Paintings of Terror

Chapter 224: Fish

It was a black round jar with a strangely shaped black lid tightly screwed.

Everyone’s gaze was on the jar, and Luo Bu had the strongest reaction. Holding Koharu in his arms, he backed away step by step, leaning his body firmly against the door frame and ready to escape at any time.

Xi Shengnan was not alarmed, but rather surprised.

Lu Heng, who was sitting next to her, also didn’t panic, and even reached out to touch the jar.

Several other newcomers also stood up and walked towards the black jar. Their faces were full of disbelief, and their eyes had an incomprehensible light of piety.

As if this jar was a unique treasure.

Luo Bu: Oh shit oh shit, the evil jar started to exert its power. The first step is to attract the newcomers and turn them all into pus…

Cao Youning walked up and patted the jar. He hesitated for a moment and then picked it to feel the weight.

Ke Xun asked Mu Yiran in a low voice: “Mind enlightening this newbie with some knowledge?”

Mu Yiran: “…I don’t know what that is either.”

Ke Xun was surprised. In addition to not having watched cartoons, Boss Mu also didn’t recognize this black jar. Of course, most of them didn’t recognize this jar.

“Who can tell us what’s inside this?” Wei Dong was puzzled too. Looking at how Cao Youning was holding the jar reminded him of his once hungry self holding a bowl of freshly made instant noodles…

“I don’t know what’s inside yet. “Cao Youning said and shook the jar, “I feel that there is something in it, and it is a bit heavy. ”

“Damn it, don’t just shake it like that, what if it explodes?!” Luo Bu almost ran out of the door, and Koharu’s fur stood up.

Seeing that Cao Youning was about to open the mysterious black jar, Luo Bu yelled out in an instant: “Don’t open it! Can you guarantee that it’s a jar full of golden fingers?!”

Everyone: “…”

Perhaps Luo Bu’s words reminded Lu Heng. He snatched the jar from Cao Youning’s hand: “Don’t just open it! Is there a darkroom bag? Use a darkroom bag.”

“Yes, darkroom bag!” Xi Shengnan continued to look through her luggage. The newcomers also started to help her.

Wei Dong’s eyes narrowed to a straight line: “Are you people really photographers? Are you sure you are not photographers who are also gangsters? Darkroom bag? What kind of gangster term is this? Haowen Er, do you know?”

Zhu Haowen’s eyes were also straight lines: “…”

“Found it! Darkroom bag!!” Du Lingyu found a black cloth-like thing from the bottom of a stack of clothes. It looked like a piece of black clothing but was actually a strangely shaped thick black bag. Du Lingyu picked up the bag and pointed it towards the lantern for a long time, “It’s double-layered and glued, so it’s not see-through at all!”

Hearing this, Mu Yiran’s slightly frowned brows gradually relaxed, as if he understood what these things were.

The newcomers put the black jar into the darkroom bag. They looked at each other, and finally handed everything over to Mai Peng.

Mai Peng rubbed his itchy nose due to the cold. He sealed the opening of the bag and put his hands in through two cuff-like things on the bag.

Wei Dong: “What the hell is this, can it be even weirder…”

“Do you need the lights off?” Mu Yiran asked.

Mai Peng paused: “It’s safer to have them off.”

Perhaps it was because of Mu Yiran’s attitude, although the veterans didn’t really understand it, they still cooperated to put out the few gauze lamps in the room. Luo Bu, who was standing at the door, also obediently closed the door with the dog in his arms. The room fell into darkness for a moment. With the curtains drawn, it was almost completely black.

“Mai Peng, you have a lot of guts ha.” Luo Bu’s voice in the dark was shaky. “In such a dark room, you dare to reach your hand into the black bag, and open the black ashes…oh no, black jar…”

“Don’t be afraid, we often do this. These are the most basic tasks when we first started doing photography.” Cao Yuning comforted Luo Bu.

“Photography?” A few people asked.

“That’s right, those of you who don’t know photography wouldn’t have known. That black jar is a standard developing tank, which is used for developing film.” Cao Youning said.

“Huh?” Wei Dong was very surprised, “A jar can develop film?!”

Lu Heng also joined the conversation: “Yes, it can. This is purely done manually. If you have experience doing it, the resulting photos will look better than that of a printing shop.”

“I can’t believe it……”

“Of course, besides a developing tank, we’ll need things like developing solutions and fixing solutions. I hope this world can provide us with that.” Said Lu Heng.

In the dark, rustling sounds could be heard. They seemed to be the sound of opening the jar. Everyone fell silent. Because no one could see anything, they couldn’t tell the result from Mai Peng’s expression.

Mai Peng breathed heavily as he had a bad cold: “Yes, it should have everything we need. There are packets of powders, a lot of them.”

Wei Dong’s scatterbrained mind started thinking about instant ramen bowls…are there sauce packets…

“You mean, packets of developing powder and fixing powder?” Mu Yiran said.

“I think they should be, along with some necessary things for film development.” There was another movement where Mai Peng was. He seemed to be checking for things by touching them one by one.

Qin Ci didn’t understand what was going on for a while, and said in a low voice: “Since it is confirmed that it is a developing tank, why do we need to confirm the contents in the dark? If it is a dangerous object, isn’t it more dangerous in the dark?”

Mu Yiran replied: “The developing tank is used for film development. If there are already films in the tank itself, the films will be completely exposed and become useless if opened without precautions.”

“Oh, so that’s how it is.” Qin Ci’s voice lowered. It was hard to imagine what would be on the films if this jar had them…

“There are films! There really are!” Mai Peng’s cold-affected voice rang out.

Qin Ci instantly felt that he had jinxed it with his thoughts.

“How many films are there?” Lu Heng asked cautiously.

“It’s packed in a small paper envelope. They are cut into pieces, should only be a few.” Mai Peng said.

Mu Yiran said: “It is currently impossible to determine whether these films have been exposed, right?”

Mai Peng: “In theory, yes. If you don’t take it out to look, you can’t tell just by touching. However, these films have been cut. I believe that only developed films will be cut.”

It did make sense, but experience was only experience. If the films in the envelope had not been developed, they would turn to scraps when exposed to light, which was equivalent to destroying precious materials.

“What should we do? Brother-in-law.” Luo Bu said.

“Two options: one is to only take out a small piece of film. Even in case of exposure, only a small piece is destroyed. The other method is to immediately find a red glass lampshade and set up the room as a darkroom. This will minimize the harm done to the photo from exposure.” Mu Yiran said.

“I have a red lampshade here.” Suddenly a thin voice rang out. It was Du Lingyu.

Everyone was stunned, it seemed that the painting had prepared all the materials for film developing for everyone.

Du Lingyu murmured to herself: “No wonder there is a red lampshade wrapped in cloth in my bag. I thought it was too creepy just now, so I didn’t dare to mention it. So it’s the red light for the darkroom.”

“I have sealed the darkroom bag. You guys can light up the lamp now.” Said Mai Peng.

A light quickly lit up. It was the gauze lamp next to Zhu Haowen. Du Lingyu walked over and handed over a round red glass shade…

Everyone’s face appeared red after the red light lit on, which was quite creepy.

Mai Peng took out a small negative from the darkroom bag and looked at it while facing the red light. “It has been developed. The person who did it had really good techniques. The room temperature here is only about ten degrees. To be able to manually develop this level of films under such a cold condition, they must have been a very experienced master.”

Ke Xun and Wei Dong have already joined Mai Peng’s side. At this moment, no one cared about the technique. Everyone was more concerned about what was shot on the film.

Wei Dong squinted his eyes and looked at it for a long time: “It looks like a few big black spots on a white background! What are these things?”

Zhu Haowen, who was closest to the red light, also squinted his eyes for a long time: “I think these should be white spots, not black spots.”

“Haowen Er, are your eyes bad?” Before Wei Dong finished speaking, Mai Peng said, “He’s right. The film negative is like this. The colors are opposite to the colors of the real photo. If it’s a black and white film, the black on the film is actually white, and the white on the film is black—because it is completely opposite, hence the developed films are also called negatives.”

“Oh, that’s right,” Wei Dong nodded, “It’s a bit like the inverted color effect in picture processing.”

Ke Xun kept staring at the black spots on the film: “Mai Peng, are you sure this picture was taken clearly and developed well?”

Mai Peng nodded: “I think so. It’s a pity that the negatives are too small, and we don’t have professional equipment to print the photos to enlarge them.”

“There are some gray things on these four black dots, and I really can’t tell what they are.” Ke Xun’s eyes never left the film, “But I think these four black dots all have a fish shape. A fish shaped like a flatfish.”

Perhaps it was Ke Xun’s remark that reminded Mai Peng of something. He looked at the negative repeatedly, and called several other photographers over to look together: “Lu Heng, do you feel these gray things are like water?”

Lu Heng looked for a long time, and his voice was a little heavy: “Looking at the texture and shape, it should be water. But if these are water, then the white background of the film should also be water, which means…”

Du Lingyu’s voice trembled a little: “This painting is so scary.”

Although the others did not have professional photography knowledge, they had more or less figured out the original appearance of this photo through Mai Peng’s explanation of the negative film just now.

In the black water, there are four snow-white diamond-shaped fish swimming.

The photography conditions in this world were limited. It should be impossible to perform underwater photography, let alone capturing the complete profile of four fish.

In other words, the four fish were lying flat on the water.

These were four dead white fish.