S.C.I Mystery Series Volume 5 Chapter 89

Countdown from the Murderer 19 – Setup

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Zhan Zhao and Zhao Jue were hit with pillows, but they were finally honest.

Bai Yutang pointed to the sofa and told them to sit down, speak human language, finish within ten minutes, and go to sleep immediately after finishing!

Zhan Zhao coughed, "This is not something that can be said clearly in just a few words..."

The crowd's eyes grew dangerous – Why don't you try?!

Zhan Zhao looked at Zhao Jue.

Zhao Jue pointed at the two paintings and asked, "When you see these two paintings at the same time, which one will you pay attention to first?"

The crowd thought for a moment, then pointed to the larger one.

Zhan Zhao nodded, "Generally, people will look at the larger one first, then the smaller one."

The crowd was puzzled – So what?

"These two paintings serve different purposes." Zhan Zhao said, "The larger one serves as a filter, while the smaller one serves as a suggestion."

"Filtering?"

"How does it filter?"

"Do you know what circumstances hypnosis is best carried out under?" Zhan Zhao asked.

Everyone looked at him – Are you going to think outside the box again? Get to the point!

Zhao Jue shook his head and said to Zhan Zhao – These stupid humans have a poor attitude towards learning!

"Ahem." Bai Yutang warned the two – Hurry up!

Zhan Zhao had no choice but to continue, "The best situation to hypnotise a person in is not when that person is concentrating, the best opportunity is actually when the person is not paying attention."

Hearing what Zhan Zhao said, although they were sleepy, the crowd's thinking ability could still keep up, "When not paying attention... that means taking advantage of someone's unguarded moment, right?

"Because everyone has different aesthetics, or different personalities, when they see the big one, some think, so ugly! It's so ugly that they can't say anything about it. Some think it's just so-so, ordinary. That small painting is very close to the big painting in terms of colour scheme and composition, so if you think the big one is extremely ugly, you will at most take a quick glance at the small one, or that kind of glance that carries a bit of disdain."

Zhan Zhao demonstrated the glance.

Bai Chi nodded. Indeed, this was the look Zhao Zhen gave when he saw what he didn't like.

The twins, on the other hand, tilted their heads – It seemed like Big Brother Bai looked at both of them with this look...

"So you will be caught because you didn't look at the second painting carefully?" Bai Yutang asked.

Zhan Zhao smiled, "Even if you looked at the smaller one carefully, if you only gave the larger one a quick glance, you would still get caught! You must carefully examine both paintings without bias and with serious consideration, paradoxically, that's how you won't fall into its trap."

"This is a layout where the techniques are superior to the means." Zhao Jue commented, "To put it simply, deception is not afraid of simplicity. As long as it is used skilfully, it can fool people just the same!"

Zhan Zhao took out his cell phone and pulled up a few of Flower Vine J's paintings. While studying them with Zhao Jue, he said, "It seems like each one uses a different little trick."

Zhao Jue nodded, "Indeed."

Bai Yutang saw that the sky was already dawning, and since the general cause had been analysed, he dragged Zhan Zhao upstairs to sleep, while everyone else went back to their respective rooms to rest. Zhao Hu and Ma Han didn't go back, but laid down in the guest room for a while, as there were still a bunch of things to be investigated in the morning.

......

The next morning, the alarm clocks rang, and everyone woke up one after another.

Fortunately, they were all young people. Although something went wrong in the middle of the night, their spirits recovered in the morning and were not bad at all.

The one who slept the best was Gongsun, who was reading the newspaper early in the morning with bread in his mouth.

Zhan Zhao and the others looked at him several times. They all wanted to show him the video from last night, but Big Brother Bai's eyes were threatening, so they didn't dare to mention it.

Before going to work, Bao Sir called. He only learnt about last night's incident at the detention centre when he arrived at the station this morning, so he called to ask.

Bai Yutang gave a rough account of it, and also mentioned a little something about the little episode in the villa last night.

Once he heard that Bai Jintang and Zhao Zhen had also been caught, Bao Sir suddenly felt a sense of equilibrium, and hung up after giving a few remarks to Bai Yutang.

Zhan Zhao arranged his schedule while eating breakfast.

At this time, Bai Ye's car drove in.

This ceiling of combat power that had been defeated by the fruit pancakes seemed to have recovered, and since Zhao Jue hadn't returned yesterday, Bai Ye came over to take a look.

Zhan Zhao asked Zhao Jue, "I might have to go to a mental hospital to see a crazy person later, do you want to come along?"

Zhao Jue smeared mustard on his bread as he asked, "How crazy?"

"He might not be crazy, or he might be crazier than imagined, we have to find out." Zhan Zhao replied.

Zhao Jue seemed a little interested, and with a spread of his hands, he indicated that since he had nothing to do anyway, it would be good for him to give them a hand.

Bai Ye went to Bai Yutang's side and sat down, asking him offhandedly, "How's Xiao Black doing?"

Bai Yutang was a little helpless – You guys, you're all so cool on the surface, are you all so nosy?

Zhan Zhao silently handed over the video he recorded last night.

While Bai Ye was watching it, a voice behind him coldly said, "What's this?"

Everyone froze and turned around to see Gongsun standing behind him, holding his glasses.

Reaching out and taking the cell phone, Gongsun opened his mouth wide after watching it, "You guys actually didn't wake me up?!"

No one could bear to say that in fact, his strange reaction last night was also recorded... but it was handed over to Big Brother Bai who forced the crowd to delete their copies...

After eating, the SCI crowd went back to the police station to investigate the case.

On the way, Bai Yutang asked Zhan Zhao, "Cat, you mentioned the mental hospital just now, are you going to see Qian Yu?"

Zhan Zhao nodded, "Mhmm, let's see if there's enough time later, and that Zhou Ping..."

Saying this, Zhan Zhao suddenly stopped speaking, and Bai Yutang also looked ahead.

It turned out that at the entrance to the police station parking lot, next to the guard post, there was an individual standing, and it was none other than the reporter who was inextricably linked to this case – Zhou Ping.

Zhou Ping seemed to be waiting for them. When he saw the car drive over, he smiled faintly and waved.

Bai Yutang signalled to the guards in the post, who nodded and let Zhou Ping in.

While SCI's cars pulled up to the underground garage, Zhou Ping, who was carrying a camera bag, slowly sauntered down as well.

Bai Yutang got out of the car, and when Zhan Zhao saw that Zhou Ping was still smiling at them, he smiled at him as well and asked him, "Reporter Zhou, are you turning yourself in?"

Zhao Hu and Ma Han also looked at him in a not-so-friendly manner – This man was heavily suspected of assisting that killer in escaping from custody.

Zhou Ping seemed to be unable to resist and hurriedly raised his hands, "Of course not, don't injure a friend by mistake!"

Everyone squinted at him – Who is your friend?!

Zhou Ping was helpless, "I heard this morning that there was almost a big incident at the detention centre last night, and figured that you guys would suspect me, so I came over to explain. I really didn't do anything bad, it was just necessary for the investigation."

Bai Yutang tilted his head and signalled to him – Go upstairs to the office and talk.

Zhou Ping smiled and then followed the crowd into the elevator.

......

Upstairs, the SCI office was quite busy, with Bao Sir and a "weirdly" dressed man chatting in the doorway.

The "weirdo" was tall and thin, with a head of granny grey hair and a moustache. He looked like an artist and a crook at the same time.

"Yo." The weirdo waved to the crowd.

This person was familiar to SCI. From the economic crime section downstairs, responsible for the artwork crimes, Zhou Ming.

Zhou Ming and Gongsun were childhood friends, both highly educated with poor marksmanship, but he was a connoisseur regarding artwork.

Bai Yutang nodded, which meant – I was just about to look for you!

Zhan Zhao held the two paintings and winked at Bai Yutang – Let's see if he'll get caught.

Zhou Ping was first taken to the interrogation room by Bai Chi to wait.

Bao Sir had probably already told Zhou Ming about Flower Vine J's paintings, and told Zhan Zhao and the others to continue chatting as he went upstairs.

"Flower Vine J..." Zhou Ming sighed, "There is really something wrong with these paintings..."

As he said that, he opened the kraft paper package of the two paintings that Zhan Zhao had placed on the desk.

Contrary to everyone's expectations, Zhou Ming first took out one of the paintings and looked at it carefully. After that, he took out the second one, the smaller one, and looked at it carefully once again.

Bai Yutang looked at Zhan Zhao with an enquiring look – He wouldn't get caught like this, would he?

Zhan Zhao was slightly disappointed – Zhou Ming seemed to know the trick.

"Ho ho." Seeing the two making eye contact, Zhou Ming smiled evilly and asked, "Did either of you two get caught?" As he said this, he looked around.

Funny enough, there was actually not a single SCI member who had been caught, but instead, the several family members had all been caught.

"Have you come across any cases related to these paintings before?" Bai Yutang inquired.

Zhou Ming laughed, "Ai, it's the same as how your SCI has seen so many perverts that you can tell which one is likely to be a serial killer with a single glance. We've seen so many paintings that we can roughly tell which ones have problems. Flower Vine J doesn't really have much in the way of painting skills at all, he's more of a performance artist if you will. But his era was still relatively early. Back then, unlike nowadays, a lot of people mistook his paintings for a form of sorcery, and at the time there was talk of burning him to death or something."

"Indeed, considering the era he lived in, it is indeed quite an avant-garde work." Zhao Jue chimed in.

"It's a pity though."

After Zhou Ming carefully looked at the two paintings, he took off his glasses and said to Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang, "Both of these are forgeries."

"What?!"

Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang were taken aback.

Zhao Hu and the others all asked as well, "Fakes?"

Zhou Ming nodded, "The era that Flower Vine J lived in didn't have pigments made of this material. This purple pigment is very new. This is a work created within ten years."

Everyone was somewhat shocked – After all this time, it was a fake.

"This Flower Vine J," Zhou Ming continued, "there's a theory about how his physical body might be fabricated, and that it might not exist."

"Huh?"

The crowd looked at him in confusion – What did that mean?

"There's a culture that's becoming more popular amongst the youth nowadays. It's where you're given a virtual situation, and then set your own characters or creatures in that situation. This is commonly seen in the promotion of games and such, a more typical example would be SCP Foundation."

After Zhou Ming finished speaking, the entire SCI team was confused, "S what foundation? Is it a charity or a financial organisation?"

Zhou Ming looked at the sky, "This organisation specialises in capturing monsters that are distributed all over the world, such as what kind of monster SCP-123 is, what characteristics it possesses, and so on. Then those who participate in this game will make up such monsters on their own, and then through some photoshopped pictures or some homemade videos, they will prove that such monsters once existed. This modelling is usually done by groups."

The crowd all rubbed their chins, "Oh..."

"I heard some of my friends in the art industry mention that Flower Vine J might have been created through such a means. Much of the information that can be found about him, including the information that can be found at the moment, originates from the internet. There are some old newspaper photographs as well, which could be nothing more than a setup written by someone who came later."

"Group modelling..." Zhan Zhao muttered to himself, "This is a bit interesting."

"There are some things that actually didn't exist originally, but after someone came up with an idea, countless other individuals or groups then provided the so-called evidence to make them real!" Zhou Ming gave an example, "For example, there is a monster in SCP who is set to be a concrete statue, but possesses life and will suddenly attack humans. After this setup was first posted to the internet, videos and pictures of sightings from all over the world began to be uploaded one after another, and gradually, a chain of evidence that this creature might actually exist was formed, and people began to create it together based on their own imaginations. Sometimes the truth doesn't stop people's passion for creation. After a monster is born, it is no longer the monster that belongs to the creator, or even to the majority of people, but the monster that belongs to a certain someone's heart. People will give them different backgrounds and different stories according to their own needs. This kind of behaviour isn't even something that a certain person or organisation can control. Once something is created, it's unknown how it will develop."

Zhan Zhao naturally understood, "What you're saying is that Flower Vine J was probably just a setup, and then someone gradually perfected him into the current Flower Vine J. As for everything about his identity and such, that's just the setup people made up for him. Flower Vine J exists as a setup, and his paintings, too, were created by a lot of different people, so there's no such thing as one that's absolutely authentic or fake?"

Zhou Ming snapped his fingers – That's what he meant!

‿︵‿︵ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ・❉・ ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ‿︵‿︵

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Translator Notes

Please feel free to comment any mistakes I made so I can improve and do better as I go through the book.

Translated: March 21, 2024 by Angel

Edited: August 1, 2024 by Angel