Mission Complete

Having escaped death, Chen Ge remained shaken, his chest heaving and lips turning purple, his hands still gripping the kitchen knife tightly.

After a minute or two, he finally calmed down, the dizzy sensation in his head fading significantly.

Reaching up to wipe the sweat from his face, he stood up shakily from the bathtub.

Under the flickering candlelight, the room seemed unchanged.

"I should have struck something when I swung the knife; I even heard a crisp sound." Chen Ge followed the angle of his swing and saw a mark left on the edge of the bathtub.

"Did I hit the tub? That shouldn't be right. I clearly felt someone pressing down on my head at the time; that strike should have hit them." Desperate to know the truth, Chen Ge stepped out of the bathtub and picked up the phone that was still recording.

He stopped the recording and played the video from the beginning.

"Sat in the tub at 3:30, and there were no abnormalities until 3:43." Chen Ge leaned against the wall, eyes fixed on the screen, until 3:44, when he lay down in the tub.

"Watching it like this is indeed a bit eerie." It hadn't felt that terrifying while he was doing it, but seeing it as an observer through the video gave him a sense of hair-raising dread.

Chen Ge compared the timestamps; twenty seconds before he lay down, everything in the bathroom was normal, save for the occasional sound of dripping water.

Ten seconds later, Chen Ge frowned; he realized the content in the video was not quite the same as what he had felt in the tub!

According to his mental count, footsteps should have echoed in the hallway by now, yet the recording remained calm and quiet, with no strange sounds at all.

Five or six seconds later, the door-banging he remembered also failed to appear in the recording; the screen showed only the dark, murky water and the swaying, dancing candlelight.

"Could the footsteps and the door-banging in the hallway have been my own hallucinations?"

A full fifty seconds passed, and the Chen Ge on the screen, previously calm, began to show veins bulging on his arms, his face turning an unnatural shade of purple.

The Chen Ge in the bathtub had been on the verge of giving up.

And it was at this moment that something truly skin-crawling occurred.

A palm-sized mirror shard beside the tub slowly darkened, and a black shadow crawled out from it, crouching beside the tub in a scene of extreme horror.

Judging by the silhouette, the figure looked very much like He Feng.

Then came the most critical moment.

In the recording, Chen Ge's body and will had reached their limit; unable to hold on any longer, he braced his hands against the bottom of the tub, preparing to give up.

But just as he was about to surrender, the black shadow standing by the tub suddenly reached out, pressed down on his head, and covered his mouth!

Unable to breathe, Chen Ge struggled desperately, swinging the kitchen knife wildly; the shadow's form flickered, and while the knife seemed to have some effect, it was negligible.

At this life-or-death moment, the ragdolls placed around the tub seemed to be moved by a breeze, and the smallest one pressed its body onto the palm-sized mirror shard.

With the mirror surface covered, the black shadow became much blurrier, and immediately after, Chen Ge inadvertently slashed its head, causing the monster to dissipate instantly.

The blade's momentum remained, landing on the edge of the bathtub and leaving a shallow mark, and Chen Ge stood up the moment that pressure vanished.

The recording ended there. Having understood the cause and effect, Chen Ge's desire to eliminate the Mirror Monster grew even stronger.

"It cannot be left alive!"

Chen Ge carefully saved the video and picked up the ragdoll that had been lying on the mirror; the little thing's back had been cut by the edge of the mirror, and its body was soaked through.

"Even though they are both existences from another world, their natures are vastly different; some are inherently kind, while others are filled with malice." Chen Ge dried himself off, put on his clothes, and stuffed the ragdolls into his pockets, finally feeling a sense of relief.

"Shattering the mirror is useless; it can still appear in the shards. How exactly is one supposed to deal with this monster?" It was elusive, invisible, and impossible to track; fighting such a thing put him at a disadvantage from the start.

Chen Ge picked up the palm-sized mirror shard from the floor. It was an unintentional gesture, but he was surprised to see water droplets rolling across the surface, leaving behind a faint Arabic numeral—"3".

"Did the Mirror Monster leave this? Is it a threat? Does the three represent the three of us—He Shan, He Feng, and me—or does it mean it intends to kill me within three days?" Chen Ge didn't understand the meaning of the number, but he was certain it held no good omen. "Do you really think I'm afraid of you? One day, I will drag you out of that mirror and bake you to death in the midday sun!"

Chen Ge muttered the most vicious curse he could think of; he had been on the brink of death just moments ago, and it had been truly harrowing.

Breathing in deep gulps of fresh air, Chen Ge leaned against the vanity to rest for a long while before picking up the Black Phone. He had already given up hope, but when he swiped the screen and saw the notification, his eyes instantly brightened: "The mission was a success?!"

"Lucky Ghost Favored, you held your breath underwater for sixty-two seconds. Congratulations on completing the Nightmare-difficulty daily mission! Reward: Yin Pupil."

"Yin Pupil: To see the ominous, to connect with the netherworld, to view the Yin spirits with a Yang body (vision significantly enhanced, other functions unknown)."

"Accumulate two Nightmare-difficulty daily mission completions. Upon completing the third, a trial mission for a new horror scenario will be unlocked at random!"

"Achieve a mission completion rate of over 95% for three consecutive times to unlock a brand-new feature: Ghost Favorability!"

After reading through the series of messages, Chen Ge felt a complex mix of emotions. The Nightmare-difficulty daily mission required holding one's breath for sixty seconds; due to his nervousness and other emotions, he had been ready to give up after only fifty-some seconds, and he should have failed. Yet, because the monster in the mirror had developed a murderous intent toward him, it had forced him to hold on for those extra few seconds, allowing him to complete the mission by the skin of his teeth.

What was lost in the east was gained in the west; although he had been on the verge of death, the outcome was, all things considered, good.

Chen Ge scrolled through the Black Phone; he considered this Nightmare-level mission to be crucial.

If this mission had failed, not only would he have lost the reward, but the unlocking of new scenarios would have been delayed, and most importantly, the brand-new feature on the phone would have remained locked.

Filled with curiosity, he found the newly appeared "Ghost Favorability" tab and tapped it.

The phone interface changed, and five completely unfamiliar names appeared on the screen.