Chapter 75: Spontaneous Combustion

The restaurant inside the exhibition hall was spacious, and around noon, crowds of visitors and staff flocked there for lunch. Meals were not included in the ticket price, so Qi Yan had to pay for his own food. His father and Chen Huiting were nowhere to be seen, likely still busy with unfinished tasks.

Smoking was strictly prohibited throughout the entire convention city—not even the restrooms were exempt. Fire safety was rigorously enforced. This left Qi Yan thoroughly uncomfortable, but he couldn’t simply go outside, as he had been brought in by his father and had no ticket of his own; if he left, he wouldn’t be able to get back in.

“This is just too much… Making me spend a whole day in a place where smoking is forbidden, while Dad busies himself with work—does he want me to die of boredom?”

After lunch, Qi Yan had no idea how he managed to endure the long hours that followed. Even after wandering through every exhibit in the vast hall, it was only just past three in the afternoon.

He ran into his father once—Qi Guoheng was leading several photography assistants on a tour through the various galleries, capturing images for the media to publish reports about the exhibition. With nothing else to do, Qi Yan found a public lounge with free Wi-Fi, ordered a drink, and sat down to play mobile games, all the while complaining in chat about his overwhelming boredom. Though he admitted that the exhibits were worth seeing, he found them rather dull.

Eventually, his phone battery died. By then, it was finally seven in the evening, with about two hours left before the exhibition closed for the day. His only hope was to wait for his father and the others to finish work; then, at last, he’d be free.

With his phone dead, the final stretch was even more unbearable. Qi Yan roamed listlessly through several areas, stifling yawns. Strangely, in the last two hours, the number of visitors actually increased—a wave of students arrived, from universities, high schools, even elementary schools, all on organized extracurricular trips.

Unwittingly, Qi Yan found himself back at the section where he and Chen Huiting had earlier admired the clay statue of Shiva. A large group of bespectacled young students clustered nearby, chattering animatedly as they examined the display, utterly absorbed.

Seeing the crowds, Qi Yan sought somewhere quieter and made his way toward the Shinto section. Perhaps because this was the Japanese exhibit, visitor numbers were much lower. When he returned, he noticed the area in front of the “Amaterasu Shining Sun Scroll” was now quiet. Only a solitary figure sat on the long, white bench—a familiar silhouette that once again caught Qi Yan’s attention.

Wait, wasn’t that the man he’d noticed earlier in the crowd?

His black clothing stood out sharply against the white décor of the exhibit, making his presence all the more conspicuous. With the man’s back to Qi Yan, he still couldn’t see his face, but as before, a strange sense of familiarity and an uneasy premonition flashed through his mind.

“Who is that guy? Why does he seem so familiar… where have I seen him before?” Qi Yan glanced to either side and was just about to approach when someone clapped his shoulder hard.

“Hey, what are you daydreaming about?” It was Qi Guoheng, holding his camera, which he swung in front of Qi Yan.

“Dad, do you have to sneak up on me every time you say hello? Are you almost done? If I have to stay here much longer, I’ll just rot. I feel like I’m starting to smell musty, just like some of these old exhibits…”

Qi Guoheng smiled wryly. “You really don’t know how to appreciate art, do you? Do you know how expensive tickets to this exhibition are?”

But knowing his son’s temperament, he didn’t press the point. “Alright, alright, I’ll be done soon.”

As his father spoke, Qi Yan noticed the young man on the bench slowly rise, still facing the “Amaterasu Shining Sun Scroll.” After standing, the man placed his right hand behind his back, fingers forming a series of odd gestures.

First, he curled his middle and ring fingers, tucking them with his thumb—a first gesture. Then he flipped his wrist, forming a sword with his fingers—a second gesture. Next, he clenched his fist—a third gesture. After pausing for a few seconds, he suddenly spread his hand wide.

Qi Yan, a few meters away, saw every movement.

Watanabe Shinji’s face was grim as he gazed up at the painting before him, the corners of his mouth twitching. At last, he muttered softly, so quietly only he could hear, “Burn… Amaterasu Omikami.”

Qi Guoheng noticed his son’s attention was fixed ahead, brow furrowed, seemingly oblivious to his words. “Hey, what are you staring at?”

Qi Yan’s eyes were locked on the painting. Slowly, he raised his finger and murmured, “Um… Dad, am I seeing things? Is that scroll on the wall… is it… smoking?”

Qi Guoheng turned to look. Bathed in the glow of several lamps, the “Amaterasu Shining Sun Scroll” was as magnificent as it had been earlier in the day. But now, both father and son were staring at the very center of the scroll, at the figure of Amaterasu seated on the clouds—a small, smoky hole was forming there.

The hole rapidly grew larger, the smoke thickening. Seconds later, as if the paper had caught a stray spark, it suddenly ignited with a whoosh! At first, the flame was no bigger than a fist, but the scroll was made of paper, and with no protective glass, the fire spread swiftly.

A faint, acrid smell wafted through the air as the scroll burned, soon noticed by the nearby visitors, who turned to look.

“What’s burning?”

“I smell it too…”

“Heavens! Look, the painting’s on fire!”

“What?!”

Qi Guoheng and Qi Yan stared in shock. What was happening? Why had the “Amaterasu Shining Sun Scroll” suddenly… burst into flames?

An exhibit, and such a prominent one at that, catching fire—what did this mean? In the span of a few seconds, astonishment swept through the crowd. Visitors and staff alike were frozen, caught off guard by the suddenness of it all.

In moments, more than half of the six-meter scroll had been consumed by flames, the fire climbing higher under the gaze of everyone present. Several staff members were already speaking frantically into their earpieces.

But the worst was yet to come.

The spontaneous combustion of the “Amaterasu Shining Sun Scroll” was like a warning or a signal. As it burned, every other scroll or flammable artwork in the Shinto gallery began to catch fire in the same inexplicable way—without any visible source of ignition, they simply burst into flames, one after another.

On every wall, a dozen scrolls depicting divine figures erupted like lanterns at a festival, flames leaping from one to the next.

Smoke and the acrid stench of burning paper thickened in the air, as a dozen works of art blazed simultaneously, bathing the entire section in a terrifying inferno.