False evidence

Chapter 403 The City Gate Tower (Part 2)

Liang Kaiyuan was not a glib-tongued person who liked to deliberately show off.

He ended with this statement because it was difficult to find other words to describe the style of the mural.

Even as a layman, I can see the exquisite craftsmanship and the grandeur of the painting.

But the content of this painting...

A horse-drawn carriage was parked at the edge of the woods.

Several brightly colored garments were scattered on the cart shaft and on the ground.

Those were clearly women's clothes, and they weren't taken off normally.

In the woods, on the grass, a man and a woman were...

The woman was fair-skinned and beautiful, while the man was ugly.

The difference in their identities is not difficult to discern from their headdresses, hairstyles, and the few remaining clothes on their bodies.

The woman was a passenger, while the man was likely a driver or servant.

One is expensive, the other is cheap.

The expressions of both characters are depicted with remarkable realism and vividness. Their illicit affair was clearly one-sided.

In contrast to the man's bestial gaze, the woman, though beautiful, possessed a deathly palpable in her eyes. Clearly, she was on the verge of death from brutal abuse!
What further accentuates this distorted artistic conception is that the white horse pulling the cart, while bowing its head to graze, is glancing sideways in the direction of the people!

I stared at it blankly for a long time, unable to describe the emotions this painting conveyed to me.

As he looked at Lü Xin, he and Liang Kaiyuan also turned their gazes toward me.

Liang Kaiyuan said, "The more I look at this painting, the more I feel there's something strange about it that I can't quite put my finger on."

I feel the same way.

Lu Xin's brows were also full of surprise and uncertainty as he said:
“I feel like I’ve not only been here before, but I also feel… the people in this painting look like one of us?”

Liang Kaiyuan immediately nodded: "Yes! That's exactly the feeling!"

What those two said really struck a chord with me.

I also think that although the painting is ancient, it depicts the actions that one of us has done in the past!

I carefully compared each one to the others, paying particular attention to Shen Fangyun, the only woman among us. But the two people in the painting didn't resemble any of us!
Lu Xin hesitated for a moment, coughed lightly, and asked Shen Fangyun, "How do you feel?"

When he met Shen Fangyun's gaze, he seemed quite frank: "I didn't mean to offend you, it's just that—women's intuition is often more sensitive than men's."

I couldn't find fault with what he said, but Shen Fangyun, being a traditional and conservative woman, simply turned her face to the side and silently looked at Liang Kaiyuan. While blushing, she seemed to harbor some resentment towards Liang Kaiyuan!
Liang Kaiyuan and Shen Fangyun exchanged glances, avoiding her gaze, but their thoughts were clearly wandering.

Lu Xin rolled his eyes and whispered:
"She's a woman after all, living a life of widowhood, how could she not think about those things between men and women?"

We looked at each other again, then at Liang Yuan, who was still in a daze. As if bewitched, Liang Yuan slowly turned around and walked forward.

“It really looks like one of us, but who does it look like?” Eunuch Sun stared at the mural and said.

I didn't say anything, but I knew in my heart: it couldn't possibly be you!
Follow Liangyuan, and move forward along the base of the wall.

When the second mural was seen clearly, it was equally impactful, but the shock was slightly less, and a few more doubts were added.

The content of this second mural is almost identical to that of the first, with little change in the scene and the postures of the figures.

The only difference is the appearance of the people in the painting.

However, perhaps because the murals were painted by the same person, and there are only slight differences in expression, it cannot be determined that the two paintings do not depict the same subject.

Liang Yuan did not linger in front of the second painting for long, but only looked up at it for a moment before moving on.

He paused for shorter and shorter periods in front of murals with similar themes. I silently counted in my mind that there were nine murals on this wall, or rather, a group of them.

Liang Yuan finally stopped in front of a blank wall after the ninth painting.

He stood there staring blankly at the empty space for a full five minutes, then suddenly turned around, gave a bitter smile, and said in a hoarse voice:
"I know who I am now."

"Who are you?" Lu Xin was clearly extremely curious.

Liang Yuan smiled again, shook his head, and remained silent.

Lu Xin's eyes darted around, as if he was thinking about how to get him to open up and explain.

Suddenly, from the depths of the mist, a strange "whooshing" sound arose!

To an ordinary person, the sound might sound a little strange, but it's by no means terrifying.

But as soon as I heard that sound, a picture immediately popped into my head, and I jumped up in fright!

I've experienced so many strange things in the past six months. Especially today, the strange things have all come together.

I'm not as thick-skinned as I thought. When I heard that "whooshing" sound, I immediately remembered the scene that morning in the funeral home, in the dressing room, where I was sticking wet yellow paper to Jiang Baohan's face!
When I was applying the "official plasters" to the corpse, there was nothing unusual about Jiang Baohan's body. But with each layer of yellow paper I applied, I felt an increased sense of suffocation.

He also seemed to hear a hallucination in his ears, as if the corpse that had been covered with official hats was suddenly making sounds from its nose and throat.

That's the "whooshing" sound!

I remembered that before I entered this city gate tower, wasn't I in the middle of holding a funeral for Jiang Baohan?
When Fang Ling handed me the paper money earlier, that scream, her expression, her eyes… Jiang Baohan…

For a moment, my mind was in complete chaos, and I don't know what I was thinking, but I walked quickly toward the direction from which the sound came.

After passing through the fog, we finally arrived at the base of another wall.

At the same time, I also saw a person's back.

I felt that the figure looked familiar. I was about to reach out and put my hand on his shoulder when he suddenly disappeared.

Then, another set of murals, different from the previous ones, appeared on the wall in front of them...

It goes without saying how to appreciate the details of this set of murals.

I really can't explain it.

All I wanted to do was finish watching it as soon as possible and leave this oppressive city gate tower.

That's what I did too, and I didn't pay attention to how the others were behaving.

But just as I reached another blank wall, that damned "whooshing" sound came again.

Uncontrollably, I followed the sound and arrived at a staircase leading upwards.

No matter how tall the city gate tower was, it would not exceed two zhang (approximately 6.6 meters), but as I walked up the stairs, my legs felt like they were filled with lead, and the further I walked, the heavier they became.

We finally reached the next floor.

I felt my blood pressure spike. Although I couldn't convince myself to turn back, I realized I absolutely couldn't continue moving forward in this state.

So I took deep breaths.

A full minute.

When I looked up, I saw Liang Kaiyuan and the others staring at me, their expressions no worse than mine.

I calmed down a bit, nodded to everyone, and was about to turn around when it suddenly occurred to me—it seems like someone is missing.

(End of this chapter)