Chapter 661 - 303: Burning Painting (Happy Mid-Autumn Festival)

Professor Boggs stroked his beard.

He spoke as if lecturing the female painter across the Great Ocean: "The focus of this concept is not on the first half of the work, but the latter half. Pain is just a process, but enlightenment is the key."

"The artist must not only immerse Tony in the old-world memories created by the piece but also allow him to detach from the pain and enter the artist’s virtual worldview."

"So the key is—to get in, you must also be able to get out. Judging by this theme, there’s no need to paint this piece of separation at the pet hospital."

Professor Boggs instructed from a high vantage point: "Firstly, this will constantly remind Tony that he has already parted ways with his cat. Secondly, if the grief is too overwhelming, it won’t be shaken off and will instead affect the artist’s subsequent narrative. This scene of separation is extremely penetrating but will disrupt the overall emotional continuity of the painting."

"That’s what it means by not worth the effort."

In his "Amy," among the six paintings of [this life] and [reincarnation], he gave up inserting the obviously most impressionable scene of Tony at the pet hospital.

It’s not that Professor Boggs lacked the confidence to paint this heavy subject, but rather he had thought it through.

Even though emotional stimulation is a good thing.

If this painting were added, Tony would always carry the grief of parting with Amy when he became enlightened about the cat’s reincarnation.

So it’s better not to paint it.

"When the emotion is too heavy, it becomes a burden on life. Even more so for a child who can’t grow up."

Anya nodded deeply.

The emotion condensed in this sketch made it hard even for her to breathe.

Let alone Tony himself?

"Too young, lacking enough experience. If it were me, the method of handling this would be... FUCK."

Professor Boggs’ advice was abruptly cut off.

Damn it!

What did he see?

Professor Boggs rubbed his eyes vigorously, looking at the new sketch switched over by his assistant on the screen.

He was suddenly dumbfounded.

It was a blaze of orange light.

Many works have a theme color.

Impressionist paintings tend to use large swaths of high brightness, warm monochrome, while the Pre-Raphaelites often employ blue, purple, and green hues to create a melancholic, serene atmosphere. Professor Boggs’ "Amy" used a lot of black and white as well as different formulas of advanced gray.

The theme of the painting before his eyes was a bright red-orange.

Similar to the cadmium color of the pet hospital wall, it was filled to the brim on the screen as if for free.

These warm and cool short lines interwove densely on the screen.

Hundreds, thousands of shorter lines, like fleeting sparks, longer and more graceful spiral strokes tangled together, like the fur of a cat entwined in tongues of flame.

The entire sketch, illuminated by millions of small LED lights, looked like a rhythmically pulsating flame.

"No, wrong."

Professor Boggs gasped.

Not "like" a pulsating flame.

Detective Cat had painted a blaze on the screen, flames seemingly coalescing into the shape of a cat within the screen.

The center flame was the brightest, a red nearly orange.

The key advantage of a MINI-LED display is that it can provide a brightness of up to 1500 nits per unit area.

In layman’s terms, it is.

Even brighter than some low-wattage incandescent lamps.

Detective Cat seemed to have painted a sun on it, causing Professor Boggs to squint slightly.

At the edges of the painting, the flames gradually extinguished, the color temperature shifting from warm to cool, the light turning violet, forming a small strip of dark color with a scorched sensibility.

This...

Professor Boggs’ eyes widened like brass bells.

That was—a half-burned, charred cat tail!

Detective Cat seemed afraid that his theme wasn’t obvious enough.

He "considerately" signed a name at the bottom of the sketch.

In this set of sketches, the only painting named by the artist, its name is...

"C, R, E, M, A, T, O, R"

Lady Anya spelled out each letter in her mind, even praying she had gotten it wrong.

She knew that word for sure.

But in this scene, those eight letters read like a joke from Hell.

"Cremator (Corpse Burning Furnace/Incinerator)"

"Cremator."—The joke wasn’t funny at all; instead, it left the audience with a bone-chilling coldness.

The assistant’s first thought upon seeing Professor Boggs’ "Amy" was of Picasso.

Curiously enough,

The female artist, seeing Detective Cat’s painting, also thought of Picasso’s work.

In Picasso’s early career, his works were often associated with "blue paint."

A blue, as gloomy as the Great Ocean, was the thematic color most frequently used by this master of Cubism.

A painter friend who often frequented prostitutes with him, one day pulled out a revolver in a bar with blue decor.

First shooting his girlfriend, then himself.

Committing suicide without warning and dragging his girlfriend along, undoubtedly made him a jerk.

But his close friend’s death also deeply influenced Picasso’s painting style.

This tragedy dealt a heavy blow to Picasso’s soul. He began to believe that blue was a color of sadness leading to Hell.

Coincidentally, this color traditionally symbolizes Hell and death in Egyptian tradition.

Thus, Picasso filled his canvases with bitter blue paint, binding various themes of mental strain.

This formed a renowned period in art history known as the "Blue Period," wherein Picasso’s creative expression was often referred to by academia as the "Blue Melancholy Period" or "Blue Sadness Period."

The burning cadmium orange under Detective Cat’s painting knife was reminiscent of the melancholic and mournful blue under Picasso’s brush.

The flames burning on the sketch, paired with the charred tail of Amy.

Not only did it fail to transmit any light or warmth to the audience’s soul, but it was as cold as standing in a blizzard, permeated by sorrow.

The sounds of sobbing echoed around, resonating with everyone’s somber mood.

Tony was no longer just crying; he was wailing like an enraged cat.

In the society of adults, even crying is restrained.

Tony’s outcry was a child’s way of crying, akin to an animal’s wail.

Unrestrained, hysterical sobbing resonated like a hoarse megaphone, echoing through the parlor.

The favorable family environment, material life surrounded by servants, coupled with the influence of autism.

Allowed Tony, at the age of forty-one, to still be cared for like a child.

Lacking emotional intelligence like Professor Boggs, when mentioning Amy to Tony, would only substitute the fact of Amy’s death with an expression everyone understood.

Who could bear to tear apart such cruel, bloody facts for this child to see!

Detective Cat did just that.

Not only did she do it, but she ridiculously drew a sketch of Amy being burned to charcoal in a furnace.

The better Detective Cat painted, the deeper Tony was stimulated.

Tony used his fingertips like a cat scratching a blackboard to scratch the expensive TV display, fingertips against the screen, making an ear-piercing screech.

The female artist had no doubts.

If there were a real fire in the television, Tony would rush in without hesitation to save his cat from the flames.

No matter how much Anya admired Detective Cat’s painting skills, at that moment, a surge of anger toward the artist rose in her heart.

Did Detective Cat not have a heart; did she not feel pain!

The female artist equated Detective Cat with Picasso in her mind, both talented, both flawed in character.

"That guy probably has antisocial personality disorder."