A bizarre and terrifying experience; I messed up the dungeon world.

Whether it works or not, we'll see.

Han Yingying spoke up: "I'll go in with you."

"no."

"My skills might be useful in there. If the things in room three can talk, I can extract more information from them."

Zhou Lang glanced at her. What she said made sense.

"Then it'll be just the two of us." He didn't refuse again.

At 11:50 p.m. that night, Zhou Lang and Han Yingying stood in front of the wall in the second-floor corridor. Lin Zhe stood guard at the entrance of the corridor, holding a kitchen knife he had taken from the kitchen. The bald, burly man volunteered to stand guard at the stairwell, carrying a fire extinguisher, saying it could be used as a weapon in a pinch.

Zhou Lang lit the oil lamp.

The green light shone on the wall again, and the painting slowly appeared. It was the same room—bed, table, chair. But the scene was different today.

There are many more things in the room.

The walls were covered with paintings. Frames of all sizes and shades were arranged densely. In each painting, something was moving. There were pine trees swaying, streams flowing, mountains, clouds, flowers, and grass.

And then there's that stick pine tree with the bald guy. It's really alive; it's in the corner of the picture, a stick supporting a green ball, swaying from side to side.

The gray figure was still sitting in the chair. But this time, it was looking up.

Zhou Lang could feel it watching him.

Twelve o'clock.

The image cracked. The crack widened.

Last time, a hand reached out. This time, nothing reached out. The gap remained open, as if inviting.

Zhou Lang gripped the oil lamp tightly and went inside.

Han Yingying followed behind him.

Stepping through the crevice felt like stepping into a puddle of ice water. Cold, a chill that ran from the soles of their feet to their scalps. Their vision went unfocused for a moment, and when it returned, they were already in room number three.

The room was much larger than it appeared in the painting.

No. Not just much bigger—it's unreasonably bigger. The space they were standing in was at least the size of a basketball court, with framed pictures hanging on all four walls, stretching from the floor to an unknown ceiling.

Every painting is in motion.

The stream gurgled and flowed, its sound emanating from the picture frame. The pine trees swayed in the wind, their needles rustling. The slender pine even spun in place, like a happy roly-poly toy.

Han Yingying saw the pine forest she had painted during the day. The frame was over a meter wide, and the pine trees inside were densely packed, with light and shadow flowing around them, even more vivid than when she painted it.

"Isn't it beautiful?"

A voice rang in her ear.

Han Yingying didn't turn around. Zhou Lang reached out and grabbed her wrist—not because he was afraid she would turn around, but because he was afraid something in this space would pull her away.

"Who's speaking?" Zhou Lang asked.

"I."

The sound came from directly in front. The gray figure stood up from the chair.

It was taller than an average person, but shockingly thin, like a stretched-out gray sheet of paper. Its face had no features, only a vague outline. But its posture—head tilted, left hand behind its back, right hand hanging at its side—resembled that of a painter admiring his own work.

"You are new guests," it said. The voice did not come from its mouth—it had no mouth—but came from all directions at once, as if the space itself was speaking for it.

Han Yingying's skill is active. She initiates a conversation; the conditions are met.

"Who are you?" Han Yingying asked.

"I am the painting," it said, "and the painter. I painted this room, and then I moved in."

"Were you a previous guest?"

"A long time ago. So long that I've forgotten what I used to look like." It tilted its head. "Your painting is really beautiful. I want to keep it."

The skill was triggered again. Han Yingying extracted the third piece of information from this sentence—

The painter in room number three has become one with the room; it is the core mystery of the instance. It collects paintings to expand its space. It grows stronger at the end of each instance run.

S-class.

This is what makes this instance so bizarre, rated S.

Zhou Lang had seen related records in the system logs before—each instance may contain a hidden S-level anomaly that does not participate in the interaction of ordinary rules, but parasitizes the underlying logic of the instance in some way.

This is the painter. It doesn't attack anyone unprovoked, but it grows stronger by collecting paintings. Those things that wander the corridors at night, those things that knock on doors—they all come from its paintings.

"What if I don't want you to collect my paintings?" Han Yingying said.

The gray figure tilted its head at an even greater angle.

"Then I'll have to draw it myself." It raised its right hand—and there was a pen in its hand. It wasn't an ordinary pen; it was a pen made from bone, and the paint on the tip was dark red.

It drew a stroke in the air.

A circle appeared beneath Han Yingying's feet. The circle's edge was a dark red line, and it was shrinking towards the center.

Zhou Lang reacted extremely quickly. He pulled Han Yingying out of the circle and pushed the oil lamp forward at the same time—the green light shone on the gray figure.

It is afraid of light.

The green light of the oil lamp made its body tremble, its edges blurring as if erased. It took a few steps back, blocking the view of the largest painting on the wall.

That painting depicts the entire view of the guesthouse.

The guesthouse as seen from the outside. A three-story building, pine forest, mountain road, and a bus. A panoramic view of the entire instance.

"Burn that painting." A thought flashed through Zhou Lang's mind.

He had no fire—the oil lamp was a green will-o'-the-wisp, incapable of igniting anything. But he had a chainsaw.

Zhou Lang activated his chainsaw and charged towards the panoramic painting. A gray figure blocked his path, wielding a bone pen to draw lines in the air—the lines transformed into chains that coiled around Zhou Lang.

Han Yingying called out from behind.

It wasn't a scream. What she shouted was—"Its brush! Its paint is drawn from the painting!"

Zhou Lang looked down and saw that every time the gray figure drew a line, a painting on the wall would fade a little. It was using the paintings it had collected to fight.

Then let's just wait it out.

Zhou Lang started running around room number three. Not to hide, but to make it chase him. Every time it took a step, it would draw a line to block him, and each line consumed a drawing.

Three minutes later, nearly a third of the painting on the wall had faded. The gray figure's body also faded.

It made a sound—it's hard to describe what that sound was. It wasn't a roar, nor a scream. It sounded more like a piece of paper being slowly torn apart.

"That's enough." Zhou Lang stopped, raised his chainsaw, and chopped at the panoramic painting.

The frame shattered. The canvas was cut in half.

The entire room shook violently. The remaining paintings on the wall began to fall, fluttering down like autumn leaves. The gray figure's body split in two, the two halves falling to either side and turning into a pool of gray paint.

The paint spread across the ground and was then absorbed by the ground.

The surrounding walls began to collapse. Not in a physical sense—the walls rolled up like a canvas, revealing the brick walls behind them.

Ordinary, normal brick wall.