I have seen dragons

Chapter 59 The Painted Wall
The once tranquil night suddenly became eerie and sinister.

Without Yue Wen's knowledge, Zhao Xing'er and Professor Guan Qin were actually swallowed up by the painting on the wall, which was quite unexpected.

The evil spirits in this house are far more sinister than they had imagined!
Yue Wen didn't dare touch Guan Qin's painting first. After all, Professor Guan was an elderly, frail man, his health failing, and he couldn't withstand any disturbance. He went straight to Zhao Xing'er's painting and gently tapped the frame. "Xing'er, can you hear me?"

Instead of Zhao Xing'er's response, a faint aura of yin energy seeped out, and then a large, blue-faced, fanged face suddenly appeared!

"Uh-"

The face that was grotesque appeared out of nowhere, almost touching Yue Wen's face.

[Nightmare in the Painting: A nightmare creature created due to chaos caused by some unknown reason. Its origin and cause of death are unknown. Apart from its ugly appearance, it has no noteworthy merits. Its combat strength is roughly equivalent to two healthy human grandmothers.]

Although this thing has very low combat power, the distance is just too ambiguous, and Yue Wen was still startled by its appearance.

The next second, a fair and strong hand reached out, grabbed the green-faced ghost by the neck, and forcefully pulled it back!
In the dim light, Yue Wen also heard a shout, "You're the ugliest of all, you scared the old lady half to death!"

A chilling aura briefly obscured the view. When the scene in the painting was viewed again, it had transformed into Zhao Xing'er standing with one foot on the green-faced ghost and the other hand holding the long-tongued ghost's red tongue, swinging it up and down, almost leaving afterimages.

The art style suddenly became somewhat anime-like.

Can this drawing paper be freely entered and exited?

Yue Wen pondered for a moment, then reached in with one hand. Sure enough, he heard a hissing sound, and it seemed as if half of his arm had entered another space and disappeared into the scene. The tactile sensation that came back was incredibly realistic.

Then, a startled cry came from inside: "Whose hand is groping around like that?"

bang——

With a loud bang, the drawing paper shattered, and Zhao Xing'er's figure gracefully landed on the ground.

She gripped a ghostly figure in each hand, looking like a female Zhong Kui, incredibly fierce, and glared at Yue Wen, asking, "Was that your hand just now?"

"No," Yue Wen immediately denied, pointing behind her. "A dark figure just passed by, reached his hand inside, and then ran away."

"Huh?" Zhao Xing'er stared at her suspiciously.

Yue Wen quickly said, "Professor Guan is still trapped here. Can he escape by destroying the drawing paper?"

“That’s right,” Zhao Xing’er said. “Just now, I followed the direction the hand reached in and poked a hole in the drawing paper to get out. It was a bit difficult to find the direction of the drawing paper inside and get out by myself… Thank you so much.”

"You're welcome," Yue Wen said casually.

Zhao Xing'er instantly crushed the two ghostly figures with her strength. "So you admit it was your hand?"

Yue Wen's heart skipped a beat. He thought to himself, "Why is this big idiot Xing resorting to wits?"

"Saving lives is the priority!" he shouted quickly, and with lightning speed, he shattered the other side of the drawing paper, grabbed Guan Qin inside, and pulled him out.

With a whoosh, the old professor collapsed to the ground, his face dazed. "I just... saw the fog, and when I opened the door, how did I end up inside?"

"Professor Guan, don't panic. We'll protect you and get you out of here first." Yue Wen said, "We don't know what the source of the nightmares here is. We'll come back and deal with it later."

Guan Qin's presence here was indeed a mistake on their part.

Based on the initial description, I thought it was just an insignificant little nightmare, and I figured I could just get rid of it as soon as it appeared.

Judging from the current situation, the entire room is under the control of this malevolent entity. The source of the yin energy is still unclear, suggesting we've likely entered a nightmare realm, which is quite troublesome. If we had known this would happen, we should have sent the old man away tonight, while we stayed to deal with the evil spirit.

Fortunately, Guan Qin was not seriously injured; he was just quite frightened after being trapped inside the sketch.

The two men immediately grabbed the old man from either side, practically lifting him off the ground, and ran towards the door.

The spiritual power of nightmares usually has a limited range. As long as they leave the house, they should be safe. It would be safer for them to deal with the nightmares slowly when they have time.

On the way downstairs, the paintings around us started to look eerie!

……

The painting directly in front of them depicts a woman's arm wearing a ring. At this moment, a thick, white arm stretches out across the painting, grasping at something in the air, seemingly trying to stop the group.

On the other side, a tiger's roar sounded, as if a striped tiger had chased them down from the second floor; apples rolled all over the floor on the first floor, and the black figures in the sketch stood up, their empty pupils staring at the group in a terrifying way; the mountains, rivers and trees in the landscape painting extended out, and half of the living room was covered with vines!

This must be the scene Wang Miaomiao described. However, the paintings that had come back to life before were definitely not this aggressive. They seemed to have been enraged by the intruders, and they all carried obvious malice, as if they wanted to leave all the people in front of them here. Zhao Xing'er didn't care about anything else. Holding a meteor hammer, she moved like a whirlwind, and with a whooshing swing, she smashed the giant hand and the painting together.

The evil spirit vanished on the spot.

Guan Qin's eyes twitched. "I bought this painting for over two hundred thousand yuan, and now its market price is at least five hundred thousand yuan..."

Before he finished speaking, Zhao Xing'er struck again with her hammer, shattering the Tiger Descending the Mountain painting completely.

"Uh—" Guan Qin's breath hitched. "There are only three of Zhang Xiaowan's tiger paintings in the world!"

Before she could even exhale, Zhao Xing'er flipped her hand and smashed a picture of a group of monkeys jumping out of a mountain stream!

"Ah..." Guan Qin suddenly could only exhale and not inhale. "Each monkey in this painting is more valuable than an ounce of gold, and it's all ruined like this! Xiao Zhao, didn't you say you also love art? You can't do this!"

"What art does she love? She's a pure warrior!" Yue Wen complained from the other side.

He also killed quite a few of the nightmare creatures that emerged from the painting. Although these nightmare creatures were not strong, generally between the half-mother realm and the second-mother realm, they were extremely aggressive and desperately blocked the three of them from leaving. Without destroying the painting, they could not be truly killed.

As they walked to the door, the two men chopped the paintings in the hall to pieces. The old man's eyes were closed, and it was unclear whether he was dead or alive. Perhaps he couldn't bear to see such a scene, and his body spontaneously severed his consciousness.

Yue Wen raised his hand to open the door, and the two of them escorted Guan Qin out of the room.

But when I looked up, I realized that something was still wrong.

This isn't a residential building corridor, but a seaside area. Everything in front of me is strangely intense in color: a purplish-red sunset, with the sun half-floating on the sea, bewitching and beautiful.

It's the scene depicted in the sunset over the sea painting on the second floor!

Still haven't gone out?
When I turned back to look, the door behind me had disappeared, replaced by a beach.

“We were trapped in a nightmare from the moment we stepped through this door,” Yue Wen realized. “Perhaps something was obscuring the yin energy, and we were completely unaware.”

The so-called "Nightmare Realm" refers to a small world that operates according to its own rules when a Nightmare's spiritual power is particularly strong.

This little world may be very similar to reality, or it may be bizarre and strange. If you get caught up in it, it will be difficult for anyone to get out.

Logically, the Yin energy in the Nightmare Realm should be incredibly dense, and one should be able to sense it immediately even without a demon-revealing mirror. However, Yue Wen stayed at Guan Qin's house until midnight without noticing anything amiss.

That's why I guessed that something was blocking the yin energy.

"That's not right," Zhao Xing'er suddenly said, "Then how did Wang Miaomiao get out?"

The rules of the Nightmare Realm must be fixed. If it's not allowed to leave, then no one will be allowed to leave. Why was it that only the little girl went out?

What makes them different from Wang Miaomiao?
"Perhaps there are still rules we haven't discovered..." Yue Wen said, beginning to use his divine sense to probe their surroundings, trying to see if there were any loopholes that could lead them back. Just like when Zhao Xing'er was inside the painting, Yue Wen felt that as long as they found the right direction to leave, they should be able to break free of the painting and return to reality.

But this vast expanse where the sea meets the sky looks so boundless that it's impossible to know which way is right.

He immediately saw a long-haired woman in a white dress standing in the shadows, her face obscured by her black hair, watching them silently.

"There are people there!" Yue Wen pointed. "Go after them!"

He was absolutely certain that when Guan Qin explained the sunset over the sea to him in the evening, there were no people in the painting.

Whether the woman in the white dress is human or a nightmare, she definitely knows some kind of trick to entering and leaving this place.

Both were cultivators, and their leaps were incredibly swift. Guan Qin hung between the two, like a toad holding a stick between two swans, his hairline being pushed back a few centimeters by the strong wind.

As the two approached, the woman turned and ran, her speed surprisingly fast. She swept across a grove of coconut trees and turned in another direction.

The three chased after her and turned the corner, only to see a long graffiti wall ahead. The woman bumped into it and vanished into thin air from the wall.

"Gone?"

Yue Wen stepped forward and scanned the area with his divine sense, but could no longer detect any trace of the woman's presence.

He pondered for a moment and said, "Perhaps this wall is the gateway to leaving."

“There are many paintings on it,” Zhao Xing’er said.

This is a grayish-yellow wall with scenes of figures painted on it. Upon closer inspection, it seems to tell a story.
(End of this chapter)