5.
On the second day of the livestream, many more viewers joined the room. Most had been drawn in by what happened with Thẩm Triết, while others had been brought in by viewers from the day before.
[Hey, you guys are back to pay your respects to the master?]
[I really want the master to paint a portrait of me, but it feels kind of weird.]
[You don't need a portrait. I know what you mean. Weren't you the one who said yesterday that if Thẩm Triết was a lynx, you'd be a mouse?]
[Oh, you actually remember that? I was just talking nonsense yesterday. Now I really admire the master.]
…
As soon as the stream began, a viewer named “Bai Zhi Lan Superfan” sent me twenty treasure maps.
I accepted the livestream connection. A man wearing gold-rimmed glasses appeared on the screen, his face pale as if he hadn't seen sunlight in a long time.
“Hello, streamer. Could you paint a portrait of my goddess? I haven't seen her in five years. I want to see her in that purple cheongsam one more time.”
He held up a photograph for me to see. The woman in it wore a pale blue silk dress and looked gentle and carefree.
The woman looked familiar, but I couldn't remember where I'd seen her.
The commotion in the livestream chat forced me to explain things all over again.
[Isn't that the actress Bai Zhi Lan, who announced her retirement from the screen?]
[Ever since Bai Zhi Lan retired five years ago, the entertainment industry hasn't had another true classic beauty.]
[Now that you mention it, I haven't seen Bai Zhi Lan on screen in five years. Streamer, say yes already. We want to see, too.]
I glanced at Bai Zhi Lan in the photo. Her beautiful, serene face held a hint of sadness, like a fragile glass cup.
I couldn't help frowning. Looking at the man, I asked uneasily, “Are you sure you want me to paint her?”
His bloodless lips murmured, “I'm sure.”
I picked up the Spirit-Gathering Brush, dipped it in a little purple cinnabar ink, and began sketching on the paper. The portrait wasn't hard to paint; I could finish it in two or three strokes.
I held the portrait up to the camera. The man on the other end took one look and burst out laughing. “Hahahaha… What is that supposed to be?”
The painting showed only a faint purple shadow, vaguely human in shape, with no lower body, just floating in midair.
“This is Bai Zhi Lan.”
The man in the gold-rimmed glasses sneered. “Yesterday, you exposed Thẩm Triết for what he really was. I thought you were the real deal, but now it seems you're just a charlatan who got lucky and stumbled onto the truth.”
I wasn't angry that he doubted me. I simply asked, “Then what do you think she should look like?”
A flicker of buried pain passed through his eyes. “She was just a silly girl.”
Some of Bai Zhi Lan's fans in the livestream chat were unhappy.
[Oh, and you're so smart, are you? You're a very clever man.]
[A minute ago, she was your goddess. Now she's just a silly girl. We've seen what a two-faced creep you are, buddy.]
[You seem to know your goddess very well. But she might not even know you from Adam.]
The comments were full of insults, but the man in the gold-rimmed glasses didn't seem to care. He said to me, sounding a little disappointed, “I guess I expected too much of you.”
Then the livestream connection was cut. The screen went dark, but I knew he hadn't left. After all, he really wanted someone to know what he'd done.
I looked straight into the camera and said calmly, “Do you have an umbrella with a surface as delicate as gelatin and a handle as smooth as jade?”
6.
Sure enough, moments later, the man in the gold-rimmed glasses requested another connection. His pale face flushed with excitement. “Why didn't you say so sooner? I really do have an umbrella. Do you want to see it?”
As he spoke, he brought out a black peachwood box and carefully took a delicate, cold white oil-paper umbrella from inside. He stroked its surface and kissed it passionately.
“I made this umbrella with my own hands. It's the work I'm most proud of.”
“How could you not be proud? After all, it was made by your goddess.”
The man in the gold-rimmed glasses couldn't help looking surprised. “If you can see that, you must have some real ability. So why did you make her look like that just now?”
I didn't answer. Instead, I asked, “What about you? Why did you want to turn her into an umbrella?”
“You know what? I just wanted to preserve her beauty. She was so beautiful, born to belong on the screen. I was going to send her abroad and make her famous around the world, and then she announced her retirement from the screen. I'd devoted so much effort to her. How dare she disobey me?”
[Monster! How could he do something so cruel?]
[No wonder there'd been no news about the goddess for five years. She was murdered five years ago.]
[How did nobody realize Bai Zhi Lan had been murdered for five whole years? Didn't she have a family? How did this bastard evade the law for so long?]
The man in the gold-rimmed glasses grew more and more frenzied. “So I put sleeping pills in her water to make her sleep. I used a scalpel to cut into her skin piece by piece, slowly peeling away a large patch from her shoulder down.”
“When I was halfway through, she woke up. But she couldn't move. She could only look at me, desperate and sad. Her eyes were so beautiful, just like the first time I saw her.”
“I couldn't bear to go on, so I asked if she was willing to come back. If she'd agreed, I would have taken her to the best hospital right away. But she really did refuse me.”
“Ah ha ha ha ha… She rejected me again, so I had to kill her. Tell me, wasn’t she a stupid girl? Ha ha ha ha…” He laughed so hard he could barely breathe, tears spilling from the corners of his eyes.
Rage boiled in my chest. I almost broke my rule and used magic on a human body.
Just then, a viewer named “Bai Zhi Lan Superfan” requested to join the stream. I wondered if the two of them having such similar usernames meant this was another lunatic who had harmed Bai Zhi Lan.
After hesitating for a moment, I agreed to connect.
A pretty girl with a baby face appeared on the screen. Her eyes were red, as if she had just been crying. “Hello, streamer. Could you give me a little time on your livestream? I really can’t stand listening to that animal talk.”
She didn’t seem to be on the same side as the man in the gold-rimmed glasses, so I nodded for her to continue.
The baby-faced girl took a deep breath and tried to speak calmly. “I’m Tiếu Ngọc, president of Bai Zhi Lan’s fan club, and this monster is Kỷ Trạch, Bai Zhi Lan’s manager—and secret husband. Ever since Bai Zhi Lan was discovered by someone with a discerning eye, Kỷ Trạch followed her and became her agent. But he didn’t understand a thing. Bai Zhi Lan handled everything herself, from securing roles and connecting with production crews to taking on advertisements.”
“After that, Bai Zhi Lan offended an actress on set and nearly got blacklisted. But this bastard forced Bai Zhi Lan to go drinking with those directors, almost…”
Tiếu Ngọc choked up. “He almost sent her to a director’s bed. Sister Bai had a very hard time then. Later, she finally became famous, and life got a little easier. Then, five years ago, Sister Bai announced she was retiring from the screen. Although longtime fans like us were heartbroken, we still wished her well and hoped she could live the life she wanted.”
Kỷ Trạch cut her off. “Live the life she wanted? If I hadn’t brought her out of the mountains back then, how could she have become a movie queen? She’d have been nothing but a country girl from some little mountain village!”
I couldn’t help sneering. “A country girl? You don’t even know what your wife is.”
“Do you know what I paint? Mountain spirits—the souls that live in the mountains, rulers of their own little worlds. She cultivated for three hundred years before becoming human, and you killed her.”
Kỷ Trạch stared at me in disbelief. “How can that be? How could she be a mountain spirit? She was clearly just a country girl.”
“How do you think the human-skin umbrella you made could still look as shiny as new after five years? Even if you used chemicals to preserve real human skin, it would last only a few months. Because she was a mountain spirit, the human body she cultivated carried the power of her soul. That’s why it could be preserved for five years.”
Kỷ Trạch stared blankly at the umbrella. “She was a mountain spirit, so why didn’t she fight back?”
I shot him a cold glance. “Maybe her heart had died, like a lamp about to go out. She’d rather die than have anything more to do with you.”
A tear rolled from the corner of Kỷ Trạch’s eye. His face twisted in anguish, and then he suddenly screamed like a madman, “How dare you! Bai Zhi Lan, you’ll never escape me! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha…”
Then he took a lighter from his pocket and murmured, “Zhi Lan, wait for me…”
The moment the flames burst forth, an explosion rocked Kỷ Trạch’s house, and the raging fire completely engulfed him.
Tiếu Ngọc didn’t seem happy to see Kỷ Trạch die. She only shed tears and thanked me before leaving the livestream.
[Good riddance to that bastard. He ruined such a good wife. If I had a wife like that, I’d carry her up to the sky.]
[A beast’s thought process really is different from an ordinary person’s. He killed his own wife and then wanted to explain how he did it to everyone in the livestream. Did he really think what he did was right?]
[If he told everyone how he killed someone, he must have wanted to die for a long time. Maybe he’d been living in fear for the past five years, and now that he’s dead, he can finally breathe a sigh of relief.]
[Replying to the comment above: after hearing your analysis, I suddenly feel like he got off too easy. It’s not satisfying at all.]
Kỷ Trạch was dead, but what a pity about the umbrella. Perhaps Bai Zhi Lan…
“Oh,” I couldn’t help sighing.
“That’s it for today’s livestream. See you all tomorrow.”