Lin Huai smiled, put the letter into his trouser pocket calmly, then turned around, and shyly picked his face with his fingers: "I'm just a little curious..."
The painter was holding black tea, with a smile on his face when the big boss in a horror game caught a player who was peeping clues. Seeing what Lin Huai said, he said softly, "It's okay, you..."
"I wonder if there is something shady hidden in it." Lin Huai added the second half of the sentence, "Who hides the painting in the black cloth in broad daylight?"
painter:…
"There is nothing shady." The painter said, "Under these black cloths, there are some... portraits. Some... portraits of women or men?"
"woman?"
"It's a long story." The painter led him to sit on the sofa, "You said you like drinking black tea the most, so I bought some."
The tea in the cup is clear, it seems that the quality of the tea is really good. Lin Huai whispered, "This... this tea is expensive, right?"
The painter said: "Do you know what is the hardest thing to find in this world?"
Lin Huai shook his head. The painter then said: "There is no shortage of stories in this world, but what is most lacking is someone who is willing to listen to you tell a story. A good confidant is hard to find. It is the best deal in the world to exchange a pinch of tea for an hour of a confidant. But a deal."
After he finished speaking, he raised his eyes to look at Lin Huai, and smiled slightly. In his smile, he only read Qianfan's vicissitudes and romance.
But Lin Huai just nodded and said, "So it's really expensive, right?"
The painter smiled noncommittally. Then, he saw Lin Huai thinking, "Since that's the case, this tea can't be wasted."
After hearing his voice, the painter secretly raised the corners of his mouth.
The fish is hooked.
A handsome and elegant male elder, whose gentleness implies exhaustion, and whose vicissitudes imply literature and art, is a huge killer for any young boy or girl who lacks a little life experience and is too young too naive.
What's more, he still talks and laughs with him so gently.
Next, he will share the stories of those eight paintings with him, and create his own affectionate and lonely image, so as to induce him to drink this cup of tea... just like...
Just like he did to everyone who has ever entered this studio.
The painter quietly glanced at the cup of black tea out of the corner of his eye.
The young man sitting on the sofa opposite him looked innocent and ignorant. He has black hair and black eyes, extremely white skin, slender fingers intertwined, and drooping thick eyelashes are slender and beautiful.
This was a rather handsome young man in every worldly sense. However, the reason why he really attracted the painter and made the painter make up his mind to make him his new work the first time he saw him was...
The contradictory temperament that the painter caught a glimpse of belonged to him.
This temperament is different from his handsome and soft appearance, it is a little sharp and a little cold. This made him a little more unpredictable and weird.
… for example.
Lin Huai sat across from him, holding the cup with his fingers, and lowered his head. His shoulders seemed to be trembling slightly, and anyone who looked at it would feel that this was the uneasiness that newcomers would have, but...
The painter frowned.
Inexplicably, he felt that this young man didn't seem to be disturbed, but rather...
excited
The painter forgot this strange conjecture.
In any case, so far... none of the works of art he wanted has ever escaped his grasp.
—After obtaining that weird set of painting tools.
The painter's life changed after he got that set of painting tools.
Like many famous geniuses, he experienced a successful youth, aura and talent are the best passports, all doors and all champagne are opened for him. He has a very unique talent in painting. Someone once commented on him:
"In each of his paintings, there is a 'spirit'."
However, it is the same as many people who rely on spiritual energy for food. After the success of youth, the frustration of youth followed. He lost the aura unique to newcomers that he relied on for his creation, and the roughness of his skills that had been covered up by passion gradually emerged. Soon, he was down and out, and even his girlfriend at the time broke up with him and wanted to run to another painter's arms.
When he was desperate, an event broke into his life - one of his best friends disappeared.
That friend's life experience is very similar to his. They both became famous when they were young, but they did not leave enough talent or skills to support this fame in their youth. His friend is also famous for his "spirit". In recent years, his paintings are all full of craftsmanship, which is no longer what it used to be.
In fact, the artist had discovered the strangeness of this friend since a month ago. Contrary to his usual melancholy, he became even more withdrawn and locked himself in a rented house. The painter once visited him once. In the dim studio, his friend was holding a paintbrush, staring at the blank drawing paper with bloodshot eyes.
He came to the rental house at the invitation of his friends, and he didn't understand the meaning at that time. His friend invited him to sit down, and the two chatted for a while. During the chat, his friend kept staring at his face, as if there was something on it, which made the painter shudder.
He figured out the other party's intentions, and his eyes noticed the paintbrush in the other party's hand.
——That was a brand he had never seen before, at least, in the hands of this friend who had known him for five years, a brand he had never seen before.
In the end, his friend let him go home. The painter was very puzzled at that time, until after his friend disappeared, he came to his apartment as the only close friend of the other party.
The apartment was as chaotic as it had been when he arrived. Scrolls and paintings were thrown around randomly, but the easel in the center of the room caught his attention.
The easel was covered with a white cloth, the painter hesitated for a moment, then lifted the white cloth.
With just one glance, he was overwhelmed by the incomparably bright painting in front of him.
It is difficult for him to describe the greatness of this painting in words. It is the starry sky, it is creativity, it is the brilliance of a person's life struggling to sink to the bottom or life burning himself at the end... This is a beauty that is enough to shock everyone!
— This painting deserves to be called a treasure handed down from generation to generation!
He found the painting set and a last letter beside the painting.
The painter opened the letter, and there were several paragraphs written on it.
These few paragraphs shocked him even more than that painting!
'I got this set of brushes by accident... I knew they were sinister, but I couldn't help but be drawn to them...'
'They can draw the most handed down paintings, can draw the most gorgeous treasures, the condition is... a person's soul. '
'Put a little bit of heart and soul into the painting, and you can get the color of the soul, and you can get the supreme handed down work... Different souls will draw different paintings, the more unique the soul The more you can draw paintings handed down from generation to generation... Which painter can refuse such a temptation? '
'I really want to paint a masterpiece... But I'm still soft-hearted after all, I can't do anything to you. I know, if I go missing, you will be the first to find out I'm missing, right? '
'Don't look for my news, don't look for my soul, my soul is already in the painting. This is my final choice. Faust can't refuse a deal with the devil, I'm already in hell, but what I've created is a paradise... This is my ultimate worth...'
'Exhibit this painting, as long as this painting can stay, I will have no regrets in my life...'
After reading this letter, the painter's eyes were moist. Two emotions stirred in him. The first emotion comes from the obsession with a friend who only uses his own soul to paint until death, and the second emotion comes from his own dangerous escape from death.
He ended up taking the painting set with him. The temptations of the devil are indeed endless. When his girlfriend quarrels with him again, he brings her a tender candlelight dinner and finally lets her into the painting.
Perhaps his girlfriend's soul was as vulgar as he thought, and she was not at all comparable to his best friend. The first painting he ended up with was just a rose in a vase.
After being painted into the painting, the girlfriend's body also disappeared at the same time, which is very convenient. This made him very satisfied. Later, another woman who had betrayed him was also drawn into the same painting by him.
He painted constantly and became picky about the quality of his drawings. He began to obsessively find those interesting souls in the crowd.
The more interesting the soul, the more beautiful the paintings created together.
His fame grew, and collectors began to pay high prices for his paintings. However, the few collectors who bought the paintings later fell into a series of misfortunes, but no one connected these events with him. He himself knew nothing about it.
After moving into Chunyu's apartment, the woman from 601 once visited him in his room for a short time—he generally didn't eat grass by the edge of his nest, and the danger of missing people around him was too high. So this is just a friendly visit.
He gave her his original painting as a small gift. After Qian Fan passed away, he became famous again and no longer cared about his previous failures, and he also lost interest in the rose painting. Today, only the eight paintings of the soul left by his side remain on the balcony.
However, this property management was beyond his expectation.
He wanted his soul so badly. The painter stared at the young man sitting across from him, thinking that he seemed oblivious to the danger he was about to face.
"There are indeed many stories about those eight paintings," said the painter. "Would you like to see them?"
He took Lin Huai to the balcony and removed the black cloths one by one.
They are either girls running in the wheat field, or young people standing on the streets of the city, or girls standing in the mountains like fairies...
The moment Lin Huai saw them, she finally realized where the "awkwardness" she had noticed before came from.
from the painting.
All the landscapes in the painter's room, all the sketches... there is no "person" in them.
It's almost like deliberately avoiding the topic of "people".
In all fairness, these eight paintings are indeed paintings that can make any layman full of praise. Lin Huai stood in front of a portrait. In the portrait was a young man with light brown hair. He lowered his head and smiled shyly.
"...this painting." Lin Huai murmured, "It's amazing."
"Excellent?"
Lin Huai looked at the bright red collar of the boy in the painting, and nodded silently.
"In the process of painting, what I have always emphasized is a particularity, a particularity that distinguishes me from other mediocre painters. You can call it... the soul." The painter smiled, "There is The works of the soul are different from the works produced by the assembly line. Although you are not a professional, I can tell by looking at your eyes, you, can feel, you even... resonate."
Lin Huai nodded: "Maybe it's because I pay great attention to the soul when I paint."
He thought about the pyramid he drew with his own hands, but which Chu Tianshu mockingly called the ○ on the head of the lazy sheep... no, the Eiffel Tower, and said sincerely: "To a certain extent, we are very similar , for example... I am often called a soul painter by my classmates in my life."