"The Sataka teachings." Mu Yiran's cold voice carried a touch of the remote and chilling quality unique to snow-capped mountains.
Ke Xun's suspicions were confirmed, but he had more questions: "Isn't the Sataka religion supposed to be about encouraging people to do good, helping the world, and achieving liberation from worldly desires? How could 'that kind of thing' exist? Could it be that the world in the painting isn't all terrifying?"
"The Sataka religion itself is a fusion of various religions," Mu Yiran said. "From the 11th century onwards, many branches gradually formed. And the pantheon in the Sataka religious system doesn't only include compassionate gods who save all beings; it also includes many pagan figures and even demons. According to the interpretation of Sataka doctrine, any pagan figure that is subdued by Sataka teachings can enter the Sataka pantheon, and these demons can be driven by those with high cultivation."
Ke Xun: "...I feel the deep malice from the gods."
Mu Yiran looked at him, his lips twitching: "If you knew when this painting was completed, you might feel it even more deeply."
"...Please try to put it tactfully," Ke Xun said.
Mu Yiran's truth was anything but subtle: "Back then, there were only churches, slave owners, and slaves in the area."
"..." Ke Xun smiled tactfully, "It's not what I imagined, is it?"
"Judging from the quality and style of our clothes, we obviously weren't slave owners." Mu Yiran withdrew his gaze. "However, even believers in the sect in those times couldn't control their own lives."
Ke Xun raised his hand and slowly covered his head: "...I heard that the torture used on slaves back then involved cutting a slit in the skin from the top of the head, then pouring mercury in. The mercury sank, directly pulling the entire skin off the flesh, allowing the person to live for a while...I'm going to find Qin Ci."
He started to get up.
"What for?" Mu Yiran looked at him.
"Go ask Dr. Qin if he has any good ways to commit suicide in a second without pain," Ke Xun said. "I don't want to see myself stripped naked before I die."
Mu Yiran said calmly, "Painless in a second is probably impossible, but if you want to die, the pebbles on the ground might help you."
Ke Xun thought it made sense. If all else failed, he could take a sharp stone and cut his carotid artery. It would hurt, but it was better than being skinned alive.
He lifted the tent flap and, using the light of the distant snow-covered mountains, searched the ground for a while. Finally, he found two thin shards of stone with relatively sharp edges and showed them to Mu Yiran: "Do you want one? I'll give you one as a spare."
Mu Yiran didn't take it, only casually tossing it to him: "Suit yourself."
Ke Xun smiled, took out his phone from his clothes, glanced at the time, and saw that it wasn't yet curfew. So he crawled out of the tent, went to the tent where Wei Dong was, and gave him the stone shard: "Good things should be shared with brothers."
"What?" Wei Dong asked.
"A suicide weapon." Ke Xun finished speaking and ran off.
"Damn it," Wei Dong cursed, trembling, stuffing the stone fragment into his pocket. "He's my best brother, always thinking of me when there's something good."
Ke Xun closed the tent flap and asked Mu Yiran, "Do you have any ideas on how to break this deadlock?"
Mu Yiran pondered, "Since the painting is called 'Faith,' I think this deadlock is related to religion. The Sataka religion has many branches, and its system of gods and demons is also very large. It's a bit early to find a way to break this deadlock now."
Ke Xun lay back on the felt blanket. "It looks like someone might die here tonight."
Mu Yiran heard his calm tone and looked at his face. There was no fear, tension, or resentment. He rested his head on his arms, crossed his legs, and lay on his own latex mattress bed.
Thinking of his bed, he couldn't help but think of the photos in the closet in his bedroom, and the photos of him from childhood to adulthood.
Back then, the little boy with his bright, smiling eyes probably never imagined that his life would turn out like this.
He lost his loving parents, his warm room, and finally, even the life of a normal person was gone.
Time flowed silently, the snow-capped peaks of the distant mountains casting a faint glow on the sky outside the tent, casting shadows of tents near and far on the tent, swaying gently in the night breeze of the grassland.
If this were outside the painting, it would probably be a peaceful and beautiful night.
Ke Xun stared at the shadows on the tent.
He remembered the sky outside during the day, a breathtakingly blue, a deep and unfathomable abyss, as if countless enormous, grotesque things were huddled together in the deepest part of that blue.
Ke Xun felt something was wrong.
During the day, although the sunlight was dazzlingly bright, it seemed… he couldn't see the sun at all. The light came from the sky, everywhere, without a single concentrated source.
If this light wasn't sunlight, the grassland, the blue sky, and the snow-capped mountains seemed to be permeated with a heavy, lifeless atmosphere.
Ke Xun recalled the way back from Wei Dong's tent; the night sky seemed starless, just pitch black.
Thinking about it made
him feel suffocated. What should have been the clearest, most open space felt oppressive and claustrophobic, almost triggering claustrophobia.
Ke Xun couldn't help but gasp for breath, the harder he tried, the less he could breathe. Air entered his nose and mouth, but he couldn't feel it flowing into his trachea. His lungs swelled desperately due to lack of oxygen, a sharp pain squeezing his chest, as if they were about to burst.
"Ke Xun!" Mu Yiran noticed Ke Xun's abnormality and leaned over, staring at him. "What's wrong?"
Ke Xun couldn't speak, desperately opening his mouth to breathe like a dying fish, but still couldn't inhale a single breath.
Mu Yiran frowned, watching Ke Xun's body twist and struggle in the pain of suffocation. Suddenly, he rolled over, pinning Ke Xun down, forcefully restraining his rolling movements, and then reached out to tightly cover his mouth and nose.
Ke Xun's eyes, peeking out from Mu Yiran's hand, stared intently at him, then slowly curved into a shallow smile before his eyelids drooped.
Ke Xun thought he was going to die like this.
But dying at Mu Yiran's hands wasn't so bad, really. It was better than dying at the hands of those hideous monsters, and better than cowardly committing suicide. In terms of karma and retribution, Mu Yiran owed him a life. He could settle the score in the next life, not by paying with his own life, but simply by selling himself to him.
As he was lost in thought, he gradually regained his breathing. His trachea, which had seemed blocked out, finally regained its presence. A few wisps of air slipped through Mu Yiran's fingers and into his lungs.
With the air, his swollen and painful lungs slowly eased, and his heavy, rapid breathing subsided. Ke Xun opened his eyes and met Mu Yiran's gaze from above.
Before he could even see the look in his eyes, Mu Yiran had already removed his hand from his mouth and nose and turned to sit down to the side.
Ke Xun took a few more careful breaths, and only after finding that his breathing had completely returned to normal did he breathe a sigh of relief. He turned his head to look at Mu Yiran: "I thought you wanted to help me die quickly so I would suffer less."
Mu Yiran didn't look at him, but just sat cross-legged, his eyes lowered: "If you want to die quickly, I can finish you off in a second."
Ke Xun sat up with a smile, touching the spot where Mu Yiran had just covered him. "What happened just now? I suddenly felt suffocated. Could it be that the power has started?"
Mu Yiran finally glanced at him, expressionless. "You just have alkalosis caused by hyperventilation."
Ke Xun: "Please translate into plain language."
"Hyperventilation reduces carbon dioxide in the body, lowers the acidity in the blood, and increases the alkalinity, causing discomfort," Mu Yiran said coldly.
Ke Xun suddenly realized, "So that's why you covered me up, increasing my carbon dioxide levels to restore the acid-base balance in my blood—impressive, no wonder you're a god."
Mu Yiran ignored him, sitting cross-legged with his eyes closed, meditating. After a long while, he suddenly spoke, "What happened to you just now?"
Ke Xun covered his mouth and nose with his hand, continuing to increase his carbon dioxide levels, his voice muffled, "I suddenly felt suffocated, like I was locked in a very narrow and stuffy box. And the sky and mountains here are actually just models and paint from inside the box, they don't feel real at all. Even in the previous painting, the locust trees and the graveyard looked just like real things, but here, everything seems so fake."
Mu Yiran slightly opened his eyes, staring at the felt blanket beneath him, seemingly lost in thought.
Ke Xun didn't disturb him, lying back down and looking at the shadows cast on the tent by the snow.
Suddenly, Ke Xun noticed that these shadows, which had been trembling slightly in the wind, had become still.
Ke Xun gently touched Mu Yiran's knee, gesturing for him to look, and tried to sit up, but Mu Yiran pressed him down, so he had to remain lying down, staring at the shadow on the tent with him.
The shadow remained motionless, the snow on the distant mountains turned pale, then deathly white, and all sounds in the world suddenly disappeared, a silence as if all the air had been sucked out.
Time flowed in this vacuum-like atmosphere, and just as Ke Xun's eyes began to sting from staring at the tent, the shadow on the tent suddenly changed.
A huge, dark shadow slowly slid down from the sky, like a large drop of thick paint, slowly, viscous, and greasy as it slid down from the heavens, slowly extending thick, fleshy branches as it slid into the air.
No, not branches, but eight arms and two legs, thick and greasy, twisting and dancing in mid-air, like a newborn baby crying and struggling.
The enormous shadow twisted and turned in bizarre postures and angles, slowly descending to the ground like a colossal god, its head reaching the sky, its feet firmly planted on the earth. Its thick, muscular legs moved with uncoordinated steps, emitting a sound like the heavy, drawn-out breathing of an obese person in the deathly silence.
The giant shadow moved slowly among the tents, its bent legs barely reaching its knees. It stopped beside each tent at a leisurely pace, as if carefully observing and selecting.
Ke Xun saw the giant shadow linger beside Wei Dong's tent for a full ten minutes before finally resuming its movement and walking towards them.
It drew ever closer to him and Mu Yiran.
Ke Xun didn't know how to avoid this thing. There was nowhere to cover their bodies inside the tents, and this time, unlike the previous scene, it seemed to be randomly selecting its prey.