Kunlun Mirror

Kunlun Mirror

With Dr. Laila pulling strings, the funeral home's van arrived promptly.

To prevent any complications from dragging on, Lu Li offered his sincere thanks and headed out immediately to have his father's remains cremated.

By dusk, when the setting sun bled like red ink, his closest kin was packed inside a small box.

Lu Li cradled the box in his arms, walking home in silence beneath the afterglow of sunset.

The streets were littered with crater holes and bullet marks, the tracks of tank treads still caked with dried, brownish bloodstains.

Lu Li let out a long sigh; though he wished to bring his father back to his ancestral soil for burial, he dared not guarantee that he himself would survive...

Aside from the drug lords' war, there were also the utterly conscience-devoid gangs.

Heidi's tattooed-arm son was a gang member, and before leaving, his gaze had been malicious, surely plotting some foul scheme.

He was all alone and disabled to boot, so how could he possibly fight back?

His thoughts in disarray, Lu Li's pace was somewhat heavy as he unconsciously wandered to the spot where the bombing had happened earlier that day.

At that moment, a petite, delicate figure blocked his path—it was none other than the flower-selling girl he had rescued on a whim.

She was clearly of mixed heritage, with bright, fair skin, refined and striking facial features, and big, watery eyes full of quick wit.

She came right up and shoved a ragged cloth pouch into Lu Li's hands, saying cheerfully:

"Thanks for saving my life, this is a thank-you gift~"

Lu Li felt a weight in his hands, and before he could react, the little girl rattled on like a string of firecrackers:

"It's getting dark, I have to go now. My name is Jessica, goodbye Lu Li~"

She waved her hand and darted off like a young deer.

Lu Li couldn't help but chuckle as he held the pouch, realizing the other person had deliberately waited here for him, even holding out until sunset.

After dark, even the main thoroughfares grew dangerous.

Putting aside what might be inside the bag, Lu Li hurriedly quickened his pace home.

Yet after running into this grateful little girl, his steps felt a good deal lighter.

~~~~~~~~~~

Finally returning home just before dark, Lu Li placed his father's ashes at the head of the bed, then took out the contents of the pouch.

First to catch his eye was a pile of sundries, including small-denomination banknotes, a lighter, cigarettes, and the like.

They were likely the leftover belongings of a Government Army soldier, nothing out of the ordinary.

Yet the last object proved somewhat unexpected; heavy in the hand, it turned out to be a "bronze mirror"!

The bronze mirror was roughly the size of a dinner plate, antique and possessing an extraordinary charm, though unfortunately it had multiple fractures across its entire body.

Moreover, all of them bore the marks of violent damage from axes and blades, as if it had been through a battlefield.

"Did the little girl ransack an antique shop?"

As a tourist city, Tijuana had plenty of antique shops along the streets that cheated tourists, and Lu Li immediately guessed the mirror's origin.

At that moment, he felt patterns on the back of the bronze mirror, and flipping it over, he saw two strangely shaped inscriptions that somewhat resembled the characters for "Kunlun".

"Kunlun Mirror?"

Running his fingers across it, Lu Li read aloud softly.

Whether it was his imagination or not, the moment his voice fell, the bronze mirror in his hand seemed to vibrate slightly?

Yet looking closely, he detected no other movement.

"Just my imagination?"

Lu Li didn't pay it much mind; having lived through such a harsh day, mental haziness was entirely normal.

Until the next second, when he brought the bronze mirror up before his face and it reflected his image.

His face appeared slightly blurry, but his eyes were exceptionally clear—sword-browed and star-eyed, open and limpid, his gaze remarkably resolute!

At that very moment, the ancient, broken bronze mirror suddenly transformed into a streak of golden rainbow light, instantly shooting right into Lu Li's glabella!

Lu Li immediately felt his entire forehead swell and heat up, as though some living creature were writhing and glowing right between his eyebrows!

The anomaly lasted for an extremely brief duration, and his body soon returned to calm.

Yet Lu Li's expression did not relax in the slightest; instead, he stood dumbfounded in utter shock!

This ancient bronze mirror, supposedly called the "Kunlun Mirror", was right now residing inside his own glabella!

No matter how one measured it, his head could never fit an object the size of a dinner plate.

Yet the "Kunlun Mirror" was clearly no mortal artifact; in a magical state neither entirely physical nor illusory, it had entered his "Sea of Consciousness"!

Which was what Taoists referred to as the "Heavenly Eye", and modern medicine called the "Pineal Gland".

Lu Li had heard of the illustrious reputation of the "Pineal Gland" more than once.

Across all civilizations, this organ symbolized extraordinary power!

Not only did Xia-country classics like the Huangting Neijing Sutra and Dao Shu record it.

Even ancient Western scholars such as Plato, Pythagoras, and Descartes had written of their reverence for the pineal gland, calling it the throne of the soul!

Normally, after a human reached the age of eight, the pineal gland would constantly calcify, eventually devolving into an enamel-like substance and completely losing its utility.

Now, with the Kunlun Mirror arriving in his Sea of Consciousness, it had helped Lu Li reactivate this organ, which was tantamount to opening the Heavenly Eye!

Its specific function remained unclear for the time being, but at this moment all of Lu Li's attention was focused on the Kunlun Mirror.

This bronze mirror seemed to have become a part of his own body, actually giving him a sensation of "flesh and blood connection"!?

Lu Li could see—or rather, "perceive"—that the Kunlun Mirror was suspended within his Sea of Consciousness, quiet and nourishing itself like an infant returned to the womb.

"How miraculous!"

Lu Li took a deep breath, intending to study it in depth.

Yet right at that moment, the basement door was knocked on rhythmically in a pattern of three long and two short.

A bantering voice drifted from outside: "Is Snow White in? I'm your good friend Toby~"

Lu Li was startled with horror!

Toby was none other than the bastard who had stirred up trouble in the hospital ward! To think he would arrive so fast, and at such a terrible time!

"Open up, Snow White, there's a free-and-easy job here~"

This fiend let out a series of weird catcalls, followed by unbridled, raucous laughter that suggested there were quite a few people!

Toby was a member of the Decapitation Gang, and he had likely hauled a bunch of gang associates along with him.

These were no ordinary street thugs of the sort back home who fought and extorted money, but men who carried guns everywhere and truly dared to kill!

"My father has already been cremated, what on earth does this bastard want? To force me to mule drugs? Or sell me off to a brothel..."

Lu Li knew all too well the methods of the gangs; once caught, life would undoubtedly be worse than death.

At this moment, the door was banging loudly, shaking violently. Clearly, Toby had grown impatient and started kicking it fiercely in.

In vain, Lu Li grabbed a fruit knife, staring fixedly at the doorway.

Right at this moment of high mental tension, his glabella suddenly grew hot, as though an invisible eye had opened.

Following that, Lu Li actually managed to see through the door four black-and-white human outlines... and they were precisely Toby and his cohorts who had come looking for trouble!

"Is this the ability brought by activating the 'Sea of Consciousness'!?"

Such an ability was akin to X-ray vision, yet no trace of joy appeared on Lu Li's face.

A mere X-ray vision was far from enough for the current situation.

Especially since he had already seen one of the human outlines pull something out from its waist and aim it right at the door lock!

Lu Li hurried and lunged toward the wall.

The next second, he heard two gunshots ring out as two bullets pierced straight through the door.

One burrowed into the wooden table in the middle of the room, sending wooden splinters flying everywhere; the other blasted a massive hole right through the schoolbag on the table!

Lu Li pressed himself tightly against the wall, his face etched with terror, anger, and utter reluctance!

"I haven't even brought my father home yet!"

At his wit's end, Lu Li sensed the Kunlun Mirror within his Sea of Consciousness and shouted frantically in his mind:

"Do you have any usable functions? Hurry up and activate them!"

Seemingly sensing Lu Li's intense will to survive, two inscriptions surfaced on the surface of the Kunlun Mirror: [Cross-Realm]

Immediately afterward, the inscriptions distorted and stretched, transforming into a visual—neatly arranged architecture, crowds of people weaving to and fro, appearing to be a civilized city?

Before Lu Li could even see clearly, several more gunshots echoed—the men from the Decapitation Gang had shot the lock away!

The very instant they smashed the door open and charged in, Lu Li was enveloped in a ball of blue light and vanished into thin air along with the ancient mirror.

Leaving behind only four heavily tattooed big men staring at each other in blank dismay...

They had left a lookout to watch the place, and there had been movement inside the room, so the target should have been here; how could it be completely empty???

This book merely continues the setting of the previous one.

The subsequent combat style, characters, and story will be entirely different.

I will definitely not fool my readers, everyone can rest assured.