A: New arc everyone! Just a disclaimer for this entire section of the story, there’s a lot of artistic themes and imagery and theory that I do not understand how to convey (STEM kid here 
), so if you are an art major or enthusiast, plz feel free to DM me on Discord (you can find me in the CG disc) with any corrections or better explanations bc I need the help LOL also look out for a fun note at the end!
The T-University Art Museum was, as its name suggested, established by the art department of T-City University. Although it wasn’t very big, it had a history of over 100 years.
The museum was always open throughout the year, and although half of the exhibitions were dedicated to younger artists, especially during graduation season, the museum would also exhibit works from graduates of other major art schools across the country.
The person in charge of the gallery was very good at running its business. The newly graduated students’ work would be sold while on display, and because they weren’t famous artists, the price wasn’t high. Often, people would simply buy any works they liked as they passed by — most of the proceeds would go to the author, while the art museum would withdraw a corresponding fee.
Because of this, undergraduate and graduate students from many different colleges across the country were happy to send their works to T-Museum for exhibition, and if they were lucky enough to sell them, they would also net a profit.
“As a result, the art in this museum is never fixed. Paintings that were still on display in the morning could be sold by the afternoon, and new works would then be added.” Qin Ci stood in the museum, looking at the avant-garde display racks and canvases in the hall.
Ke Xun and Wei Dong met Qin Ci in front of a vending machine inside the gallery. It was very hot, and people couldn’t help but want to drink something.
After experiencing the last painting, everyone refused to drink any processed beverages. At this time, the three men each had a bottle of mineral water.
“The rotation of these works are unknown, so it’s useless to worry about it,” Ke Xun drank a few sips of cool water, “Just go with the flow.”
“Did you two just get here?” Qin Ci asked.
Wei Dong nodded: “We asked students from the university to help us out since the location of this small gallery was quite hard to find.”
Qin Ci looked around at the several exhibition halls: “I’ve searched around, but I wasn’t able to find Hall K.”
Ke Xun and Wei Dong found it strange. The art gallery wasn’t very large to begin with, where else could an exhibition hall be hidden?
Qin Ci picked up the invitation letter in his hand and looked at it: “There’s no mistake, it says Hall K, but there’s only ten exhibition halls in the museum. Arranged in alphabetical order, Hall K would belong to an 11th exhibition hall.”
Most of the people who came inside the exhibition hall were students from the fine arts academy, and a lot of them were wearing T-shirts with the gallery’s logo, probably here to act as volunteers and help out the attendees.
The few men planned on asking someone for directions, when a female volunteer with pigtails came over and smiled enthusiastically: “Are you guys here to see the exhibition? Today’s works cover a wide variety of subjects, and there are four collections filled with excellent art from the university! If you want to learn more about these paintings, I can give you a brief explanation.”
“Thank you very much. We actually just wanted to ask, is there a K exhibition hall here?” Qin Ci inquired.
“Ah, it seems that you guys are familiar with today’s exhibition. Hall K is just a temporary addition for us, because there have been so many exhibits these last two days~” The girl shrugged her shoulders and smiled cutely, “Everyone come with me please.”
They didn’t expect the exhibition hall to have such a complicated set up, and they also couldn’t figure out how the game maker behind-the-scenes got ahold of the information in advance.
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.
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She said that she would lead everyone in, but the three of them waved their hands at the same time: “Uh… it’s alright, we’ll go in by ourselves.”
The girl was still very enthusiastic: “The works in Hall K are very unique. If they had to be categorized, the works in this exhibition would be considered Fauvism, and can even be said to be a revival of the movement.”
Fauvism — it could be said that the next painting should be very powerful.
The three of them didn’t want to drag an innocent girl into the painting, so Ke Xun smiled with embarrassment: “Thank you very much for showing us the way, but I think we need to use the bathroom first.”
The girl nodded with an expression of understanding: “I sincerely hope that you all will enjoy today’s exhibition.”
Wei Dong added another sentence: “I think the lobby might need you more than us, after all, there were many guests up front.”
“Okay, if you need anything, just go to the front hall to find me. My name is Yening Chenyi.” The girl pointed to the name tag on her T-shirt and left with a smile.
Seeing the girl’s back towards them, everyone sighed with relief — this could be regarded as saving a life.
There was a sign in front of the temporary exhibition hall — A Renaissance of Fauvism: Painting is not technical, rather it’s our emotions,
“This is indeed the subjective view of Fauvism.” Wei Dong said suddenly.
“When did a little designer like you become a professional artist?” Ke Xun asked.
Wei Dong spread his hands out: “Experience comes with time. If you’re sick for long enough, you can even become a doctor.”
The doctor, Qin Ci, smiled faintly and pushed open the door of the exhibition hall.
There was enough light inside the building for it to be suitable for viewing the paintings.
No one else was in the exhibition hall, possibly because the weather was too hot for people to enjoy going to the backyard, or perhaps the previous group of guests had already been absorbed into a certain painting.
As the room had yet to darken, the three of them seized the opportunity to look at the paintings in the hall, wishing they could remember the contents and labels of these paintings as quickly as possible, as well as the artist’s introductions.
“Where can I go to get some hot water?” The door of the exhibition hall suddenly opened, and a middle-aged woman recklessly stopped inside.
The three of them had never encountered a situation like this before, and they all stared at the visitor.
The door behind the middle-aged lady closed, and she looked around the room with a half-empty water bottle in her hand: “This place is just too improper, why isn’t there boiled water anywhere? Don’t museums and libraries usually have some free boiled water?! These people really are too good at making money, they put vending machines everywhere so they can scam money from people…”
Before the lady had finished speaking, the entire exhibition hall suddenly went dark, and the woman furiously said, “Why is there a power outage?! Even if they don’t care, the guests will care! If someone falls, will they take responsibility?!”
When the familiar white light lit up, the middle-aged lady was still chattering: “What’s going on? Is this an emergency light? Where’s the exhibition hall door….”
Ke Xun clearly saw the label beside the painting — 【Shadow】, by Rong Rang, born in 1993, ancestral home in Tongzhou, Hunan….
The picture itself was nothing worth studying: there were abstract lines everywhere, mainly black, with blue, yellow, red, purple…. The colors all had the same density and depth, and this flat canvas pulled everyone inside.
The new world was dazzlingly bright, and Ke Xun once again experienced the so-called “two-dimensional discomfort” that he’d experienced before — just like being in a rapidly descending elevator or on an airplane that just took off, there was a sense of vertigo in his heart. Except, inside the painting, this sense of weightlessness was simply a matter of up or down, but rather extended infinitely in all directions.
The unique building in front seemed to be made of countless colored spots, the fruit trees shone with rich colors and grew next to a shimmering river that stretched far off into the distance without end.
“Is this world three-dimensional?” Ke Xun rubbed his temples, taking a deep breath to try and adjust to the discomfort.
Wei Dong looked at his relatively 3D hand: “It’s three-dimensional, but the color is too bright, which makes people feel that it’s a bit unnatural.”
“The sunshine here is similar in Nice,” Qin Ci explained, looking at Ke Xun and Wei Dong who both had blank expressions on their faces, “Nice is a city in southeastern France. The former residence of Matisse, the pioneer of Fauvism, is located there. There’s also a famous Matisse Museum — I traveled there two years ago.”
“Maybe this painting is a tribute to Matisse.” Ke Xun tried his best to adapt to the surrounding environment. Because the painting seemed to be more on the artistic side, outside the small world created by the painting, there were small flashes of color in the white void, seemingly indicating that this was truly no-man’s-land.
“Where in the world am I supposed to find water?” The voice of the middle-aged women rang out from behind them.
Ke Xun and Wei Dong turned their hopeful eyes towards Doctor Qin. Qin Ci turned to the middle-aged lady and said, “Go on ahead first, once everyone is here I’ll explain.”
“It’s not… I don’t understand this kind of modern art. I’ll admit, you made the exhibition hall very beautiful, and I’m even surprised…. But right now I want to find some drinking water! I only came inside the art gallery to use the restroom, and I felt like it’d be convenient to get some water while I’m at it!” The middle-aged lady spoke and spoke until she finally stopped, shocked to find that the big water bottle in her hand had somehow turned into a bright European-style glass jug, “What is this? It’s so heavy!”
The three people in Ke Xun’s group didn’t speak, continuing to walk towards the beautiful building in front of them. The middle-aged woman was dumbfounded, and could only follow along with that heavy water jar.
Everyone didn’t bother to pay attention to their change in clothes — commoner garments that didn’t seem to belong to any ethnic group: the base color was a dazzling white, while bright patterns of various shapes and colors decorated the clothing.
Under the fruit tree by the river, Mu Yiran and Zhu Haowen were already waiting alongside a middle-aged man in his 40s and a girl who looked like a college student.
The girl sobbed softly as she was held in the arms of the middle-aged man, and from time to time they would comfort each other by kissing. — This was actually a pair of lovers.
Mu Yiran’s clothes were also mainly white, but had very fine grape-purple patterns stitched on them, making him look like a noble prince.
For the first time, Ke Xun felt like admiring a person was very similar to admiring a painting. He was about to look at the ‘painting’ more when he heard a familiar name from a distance away: “Yening Chenyi, hurry up!”
Yening Chenyi, it was the volunteer who had led everyone to the K exhibition hall just now. He didn’t expect that she would not escape the fate of entering this cruel world of nightmares.
Qin Ci counted the number of people in front, and then looked at the group of young people who were headed over: “Everyone is here.”
From the distance came five college students, three boys and two girls. At the tail-end of the group was Yening Chenyi with her pigtails, but she no longer had that enthusiastic smile on her face, instead it had been replaced with panic.
Qin Ci had become the recognized instructor for those new to entering paintings, and he once again entered the routine of explaining the rules to the group.
The newcomers naturally couldn’t conceal their inner trepidation. Only the middle-aged man in his 40s was relatively calm, while the middle-aged woman became even more irritable: “This is some horrible luck!”
The middle-aged man embraced his crying girlfriend and looked at Mu Yiran and the others: “You guys have experienced this already?”
Qin Ci nodded in place of the others.
“Then I’ll have to request your assistance for the rest of the road ahead,” The man was very used to getting his business card out of his jacket pocket, but he found that his clothes had already become an olden style without pockets, and couldn’t help but laugh, “My name is Shi Zhendong, how should I address you all?”
A few people reported their names, while some only used their surnames. For example, Mu Yiran: “Last name is Mu.”
The other college students looked at the girl in Shi Zhendong’s arms, and a few greeted her unkindly: “Xin Beibei, we only came to Hall K to find you in the first place. You didn’t even come to say hi, and instead ran off to go on a date?”
Xin Beibei obviously couldn’t bear to listen to these works, and simply continued to cry.
—
A: This is… an unfortunate cast of cannon-fodder…
H: I am cringing with every new introduction orz
A: Hello everyone! It’s been a two ish months since I took over this project from Eve and I’ve been really grateful for the support I got from everyone Since I’ve been busy finishing undergrad this past semester, I didn’t have time to properly thank you guys as well as those who sent Kofi’s sooo for the next three weeks (including this one), there will double updates!
they tried to help her at least.
YAY! For double updates!! Glad to start a new arc!! 🤓🤓
Thank you for the chapter 💜 and yay double updates!
thank you for hard work .
Bet yening chenyi will survive till the end….but she also radiates cannon fodder vibe 🥲
Thank you for the chapter ☺️
I really hoped she wouldn’t be in the painting. now I hope she survives.
Thanks for the chapter! <3
Thank you very much♡♡( ◜‿◝ )♡♡
the cannon fodder can be truly distinguished. a truly sad life.
AH AH AH! One of ny favorite arcs! 2nd arc, faith, is thrilling while this arc is eerie! EERIE!