Urban System in America-Chapter 137 - 136: Madness of Color

"I wanted to be a preacher," he said once, sitting outside a boarded-up church. "But they told me I cared too much. That I lived like the poor."

He looked down at his ragged boots, cracked at the sole.

"I didn’t live like them. I was them."

He used to sleep on straw mats, wearing a threadbare coat through Belgian winters. He gave away his belongings to coal miners and slept in the dirt. Ate crusts of bread dipped in paint water. Once, he wrote a letter saying he hadn’t eaten for two days, but he didn’t mind — the sky had been beautiful that morning.

"They say I’m insane," Vincent whispered, "but maybe they just mean I’m not afraid to feel everything at once."

—

Rex had been learning many things in this journey that he hadn’t learned before.

He learned how to paint pain with yellow.

How to use red not for blood, but for the heat of memory. How to let blue speak of despair, not like a scream, but like a quiet confession in the dark.

He learned that color wasn’t for decoration. It was a language for the things you couldn’t say out loud.

One night, when Van Gogh was asleep, he painted beside him. He didn’t try to draw a scene. He just painted what he felt.

The stroke of a brush when you miss someone.

The drag of white when hope fades.

The pressure in your chest when you realize you’ll never be seen the way you wish.

He drew whole night, until next morning.

When Van Gogh saw it, just took a look at Rex but didn’t say a word.

He understood his meaning, and from then on continued trying to express things he had learnt in this journey.

He painted, teared it, and painted again, again and again.

—

And finally one day he broke down.

He stared at a wall — a crumbling brick stretch covered in moss and soot — and saw nothing.

He dropped his brush.

"I can’t do this," he said. "I don’t see what you see."

Vincent turned, and then slowly walked to him.

And handed him a cracked mirror.

"Then paint what you don’t see," he said. "Paint the missing. Paint what hurts because it isn’t there."

Rex looked at his own face. Hollow-eyed. Smudged. Lost.

He was lost in thoughts for a while and various memories swirled in his head.

After sometime he snapped back and finally seemed to understand something.

And then he painted.

Not what was there.

But what had been taken.

Kids wearing new clothes on festivals, but he still in old and dirty hand downs.

He painted with colors that bled outside the lines — reds that bruised, blues that shivered, yellows that screamed and burned.

He stabbed the canvas with his brush.

He sobbed into the hues.

And when he finally stopped, he was panting heavily, utterly exhausted like he had been digging continously for hours.

But he was happy, like a child who got his favourite toy, even though the painting was still nondisript and ugly, but what he saw was not beauty.

But truth.

Cold hard truth which he always wanted to forget.

—

After that day whenever he found time, he would draw beside Vincent and continued learning from him.

And just like that, one day he was drawing beside him, but his lines felt... wrong. Too clean. Too designed.

Ni matter how much he tried, he felt at loss.

Seeimg his dilemma, Vincent turned to him and told him.

"Stop trying to paint like an artist. Paint like you’ve lost something and don’t know how to get it back."

After some tries, when he finally understood it.

And that night, he painted with tears mixed into his paint water. He smeared red across an old crate like blood on a bandage. He dragged blue until it turned violet from grief. He used his fingernails to carve light into the sky.

When he showed it to Vincent, the man simply stared at it.

Then — without a word — he reached out and placed his paint-stained hand on his chest.

"You can finally see it now," he whispered. "That color isn’t just a pigment. It’s pain made visible."

— freewebnøvel.com

But what Rex didn’t see was that in the center of the work — just above the chaos — a glyph shimmered.

And then, without them noticing it shimmered faintly and finally merged with his body.

[GLYPH ACQUIRED: Madness of Color]

Skill Internalized: Chromatic Emotion Distortion — Rendering with Emotional Irregularity & Abstract Sentiment Mapping

Unaware of it all, they continued their journey.

—

One night, while sharing a blanket beneath an orchard.

Vincent spoke softly to the stars.

"I tried so hard to be loved," he said. "But I always frightened people. They say I talk too much. That I write too often. That I care too deeply."

He looked up.

"But I see so much color in the world, how can I not talk? it’s unbearable. It’s suffocating."

Rex looked through the eyes of Vincent too. The sky was not just black. It pulsed.

Lavender, navy, green, silver, gold — all folding together in shifting waves.

"Do you see it now?" Vincent whispered.

"Color isn’t on the surface. It’s inside things."

He tapped his chest. "Here. Color’s just how our soul leaks."

But Rex was already stunned looking at the sky, and couldn’t speak.

—

They arrived at a windmill one evening. It was rotting, lopsided. A single crow perched on the broken blade.

Vincent sat and painted for hours and he simply watched.

The painting seemed ugly at first.

There was no symmetry. The blades of the windmill bled into the sky. The crow’s eye was smeared. The ground twisted unnaturally.

But as he looked closer... it moved.

It vibrated.

It ached.

It felt like watching someone scream into a pillow.

"You see," Vincent said, without looking up, "I don’t paint how things look. I paint how they are when no one is watching."

—

Just like how, no matter happy or sad life is, it will always end.

This seemingly endless journey also came to and end too.

One night, Vincent stood at the edge of a wheat field. The stars above him were swirling — not like a metaphor, but like they truly were.

He watched as he smeared yellow across the canvas — violent, burning strokes — like the sun was bleeding out. He layered it with black crows — chaotic, wild, sharp like blades.

"Wheatfield with Crows," he said softly. "This is the name of this and maybe, It’s the last thing I’ll ever finish."

He drew furiously like he was possessed, his hands were trembling, sweat stained his face, and when he felt that he truly couldn’t continue anymore, he stopped, looking regretfully at still unfinished painting.

He sighed softly and sat beside Rex, his eyes empty, as he stared at the distant sky.

"I just have one wish in this lowly life and that is, that people can appreciate my creations, but it seem impossible in this era." He sighed softly, "maybe in the future someone will look at my painting and feel the pain, the madness, the beauty that I once felt," he said, his voice containing untold emotions.

Rex looked at his bleak, hunched body and couldn’t help say. "They will, Vincent, definitely will."

"You’re a genius, people just haven’t discovered your talent, they don’t understand the beauty, the world you are showing yet." he said looking straight into his eyes.

Vincent laughed softly. "Oh no. Don’t say that. I’m no genius. A genius doesn’t die in a gutter."

He didn’t say it bitterly. He said it like fact. Like weather. Like something you eventually come to accept.

He touched his chest. "You see, I may not have bleed on a battlefield like fellow men in my era, but I bled on canvas. Every day. Every single day, but no one saw it."

Rex felt a tightness in his throat and was about to speak, but he spoke first.

"But you saw," Van Gogh added, voice gentle now. "I can now die peacefully knowing that there’s someone in this world who appreciated me, understood me, and most importantly saw what I saw. And that’s enough for me."

After that, he got up and painted like there was no tomorrow, finishing it after what felt like an eternity!

Seeing the finished piece, Rex was once again sighed at Vincent’s talent.

This painting wasn’t something that could be created without decades of experience and suffering, it wasn’t even a simple painting, it was more like a memento, like a final will, a gift for the world.

Bbut even after finishing that, Vincent didn’t stopped and they continued until the road finally ended.

Until the field turned to stars.

Rex stood there stupified by the scenery in front of him, it looked like the Starry Sky painting has came to life, the sky was swirling with pigments of yellow and blue.

But when he turned back to call Vincent, he found that he was gone.

Before he could think any Further, the world seemed to pause, and the night slowly faded.

And stood all alone in this fading world.

He seemed to understand something and sighed, his hands still trembling with yellow and is eyes still burned with blue.

Suddenly, from somewhere, a voice — soft, tired, defiant — whispered:

"Thank you for accompanying me on this journey. And never lose your passion for drawing, dewa what what you like, what you want, pay no heed to others, let them think you are mad, let them think you are crazy, as long as you’re sincere with yourself that’s enough. If they don’t understand you, It only means you saw color where they refused to look."

And with that, the voice faded away, and systems voice echoed in the void.

[SESSION COMPLETE]

Core Principle: Color Is the Language of the Unspeakable

Legacy Fragmented: Vincent van Gogh — The Man Who Painted So the World Might One Day Understand Pain as Beauty.

And when he opened his eyes again, he was back in system space.

Everything was still the same as when he had left.

But he wasn’t the same.

His fingers twitched for color — not to impress, but to confess.

And in the corner of his mind, there remained a quiet, flickering pulse of a man who died unknown — whose brushstrokes were screams in disguise — and whose legacy, though now priceless, was never meant for wealth.

It was meant to be seen.

To be felt.

To be survived.

And this time he didn’t return with technique.

He returned with truth. With lessons that he’ll never forget.

And though he would go on to paint with grace, precision, power — he would never again paint without honesty.

Because now, he knew.

Greatness wasn’t born in palaces.

It died in attics, slept in ditches, spoke in letters that went unanswered, and bled in colors no one dared to see.

And still —

it painted.

(End of Chapter)