Blind Spot
Chapter 280: Chaos at 2604

Chapter 280: Chaos at 2604

5:30 PM.

Li Chengyi arrived at Bai Family Bookstore on time.

The old building was still rickety, bustling with the noise of people from the sleek new mall towering nearby.

It was as quiet and as desolate as before.

Only schoolchildren with backpacks would occasionally pass by, enter the bookstore for a quick browse, and soon come out with a few old books.

Li Chengyi did not bring Zhou Xingtong along, but instead, got out of the car alone and walked to the entrance of the bookstore.

The coffee shop to the left of the store had closed down, with a sign hanging that it was up for lease.

The stationery store on the right was the same as ever, barely clinging to life, its shelves for displaying stationery even older and somewhat blackened.

Standing in front of the dim bookstore, Li Chengyi recalled the scene from before.

That mountain rose with the special drawing technique was in Bai Feipeng’s painting.

So... could it be that the painting connected to another world that possessed special drawing techniques, thereby being affected by contamination?

Approaching the entrance, underneath the dark shelves inside, an old bald man was half-lying on a wooden chair, playing a fighting game on his phone.

The rapid combos unleashed all sorts of light and shadow effects, with fierce battling on the screen.

"Boss." Li Chengyi knocked on the desk where books were placed.

Thud thud thud.

The old man put down his phone and glanced at him.

"Pick out the books yourself. Prices are on the wooden sign."

"I’m not here to buy books." Li Chengyi slowly extended his hand, pulling out a stack of cash from his pocket and placing it on the desk.

"I’m here to buy paintings. All the comic strip books, and those painted by your grandfather that you have in this store."

"?" The bald man perked up, squinting at Li Chengyi under the dim light as if remembering something.

"You... are you the one from that time..." he pointed at Li Chengyi, seemingly recalling something.

"Yes, I’m the one who came by here before..." Li Chengyi nodded.

"What do you want the paintings for?" the old man asked in confusion.

"I have a nephew who just happens to be very fond of..."

"Forget it, no matter what you’re going to do with them, come on." He quickly got up, gesturing for Li Chengyi to follow him inside.

"You’ve come at the right time, this place here, it’s full of old stuff, tons of old comic strips!"

He led Li Chengyi to a small room at the back.

Rows of shelves were filled with all kinds of old picture books and paintings, the dim lighting obscured by the high bookshelves, and the floor’s true color indecipherable beneath the shifting shadows cast by their movement.

Soon, they reached the last two rows of shelves. The old man bent down and dragged a large wooden box from the floor, starting to open it.

As he opened the box, he prattled on about the virtues of physical comic books and how suitable they were for enlightening children and shaping their worldviews.

Li Chengyi absently responded while surveying his surroundings.

Suddenly, he noticed a young woman standing in the dark between the bookshelves to his left, wearing a white long dress, her black hair draped over her shoulders, standing barefoot.

With her back to him, she stood at the very back of the shelves, quiet, still, motionless.

Li Chengyi frowned slightly, feeling something was off.

The old man kept rambling on; obviously, this was not a blind spot environment, so the girl could not be a creature from the blind spot, she must be a real person.

But... something strange was that although his senses could detect her breathing, heartbeat, and the flow of her blood, she remained motionless.

She stood quietly between the shadows of the bookshelves, her back to this side, facing the white wall, motionless.

"Boss, do you have a new clerk here?" Li Chengyi asked, looking forward at the old man.

"Clerk?" The old man looked puzzled. "Why would I hire a clerk for such a small store?"

"Then who is that lady?" Li Chengyi turned his head again to look towards the woman.

The space between the bookshelves was empty, not a soul in sight.

"!?"

Li Chengyi’s words faltered.

He scrutinized that spot carefully.

Between the two shelves, one end was a dead end against the wall, the other was the way out where he stood.

The woman... in just that split moment, she had vanished!?

With his now acute senses, he had failed to notice how she had left!

"What’s the matter?" The old man approached, curious, looking in the direction Li Chengyi was gazing.

"Those books over there, I haven’t organized them in a long time, they’re all about natural sciences, are you interested?"

"Let me see..." Li Chengyi narrowed his eyes, already sensing something was amiss.

He walked forward, between the shelves, stopping precisely where the woman had been.

Then he looked up and down the aisle.

There was nothing to be found.

The bookshelves remained dusty as ever.

He looked down at the floor and saw that there were only his own footprints.

The fine dust coated the ground, with only a single set of his footprints leading from outside the shelves to here.

Li Chengyi’s heart chilled, realizing something was wrong.

"Alright, all the comic strips have been dragged out here. You’re in luck, many old comic strips can only be found here now. As for my grandfather’s paintings..." The old man hadn’t finished speaking.

"Wait!" Li Chengyi suddenly thought of something, "Do you still sell the old paints for drawing here?"

"Paints, of course, we do," the old man chuckled.

"Then, the paints your grandfather used for his paintings, are they still here?" Li Chengyi quickly asked.

"Uh... are you joking, sir?" The old man was taken aback.

His grandfather’s painting supplies?

That was many years ago; how could they still be around now?

Isn’t that a joke?

"Never mind if they aren’t here. Then, could you tell me, which brand of paint did your grandfather like to use the most back in the day?" Li Chengyi asked again.

It was that odd chubby child who had been brought to life by Bai Feipeng with just a drop of white paint that had accidentally fallen.

That chubby boy was very strange; it might not be unrelated to the paint.

So it was then that Li Chengyi thought of this point.

"I do remember that. Back then, resources weren’t abundant, and there weren’t many brands to choose from, since there were only a few shops around," old Bai chuckled.

"My grandfather and I used Wan You brand paints. There weren’t other choices."

"Wan You brand, got it."

Li Chengyi remembered the name and then loaded up a big box of comic strip books he dragged out, along with all the paintings his grandfather had done, and threw them all onto the truck.

After paying, old Bai’s smile was so wide he could hardly close his mouth. This old man had already made a good sum off Xindela before, and now he made another sum in the hundreds of thousands. It’s a mystery what he needed all that money for.

The storefront was still as rundown as ever, and he didn’t even spruce it up a bit.

Driving off with a vehicle full of comic strip books and frames, Li Chengyi found a hotel nearby to settle down in.

He booked a suite and took out all the comic strip books to look through them one by one.

At the same time, he asked ai Rose to search for information on Wan You brand paints.

From the paints and paintbrushes to the artist, the paper, and the frame, he wanted to trace every single clue to confirm why the "Flower Language" deep within the mountains had changed.

Two days.

He spent a full two days.

Li Chengyi was holed up in the room, incessantly going over all the comic strip books.

He wasn’t just casually flipping through; as he perused, he covered them with Radiance Field to inspect.

To ascertain the state of the Blind Spot items.

But, regretfully, he still came up empty-handed...

Woosh.

Standing at the washbasin, Li Chengyi turned on the faucet and scooped up clear water to smear across his face.

He had reviewed the details of all the comic strip books.

But there was still no discovery, and the Radiance Field was of no help at all.

The sound of running water continued, and Li Chengyi grabbed a towel to pat his face dry.

’Where exactly is the key?’

His mind raced, trying to find any critical point that could be in any way related to his spiritual practice.

But it was all in vain.

Looking up, he faced himself in the mirror. Two days of searching through comic strip books without any rest left a trace of fatigue in his eyes.

’Could it be that the paints Bai Feipeng used were not from the real world, but rather items that slipped out from the Blind Spot?’ A thought suddenly struck Li Chengyi.

The Blind Spot was full of all sorts of oddities. If that were the case, it might explain everything.

He turned around, opened the bathroom door, and went back to the living room.

Suddenly, he stopped in his tracks.

He just stood there, at the threshold between the bathroom and the living room, motionless.

Li Chengyi’s eyes narrowed, and without realizing it, his body was enshrouded in the intangible Feilian Floral Dress.

His gaze was fixed on the living room.

At dawn, the dim light from the sky shone through a side window, illuminating half of the living room.

The desk lamp in the corner was still emitting a yellow glow.

In the area where the daylight and lamp light intersected,

there stood a woman at that moment.

A woman with her back to him, utterly motionless, dressed in a long white gown with black hair.

Barefoot, her fair calves were exposed for a third of their length, her hands naturally hanging down, standing upright.

"How did you get in here?" Li Chengyi asked in a deep voice.

There was no answer. The woman did not move as if she hadn’t heard him.

"No matter who you are," Li Chengyi said as a Golden Sword slowly emerged in his hand, and he took a step forward.

"First at the bookstore, now in my place. It seems... you’re coming after me?"

The distance between them slowly closed.

Yet the woman remained still and silent, standing like a statue with her back to Li Chengyi.

Woosh.

Suddenly, the water tap in the bathroom turned on by itself.

Li Chengyi was slightly distracted and glanced behind with the corner of his eye.

The bathroom door clicked open on its own.

A white hem of a dress fluttered slightly at the doorway.

Someone was there!!

A shiver ran down Li Chengyi’s spine.

He had not noticed any movement at all. How did these two get in?

Whoo.

Then he snapped back to reality and looked towards the living room again;

the white-dressed woman who was there just a moment ago had now vanished without a trace.

She had disappeared completely when no one knew.

And the water faucet had also turned off by itself.

He quickly turned back only to find that the door to the bathroom had never been opened.

"Not right!"

Li Chengyi felt something was wrong and immediately pulled out his mobile phone to check.

As he suspected!

The phone’s time was about half a minute slow!

This indicated that he had just been exposed to strong electromagnetic interference, causing his mobile phone timer to fail.

"Could it be... a new Blind Spot!?" Li Chengyi didn’t believe that there was anyone still capable of approaching and leaving him unnoticed.

But if it was a Blind Spot, then it all would make sense...