Chapter 56 - It Did Not Drop the Curtain, Yet It Exited the Stage

When the gallery’s ceiling lights flickered back on, the staff dressed in black uniforms had already packed the oil painting into its shockproof case.

Chen Zhan, the curator, stood beside the box with his hands behind his back. His gaze, hidden behind his glasses, lingered on the lock for two seconds before swiftly moving away—half as if confirming something, half as if avoiding it.

Shen Mo pressed his knuckles against his chin.

Watching the staff push the shockproof case toward the door, he suddenly raised his hand. “Wait a moment.”

Everyone froze in place. Chen Zhan’s eyebrows twitched. “Forensic Doctor Shen?”

“Ultraviolet scan.” Shen Mo pulled out a portable scanner from his canvas bag. “Let’s follow procedure and record this before handover.” He shook the device lightly. “I’m doing this on Director Lin’s behalf, to capture some scientific footage for the documentary.”

Director Lin immediately nodded. “Yes, I mentioned to Director Chen earlier that the condition of the exhibits must be fully documented.”

Chen Zhan opened his mouth but finally waved his hand. “Hurry up.”

Shen Mo bent over to adjust the scanner’s angle. As the cool white ultraviolet light swept across the canvas, his pupils contracted slightly—the fluorescent underlayer was indeed still, yet around the dancer’s neck, there was a faint, dark red ring, like a thin brushstroke dipped in blood. It was invisible unless viewed up close.

His thumb unconsciously traced the edge of the scanner. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Su Wanying bending down to adjust the ballet shoe pendant at her neck. The pale pink paint stains on her wrist had faded to mere crescent shadows, and the starting point of the dark red ring perfectly aligned with the origin of those paint marks.

“All done.” He switched off the scanner and lightly tapped the side of the frame with his fingertip. “You may move it now.”

As the staff pushed the case away, Shen Mo crouched down, pretending to tie his shoelaces. His fingernail scraped off a tiny wood chip from the frame and discreetly slipped it into the evidence pouch hidden in his palm.

The motion was as swift and silent as a leaf drifting into the soil; even Su Wanying didn’t notice—she was still staring at the back of the shockproof case, her eyelashes casting delicate shadows beneath her eyes.

“What are you thinking?” Shen Mo approached and gently nudged her shoulder with his own.

Su Wanying turned her head, water shimmering in her eyes. “I’m thinking about what Lin Yan said—‘unfinished is not a flaw.’” She touched the pendant. “But now it’s locked away in the constant-temperature vault. Does that mean it won’t even have a chance to be ‘seen’?”

Shen Mo remained silent. The evidence pouch in his palm was crumpled tightly.

He watched Chen Zhan giving the security guards their instructions. His Adam’s apple moved slightly—some things, for now, must remain unspoken.

Three days later, in the early morning, Su Wanying twisted open the faucet in the restroom.

Ripples of water appeared in the mirror first, but her reflection lifted its hand a half-beat too late.

She froze in place.

Water still dripped from her fingertips, yet the hands in the mirror hung still, only following her movement 0.7 seconds afterward.

She blinked her left eye; the reflected left eye blinked 0.7 seconds later. She raised her right hand, and the mirrored one, as if pulled by an invisible thread, lagged behind.

“Xiaoying?” Shen Mo’s voice came from the living room.

She quickly wiped her face and forced a smile. “Coming!” As she turned, a thin sweat broke out on the back of her neck.

That evening, in Shen Mo’s autopsy lab, the computer screen glowed with a ghostly blue light.

He stared at the sleep monitoring report, the mouse wheel stopped on the REM sleep brainwave chart—within the wavy lines lurked a 0.7Hz oscillation frequency, like a fish hidden beneath a dark current.

“It matches the frequency of your dream,” he said, looking up to see Su Wanying leaning against the doorframe, water still dripping from her hair. “Does the feeling of an empty stage always appear at this frequency?”

She nodded, her fingers nervously twisting the hem of her nightdress. “It’s like… something is stuck in my nerves and can’t be pulled out.”

Shen Mo pressed his thumb to his brow.

He recalled the dark red ring on the frame three days ago, the indelible pale pink on Su Wanying’s wrist, then abruptly grabbed his coat. “Let’s go.”

“Where?”

“The museum’s official website.” He opened the door. “Director Chen posted an article yesterday. I want to see what he wrote.”

On the city museum’s website, the headline “Silent Night at the Exhibition: How Art Conquers Obsession Through Stillness” stabbed at the eyes.

Shen Mo scrolled quickly and found Chen Zhan’s signature at the end—“We prove that the resonance between reason and art is enough to dispel all supernatural interference.”

“Conquer?” Su Wanying repeated softly. “He didn’t see it at all…”

“He saw it,” Shen Mo said, closing the webpage. “But he chose to believe only what he wanted to believe.”

His phone vibrated at that moment.

A voice call popped up from Director Lin, keyboard clicking in the background. “Forensic Doctor Shen, I found something on the surveillance footage you asked me to check.”

Under the autopsy room’s lights, Director Lin’s computer screen split into four windows.

He dragged the timeline and stopped at the seventh minute after the boat departed. “Look here.”

The temperature and humidity sensor’s readings suddenly spiked for 0.3 seconds—the humidity shot up from 45% to 87%, then instantly dropped back.

On the surveillance video, where the oil painting had originally hung, a black shadow flashed in the glass reflection for half a second: a slender waist, a long skirt, the left foot suspended midair—the very same movement defying physical laws seen in the “False Finale.”

“It’s still here,” Director Lin’s Adam’s apple bobbed. “Just existing in a different form now.”

Shen Mo pressed his knuckles against the table, the pressure turning his skin pale. “We’re reopening the gallery overnight,” he said. “Basic lighting, voiceprint collection—only the three of us.”

“What are you planning to do?” Su Wanying asked.

“To verify a hypothesis.” He turned to her. “I need you to read the remaining pages of Aunt Lin Yan’s diary, especially the line ‘the heartbeat is the rhythm.’”

The gallery at midnight felt muted, as if silenced by an unseen hand.

Su Wanying stood ten meters from the original painting’s spot, holding an aged diary whose page edges bore burn marks—the remnants salvaged from a fire in Aunt Lin Yan’s studio.

“March 15th, 1987, rainy,” her voice echoed in the empty space. “The choreography teacher said that true dance isn’t merely a performance of limbs, but the rhythm of the heartbeat.

When you hear the beat of your own heart, the stage will light up for you…”

The air suddenly carried a faint scent of turpentine, subtle and fleeting, like fine sand stirred by the wind.

Su Wanying’s voice faltered, and all eyes turned to the gallery’s center—on the floor, a swirling shadow of a skirt unfurled, as delicate as watercolor bleeding through water, yet undeniably present.

“13.7 seconds,” Director Lin’s voice came from the recording device. “The same duration as the previous projection.”

Shen Mo stared at the spectrum analysis chart on his phone; the pulse wave in the 18kHz band pulsed rhythmically, perfectly overlapping the 13.7Hz harmonic frequency he had detected in the canvas fibers before.

“It’s responding,” he whispered. “Responding to the act of ‘watching.’”

Under the operating light in the autopsy room, a brainstem slice of a lab mouse lay under the microscope.

Shen Mo’s tweezers hovered midair. Within the gaps of the glial cells, a ring-shaped pigment deposit was clearly visible—eerily similar to the dark red ring on the oil painting from three days ago, and also to the pale pink on Su Wanying’s wrist.

“Ding—”

His phone vibrated.

Another video call from Director Lin appeared, the background showing the museum’s glass curtain wall. “Look!”

On the screen, vague human silhouettes were reflected in the glass.

Not one figure, but a crowd, all facing away from the stage.

In the center of the crowd, the clearest silhouette slowly raised a hand, peeling off the mask from its face—

Shen Mo’s breath caught in his chest.

Beneath the mask was Su Wanying’s face.

“Forensic Doctor Shen?” Director Lin’s voice crackled through the phone. “Are you there?”

Shen Mo slammed shut the sample box, his knuckles whitening with the pressure.

He looked out at the gathering dusk. The museum’s outline had turned into a deep gray silhouette against the sunset. Suddenly, he recalled Su Wanying’s delayed reflection in the mirror that morning, the ring-shaped pigment in the mouse brainstem, and the half-second dancer’s figure caught on surveillance.

His phone vibrated again.

This time, an anonymous email arrived, sender labeled “Unknown,” with an attachment titled “EEG Monitoring Report (3 Cases).”

Shen Mo’s thumb hovered over the “Open” button, but in the end, he pressed the power-off key.

He turned to look at the refrigerated cabinet in the autopsy room, where the wood chip samples from the frame lay, alongside the tissue slices from the lab mice—all the so-called “evidence” he had tried to dissect with science.

Outside the window, the museum’s glass curtain wall gleamed coldly in the twilight. The dancer’s silhouette wearing Su Wanying’s face slowly lifted its left foot—

As if waiting for the next dance to begin.