Cooking in the Monster Sanctuary - Chapter 9 - Part 2

In the blink of an eye, something happened, and Qin Huai Shu couldn’t react in time to understand what had transpired.

The bloody hand, sensing a formidable adversary, went completely limp, like a pitiful, pale line. Its sharp, elongated nails, resembling five sharp knives were now devoid of strength and moving feebly.

It was struggling like a suffocating fish!

Qin Huai Shu looked at the spasming hand, then at his partner, who appeared utterly nonchalant and self-satisfied. He suddenly had a serious question: who was really the antagonist here?

“The flesh is fresh and tender, though it has a bit of a fishy smell, but a good wash should fix that,” she remarked.

Lin Yu gripped it with one hand and took out some tape from her bag with the other. The hand, at the sound of her words, decided to stay motionless, hanging lifelessly. She continued, “I’m talking about the fish we just bought at home. What are you afraid of?”

The bloodied hand still played dead.

She tightly wrapped the entire hand in tape and casually tossed it into her backpack. She seemed even more elated than before. “Let’s continue! We might encounter more tangible anomalies. When we do, we’ll split the reward fifty-fifty. I won’t shortchange you, for sure.”

To him, these ghost stories seemed like life-threatening challenges, but for Lin Yu, they turned into stacks of hefty banknotes.

Qin Huai Shu replied, “Alright, everything you say.”

The third destination was the art studio in the academic building.

They had heard that in the center of the art studio hung a portrait of a woman with childlike brushstrokes. During the quiet hours of the night, if someone stared at the portrait for ten seconds, the woman would crawl out and drag them into the painting.

What made it even more eerie was that the school had repeatedly destroyed or moved the artwork, but no matter what they did, it always reappeared in its original position the next day.

This was a story that was creepy enough to send shivers down your spine, and the feeling intensified for Qin Huai Shu when he laid eyes on the painting. It felt like a sudden tidal surge, overwhelming his senses and blocking his thoughts. All he knew was that a chill was running down his spine.

The style of the painting was wild to the point of near madness. The entire painting used dark, gloomy shades with chaotic colors randomly mixed together, creating a suffocating atmosphere, and all pressing down on the woman in the center of the painting.

She was beautiful, with long flowing hair and smooth skin. Her almond-shaped eyes were alluring, but her unfocused gaze was incredibly dim; reminiscent of the lifeless black swamp water.

“They say this woman was the painter’s wife. After she died from an illness, the grief-stricken artist went insane and painted this piece, following her death,” Qin Huai Shu explained without looking at the woman’s eyes. “That’s why her eyes lack any luster.”

“This kind of story is something even elementary school students could come up with,” Lin Yu commented, her dance moves light and playful as she searched through drawers for a box of paints and a brush.

Qin Huai Shu was puzzled. “What are you doing?”

“Just testing a theory,” she replied contemplatively as she approached the portrait. She roughly dipped the brush in paint and smeared it directly onto the woman’s face. Lin Yu’s playful style turned the previously eerie painting into childlike doodles.

“Anyway, no matter what we do, this painting will restore itself by tomorrow. So, what’s the harm in a little prank?” She took a step back and picked up another painting next to it, holding it about twenty centimeters away from the woman. “It’s time to witness a miracle!”

“Why do I have a bad feeling about this? Not about Lin Yu but the unknown woman inside the painting.”

Qin Huai Shu anxiously stared at the disfigured painting and silently counted the beats. When he reached ten, something happened. He clearly saw a pale, slender hand clutching the frame, and slowly emerging.

What met his gaze were the thin and bone-like knuckles. The woman moved quickly but stiffly, her hand joints twisted at unnatural angles which emit a bone-chilling cracking sound.

As the arm extended, getting closer and closer to Lin Yu, she remained motionless. And she watched it with an amused expression; a faint smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.

As Lin Yu touched the other painting in her hand, her fingertips were instantly sucked into the image, followed by her knuckles, wrists, and arms.

The woman’s head hadn’t emerged yet, so she was completely unaware of what was happening. When she finally revealed herself from the painting.

Why were her arms entirely pulled into another painting?

A hint of anger flashed in her dark eyes. She glared at Lin Yu, exasperated, and then viciously attempted to retrieve her hand.

However, there was no apparent movement.

She tried forcefully pulling her arm back again.

Still no success.

It seemed like her ability to phase into paintings had an unstable aspect to it, where the first entry might result in a momentary glitch, similar to a “motion sickness” when traveling to an unfamiliar place.

“Gah.”

“Ah, can’t you pull it back?”

Lin Yu blinked and tugged hard on the painting in her hand. This time, the woman’s hand didn’t return; instead, her entire body was yanked out.

As per Qin Huai Shu’s recollection, the scene at that moment was extremely awkward.

The woman with her long hair was dragged out of the painting like a ragdoll, landing awkwardly on the floor. With her hands still trapped, she couldn’t get up. She could only struggle fruitlessly, her body twitching without purpose.

To make things worse, all the doodles Lin Yu had drawn on the painting earlier had somehow become part of her face, and they had been painstakingly brought into the physical world.

Her long mustache and arched eyebrows nearly touched the ground, turning her into a living embodiment of the Chinese character “?,” her nose was a comically round red ball, and the swirling red blush on her cheeks gave her a unique kind of cuteness.

Most notably, her jet-black hair was accompanied by a towering, rocket-shaped, and fiery red tuft of hair.

The fiery red strands danced in the wind, defiantly shooting straight up. This combined with the woman’s futile attempts to bounce back to her feet, was a motivational sight.

The music on the phone continued, and the loud male voice resounded throughout the art studio: “Kill Matt, kill Matt, wash, cut, blow, wash, cut, blow, blow, blow.”

A tear slowly rolled down from the woman’s right eye.

Lin Yu mumbled weakly, “I’m so sorry.”

The woman retorted with a quivering voice, “If apologies worked, why would we need the police?”