When Lin Shu was restoring a Ming Dynasty landscape, the lamp went out.
Not a blackout. All the light was "pulled away" at the same moment - the neon lights of the city outside the window, the green light of the emergency exit, the fluorescence of the mobile phone screen, and even the afterimage of the candlelight reflected in his pupils. It's like there is an invisible hand pressing the whole world into the ink.
Absolute darkness. Absolute silence.
Then he heard a heartbeat.
Not my own. Two hearts beating at the same frequency, like being tied by a thread soaked in blood, one moving in response to the other, one stopping and the other silent.
In the darkness, someone held his waist from behind. The hands were steady and warm, with the smell of old paper mixed with sandalwood, and a hint of... Rust.
"It's all gone." The man said.
Lin Shu suddenly turned his head——
A vast expanse of white.
Not snow, not fog, just a pure, all-devouring void. He fell in this void and heard someone calling his name below, and the voice was torn into pieces:
"... Lin Shu... Don't look back..."
He looked back.
Then everything resumes. The lights are on. The city lights are back. He stood alone on the ladder, with the solid floor beneath his feet and nothing behind his waist.
But on the painting table, there is a drop of fresh blood in the blank space of the Ming Dynasty landscape.
Not his. His fingertips are intact.
And the location of the drop of blood happened to be the step he missed in his "dream".
Intention: We go around in circles just to find ourselves and our best people