"Click!"
The door hinges let out a dry rasp, as if someone were scraping the wood with their fingernails.
The moment Jiang Qiao pushed open the door, a thick scent of rouge mixed with a meaty stench rushed at him. It seemed something terrible had happened in the room—a woman had died inside.
"Come in."
Jiang Qiao swept his gaze around the room.
The furnishings were extremely old, all of them the sort of furniture that should have been discarded decades ago.
There was no corpse.
But all four walls were covered with dark-red wallpaper patterned with peonies. In the dim light, the patterns seemed to writhe slowly. Yet when he looked carefully, he found that they were completely still.
Perhaps his eyes were playing tricks on him.
"There's something wrong with this dressing table." Jiang Qiao's gaze passed over the bed and fell on the carved dressing table in the corner.
A round mirror stood on it.
The mirror's surface was gray and dusty, faintly reflecting the blurry silhouettes of everyone who had entered the room.
But in a daze,
those silhouettes seemed to twist.
"Creak!"
"Creak!"
As everyone entered the room, the wooden floorboards groaned beneath their feet. The sounds were especially jarring in the empty room. Many people instinctively lightened their steps, but it was useless. The floor still creaked.
Not only that.
When Jiang Qiao was three steps from the dressing table,
he suddenly noticed that his reflection in the mirror blinked.
"Hm?"
Jiang Qiao focused on it. The figure in the mirror had returned to normal, and even the distorted appearance had vanished. What the mirror now reflected was his exact appearance.
Only,
when he turned his gaze elsewhere,
the corner of his eye suddenly caught a trace of blood slowly seeping from his reflection's