Chapter 24: Scene in the Mirror

This room was not originally like this!

Yu Sheng instantly realized what was happening—he still clearly remembered what the room that had once trapped Erin looked like: empty, with no furnishings at all, not even a chair, and only a single oil painting hanging lonely on the wall directly opposite the door...

... and not like now, where various pieces of furniture were arranged, and a mirror hung on the wall directly facing the door.

Doubt and a thread of unease rose in his heart, yet Yu Sheng did not sense any dangerous aura within the room.

Of course, he knew this so-called "sense of crisis" sounded very mystical, but after several experiences where he had narrowly escaped death, he truly felt he had developed some perception of danger, and here... he felt the room before him was safe.

Hesitating for a few seconds at the doorway, Yu Sheng stepped into the room.

Everything in the room looked perfectly normal; no monster wielding a pitchfork suddenly spawned from the corner or a fire basin fell from the ceiling just because he had stepped inside, the sunlight outside the window was just right, the air in the room was fresh, and there was no rotting stench or suspicious fishy odor.

Yu Sheng checked the room thoroughly, confirmed that the furniture and furnishings were just ordinary items, and finally arrived before the mirror facing the door.

In his impression, mirrors were generally not placed directly opposite the door; according to his understanding, feng shui considerations were one aspect, and another reason was that a mirror facing the door could easily startle someone entering the room at night.

But he was unsure if similar sayings existed in this "Boundary City."

He only felt that the mirror facing the door gave him a somewhat... eerie feeling.

Moreover, this eerie sensation was not just because an oil painting of Erin had originally hung here, but also because the scene in the mirror... looked strange.

It was an indescribable oddity; the scene reflected in the mirror was actually quite normal, simply the room as it looked at this moment; Yu Sheng examined it carefully for a long time but could not find the source of that strange feeling in his heart, only becoming more and more suspicious the longer he looked—what exactly was wrong?

Had the size and position of the objects in the mirror shifted in a way the naked eye could barely detect? Was there a dissonance in the brightness and darkness of the image? Or... had something appeared in the mirror that was not originally in the room?

Yu Sheng pondered for a moment, then extended his finger to gently brush the surface of the mirror.

A cold sensation came; ripples like water waves rippled out from where his finger touched the mirror surface, and the reflection in the mirror shattered in the blink of an eye!

Yu Sheng instantly widened his eyes and instinctively stepped back half a pace, and within that less-than-a-second timeframe, the mirror had already turned pitch black—the room scene originally reflected shattered and dissolved into those ripples, and thick, ink-like darkness finally filled the entire mirror frame, as if swallowing everything, slowly writhing, undulating, and rotating before Yu Sheng's eyes.

Then, new things gradually emerged from that darkness; Yu Sheng suppressed the unease in his heart, took a step forward to look closely, and gradually, that darkness, which seemed like a thick black veil, faded away before his eyes, letting him see the scene deep within the mirror:

A doll—but not Erin, rather a stranger's face—lay broken and scattered amidst ruins whose original form was unrecognizable; her limbs were broken, her dress tattered, covered in wounds, as if she had endured a fierce and brutal battle and finally died from exhaustion in combat.

In shock, Yu Sheng widened his eyes, trying hard to see more things in the mirror, and the mirror seemed to truly respond to his thought; the scene within the darkness slowly began to move; Yu Sheng noticed the perspective presented by the mirror surface was pulling back, tilting, presenting a broader panorama—

He saw the situation around the battle-dead doll, saw ruins of even greater scale; he saw many structures resembling classical columns and flying eaves, and those structures were all fractured and collapsing, fallen into a darkness like mud-like chaos; many fragments of the doll's broken limbs were scattered around, as if conveying a message to him:

Everything here was destroyed by this battle.

Suddenly, a sentence Erin had said to him before echoed in Yu Sheng's mind:

"... Living dolls are blessed; in the Otherworld, I can fight much better than those so-called investigators and spirit detectives..."

"Are these 'living dolls' really that capable...?" Yu Sheng couldn't help but mutter to himself.

But even if she was that capable, the doll in the mirror was still dead; something even more powerful than her had killed her—as the perspective shifted, Yu Sheng saw the "enemy" that had killed the doll.

A... huge shadow; Yu Sheng did not know what that thing was, only feeling that its size was very large, almost ten times the size of the doll; its outline roughly had a humanoid shape, yet it seemed to have twisted, overlapping wings growing on its back; it too lay amidst ruins, with part of its massive body melting like mud, merging with the chaos surrounding the ruins, and also merging with the fragments of the doll's limbs scattered in the ruins, while the remaining body structure was covered in twists and damage.

Yu Sheng did not know whether the twisted damage on that huge shadow was caused by the doll or if it had originally looked that way—after all, this thing looked quite abstract to begin with.

But one thing he could guess was that the doll and that huge shadow, which seemed to have wings, must have perished together in the end.

And just as Yu Sheng wanted to see more details clearly, the scene before his eyes suddenly rippled out like water waves again.

Everything deep in the darkness shattered and dissolved in the blink of an eye; the thick, curtain-like darkness surged upward instantly, then receded toward the surrounding mirror frame; in the blink of an eye, what Yu Sheng saw before him became an ordinary mirror again, reflecting the scene in the room.

Yu Sheng stared blankly at this scene, then tapped and touched the mirror several more times, but could not trigger any abnormality again. What on earth was that just now?

Probably because he had been dealing with abnormal things for the past two days, Yu Sheng felt his ability to accept things had increased significantly; at this moment, he didn't even find that eerie scene just now scary, but only felt a strong curiosity about what he had seen.

Did the scene appearing in the mirror represent something that had truly happened before? Who was that dead doll? What was that huge shadow that perished together with the doll? Where were those ruins? And why... would all this appear in this house, appear before him?

Yu Sheng frowned deeply in thought, and couldn't help but think of another question:

Was the scene recorded in the mirror related to Erin?

That dead doll did not resemble Erin at all; although her face was unrecognizable when she died in battle, at least that eye-catching golden hair was completely different from Erin's, but for some reason, when he saw that doll, Yu Sheng couldn't help but associate it with a certain girl who was currently watching television on the first floor, sealed within an oil painting.

After a moment, Yu Sheng ended his contemplation; he looked at the mirror on the wall, reached out to hold the mirror frame, applied slight force, and tried to see if he could take it down and move it.

The mirror did not budge, solid as if it had been cast into the wall.

After trying several times, Yu Sheng chose to give up.

He turned and walked toward the door, but before leaving the room, he suddenly turned his head back, his gaze quickly sweeping over the entire house.

The furnishings in the room were still the same, and the mirror had not changed in the slightest.

Yu Sheng frowned and closed the door.

After two or three seconds, he suddenly pushed the door open again, as if to catch the room off guard.

There was no change in the room; it was still the same.

Yu Sheng stood at the doorway holding the doorknob, poked his head into the room to look around suspiciously, and gradually felt like he was acting like a madman.

!.

After confirming repeatedly, he finally stopped messing with that door.

But he did not return to his bedroom; instead, he ran down the stairs with a clatter and arrived at the dining room.

Erin, who was watching television at the dining table, heard the commotion coming from nearby, poked her head out to look toward the edge of the picture frame: "Eh? Yu Sheng, weren't you going to sleep? Insomnia? I'm not going to tell you a bedtime story..."

She still had that same carefree and overly familiar look.

Yu Sheng didn't speak either; he just sat opposite Erin and looked at her seriously, as if carefully observing something.

This finally made the doll in the painting feel a bit awkward.

"Why are you looking at me..." Erin shrank her neck, "I'm telling you, I know I'm good-looking, but you and a paper person have no future..."

The topic Yu Sheng had been preparing all the way was completely deflated by Erin's single sentence.

"Ahem, ahem, I'm going to talk to you about something serious!" He had to cough twice, very stiffly steering the topic back on track, "Do you still remember what the room you were hung on the wall in before looked like?"

"I remember," Erin thought for a moment and answered very naturally, "Nothing at all, empty, you could see the door directly opposite, and the wallpaper—the wallpaper in the corners was moldy and peeling, and you didn't even fix it."

Yu Sheng nodded: Good, at least on this matter, Erin's memory was consistent with his own.

"Second question, do you remember a place—that looked like ruins, with many classical columns and collapsed stone walls, flying eaves, the entire ruins 'soaked' in a darkness, and then there was a doll—don't worry about whether it's you for now, anyway, there was a doll that died in the ruins, died terribly, arms and legs shattered all over the place..."

Erin instantly shrank her neck: "That sounds really scary."

"Forget whether it's scary or not; just tell me, do you have any impression of this scene?"

"No."

Irene answered without hesitation.

(End of this chapter)