“Oh, my old friend, Earl Drayton.”
Coleridge spread his arms wide to welcome a pot-bellied fat man, the ruler of some Isolated Lands who had proclaimed himself Sidney Drayton, the Earl Drayton.
After the embrace, he piled on a smile and turned to a tall, shrewd man—the great banker Omar Norton.
After warmly exchanging greetings with the banker, Coleridge placed his hands on his hips, leaned back, and let out a hearty laugh to welcome the media tycoon Dulles Woolf, who was the greatest rival to the reporter loli Chloe.
Of course, that rivalry was nothing more than feeble resistance under his absolute monopoly, and it was limited to Fountain City.
Dulles’s news empire spanned cities large and small, as well as the Isolated Lands. He manipulated public opinion and controlled the hype, with more than ten newspapers in his hand that matched the scale of today’s Fountain News.
The invited guests were all such prominent figures. When facing the greetings from this renowned collector of rare treasures, ambiguous yet friendly smiles appeared on their faces. Those with deeper ties had even prepared gifts.
With the guests and their attendants numbering over a hundred, they were assigned to cabins on the first and second floors of the cruise ship according to their status and closeness.
The highest third floor, from front to back, consisted of the observation deck, pilothouse, sky garden restaurant, and cadaver landing pad. Tea rooms, gyms, music halls, and the like were distributed along both sides.
Frequently used areas like the cabins, main deck, grand pool, and banquet hall were on the first and second floors.
The negative first floor below the gunwales was Coleridge’s private space, housing his most mysterious collection room, which tourists were forbidden to enter without permission.
The bottom hold was where the servants and crew lived.
Ashley clung to the butler Flin’s back, having transformed into a seed. Her perspective expanded instead, a full 360 degrees with no blind spots. Her gaze swept over the crowd, and she immediately spotted the Wolf Girl.
The Wolf Girl had her long hair pinned up, covered with a black silk pleated hairband. She wore a black-and-white dress paired with an elegant apron embroidered with heavy-petaled flowers, and black silk stockings wrapped her slender calves.
Though she had removed her lip ring and such, the tattoos on her neck and face still exuded a fierce aura.
The woman in palace attire she followed was none other than “Grandmother” Valentina Ricardo, one of the invited guests. In society, she was known as the owner of the Asis Opera House and a famous philanthropist.
The “Night Devil” was also among them—a pale-faced man with pointed ears, no eyebrows, a bald forehead, and deep-set eye sockets that formed a bat-like visage, which looked somewhat frightening.
Valentina’s entourage numbered fewer than five, clearly not enough to fit all the Card Court Society members. It was unclear whether reinforcements would come later or if another team of killers had boarded under the guise of invitations.
The guests collected their keys and headed to their respective cabins for a brief rest. They then gathered in the tea room on the third floor, sitting along both sides of a long tea table adorned with towers of pastries, and enjoyed fragrant black tea and rich apple cider.
After the pleasantries, under Coleridge’s lead, they rose and entered the adjacent painting studio to admire the artworks.
From the casual way the paintings were placed on easels, none had reached the level of timeless masterpieces. Some weren’t even framed, just bare canvases.
But strangely, the subjects weren’t people, still lifes, or landscapes—they were monsters and cadavers.
Muddy, obscure oil paint strokes crawled and twisted across the rough, grimy linen canvases, wildly unleashing arrogant, unrestrained talent.
In the dim light, horned, beast-faced monsters dressed in suits and ties—fat and robust—exuded an air of civilization and wealth everywhere except for the black-furred claws protruding from their sleeves and the ferocious heads emerging from their collars.
The corpses, gnawed to the bone, shackled and chained with rotting flesh hanging from their skeletons, were ragged and emaciated, permeated with an aura of suffering and poverty.
“This painter named Plannan had some talent, but he didn’t understand that art is merely a toy for the rich. What determines a painting’s value isn’t its artistry, but the hand that hands over the cash.”
Coleridge’s lips curled, his tone thick with arrogance and mockery, as he began recounting the painter’s life story.
“Plannan’s target clientele appreciated his work but couldn’t shell out a dime, because to hang a painting, you first needed a living room (laughter).
In his youth, even in dire poverty, Plannan sustained himself with a strong physique and abundant energy, taking odd jobs alongside his painting to scrape by.
But as age crept in, his hair thinned, his vitality waned, and life’s pressures suddenly overwhelmed him. The time wasted on painting became a severe burden. His dreams turned from sweet to bitter medicine, and he reached the point where he had to give them up. He even tried to pivot…”
Coleridge led the guests through the staggered easels toward the back, and sure enough, the style shifted to fresh pastoral scenes and elegantly dressed beauties. However, Plannan clearly wasn’t skilled in this middle-class favorite; his strokes lacked finesse, revealing clumsy imitation, unable to compete with peers who made a living from such styles.
“With no specialized skills, and too old for even manual labor, Plannan’s life grew ever more destitute. Rheumatism and stomach pains tormented him, and long hours staring closely at canvases nearly blinded him—he could only grope along walls in severe moments.
One noon, while carrying a plank up scaffolding at a construction site, the painter slipped and fell. His coworkers rescued him, only to find his skull shattered over a wide area, fragments embedded in his brain matter. There was no saving him.
On his deathbed, Plannan shed bloody tears, mustering his last breath to stagger back to his basement rental. Using his own brain pulp and blood mixed with turpentine as paint, he created a masterpiece that shocked the world—Apple!”
The guests collectively held their breath and turned as one to the wall at the far end of the studio. Against a black velvet backdrop, embedded in the center, hung a self-portrait!
In a dingy room crisscrossed with cobwebs and thick with dust, Plannan stood before a full-length mirror in a tattered jacket. His pale, gaunt face was twisted in agony, his stiff, withered fingers clutching a small, sour half-eaten apple.
The left half of the man’s skull was gone, its edge jagged and cracked. A large chunk of grayish-white brain tissue was missing, the damaged area glistening with fresh moisture.
Behind the man stood a demon with asymmetrical, curling horns, dressed in a crisp suit. Its large, rough black-furred hands gripped his shoulders, its narrow snout withdrawing from the skull cavity, a strand of grayish-white brain matter dangling from its mouth…
The horror wasn’t just in the content; the painting itself was eerie. Those warped strokes held immense pull, impossible to look away from. Plannan and the monster seemed to come alive, writhing in bizarre forms, whispering faint murmurs.
Gasps rose one after another among the guests, their pupils trembling, throats tightening, hearts echoing with inexplicable fear and excitement.
“As you all see, this painting contains a demonic power. Staring at it long enough makes you feel as if you’ve received some revelation or omen from the ether. Ever since acquiring it, I’ve been studying its secrets. What enabled Plannan to complete his metamorphosis at life’s end? Was it the fate of suffering, the tragedy of unrecognized talent? Or could mixing brain pulp into paint sublimate art? To that end, I created an imitation.”
With that, Coleridge clapped his hands. The wall panel lifted upward, gradually revealing the painting behind it.
The composition and lighting were nearly identical, but this time, the one holding the apple was a fragile girl in a little white dress, pitifully delicate. And the demon behind her bore Coleridge’s own face!
