Quick Transmigration: Only You Are the Desire of My Heart

More than three hours later, as the sky began to lighten with the first hint of dawn, they finally arrived at their destination.

It was a very quiet little town, with cobblestone streets, white walls and black tiles, full of the charm of a Jiangnan water town. Because it was still early, there were almost no people in the town, only a few breakfast stalls, with wisps of steam rising from them.

Song Qingyin directed Gu Zhiyuan to park the car at the entrance of an old courtyard.

It was a small courtyard, with green vines climbing all over the gray brick walls. A small wooden door, its red paint peeling off and faded with age.

"This is it." Song Qingyin unbuckled her seatbelt and took out a set of keys from her backpack.

She jumped out of the car, walked to the wooden door, and inserted one of the rusty keys into the lock.

"Squeak-"

A long, drawn-out sound, as if from a distant time, was heard as the wooden door was slowly pushed open.

A smell mixed with dust and paint hit me.

Song Qingyin turned around and smiled at Gu Zhiyuan, who had followed her, "Welcome to my secret base."

Gu Zhiyuan followed her into the courtyard.

The yard wasn't big, with a few half-dead plants and a small pond that had long since dried up. At the far end of the yard was a two-story building, which looked like it hadn't been lived in for a long time.

Song Qingyin pushed open the door of the small building and went inside.

Gu Zhiyuan followed behind her, and when he saw the scene inside the house, he was stunned.

This room doesn't look like a place for people to live at all.

It's more like an artist's studio, or rather, an abandoned gallery.

The room was filled with paintings.

The floor, the walls, the tables, the sofas... everywhere you look, there are paintings.

Some paintings are still stretched on their frames, while others are just canvases piled up haphazardly.

The content of those paintings gave Gu Zhiyuan a strong, soul-stirring shock.

It wasn't a serene landscape painting, nor a pleasing portrait.

Those paintings are filled with repression, pain, and frantic screams.

One painting depicts a girl being held tightly by countless hands, her body torn to pieces, yet a strange smile graces her face.

In another painting, there is a doll locked in a golden birdcage. Outside the cage are countless eyes filled with admiration and expectation, while inside the cage, the doll's body has begun to rot, oozing black pus.

There is another painting, the entire scene a distorted, burning crimson, indistinguishable between fiery clouds and flowing blood. And in the center of that crimson expanse, there is an eye, an eye filled with despair and death, staring intently at the person outside the painting.

Each painting is like a silent scream.

Every stroke of color is filled with an intense, overwhelming emotion.

Darkness, distortion, chaos, madness...

These paintings form the most striking and shocking contrast with Song Qingyin, who always wore a clean school uniform and had a polite smile on her face.

Gu Zhiyuan's heart felt as if it had been gripped tightly by a hand, a mixture of soreness and pain.

He finally understood what Zhou Yun meant by the sentence in her diary, "I really want to tear this skin off and let everyone see how rotten it is inside."

Zhou Yun wrote about her pain in her diary.

Song Qingyin painted all her pain onto these dark, sunless canvases.

He slowly turned his head and looked at Song Qingyin standing in the pile of paintings.

She was facing away from him, bending down and rummaging through a pile of paintings.

The faint light of dawn shone through the window, which had not drawn the curtains, and gilded her with a layer of fuzzy gold.

She looked so thin and frail, as if a gust of wind could blow her over.

Yet, within such a frail body lay such a heavy and painful soul.

"Did you draw all of these?" Gu Zhiyuan's voice was somewhat hoarse.

Song Qingyin paused for a moment.

She didn't turn around, but whispered, "It wasn't me."

"It's 'her'."

It was the original owner who, until his death, never allowed these paintings to see the light of day.

However, she didn't say these words.

Gu Zhiyuan was taken aback for a moment, but didn't think too deeply about it, assuming that she was referring to his past self who was trapped.

Looking at those paintings, Gu Zhiyuan felt as if his heart had been submerged in ice water, cold and numb, and the pain was so intense that he could hardly breathe.

He walked very slowly, step by step, as if afraid of disturbing something. He came to a painting in which a girl in a beautiful princess dress was being controlled by countless invisible threads, dancing stiffly like a puppet. Thunderous applause erupted from below the stage, but not a single tear could be shed from the girl's eyes; they were just empty.

He looked at another picture, which depicted a bottomless sea with glamorous cruise ships and dazzling fireworks on the surface. On the seabed, a girl was entangled in seaweed and slowly sinking. Her mouth was slightly open, but she could not make any sound for help.

These paintings...

Every brushstroke in these paintings is like a bloody wound.

It turns out that behind her ever-present, impeccably smiling face lies a soul riddled with wounds, struggling in despair.

He always thought she was just under too much pressure, just going through a rebellious phase of adolescence. But he never imagined she was living such a painful life.

A profound, helpless regret and heartache instantly overwhelmed Gu Zhiyuan. He recalled how he had previously tried to persuade her with grand principles, urging her to be rational and consider the consequences. Now, he realized how ridiculous and cruel he had been.

When someone is about to drown, you stand on the shore and calmly tell them that the water is dangerous and they should learn to swim.

Gu Zhiyuan closed his eyes briefly, and when he opened them again, his eyes were filled with unfathomable tenderness.

"Song Qingyin." He called her name, his voice hoarse.

Song Qingyin finally straightened up from the pile of canvases. She was holding a scroll of paintings in her hand, which looked to be only half-finished.

She turned around, not looking at Gu Zhiyuan, but carefully unfolded the painting in her hand on the empty floor.

Gu Zhiyuan walked over.

He noticed that the style of this painting was completely different from the other paintings in the room.

The lower half of the painting remains a dense, impenetrable darkness, like a swamp or an abyss, with countless pale hands reaching out from the darkness, trying to grasp something.

However, above this darkness, in the upper half of the image, a dazzling starry sky appears.

Those stars, one by one, though faint, possess a tenacious, upward force, striving to break through the darkness and shine their light. The higher one goes, the brighter and denser the starlight becomes, as if they are converging into a Milky Way leading to the light.

The whole painting is half hell and half heaven.

Half of it is a desperate descent into despair, and the other half is a struggling hope.

"This is what I painted recently." Song Qingyin squatted down next to the painting, her fingers gently tracing the starry sky. Her voice was soft, but it carried a kind of relieved joy that Gu Zhiyuan had never heard before.

"I think 'she' probably also wanted to see the light."

Gu Zhiyuan's heart skipped a beat at those words. He knew that the 'she' she was referring to was his past self, trapped in a perfect shell.

And now, she has painted that starry sky with her own hands.

She wanted to lead that tormented soul towards the light.

Gu Zhiyuan squatted down beside her. He wanted to reach out and hug her, to tell her how much his heart ached for her. But his hand froze halfway up. He was afraid that his touch would disturb the hard-won peace she was in at that moment.

He could only look at her profile with an almost greedy gaze.

The morning light streamed through the window, gently bathing her in its glow. Her long eyelashes cast a small shadow beneath her eyes, and those eyes, which always held so many unspoken thoughts, now shone brightly because of the starlight.

"So, what are your plans for the future?" Gu Zhiyuan tried to keep his voice steady.

He knew that she brought him here, driving more than three hours late at night to this secret base, not just to show him these paintings.

She was showing him her most vulnerable wounds, and at the same time, she was announcing her rebirth.