Scene in the Mirror

This room wasn't like this originally!

Yu Sheng immediately understood—he clearly remembered what the room that had once trapped Eileen looked like. It was empty, with no furnishings, not even a chair. Only a single oil painting hung forlornly on the wall opposite the door…

Instead of the various pieces of furniture it now held, with a mirror hanging on the wall directly facing the door.

A sense of doubt and a sliver of unease surfaced in his heart, but Yu Sheng didn't feel any danger in the room.

Of course, he knew that this so-called "sense of crisis" was rather abstract, but after several near-death experiences, he felt he had developed some perception of danger. And here… he felt the room before him was safe.

He hesitated for a few seconds at the doorway before stepping into the room.

Everything in the room appeared perfectly normal. Nothing sprang out from the corners with a pitchfork, nor did a brazier fall from the ceiling as he stepped inside. The sunlight outside the window was bright, and the air in the room was fresh, with no scent of decay or any suspicious fishy odor.

Yu Sheng inspected the room, confirming that the furniture and furnishings were just ordinary items, and finally approached the mirror facing the door.

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

But he wasn't sure if similar sayings applied in this "Boundary City."

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

And this eerie feeling wasn't just because Eileen's oil painting had originally hung here, but more so because the scene in the mirror… looked strange.

It was an indescribable strangeness. The scene reflected in the mirror was actually normal, just as the room looked at that moment. Yu Sheng stared at it for a long time, but couldn't pinpoint the source of his strange feeling. The more he looked, the more suspicious he became—what was wrong?

Was there a subtle, imperceptible shift in the size or position of the objects in the mirror? Was there a disharmony in the brightness or darkness of the image? Or… had something appeared in the mirror that wasn't originally in the room?

Yu Sheng pondered for a moment, then reached out and gently brushed his finger across the surface of the mirror.

A cold touch spread as the mirror rippled with water-like waves where his finger touched. The reflection in the mirror shattered with the ripples in an instant!

Yu Sheng's eyes widened, and he instinctively took half a step back. In less than a second, the mirror had turned completely black. The original reflection of the room shattered and dissolved within those ripples. The dense, ink-like darkness eventually filled the entire frame, as if it had swallowed everything. It slowly writhed, undulated, and rotated before Yu Sheng's eyes.

Then, new things gradually appeared in the darkness. Yu Sheng suppressed the unease in his heart and stepped forward to look closely. Gradually, the thick, black veil-like darkness receded before his eyes, allowing him to see the scene deep within the mirror:

A puppet—but not Eileen, it was an unfamiliar face—lay shattered in a ruin whose original appearance was unrecognizable. Her limbs were broken, her dress tattered, and she was covered in wounds, as if she had gone through a fierce battle and finally died from exhaustion.

In his astonishment, Yu Sheng's eyes widened, trying desperately to see more in the mirror. As if responding to his thoughts, the scene in the darkness slowly moved. Yu Sheng noticed the perspective of the mirror widening and tilting, revealing a broader panoramic view—

He saw the surroundings of the fallen puppet, the even larger scale of the ruins, and many structures resembling classical pillars and eaves. All of these structures were broken and toppled, collapsing into the mud-like chaos. Many of the puppet's broken limb fragments were scattered around, as if conveying a message to him:

Everything here was destroyed because of this battle.

Suddenly, a sentence Eileen had told him before echoed in Yu Sheng's mind:

"…Living puppets are blessed. In the Otherworld, I can fight much better than those so-called investigators or spirit detectives…"

"Are these 'living puppets' really that strong…?" Yu Sheng couldn't help but murmur to himself.

But even with such strength, the puppet 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 puppet.

A… giant shadow. Yu Sheng didn't know what it was, only that it was very large, almost ten times the size of the puppet. Its outline was roughly humanoid, but it seemed to have twisted, overlapping wings on its back. It also lay amidst ruins, a part of its massive body melted like mud, merging with the chaos around the ruins and with the scattered fragments of the puppet's limbs. The remaining structure of its body was covered in twists and damage.

Yu Sheng didn't know if the twists and damage on the giant shadow were inflicted by the puppet or if it had always looked that way—after all, the thing looked abstract to begin with.

But one thing he could guess was that the puppet and the massive shadow, which seemed to have wings, had likely perished together in the end.

Just as Yu Sheng was about to get a clearer look at more details, the scene before him suddenly rippled like water again.

Everything deep within the darkness shattered and dissolved in an instant. The thick, curtain-like darkness surged upwards and then receded towards the edges of the frame. In a blink of an eye, the scene before Yu Sheng was once again an ordinary mirror, reflecting the room.

Yu Sheng stared blankly at this, then tapped and touched the mirror a few more times, but nothing unusual happened again.

What was that just now?

Perhaps it was because he had been dealing with abnormal things for the past two days, Yu Sheng felt his ability to accept things had improved significantly. At this moment, he didn't find the bizarre scene frightening, but rather felt a strong curiosity about what he had seen.

Was what appeared in the mirror something that had truly happened in the past? Who was that dead puppet? What was that massive shadow that had perished with the puppet? Where were those ruins? And why did all of this… appear in this house, and before him?

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

Was the scene recorded in the mirror related to Eileen?

The dead puppet didn't resemble Eileen at all. Although her face was unrecognizable when she died, at least her striking golden hair was completely different from Eileen's. But for some reason, when he saw that puppet, Yu Sheng couldn't help but think of the girl sealed in the oil painting downstairs, watching television.

A moment later, Yu Sheng ended his contemplation. He looked at the mirror on the wall, reached out and held the frame, applying a slight force, trying to see if he could take it down and move it elsewhere.

The mirror didn't budge, as solid as if it had been cast into the wall.

After trying a few times, Yu Sheng gave up.

He turned towards the door, but before leaving the room, he suddenly looked back, his gaze quickly sweeping across the entire room.

The furnishings in the room were still the same, and the mirror hadn't changed at all.

Yu Sheng frowned and closed the door.

After two or three seconds, he abruptly 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, his head poking into the room, observing everything suspiciously. He gradually felt like a lunatic.

After confirming multiple times, he finally stopped fiddling with the door.

But he didn't return to his bedroom. Instead, he went downstairs with a clatter and came to the dining room.

Eileen, who was watching TV at the dining table, heard the commotion next to her and peeked towards the edge of the frame. "Huh? Yu Sheng, weren't you going to sleep? Insomnia? I can't tell bedtime stories, you know…"

She still had that carefree, overly familiar demeanor.

Yu Sheng said nothing, simply sitting opposite Eileen and watching her intently, as if observing something closely.

This finally made the person in the painting feel a little awkward.

"Why are you looking at me like that..." Eileen hunched her shoulders. "I'm telling you, I know I'm good-looking, but you have no future with a paper doll..."

The topic Yu Sheng had been preparing all the way here was completely derailed by Eileen's remark.

"Cough, cough, I'm here to talk about serious business!" He had to clear his throat and very stiffly steer the conversation back on track. "Do you still remember what the room looked like where you were hung on the wall before?"

"I remember," Eileen thought for a moment and answered naturally. "There was nothing in it, completely empty. You could see a door opposite, and wallpaper – the wallpaper in the corner was moldy and peeling, why don't you fix it."

Yu Sheng nodded: Good, at least on this matter, Eileen's memory matched his own.

"Second question, do you remember a place – it looked like ruins, with many classical pillars and collapsed stone walls, eaves, the whole ruin was 'submerged' in darkness, and then there was a puppet – don't worry about whether it was you, but a puppet died in the ruins, died horribly, with limbs scattered everywhere..."

Eileen immediately hunched her shoulders: "That sounds really scary."

"Never mind if it's scary or not, just tell me if you have any impression of this scene."

"No."

Eileen answered without hesitation.