38: Thirty-eight.

The Seven Wonders: The Vampire in the Portrait 38: Thirty-eight.

The Seven Wonders: The Vampire in the Portrait Crack.

The moisture that poured in ceased as the window closed.

Lu Li returned to his desk, placed the finished exam back in its spot, and turned his gaze elsewhere.

After a few minutes perusing the remaining documents and books on the other desks, he found no further clues.

Lu Li turned his attention to a row of file cabinets in the corner of the room.

Through the cabinet’s dusty transparent glass, a row of dark blue folders was visible inside, the cabinet door was locked.

Lu Li grabbed a tablecloth from a nearby desk, wrapped it around his hand, made a fist, and swung.

The thin glass of the file cabinet shattered on cue.

Unwrapping the tablecloth, Lu Li reached into the gap and pulled out a folder.

[Employee Performance, Department One]

This obviously wasn’t it.

Tossed behind on the desk, Lu Li reached in again, pulling out the third folder in sequence.

[Employee Performance, Department Two]

Casually flipping it open, he quickly found the page with Liu Zhen’s name on it.

A row of numbers appeared before his eyes, listing Liu Zhen’s performance.

His rankings were in the upper-middle tier of Department Two, occasionally breaking into the top three.

Good enough, but not excellent.

Beyond Liu Zhen’s performance metrics, there was no other information.

It seemed nothing else useful could be found in the gallery area.

Going on with the investigation like a headless fly seemed somewhat troublesome; perhaps summoning a Pen Immortal for information could be an option, whilst also adding a new entry to his gallery?

It wasn’t necessary to go through so much trouble, as Lu Li had a Pen Immortal of his own.

Thud thud thud—

Thud thud thud!

A series of urgent, forceful knocks suddenly came from the door.

Lu Li, standing straight in front of the file cabinets, turned his head to listen quietly.

Thud thud thud—

Thud thud thud!

The sound of knocking echoed through the empty and solitary third-floor corridor.

“Who is it?” Lu Li closed the folder and asked towards the door.

His tone was as casual as if he were inquiring about the experience of an employee who knocked.

After waiting a while, there was no response from outside the door.

In the silence, something eerie brewed.

Lu Li put the folder back in the cabinet, scanned the office to make sure nothing was forgotten, and walked toward the door.

Thud thud thud—

Thud thud thud!

The office door started shaking again, and Lu Li could clearly see the door vibrate and dust fall off.

The moment the knocking ceased, Lu Li reached the door.

He put his hand on the doorknob and yanked it open—

A lightning bolt shot in from the window across the hallway, instantly illuminating the vacant corridor.

A silhouette standing in the doorway came into sharp relief in the sudden light.

Drip-drip—drip-drip—

Water droplets fell from the mannequin’s muddy wet skirt, gathering into a small puddle at its feet.

Its clothes and skirt were soaked through, caked with mud.

Lu Li was silent for a few seconds, then stepped aside to create a pathway, “I’ll return the office to you, I’m done using it.”

To be honest, he felt a bit guilty at that moment.

The mannequin didn’t move an inch.

Lu Li remembered that it wouldn’t move while being watched.

Perhaps out of guilt for throwing it out the window, Lu Li picked up the mannequin and placed it back in the corner where he first saw it.

Once everything was done and restored to how it was—apart from the shattered file cabinet—Lu Li returned to the side of the door, and casually unlocked the door behind him.

The office door slowly closed.

Click.

A faint sound, the office door was locked from the inside.

Lu Li moved back to create distance and turned to leave, preparing to meet Yang Chunxue at the dormitory.

Tap—Tap—

The sound of footsteps echoed in the empty corridor.

Tap—Tap—Click—Tap—

An indiscernible noise was mixed in with the footsteps.

Lu Li paused and turned towards the direction of the sound.

Not far from the office door, a sliver of the door was open.

A faceless head peeked out from behind the door, looking ominously in this direction.

This scene was both comical and eerie.

“Stop following me,”

Lu Li’s voice resonated as he frowned slightly.

Being stalked by a dummy was not a pleasant feeling.

Assuring that the dummy propped by the door could hear him, Lu Li watched it closely as he slowly edged backward, farther and farther away, until he reached the stairs.

This place was four to five meters from the office, and darkness enveloped the area a dozen meters away.

Perhaps the dummy was still propped by the door, or perhaps it was hidden just beyond Lu Li’s line of sight.

After staring intently down the dark corridor, Lu Li descended the steps, his form vanishing around the corner.

Several seconds later, Lu Li returned to the first-floor hall of the gallery.

Passing the portrait from the Victoria era on the wall, Lu Li looked at it quietly.

The seventh wonder: the Vampire in the painting.

Rumour had it that every full moon night, a vampire hidden within the portrait would emerge, selecting a night shift employee to feed on their blood.

Whether it was true or not was unknown; it might well be, or it could have started from an artist who found the painting bizarre, spreading by word of mouth until it became an urban legend.

In any case, just like the dummy, Lu Li turned a blind eye to these weird occurrences that didn’t emanate any malevolent aura, so long as they didn’t bother him.

Moving his gaze away, Lu Li approached the final set of steps.

With his back to the painting, at that moment, the vampire’s likeness in the portrait suddenly came alive, its eyes slowly moving, becoming a blood red and three-dimensional.

Its teeth turned sharp, and its nails began to grow, as if about to break free from the painting.

But another strangeness appeared before it could.

“I’ve already warned you,”

Lu Li’s gaze was fixed on the motionless dummy at the bottom of the steps, his tone progressively chilling.

Although unclear about the dummy’s intentions, in such an environment, any silence would be taken by Lu Li as inherently malicious—he decided to strike first.

Lu Li quickened his pace, charging down the steps toward the dummy.

The dummy itself wasn’t very heavy and was instantly sent flying by Lu Li’s collision, skidding several meters.

Lu Li quickly followed up, stepped on the dummy’s chest to prevent any retaliation, grabbed the dummy’s left arm with both hands, and with a strong pull—detached the entire limb.

The weird shadow that was half protruding from the painting on the steps behind him was suddenly startled.

Unaware of this, Lu Li removed the dummy’s other arm, stepped on its abdomen to pin it down, embraced its two legs with his arms, and with a strained grunt tore them off forcefully.

The dummy, stripped of its limbs, was left with only its lonely torso and head.

The weird shadow from the painting frantically retreated back into it.

Without respite, Lu Li picked up the dummy, crossed his arms around its head, and exerted himself, twisting off the dummy’s head.

With the dummy’s head tightly clutched in his slender hand, Lu Li caught his breath slightly and, suddenly sensing something, his still cold gaze turned towards the painting above the stairs.

The vampire that had retracted back into the painting nonchalantly looked away.

Shifting his attention, Lu Li casually tossed the head aside and said to the rolling head, “Such tricks should not be able to hurt you.

Don’t follow me anymore.”

No longer concerned with the scattered dummy parts, Lu Li stepped over the debris to the hall’s entrance.

His hand reaching for the doorknob abruptly froze—the umbrella hanging there when he entered had vanished without a trace.

Lu Li slightly cocked his head, his voice detached, “That painting, have you seen my umbrella?”

The oil painting trembled imperceptibly.