Chapter 81: That Painting Was So Beautiful

“Mr. Xu, please tell me everything exactly as it happened. Do not attempt to hide anything.”

“You should understand very well that if I wished, I could use another method to make you speak!”

Chen Jing drove the Jeep along a lengthy stretch of winding, lamp-less highway. Lu Xin sat obediently in the back seat. Beside him were Mr. Xu and Xu Xiaoxiao, who had already bandaged the wound on her wrist and taken strong painkillers. Father and daughter both hunched on the back seat, staying far from Lu Xin. Though there were three seats, Lu Xin occupied two by himself.

It was clear both parent and child were deeply shaken at this moment.

Before and behind the Jeep were four other vehicles, each filled with fully armed soldiers providing escort throughout the journey.

Crisscrossing beams of light occasionally tore through the heavy darkness, illuminating swaths of snowy white.

Driving steadily, Chen Jing spoke with calm composure, projecting an air of complete control.

In the back seat, Mr. Xu hesitated slightly, as though contemplating some defiant words to protest. But after glancing at Chen Jing behind the wheel and the tranquil Lu Xin seated beside him, then recalling the fate of his private armed forces…

He sighed softly, his voice raspy as he spoke. “Actually… I don’t know much…”

“I… I just couldn’t bear to see priceless artworks abandoned and decaying in those dead cities…”

“The truth is, many in the Main City employ similar methods. We merely fund scavenger teams to enter various abandoned cities and search for art. In this mad era, what we lack most is the pursuit of beauty. An era where rot and starvation eclipse all beauty is chaos, and it should end…”

“…”

Chen Jing cut him off. “I attended your lectures during my training at Qinggang University. Spare me the philosophical lamentations now.”

Mr. Xu stiffened in surprise.

Lu Xin kindly added from the side, “She likely means you should get straight to the point.”

“…”

A complex expression crossed Mr. Xu’s face. After a moment, he slumped dejectedly. “I regularly fund scavenger teams to search for valuable artworks, compensating them based on the finds. Then… then certain… private channels bring the items into the Main City, either for my own collection… or to share with like-minded individuals…”

He added defensively, “I think you understand such practices aren’t uncommon…”

Chen Jing nodded impassively, her tone sharpening slightly. “Continue.”

“This instance was the same…”

Mr. Xu fell silent for a beat. “I received a report from an external land reclamation team. They’d just returned from a massive abandoned city bearing valuable items. An inventory list included two traditional paintings, a perfectly preserved set of Ming Dynasty Hainan Huanghuali wood furniture, a suitcase of jewelry and necklaces, plus several ancient jade carvings…”

Chen Jing interrupted. “When?”

“This… was two months ago…”

Mr. Xu paused before answering quietly. “Work commitments restrained me then. So I sent Xiaoxiao to rendezvous with them. She’d handled such transactions several times before, quite expertly. She even knew the scavenger team’s captain… But… but unexpectedly, disaster struck almost the moment she returned. I was so preoccupied with her treatment that the cargo remains piled up at Bengbu Port…”

“You should consider yourself fortunate!” Chen Jing stated coldly. “Had she not fallen ill, those items would already be within Main City walls.”

Mr. Xu fell silent. Only after a long pause did he exhale softly.

“Your turn now, Miss Xu.”

Chen Jing said no more, shifting her cold attention to Xu Xiaoxiao nestled against her father.

The girl seemed utterly drained. Having lost an entire hand and bled profusely, only an injection administered on Chen Jing’s orders kept her conscious instead of comatose. Though awake, she remained listless and ill-looking. Hearing Chen Jing’s directive, she merely glared at the back of her head before turning away.

Lu Xin found this defiance puzzling. Rebelling even now seemed abnormal.

Mr. Xu grew anxious. “Xiaoxiao…”

Before any persuasion could leave his lips, Chen Jing’s brow creased with impatience.

Through the rearview mirror, her gaze locked onto Xu Xiaoxiao. Her voice lowered, gaining a resonant, penetrating quality.

“Harboring secrets constantly… it’s exhausting, isn’t it?”

Lu Xin noticed her pupils had turned a crimson red. “Therefore, you should tell me everything you know. Reveal every secret in your heart. Only then can I truly help you bear that burden… Isn’t that right?”

Lu Xin noted Chen Jing’s words now held far greater softness and meticulousness than earlier commands.

Old films depicted “hypnotism,” but while Chen Jing’s approach felt similar, the methodology diverged starkly. Unlike traditional hypnotism needing optimal timing and nuanced technique, this seemed a form of forced hypnosis.

Gentle words, yet the method brutal and direct.

Under Chen Jing’s vocal compulsion, Xu Xiaoxiao’s resistance melted into bewildered disorientation. She seemed to plunge into a dream – clearly awake, yet moving like a sleepwalker as she began to murmur:

“When I… when I arrived at their camp…”

“The scavenger team… they were already dead…”

“…”

Mr. Xu stirred with alarm. “Colonel Chen…”

“Let her speak!” Chen Jing said coolly. “She’s in deep hypnosis. Try interrupting her now and risk reducing her to an imbecile.”

Mr. Xu clamped his mouth shut instantly, eyes wide with alarm and helpless dread.

Xu Xiaoxiao continued dully, spilling everything. “They… they died horribly.”

“I saw… several members naked… embracing each other… Some… some clung to a pig’s head…”

“Bullet wounds riddled their bodies… The shooter? The scavenger team captain himself…”

“I knew him. His name was Shen Baohui. A trustworthy man… He sat slumped in a chair, the submachine gun lying by his feet… bullets he’d fired tearing through his teammates… Then… then he died too. Shot… shot through the chin with his own handgun…”

“I didn’t grasp what happened… Frantic, I checked the treasures they mentioned… Found… their haul from the dead city untouched… All intact… and… and something extra… never listed…”

“It was a painting…”

“The other finds remained sealed in crates… Only… only that painting… sat mounted on an easel right in the center of their main tent… Covered by a black cloth… as if hastily draped…”

“I… ordered our men to pack everything… Smuggled them via bribes to Old Wei… that City Patrol Army supervisor?…

Introduced the haul to a temporary Bengbu Port warehouse… to sort and catalogue… I… I took the painting… Because… because I sensed… how fiercely they’d valued it… Assumed immense value… So I planned to appraise it…

And so… I lifted the black cloth…”

“…”

Hearing this, Chen Jing’s brow furrowed deeper.

Lu Xin, seated behind, inclined his head, listening intently.

Mr. Xu opened his mouth, ready to speak several times, only to sigh and let his daughter continue. He knew this confession doomed his illicit path and countless others – precisely why he’d sought absolute secrecy from the start. Yet cornered like this, what else remained possible?

“That painting… was so beautiful…”

Xu Xiaoxiao remained ensnared in hypnosis’s trance. Yet upon naming the artwork, her near-stilled pupils widened faintly, glimmering.

Something fierce stirred beneath the fog of compulsion, fighting toward wakefulness.