Chapter 264: In the Mirror

Shadowy wolves materialized around Little Red Riding Hood, then, at their master's slightest thought, silently scattered and dashed into the rolling, unending thick fog.

Behind Hu Li, a large cluster of tails slowly unfurled; six of them detached and flew out, circling the group as fox-cannons, patrolling the air slowly to guard their surroundings, while another two were held in the fox-girl's arms, one on each side, their tips flickering with fox-fire, poised and ready to strike—and the remaining tail, used for storage, continued to dangle on the ground like a grounding wire.

Erin gently let her hand drop from Yu Sheng's side, strands of black spider silk trickling from her fingertips, moving and spreading through the mist like some substance possessing independent life, searching for any mental response that might emerge from the fog, while also guarding against something with ill intent—though theoretically, the depth here might only be L-2 or even L-1, the Otherworld never played by the rules; its depth and danger level were not always proportional, and cases of extremely dangerous entities appearing in shallow Otherworlds did exist.

Yu Sheng glanced at the few people beside him, and a sigh rose in his heart again—why was everyone so cool!

"Honestly, I wish I had skills with special effects like you guys," he couldn't help muttering, "Just a 'whoosh,' and whether it works or not, it scares people first..."

Erin, on his shoulder, turned her head: "You have special effects; wasn't opening the door special effects enough?"

Hearing this, Yu Sheng sighed again, then casually opened a door, pulled out his "bleed to death with a scratch, cripple severely with a smash" "Reason" battle staff from inside, and slung it over his shoulder.

Erin immediately executed a practiced backflip, followed by a neck-hold giant loop, switching to sit on the other shoulder...

Little Red Riding Hood looked somewhat stunned at the battle staff Yu Sheng had pulled from the door: "... You developed your own door into a storage space?"

"I opened the door to the basement at No. 66 Wutong Road," Yu Sheng said, now in high spirits, "See, doesn't it work just like a storage space?"

Little Red Riding Hood clicked her tongue in amazement, while Hu Li looked thoughtfully at Yu Sheng's previous maneuver, wondering what other "Immortal-like demeanor" thoughts had crossed her mind—Yu Sheng's own attention, however, was fixed on the surrounding thick fog and the street scene within it.

This looked exactly like the open area in front of the shopping mall and the main avenue, corresponding point-for-point with the real world outside.

Except for the eerie thick fog permeating everywhere, and the fact that the mist was completely empty of people.

Yu Sheng cautiously walked a few steps forward and spotted the Special Operations Bureau's black vehicles—several cars parked at the edge of the small square, exactly where he remembered them.

The cars, of course, were also empty.

"So this is... the world inside the mirror?" Little Red Riding Hood frowned slightly at the scene before her, but quickly shook her head, "No, this must just be an Otherworld possessing 'mirror characteristics'; it can reflect objects from the real world, but it cannot reflect humans."

"Have you heard of this Otherworld?" Yu Sheng asked.

Little Red Riding Hood thought carefully for a moment, then slowly shook her head: "No... there are quite a few Otherworlds related to mirrors, but I haven't heard of one matching this situation."

"Benefactor, this fog gives me a strange feeling," Hu Li murmured at this point, "I keep feeling something approaching within the fog, but when I scan with my divine sense, there's actually nothing there."

Yu Sheng turned to look at the doll on his shoulder: "Erin, is there anything nearby?"

The doll shook her head, and Little Red Riding Hood spoke up as well: "My wolf pack hasn't found anything either—no entities have spawned nearby, and no traces left by humans can be detected. Theoretically, people couldn't have run that far."

"Hmm," Yu Sheng nodded lightly, his gaze falling on the main entrance of the shopping mall, "'Big Nephew' said he escaped from inside the mall; is it possible that seeing the situation outside was unfavorable, he hid back inside the mall?"

Erin thought for a moment: "... Maybe; shall we go take a look?"

"Let's go take a look," Yu Sheng nodded, then stepped toward the direction of the mall, not forgetting to remind the others, "Everyone, stay close; Hu Li just said she felt something strange in the fog, and who knows what might happen if we get separated in the mist."

The group huddled tightly together, carefully crossed the fog-shrouded small square, and entered the interior of the mall through the open glass doors.

The mall was equally empty, with only the lights that hadn't been turned off in time illuminating the desolate shops and open areas; thin mist seeped everywhere, drilling into the mall through every crack, drifting slowly before everyone like a sheer veil.

And immediately after, Hu Li let out a small gasp: "There are mirrors everywhere here!"

Mirrors were everywhere in the mall—the glass doors of the shops had become mirrors, the screens used for advertising had become mirrors, and even many products displayed on counters had turned into mirrors of various sizes; the few remaining products not replaced by mirrors were all twisted into all sorts of bizarre shapes, piled up on counters and shelves like geometric models with incorrect scales or rendering failures, presenting a repulsive appearance that was both familiar and alien.

Yu Sheng walked past one of the mirrors, his gaze sweeping across the surface to look at his own reflection within it.

However, before he could make out any details, the mirror "cracked" and shattered; then, as if instantly undergoing countless years of weathering and corrosion, the seemingly glass surface began to rapidly shrink and wrinkle, turning into a curled, scorched mass that silently crumbled into black ash.

Yu Sheng only remembered seeing a pitch-black human silhouette, cloaked in black mist, standing inside that mirror.

Erin was startled by this situation: "... What the heck just shattered!"

Yu Sheng didn't know what was going on either; watching the black ash from the mirror scatter across the ground, he instinctively bent down, dipped a finger into it, and rubbed it between his fingertips—he didn't know what could possibly be rubbed out of it, but he had seen those great detectives in detective dramas do exactly that whenever they encountered powdery substances at a crime scene.

The moment he rubbed it twice, everything before his eyes lost all color; a black-and-white-gray dead world suddenly descended, and a voice vaguely intruded into his mind—"... What the heck, ah, I'm dead!"

In the span of just one second, the black-and-white-gray world before his eyes faded away, and normal colors and sounds returned to his senses.

Yu Sheng stood up, completely bewildered, a sentence popping into his mind: Rubbing it really works?

Hu Li, nearby, seemed to have sensed the change in Yu Sheng's aura and immediately turned her head: "Benefactor, what happened?"

"Seems I discovered two things," Yu Sheng said with a subtle expression, patting the black ash in his hand as he spoke, "First, the mirrors here are alive; second, I heard its last words."

Hu Li, Erin, and Little Red Riding Hood all wore expressions of utter bewilderment.

Erin: "What did the last words say?"

Yu Sheng: "The last words said it died."

Erin: "... What the heck!?"

"Don't ask me; I'm confused too," Yu Sheng helplessly frowned, then cautiously directed his gaze toward the other mirror surfaces around them.

However, the anticipated scene where all the mirrors in the vicinity would shatter with a "crack-crack" chorus of "Ah, I'm dead" at just one glance from him did not occur—those mirrors simply no longer reflected his figure.

In the largest mirror directly in front, only Hu Li and Little Red Riding Hood stood in place, while Erin sat in mid-air as if floating by magic—his figure had been directly "cut out" from the image.

!

They didn't even bother pretending anymore.

Yu Sheng frowned: "Can you see me in the mirrors?"

"Yes," Little Red Riding Hood nodded, "You're standing right next to us, perfectly normal... wait, you can't see?!"

Yu Sheng nodded lightly: "... Yes, I can't see."

So, the key wasn't "who was reflected," but "who was looking"? Or did both conditions need to be met simultaneously to cause the mirror's "sudden death" just now?

But why? What was the principle behind it?

Yu Sheng's forehead was covered in question marks, while everyone else had even more question marks than him.

"I don't know whether this place is weird, or if you're weirder than this place," Little Red Riding Hood looked at Yu Sheng with a strange gaze, "... Do you eat too much random junk food usually?"

Yu Sheng: "..."

This small incident did not affect the group's search efficiency within the mall.

Hu Li's divine sense sensing, Erin's spider silk spreading, combined with Little Red Riding Hood continuously releasing phantom wolf packs into the thin mist, meant the entire mall was quickly roughly searched, yet no traces of anyone hiding were found.

Helplessly, Yu Sheng and the others returned outside the mall, once again facing that boundless thick fog.

Whether it was an illusion or not, this fog seemed even thicker than before; now, even the few black luxury cars at the edge of the square were barely visible.

"Do you feel like this fog is chasing us?" Erin suddenly murmured, "Wherever we go, it gathers there, and more and more is converging from all directions."

Yu Sheng frowned. He hadn't been able to sense the "sense of being pursued" that Eileen mentioned or the "something in the fog drawing closer" that Hu Li mentioned—after all, he didn't have the cool spider-sense or divine-sense scanning abilities that the puppet and the fox demon had. But he had indeed noticed that the atmosphere around him was starting to feel off, like… his spiritual intuition was about to go thump-thump bouncing wildly and was currently warming up for it.

The fog was undergoing a "transformation."

From deep within the thick fog, some kind of sound seemed to drift over.

Little Red Riding Hood's face changed abruptly: "My wolf was attacked!"

The next instant, a shadow wolf appeared beside her out of nowhere. The wolf's body looked as if something had taken a huge bite out of it midair, nearly cutting it clean in half—it let out a chaotic, furious snarl, but the snarl quickly turned into a defeated, unwilling whimper. After nuzzling its master's feet twice, it slunk back dejectated into the depths of the shadows.

The defeated wolf transmitted back some valuable information.

Little Red Riding Hood jerked her head up: "There's a huge monster in the fog, with a bunch of arms, legs, and fangs—I couldn't make out its exact form. It can take down a lone shadow wolf in an instant!"

The instant she finished speaking, Eileen raised a hand and pointed at the mall's massive glass curtain wall: "…Is it the thing crawling down off the wall?"

(End of chapter)