I'm Already the Richest Man, Why Did My System Just Arrive?

Chapter 259: Chapter 166: Struggle of Deceitful Objects

”So, are you Gongsun Mo, Zheng Shan, or... Zheng Xiu?”

As Xie Luohe voiced this question in a calm tone,

Zheng Xiu felt a sudden chill run down his back, snapping him out of his state of Concentration.

A drop of thick ink landed on the woman’s face in the portrait, completely blackening it. The ink slowly began to bleed outwards. Zheng Xiu’s eyelid twitched. He found the image shockingly disturbing, but he couldn’t say why. It was, after all, just a painting.

Why, though?

”Redraw it.”

Xie Luohe looked at Zheng Xiu with a smile, her tone gentle yet carrying an undeniable firmness.

Zheng Xiu silently prepared the brush, ink, paper, and inkstone again.

Lifting the brush once more, he stared at the pristine white paper, unable to make a stroke for a long time.

Xie Luohe didn’t rush him. Instead, she watched him quietly from her seat on a rock across the green flower bushes, her expression calm, her lips occasionally curling into a slight smile.

Zheng Xiu appeared calm, but he was caught in a strange sort of ”game.”

That question from Xie Luohe had seemed to be about a dream she’d had since childhood, but at the same time, it had triggered a moment of sudden, profound realization for Zheng Xiu.

Gongsun Mo’s ”Cannibal Painting” was not as simple as he first imagined!

This place wasn’t like the Ghostly Realms he’d experienced before!

It was anything but ordinary!

No wonder there was no word from Feng Bei after she was swallowed by the Cannibal Painting, yet the [Post Station] could still send an Incarnation here.

No wonder he entered this place as the ”Incarnation Zheng Shan” but appeared in the form of his Main Body.

’This place can’t be explained simply as ’Gongsun Mo’s world of memory.’ It’s... perception!’ Beads of cold sweat, as large as beans, broke out on Zheng Xiu’s forehead, soon soaking his entire back.

His damp, sticky clothes clung to his skin. A cold wind blew past, making Zheng Xiu’s frail body shiver uncontrollably.

A series of images flashed before Zheng Xiu’s eyes like a slideshow.

One moment, it was Zheng Xiu’s memories.

The next, it was Gongsun Mo’s.

The memories of the two men, like shards of a broken mirror surface, rapidly fractured, twisted, reassembled, and dissolved before his eyes.

Zheng Xiu understood.

The woman before him was Feng Bei.

He was Zheng Xiu.

Just as Gongsun Mo couldn’t have looked identical to Zheng Xiu in real life, Xie Luohe’s appearance couldn’t be the same as Feng Bei’s.

He was Zheng Xiu, and she was Feng Bei. It was as simple as that.

But at the same time, Zheng Xiu realized he was wrong.

Completely and utterly wrong.

’I shouldn’t have focused solely on ’memory.’ The key is ’perception’!’

In Feng Bei’s perception, she *was* Xie Luohe!

Even if she had Feng Bei’s memories, everything that made her Feng Bei, in her perception it was all just a dream—a false dream.

Feng Bei’s ”perception” had been tampered with.

Feng Bei’s very existence had been devoured by ”Xie Luohe,” turning her *into* ”Xie Luohe”!

Not because of memory, but because of ”perception.”

’Just having Feng Bei’s memories is useless.’

’So that’s how it is. This is the true Cannibal Painting.’

’It’s just like the story of Zhuang Zhou dreaming of the butterfly, where upon waking, he couldn’t tell if he was Zhuang Zhou who had dreamt of a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming it was Zhuang Zhou.’

’Everything is a mess. Everything is wrong.’

’Disordered time and space, disordered perception.’

’It was me. I underestimated this place, thinking it was just another Ghostly Realm!’

It was precisely because Xie Luohe’s question had been a startling wake-up call for Zheng Xiu, one that became more terrifying the more he thought about it.

This place was like a mire, causing the perception of everyone who fell into the World in the Painting to become disordered, completely transforming them into someone else.

A true... Cannibal Painting!

The Cannibal Painting didn’t devour a person’s flesh, but their very mind and soul!

Recalling everything he had experienced as ”Gongsun Mo,” Zheng Xiu remembered the sudden headache he’d felt when facing the Former Imperial Tutor.

Zheng Xiu touched his forehead. On the once-smooth bone between his eyebrows, an inconspicuous little bump had quietly formed.

’So, this isn’t a simple conflict between a Human and a Ghostly Realm. It’s a conflict between Mystics, and maybe even between Deceitful Objects.’

Within Gongsun Mo’s painting, the [Prisoner], the [Executioner], the [Painter], and the [Ascetic Monk]—Deceitful Objects from four Paths—had all gathered. It was a lineup that might only appear once in a thousand years, a truly lively affair.

A full table for mahjong, a complete set.

Zheng Xiu even suspected that if he weren’t the [Prisoner], he likely would have lost himself the moment he was swallowed by the Cannibal Painting, just like Feng Bei had, treating his entire past as nothing more than a great, empty dream, unable to tell the difference.

Huuu...

Zheng Xiu let out a long, heavy breath, and in an instant, calm returned to his eyes.

His hand, which had been raised for so long, lowered once more. Meticulously, he again began to sketch the figure of a woman with long hair, dressed in black, on the white paper.

”Wrong.”

Xie Luohe flicked a finger, and a stone the size of a fingernail shot like lightning, striking Zheng Xiu in the chest.

CRACK!

Zheng Xiu clearly heard the sound of a rib cracking. Amid the sharp pain, a tightness seized his chest, and he coughed up a mouthful of fresh blood that splattered across the paper.

”Redraw it.”

Xie Luohe completely ignored the fact that Zheng Xiu was spitting blood, her tone indifferent as she commanded him.

”Alright.”

Zheng Xiu wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth with his sleeve and began to paint again.

Time and again, Zheng Xiu drew the same portrait on the paper. And each time, just as he was about to apply the finishing touch, Xie Luohe would, with the same posture and the same force, flick a stone to strike the exact same spot on his chest.

With each mouthful of blood he spat out, Zheng Xiu’s face grew paler and paler. All around him, discarded sheets of paper, stained with blood and ink, lay scattered messily on the ground.

”Wrong. Redraw it.”

”Alright.”