Translator: Dj22031
Editor: Dj22031
Advance chapters available for patrons on Patreon. And a chapter can be sponsored by buying me a ko-fi
Li Yuebai walked towards the first plaster statue and examined it closely.
It was a nude female statue, deathly pale, with a full figure and a somewhat frightening expression. However, upon closer inspection, one would realize that the expression was less frightening and more conflicted.
“This…” Li Yuebai turned to Liang Jing and asked, “Is it—”
He had only uttered a few words when Liang Jing pointed behind him with a look of terror.
Li Yuebai felt a chill run down his spine. Before he could turn around, he hurriedly dodged to the side.
The plaster statue moved! Just moments ago, she had stretched out her pale arm as if to slap Li Yuebai hard on the head. If he hadn’t dodged quickly, he probably would have been hit.
This was an illusion; he didn’t know what the consequences of being hit would be. To be on the safe side, it was best to dodge.
The plaster statue, along with its base, turned around, and its grayish-white, pupil-less eyes fixed on Li Yuebai and Liang Jing again. It moved slowly, beginning to chase after the two.
The other five or six plaster statues also began to move, each with a different posture and terrifying movements like zombies that had been dead for many years. Yet, they were all exquisitely and ornately sculpted, resembling a scene from the old movie “Night at the Museum” where ancient sculptures come to life.
Li Yuebai immediately pulled Liang Jing aside, dodging left and right.
Fortunately, the exhibition hall was large enough for them to manoeuvre, and although the statues looked terrifying, they moved relatively slowly and didn’t seem to cooperate in their pursuit; occasionally, they would even bump into each other.
In short, as long as they were careful not to step on the snakes on the ground, there would be no danger.
Catching their breath, Li Yuebai took the opportunity to observe the strange plaster statues.
The nude female plaster statue wasn’t alone; she appeared in a set with the other statues. A nude male plaster statue always stayed close to her, and even more strangely, a plaster tree was always persistently with them. What did this mean? A couple’s sculpture?
There was another plaster female statue, dressed—not in the form of cloth, but in the form of clothing sculpted from plaster. She was also entirely grayish-white, making it impossible to discern the color of her clothes, but the intricate patterns were clear. She had long, straight hair with bangs, and her head was adorned with a magnificent headdress. She seemed to lack the energy to pursue the two people, simply lying lazily on the ground, staring intently at a plaster basket.
Li Yuebai was observing too closely, delaying his dodge, and nearly got stabbed by a trident.
The trident naturally belonged to another plaster statue—a naked man, tall and strong, with four arms, a third eye on his forehead, and no clothes except for a tiger skin around his waist, and a crescent moon adorning his head… The trident in his hand was incredibly sharp.
There was only one plaster statue left. Its appearance was very familiar, like the ancient great man statues you see in every school—a man dressed in Hanfu, wearing a tall crown, holding a long sword, but not using it to kill anyone. Instead, he simply stood still, hacking at the ground with his sword.
“Are these plaster statues all Weng Zichen’s previous works?” Li Yuebai asked while dodging.
“It doesn’t seem so.” Liang Jing, panting, was pulled left and right by Li Yuebai as they dodged. “I don’t remember…”
So, what kind of puzzle was this? Weng Zichen had only placed these plaster statues in the illusion, even giving them the ability to move and chase Liang Jing, but he hadn’t provided any clues.
If this were a puzzle, there wasn’t even a clear question, not even an answer area.
Li Yuebai had been grading papers for many years, and now he was confused too.
Moreover, the poisonous snakes covering the ground were too dangerous; one wrong step and he would step on one, making him very nervous.
Soon, several venomous snakes were enraged by their rapid movement, hissing and flicking their dark red tongues as they approached.
Neither Li Yuebai nor Gu Xisha had received professional training in snake handling; their usual contact with snakes was limited to observing them through glass at the zoo. They had heard the proverb “Strike the snake at its seven-inch mark,” but in reality, they couldn’t find it at all. Faced with this situation, their palms sweated.
“Wait a minute, let me clean the snakes first,” Liang Jing said, letting go of Li Yuebai’s hand.
Wearing a white lab coat and gloves, she crouched down in the direction the snake had come from, and in the blink of an eye, she had caught it.
Truly a professional.
Liang Tian had told him before that Liang Jing had to catch venomous snakes from glass cases every day for her experiments, and over time, she had become even more skilled than a street snake charmer.
Li Yuebai secretly breathed a sigh of relief; he wouldn’t have to worry about being bitten to death by a venomous snake for the time being.
This Weng Zichen was really going too far. Creating an illusion was one thing, but bringing the venomous snakes from the lab into it was another. Was it really necessary to increase the difficulty like this?
Liang Jing had cleared the snakes into a box in a corner of the exhibition hall, and the floor was clean, but the plaster statues continued their movements. How was he going to break the illusion?
Li Yuebai spun around and dodged. The trident that had been aimed at him struck the head of the naked man’s statue. With a loud crash, the upper half of the statue shattered, and broken plaster pieces scattered all over the ground.
Was that the end?
No, not at all.
A few seconds later, the scattered plaster pieces flew back and reassembled themselves onto the upper half of the statue, perfectly intact, just like before it shattered.
Li Yuebai felt utterly exhausted.
He had thought that as long as he could find a way to make all the statues collide and shatter, he would pass the test, but it wasn’t like that at all.
When faced with something incomprehensible, the first thing to do was—intensify observation, continue observing, and observe intently.
So Li Yuebai stared intently at the statues. And the more he looked, the more familiar they seemed.
The first group of statues—a nude woman and a nude man, and a tree that appeared to bear fruit— wasn’t just familiar; he’d seen this combination every day in books and documentaries.
The second statue, a woman in ornate clothing with a sorrowful expression, had a very unique style of clothing and a distinctive fringe— Egyptian style, definitely Egyptian!
The third statue… what kind of person would have four arms and three eyes? It could only be a god from mythology, Erlang Shen? No, this statue’s style wasn’t Chinese; it was Indian.
The fourth statue was clearly Chinese, perhaps a famous historical figure, but what was the meaning of him repeatedly slashing at the ground with his sword? No one would fight with the ground; perhaps he was cutting something else?
These four groups of statues presented a perplexing problem within the same illusion. Did they share some common thread?
He decided to start with the simplest group, the first one.
A man, a woman, and a tree, with fruit growing on the tree— what else could it be but Adam and Eve!
According to the Bible, God created the world in seven days, then created the first human, Adam, from the dust. Adam and his wife Eve lived carefreely in the Garden of Eden, except for a prohibition: they were to never eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. Unfortunately, a serpent tempted them, leading them to eat the fruit, thus gaining wisdom and shame, and were expelled from Eden by God…
This story was so widely known that countless paintings and sculptures used it as their subject, often depicting Adam and Eve, with the Tree of Knowledge in between, bearing fruit, and a serpent coiled around its trunk.
Li Yuebai examined the first group of sculptures more closely. The plaster tree trunk was empty; no serpent was carved.
Had Weng Zichen forgotten to carve the serpent? Or was this the key to the problem?
Li Yuebai felt a surge of excitement. Yes, the tree was missing a serpent, and the ground was covered with snakes… This was the key to solving the problem!
Weng Zichen had always resented Liang Jing for not understanding his work and his art, and for even smashing his artwork during an argument. That’s why he gave her this challenge: only when Liang Jing understood the meaning of his sculpture and filled in the missing parts would she pass the illusion test!
“Sister Liang,” Li Yuebai immediately called to Liang Jing, “Get a snake and coil it around this tree!”
“Why?” Liang Jing was confused by his strange request.
“The Bible, Adam and Eve, and the Tree of Knowledge,” Li Yuebai stated simply and clearly.
Liang Jing looked at the first group of sculptures, thought for a moment, and nodded, “I understand.”
Although she was only focused on biological research, she wasn’t completely ignorant of other fields of knowledge; this kind of widely disseminated, popular knowledge was naturally no problem for her.
“But, which snake?” Liang Jing stumbled to the box containing the snakes. “There are too many… good heavens… which one should I choose?”
“Any one.” Li Yuebai was a little impatient. Did Liang Jing also have decision-making difficulties? For this kind of thing, any snake would do, right?
His heart skipped a beat. Something was wrong.
If any snake could pass the test, the question would be far too easy.
It should be some special kind of snake, the kind that best matched the description in the Bible…
But damn it, the Bible didn’t mention any species of snake. Biology hadn’t even started back then; naming, classifying, and categorizing snakes came later.
Don’t panic, think back carefully…
After Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden, God punished the serpent by taking away its wings…
In many paintings, the snakes coiled around the Tree of Knowledge had wings…
Wings!
“Choose the one with wings!” Li Yuebai shouted in a deep voice.
Liang Jing’s back stiffened noticeably.
“How did you know we had one in our lab…” Her voice was a little panicked and guilty. She pulled one out of the pile of snakes. The snake was bluish-black all over, with a pair of strange wings growing on its body, but they were very small and not noticeable unless you looked closely.
There really was one!
Li Yuebai was also stunned.
Snakes, of course, didn’t have wings, but Liang Jing’s lab always conducted cutting-edge research. Judging from her guilty expression, they must have secretly used some kind of black technology to create this bizarre snake.
Black technology it was, as long as it got through the test.
Li Yuebai covered Liang Jing as she dodged the plaster statues’ attacks, rushed to the first group of statues, and carefully coiled the winged snake around the tree trunk.
The instant the coiling was complete, Adam and Eve both froze.
They returned to their original plaster statue forms.
The snake coiled around the tree trunk also froze. In an instant, it transformed from a bluish-black living snake into a grayish-white limestone sculpture, its posture still lifelike, blending perfectly with the rest of the sculptures.
Then, this group of sculptures turned into white smoke and disappeared into the air.
The problem with the first group of sculptures was solved; the test was passed.
Guys, ads are my only source of revenue, so please do not turn on the AdBlock when you are accessing this website…. Thank you, this would be a great help…
You can buy me a ko-fi and sponsor a chapter on: https://ko-fi.com/midnightrambles
Or become a Patron or access advance chapters on: https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=45665005
If you support me, I would be able to provide more chapters….
Previous • Table of Contents • Next