Almighty painter

Chapter 842: Moonlight Palm and the Priest (Part )
As a microcosm of colonial culture, Britain sent tens of thousands of missionaries to its East Indian colonies, including India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, throughout the 19th century.

The exact number is difficult to compile.

Around 1900, there were approximately 1000 to 1500 missionaries from the Church of England active in India, of which 5% to 10% were sent to Burma outside the Indian subcontinent, causing very complex historical impacts and deepening the rift between believers of different religions.

According to the speculation in Gu Weijing's paper.

Carroll arrived in Rangoon many years after the Second Anglo-Burmese War and on the eve of the outbreak of the Third Anglo-Burmese War.

Yangon had been unilaterally declared by Britain to be under the jurisdiction of British India, and had been used by the British as one of the core trading port cities to maintain control over Southeast Asia for a full twenty years.

The number of priests in the UK should be slightly less than in 1900, but it has reached a certain scale.

"Oil Painting" magazine displayed part of the list on the screen at this moment, and one name was specially marked out.

"The magazine did some research—"

"——Robert Benning Anderson."

The host on the stage read out the name.

"He graduated from a church school in Liverpool in 1855, became a deacon in the same year, and was sent to the British Indian colony by the Anglican Church in 1862. By the end of the s, he was ordained a priest. In the s, when Carroll was presumed to have painted The Old Church in a Thunderstorm, he was in charge of preaching in a local parish in Rangoon."

"If nothing unexpected happens, it must be Father Anderson mentioned by the priest who wrote the diary in the paper."

The woman threw out a document in her hand in a calm tone, like a forensic doctor reciting the results of an autopsy.

The expressions of the guests on the stage immediately changed drastically.

Gu Weijing sat on the sofa and glanced at Anna quickly, his eyes thoughtful.

Rosings frowned.

Dr. Gustav looked a little surprised.

Alexander was the most excited. He clapped his hands and hummed "Aha".

"Now, at least it is certain that there is indeed a Mr. Anderson in the world" - Rikiya Ameda lowered his head and wrote hurriedly in small words on his notebook.

This is a major benefit to Gu Weijing's paper.

A very surprising discovery.

150 years have passed, and "Oil Painting" magazine has actually dug out some incredible things from the pile of old papers just by relying on a name.

At least it can indirectly confirm part of the content in the missionary's preaching diary discovered by Gu Weijing, which is the most important documentary material to determine whether Carroll really existed.

……

"This isn't conclusive evidence, is it?" Cui Xuanyou snorted.

Cui Xiaoming's face was very pale.

What's happening here?
What suddenly appeared on the projection screen from Oil Painting magazine was far beyond his expectations.

He smelled the uneasy atmosphere again.

Rosings said that top art institutions such as the British Museum or the Louvre had never endorsed the authenticity of "Salvator Mundi," and asked the woman, does "Oil Painting" holding this face-to-face interview mean that they endorsed the results of Gu Weijing's paper?
The moment Miss Elena answered "Of course not".

He smelled the sweet scent of victory.

The interview ended the moment she opened her mouth.

All that was left was to admire how she tore Gu Weijing into pieces.

Cui Xiaoming has reason to believe.

The difficulty posed by Oil Painting magazine could not be resolved by Gu Weijing pretending to donate a fake painting.

But how could things take such a turn?

On the one hand, my father was right.

The clergy archives of the Anglican Church going back more than a century are extremely important materials, but they are not indestructible evidence.

If you want to explain, you can always explain.

If Gu Weijing was intending to forge documents, since he was able to produce the missionary's diary, he must have been meticulous enough to investigate in advance who were the people in the old church. Although it was difficult, it was not impossible.

Maybe the missionary's preaching diary was actually real, and the person who wrote the diary and Father Anderson also existed, but the pages about Carroll were fake, and Gu Weijing played a trick and changed a page.

Even with this page of files, there are many ways to step on Gu Weijing.

But what my father said was bullshit.

Because the core of the problem is not this at all, not the probative value of the evidence.

The core of the problem is -

attitude.

Coming up with materials like this shows that this isn't the attitude of someone trying to step on Gu Weijing at all!
This attitude is more powerful than ten thousand shitty missionary journals put together.

Translate: Translate, what the fuck is this, a fucking surprise?
Cui Xiaoming never doubted Miss Elena's ability to tear people apart.

Sir Brown can tear it up if he wants.

If it was Gu Weijing, he would be killed instantly with just one normal attack. What's there to say?

The problem is that.

Did they figure out what the art director of Oil Painting magazine was thinking about this matter?
Cui Xiaoming is a super perceptive person.

While his father was still nitpicking about the file, Cui Xiaoming was completely stunned by the surprise... His focus was not on the file at all.

Cui Xiaoming once again thought of Miss Elena's performance at the cocktail party when they first met.

He misjudged Cao Xuan's attitude.

Just say... is there a possibility? It's just a guess... What if, what if, Oil Painting magazine is also on the same side as Gu Weijing?
if that's the case.

For Gu Weijing, it is just the difference between a small win, a medium win, or a very big win.

So who is the loser?

Cui Xiaoming thought of the materials his father had stuffed under the door of the deputy editor-in-chief of Newzland's office. He felt an inexplicable pain in his stomach, his throat was dry, and he felt like a huge stone was pressing on his heart.

In the hotel suite the day before yesterday.

His father realized that he was busy in the room, so he turned around and left quietly. Cui Xiaoming held his breath and concentrated on building the last spire of the Sistine Chapel.

Just when they thought everything was safe.

The moment his father turned around and opened the door of the hotel suite to the outer corridor, with the slight change in the air pressure between indoors and outdoors, in the imperceptible wind, Cui Xiaoming's poker tower, which was shaky and about to be completed, overturned and collapsed, turning into a colorful rain of cards that scattered all over the ground.

This artistic scene is like a classic domino prophecy - unexpected yet interconnected.

When Achilles was still a baby, held upside down by his mother and plunged into the cold Styx, he would not have realized that decades later, the half-human, half-god hero would be shot dead in the ancient city of Troy by an arrow because of the warmth of his mother touching his ankle. When Wei Yan, wearing full armor, hurriedly opened the curtain of the Wuzhangyuan military tent, he would not have thought that the wind he brought would easily extinguish the last embers of the Han Dynasty that had lasted for more than 400 years.

In artistic imagination, the fate and rise and fall of gods or empires are often contained in a tiny action... People put the world into a miniature crystal ball in the palm of their hand.

What about Cui Xiaoming himself?

That day, he sat at the table, looking at the collapsed building model, his heart filled with indescribable depression. He wanted to scold his father, but he couldn't open his mouth.

He knew his father had done nothing wrong, and neither had he.

They racked their brains and used all means to do their best, but in the end, the church made up of hundreds of overlapping playing cards was destroyed in an instant...

Because of a breeze that was unexpected but inevitable.
-
"The agency's calculations are too clever, and they have mistaken Qingqing's life."

——"A Dream of Red Mansions, Chapter 5: Traveling in the Fantasy Land to Guide the Twelve Beauties, Drinking Immortal Wine and Singing the Dream of Red Mansions"
-
When people feel angry, they become restless, shout, and sneer with contempt.

Who really felt the fear?

He wouldn't scream hysterically, he would just sit there alone, breathing slowly, with cold hands and feet, feeling very cold.

Cui Xiaoming sat there in silence.

He sat in a conference hall filled with thousands of people, as if he was in another time and space, immersed in ice water.

“(Beep——)”

He suddenly cursed.

When his father heard Cui Xiaoming's voice, he turned around in shock.

He and his wife are both considered upper-class people. Cui Xuanyou would occasionally call others idiots during art projects, but Cui Xiaoming was a quiet child.

According to my wife.

Their Xiao Ming has an aristocratic and elegant personality.

And just now, if it wasn't an auditory hallucination, he clearly heard Cui Xiaoming say a very obscene and vulgar swear word in German.

Cui Xuanyou quickly turned his head and looked around to confirm that none of the guests around him understood what he was saying.

"Hey, calm down, Gu Weijing is not worth your scolding--" Cui Xuanyou had just said half of his words of comfort when he heard his son speak in a low voice.

"Tangning misled me."

Cui Xiaoming repeated.

"Tangning misled me."

He ignored his father completely, his eyes fixed on the stage, never leaving Miss Elena's face.

Cui Xiaoming hopes to gain power from the woman's face. He hopes that the director took out this material just to play hard to get. He hopes that she can still trample Gu Weijing back under her feet after some miraculous turn, just like she did at the European Art Conference.

"Ms. Elena, you have to straighten yourself up. Please."
-
"Very good. Now we know that there was indeed a church in charge of Father Anderson one hundred and fifty years ago... We know his name was Robert Banning Anderson, so what?"

Rosings looked straight at Gu Weijing.

It's hard to say whether Miss Elena was stunned or not.

He has been very weak, and today he looks like he is full of fighting spirit and no one can stop him.

The scholar curled his lips.

"It's normal that there is a priest in the church. His name is Anderson... Well, I admit that this explains something. But, ladies and gentlemen, the existence of Father Anderson and the existence of the female painter Carol are two very different things. They cannot be equated—"

"Wait a moment, Mr. Rosings."

Before he could continue, someone interrupted her.

It's neither Gu Weijing nor Alexander.

But Anna.

"Please don't rush. I have two documents that I want to show you now. The Anglican document on the projection screen is just one of them. I have a second document that I want to show you."

While talking.

The woman took off the glove on one hand and pulled a card from her pocket.

It was a piece of paper that looked very old, with gold hot stamping and embossing, about 10 cm square in size, and protected by a vacuum-sealed plastic sleeve like a precious collectible star card.

In terms of position, Alexander, who was closest to the female host, saw the words on the card, sat up straight, leaned his upper body forward, and his buttocks left the seat.

It looked as if it was going to dive directly into the piece of paper in Anna's hand.

Most of the ordinary audience in the venue looked confused.

They were quite far away and could only see the woman taking a card out of her pocket, but they didn't understand what it was.

fortunately.

A crew on the scene switched to the camera angle, moved the camera lens forward, and pointed it at Anna's hand. The video was magnified and projected onto the big screen behind them.

It was an exquisitely shaped note, made of thick imitation parchment, with a shield with a lion and the "KPM" logo on it.

"KPM? Royal Dutch Shell? Antique ship ticket?"

Among the guests present, the most professional one is Liu Ziming.

He immediately recognized what Anna was holding out.

KPM is the abbreviation of Royal Dutch Line, a long-established shipping company. At the end of the 19th century, it competed with Cunard Line and White Star Line, the parent company of the Titanic, for the Atlantic route from Eurasia to America.

After the Suez Canal was opened in the 1860s, it also operated some ocean passenger routes from Southeast Asia to the European continent via Yokohama or Malaysia.

What the woman was holding in her hand was an antique ship ticket from a hundred years ago.

"The ticket I have in my hand is for a first-class cabin on the Royal Dutch Cruise Line's Ocean Queen. The Ocean Queen is a new steamship that the cruise line has just put into operation. It departed from Yokohama on January 1877, 1, passed through Colombo and Yaning, entered the Mediterranean through the Suez Canal, and finally arrived at the port of Marseille in France. The total time is about forty days."

"According to the information on the ticket."

"This first-class cabin ticket was purchased on January 1th. The buyer chose to pay in British pounds. The price was 9 pounds. The buyer was——"

Miss Elena read the passenger information above.

“Coral.”

"Carol."

When Cui Xiaoming saw the boat ticket, he was shocked.

Not only Cui Xiaoming, but also the big troll Rossings was annoyed.

No?

He could understand that with Oil Painting's status and resources, it could easily find some information that others could not obtain, such as the clergy archives of the Church of England.

But what on earth was Carol's ticket? Was it something a normal person could find? How on earth did Miss Elena find it?

joke.

Performing magic here.

Rosings didn't understand, but he was shocked.

(End of this chapter)