Chapter 92: The Painter
Inside the storage hall, after two frog croaks, Molei vanished without a trace. That was precisely why she dared to enter the Nightmare Ancient Castle Ward—she could hide.
Tap! Tap! Tap!
Lamp Sister moved with an eerie gait, patrolling without any sense of direction. Accompanied by the creaking, grinding sound of metal, her searchlight head scanned the surroundings. Wherever the murky orange beam fell, things became old, pitted, and uneven.
Lamp Sister stopped moving in the storage hall. Zuiyasi, now reduced to a brain monster corpse, could only continue lying stiff on the dissection table.
Compared to Molei and Zuiyasi, Shenyin was even more unlucky. Just as he rushed from the storage hall into the patient room, Lamp Sister caught him from behind with her light. His sanity plummeted at a terrifying rate—dizziness, tinnitus, double vision, and his body went completely limp.
Just as Shenyin thought he would turn into a beast, Lamp Sister drove a spike into his spine. This numbed his entire body, but his sanity stopped dropping.
The real problem was that Lamp Sister hooked him onto her lower back, making him her accessory. That was deeply unsettling—who knew what Lamp Sister planned to do with Shenyin.
Behind the coded metal door, it was pitch black. Su Xiao had heard Lamp Sister ramming the door and scratching at it earlier. Now everything had calmed down, and he could only faintly hear the tapping sound from outside—Lamp Sister's high heels striking the floor.
Su Xiao had noticed earlier that the storage hall had two doors and two passages. The two doors faced each other: one was the patient room door he had entered through, and the other was the coded door he had opened.
As for the passages on the left and right sides of the storage hall, he had glanced at them while rushing through. Each passage led to a room.
The room on the left looked like a laboratory or medicine storage area. Presumably, the castle doctors had researched how to deal with beast transformation there.
The room connected to the right passage had a faint glow inside. There was an unusually thick glass column, and the light came from within it. What exactly was submerged in that glass column? He had been in too much of a hurry to see clearly.
With Lamp Sister standing guard, exploring the rooms on either side of the storage hall was impossible. Lamp Sister wasn't a monster that had mutated by chance—someone had deliberately modified her to guard this place. As for which faction did this...
In the World of Paintings, there were four known factions: the Sun Church, the Dynasty, the Trace King Hall, and the Young Miss's side, the Ancient Castle.
From various clues, when mental beast transformation first appeared in this world, the Dynasty was the one to fight against the calamity. But the Dynasty didn't hold out long before collapsing.
The Nightmare King was once a minister of the Dynasty, a leading figure in combating beast transformation. He wasn't an ordinary person back then. What kind of change turned a former Dynasty minister into what he was now? Someone who only dared to hide in his stitched-together nightmare world, using his advantages to play death games with others, only to be unable to win or lose gracefully, begging for mercy when defeated.
Many subtle clues suggested that the Nightmare King hadn't always been like this. He only became this way after his beliefs and faith completely collapsed.
Or perhaps it was the Dynasty's collapse that made him this way. In its later stages, the Dynasty fell into extreme obsession. The momentum was clear: no matter the cost, they would cure beast transformation, even if patients had to endure the Sea's Wrath, which was as terrible as beast transformation itself.
After the first brain monster appeared, the Dynasty had already fallen. But mental beast transformation persisted, and the next to step up was the Sun Church.
That was why Su Xiao found the [Church Knight Helmet] on the castle roof. Besides that, the Sun Church had many connections to the castle ward. For example, the white robe style of the church alchemists was borrowed from the castle doctors' robes.
Su Xiao had obtained the ward key from Bishop Cooper. That was normal—the Sun Church had taken over the castle ward later, and they took the key with them.
Thinking this way, the Sun believers and the castle doctors must have worked together to modify Lamp Sister, making her guard the secrets deep within the nightmare.
If that were the case, even without a method to control Lamp Sister, she should have some kind of weakness.
Otherwise, if one day Sun believers entered this nightmare using the ward key and got killed by Lamp Sister, that would be incredibly stupid. Lamp Sister was the monster they had created.
Su Xiao was 100% certain that Lamp Sister had been modified. He could create alchemical creatures, and a preliminary observation confirmed this.
If the Sun Church and castle doctors had modified Lamp Sister, then simple elimination logic applied. The castle doctors were mostly dead, and the ward key was in the hands of the Sun Church's bishop. This meant the Sun Church likely had a way to control or restrain Lamp Sister.
The castle ward had been sealed for too long. When Su Xiao obtained the ward key from Bishop Cooper, the bishop only said this key was very important—it was hope, more important than his own life.
What kind of hope? Bishop Cooper didn't know either. This key had been passed down through several bishops.
According to Bishop Cooper, when the bishop two generations ago passed on the key, that bishop was notoriously tight-lipped and proud, believing he wouldn't die by accident.
As it turned out, that bishop was reliable—he didn't die by accident. On his deathbed, gasping for breath, he tried to reveal the key's purpose. But his mouth was too tight, and he was a bit too late—he croaked on the spot.
The bishop who received the key was dumbfounded. What was this key for? Hope? What hope? You say half a sentence, then croak and die? What the hell are you pulling?
Of course, the bishop wouldn't say "what the hell" out loud, but that was exactly how he felt. From the key's original holder all the way to Bishop Cooper, the message went like this:
This is the key to open the castle ward, where there is hope → Hope... croak~ → This is hope.
By the time it reached Bishop Cooper, only "hope" remained. No wonder Bishop Cooper used this key to trade for his life.
The castle ward had countless connections to the Sun Church. The most likely people to come here were Sun believers. Time was the best way to erase clues and information. The safest method was to make Lamp Sister fear something that only Sun believers had, something others couldn't obtain or steal.
A Sun helmet? No, a helmet was a dead object. It was representative enough, but it couldn't guarantee exclusivity. Then... what about Sun Power?
Su Xiao had encountered the Blazing Sun Lord before. On the surface, he seemed to wield Sun Power, but that wasn't the case. His Sun Power wasn't pure—it was twisted from Flame Power. The Blazing Sun Lord had developed his bloodline talent in the wrong direction. Instead of mastering Flame Power, he insisted on mastering Sun Power.
Nothing was safer than Sun Power. When encountering Lamp Sister, Sun believers would definitely fight back to survive. Over 50% of Sun believers specialized in Sun miracles, and over 97% could use some Sun miracles. Making Lamp Sister fear Sun Power was the best protection the modifiers could give their own people.
The people who modified Lamp Sister weren't entirely selfish. If others wanted to know the secret in the secret room, they could face Lamp Sister. Passing her test meant being qualified. This style was very Sun Church.
In the pitch-black secret room, when the tapping outside stopped, Su Xiao took out a lighting device and flipped the switch. The light illuminated this small secret room, which was about 20 square meters. Bookshelves lined the walls, and a desk sat in the corner. The ink bottle on it had dried up, a quill still stuck inside. Other items were neatly arranged on the desk.
Su Xiao looked toward the opposite side of the secret room. Between the bookshelves was a door, made of the same silver-gray metal as the door in the Sanctuary Hall. But this door had neither a keyhole nor a combination lock.
After examining this silver-gray single door, Su Xiao confirmed that it opened from the other side. In this secret room, this door was impassable.
Ignoring that, Su Xiao walked to the desk and sat in the chair. The most eye-catching item on the desk was a glass test tube.
The glass of this test tube was slightly impure. Inside was fresh, vibrant blood. Even though the tube's mouth was covered with waterproof cloth and tightly bound with ox tendon to prevent air from getting in, given the age of the castle ward, the freshness of this blood was absurd—as if it had just left a body.
Picking up the test tube, Su Xiao received a notification from Reincarnation Paradise.
[You have obtained Rosa Nier's Blood (Painter's Blood)]
[Rosa Nier's Blood (Painter's Blood)]
Origin: World of Paintings - Exclusive.
Quality: World-Class
Category: Special Item / Awakening Object / Ritual Object.
Usage 1: Hand it over to the Young Miss of the Ancient Castle.
Usage 2: Hand it over to the Trace King in Room 5 of the Second Floor Sanctuary Hall.
Usage 3: Hand it over to the Trace King Hall.
Usage 4: Hand it over to the Sun Church (Warning: Due to the Hunter's personal circumstances, this action carries significant risk).
Description: The blood left behind by the Painter Rosa Nier before her death, collected by a castle doctor. As a Painter, Rosa Nier could have continued to exist, but a new Painter was born. The scroll painted by Rosa Nier had been stained black by madness. A Painter can only create one scroll in their lifetime. Her world was shattered, and she was now useless. Only one Painter can exist at a time.
Rosa Nier originally intended to use her blood to awaken the newly born Painter. Unfortunately, the source blood she released was taken by a castle doctor and injected into a powerful beast transformer, causing that beast transformer to evolve to the seventh stage, becoming the strongest beast transformer in history.
The new Painter was not awakened. Rosa Nier could only choose to leave behind all her source blood and end her life, to avoid the new Painter's death due to the Painter's uniqueness. Whether the source blood she left behind could be used to awaken the new Painter was beyond Rosa Nier's control. Painters were noble beings, but they were not powerful, nor were they omnipotent.
This is the world Rosa Nier painted. With her death, this world no longer allows her name to appear. She is dead, and her name should rest in peace. If someone writes her name, use bloodstains to erase it.
Selling Price: World-Class Chest × 1.