I will post 1 more chapter today, so that it will be 200! 
Yue Xingwen pressed the course selection button. After a few minutes of countdown, 13 people were collectively transported to the exam room.
The environment of this exam room was night time, a bright moon hung high in the sky, and they could see through the moonlight that there was a strangely shaped building in front of them, a bit like an European castle in a Western fantasy movie.
Zhang Xiaonian looked at the building carefully and said, “This is a typical Gothic style, with a fine spike shape and a towering tip, symbolizing that people can get closer to Heaven.”
As soon as the words fell, a group of crows suddenly flew around, and in the silent night, the piercing quackling of the crows startled everyone. The shadows casted by the branches on the ground swayed like shifting ghostly shadows.
Ke Shaobin hurriedly took a step back, rubbed the goosebumps on his arm, and whispered, “This environment is too eerie. Why do I feel as if we have traveled into a vampire movie and come to a vampire castle?”
Jiang Pingce said calmly, “Let’s go in and take a look.”
Everyone followed Jiang Pingce and Yue Xingwen towards the castle.
At the entrance to the castle was a garden filled with roses, but strangely enough, they were all black. Yue Xingwen still thought that it was because the light was too dark, so he turned his head to look at Xin Yan. “Xin Yan, lend me a light.”
Xin Yan summoned a string of spirit lamps to surround the area, and Yue Xingwen took a closer look and wondered, “Is it really Black Rose?”
Lan Yarong said, “The roses sold on the market are usually red, white, pink and yellow. Is there anything special about black roses?”
Qin Miao said calmly, “The flower language of the black rose is—— You are a demon and you are mine.”
Everyone was silent for a moment, always feeling a chill down their spine.
Most of the roses in the flower bed had opened, layers of black petals, looking particularly strange under the moonlight. Yue Xingwen leaned over to observe for a moment, but did not find anything special, and the arrangement of the rose beds was not regular. He said, “This course may be a survival class or a reasoning class, so be careful after entering, don’t touch anything inside the castle.”
The students nodded in unison and carefully pushed open the gate of the castle.
The interior of the castle was luxuriously decorated, and through Xin Yan’s spirit lamp, they could see that the hall on the 1st floor was an arched structure, with a ceiling height of more than 5 meters, which was very grand, and there was a spiral staircase leading to the second floor.
There were European-style sofas, coffee tables, and a few paintings on the surrounding walls.
Seeing the wall paintings, Yue Xingwen immediately became alert. “Since this course is called <Illusion in the Painting>, we must pay special attention to the decorative paintings on the walls, they are likely to be important clues.”
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
Lin Manluo said, “Let Feixue go over and take a look.”
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Xu Feixue said, “This painting is a masterpiece of abstract works, called <Blackboard>, by Cy Twombly. There is also an allusion to the birth of this painting, it’s said that the painter sat on his friend’s shoulders, let his friend shake his body at will, and he casually put down his strokes on the canvas, so the lines drawn were so messy.”
Everyone: “…”
This painter was also individualistic enough to paint like this!
Liu Zhaoqing couldn’t help but complain, “The abstract department is really very abstract. When I look at this painting, it’s like a kindergarten child’s graffiti, I can’t understand what he’s trying to express.”
Xu Feixue said with a smile, “The abstract department is indeed like this, out of 1,000 people, 990 can’t understand it, and the remaining 10 can see different meanings. The abstract style was able to become popular in the art world mainly because these paintings are full of imagination.”
Ke Shaobin opened his mouth wide, “Just this blackboard scribbling? Can it be sold for hundreds of millions of yuan?”
His 3 views were obviously refreshed. And there were still more to come.
Xu Feixue pointed to the second painting and said, “This one is called <Exchange>, also a masterpiece of abstract surrealism, with a price tag of several hundred million dollars.”
They saw a large number of messy color blocks spliced together in the painting; White, orange, blue, green, black, irregular shapes, as if a bunch of rags had been cut and put together to make a painting, and they simply couldn’t understand what it meant.
Yue Xingwen helplessly supported his forehead. “No wonder the course information says that abstract paintings are difficult to describe—— This is really too abstract to understand.”
Xu Feixue walked to the third painting, and everyone only saw four black lines simply outlined on the pure white background, which looked a bit like the side of a person’s face at a rough glance, but not at a closer look.
Xu Feixue said, “This painting is called <Dream>, a masterpiece of minimalist abstract work.”
Ke Shaobin was very curious. “How much can you sell for drawing four lines on white paper?”
Xu Fei Xue said, “About 100~200 million dollars?” Ke Shaobin: “…”
In the last painting, there was a vertical white line in the middle of the pure red canvas. If it wasn’t for Xu Feixue’s introduction, everyone wouldn’t even think that it was a ‘painting’, it looked like a picture made by a computer casually, and it was also an extremely lazy drawing.
Xu Feixue said, “This painting is called <Anna’s Light>, the straight line in the middle and the red background, both painted by the painter himself, without the help of tools such as rulers. This painting is also worth a lot and can be sold for hundreds of millions of yuan.”
Ke Shaobin gave a thumbs up. “Awesome, the world of art is really too profound to appreciate.”
Jiang Pingce said calmly, “These paintings are expensive. Firstly, because they are old and collectible; Second, their painters were very famous, they were masters of a certain genre at that time, and the legacy of their works sold at a very high price, which is understandable.”
Yue Xingwen nodded and said, “That’s right, the legacy of our masters of Chinese painting can also be auctioned at sky-high prices, and the key lies in the value of the collection. These abstract paintings we saw were definitely not genuine.”
Xu Feixue looked back in surprise, “Xingwen, you can tell the difference between a real one and a fake?”
Yue XIngwen said with a smile, “I can’t tell. I only know that the owner of this castle can’t collect so many priceless famous paintings at the same time, not to mention that a single painting is worth hundreds of millions. These paintings belong to cultural relics-level collections, and they can’t be bought with money.”
It turned out that he was judging these to be knockoffs from the price.
Xu Feixue nodded in agreement. “It makes sense. These paintings should be copied works, and hanging them here is most likely to be a clue prompt. What does that mean?”
Even Xu Feixue from the Art Department could not understand what these abstract paintings meant. Even the painter of the paintings was also cranky and free-handed, and it was difficult to say what they wanted to express.
Then, the name of the painting became the key.
Jiang Pingce said calmly, “First, write down the names of the four paintings, there should be some kind of logical relationship between them.”
Ke Shaobin whispered, “Blackboard, Exchange, Dream, Anna’s Light, why do I feel like a storyline? The blackboard is usually associated with schools, right? But this is an old castle, which is too strange.”
The whole castle was empty. The moonlight came in through the arched windows, and occasionally, crows flew past the windows; It was an eerie atmosphere, and it always felt as if some demon or monster would swoop down and attack them at any moment.
Lin Manluo felt hairy, and she said, “Should everyone split up and look for clues?”
Yue Xingwen nodded. “En, let’s divide into three groups.”
Yue Xingwen and Jiang Pingce took Xu Feixue, Ke Shaobin and Xin Yan to the bedroom next to the living room, four girls went to the bathroom in a group, and the rest went to the kitchen.
This bedroom on the 1st floor should be occupied by a nanny, and the layout was very simple, with a separate bathroom and a workshop next to the bathroom, in which there were mops, brooms and other cleaning tools, and had a door leading to the kitchen.
There was nothing special in the nanny room, Yue Xingwen withdrew and asked his teammates, “Did you find out?”
The girls’ group quickly reported: “There are no special clues in the bathroom and utility room.”
At this moment, Liu Zhaoqing’s voice came from the kitchen, “The refrigerator is empty, it looks like it hasn’t been used for a long time. There are no traces of cooking on the kitchen stove either—— This castle is strange, like no one lives here ah?”
Ke Shaobin was also puzzled. “There are no clothes in the wardrobe in the nanny’s room, it feels like the family has long moved to another place, leaving only an empty shell?”
Jiang Pingce said, “Don’t jump to conclusions easily, we haven’t finished searching this place yet.”
Yue Xingwen agreed and said, “Yes, there is nothing in the refrigerator and kitchen, which only means that the family doesn’t eat here. Search the entire castle first.”
At this moment, Xin Yan suddenly said in a low voice, “Look here guys.”
Everyone followed the sound, and saw Xin Yan squatting next to the carpet in the living room, holding a spirit lamp to illuminate the area on the edge of the carpet. Following his gaze, there seemed to be a pool of dark red liquid traces on the carpet. Liu Zhaoqing walked over quickly, squatted down and carefully observed for a moment, and said, “It should be blood.”
Xin Yan said, “There was a murder in this old castle?”
Yue Xingwen was silent for a moment and said, “It seems that we were teleported to the scene of the murder. The murderer must have fled long ago. Where’s the corpse? Was the corpse taken away, or is it hidden in the middle of this old castle?”
Liu Zhaoqing asked, “Did you guys smell the putrid odor of the corpse after you came in?”
Everyone shook their heads: “No!”
There was no smell of blood or rotten smell in the old castle, but because the garden outside was full of roses and the windows were open, they could always smell the fragrance of roses between their noses.
Liu Zhaoqing analyzed. “The temperature here is not low, if the body is left at the crime scene, it will rot and stink after more than a day, and there are three ways not to let the body stink, one is to freeze the body in the refrigerator, but the refrigerator is empty; Second is to seal into the cement wall, this method has appeared once on the construction site of the Faculty of Architecture, so it shouldn’t be repeated, right?”
He paused and said, “Third, buried in the ground.”
Hearing this, Yue Xingwen immediately turned his head to look out the window.
Under the cold moonlight, black roses bloomed in the large rose garden, as if absorbing sufficient nutrients. His gaze froze and he whispered, “The rose garden.”
Jiang Pingce immediately said, “Go dig it up and take a look.”
Several people jumped out of the window, and Zhang Xiaonian summoned the excavator and cautiously began to turn over the ground. A moment later, the excavator seemed to touch something hard, and Zhang Xiaonian immediately slowed down his movements and said, “There’s something underground.”
“Be careful,” Yue Xingwen reminded him, “Don’t dig it off.”
Zhang Xiaonian changed direction and started digging from the surrounding area, and soon dug out a large pit.
They saw three complete human bones appear in the pit.
The ghastly white bones glowed coldly in the moonlight, and the three skulls were facing the direction where they stood.
Thanks for the update 😍
Archeology class for a minute, lol
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