What Was Hidden in the Mirror

"Ah? Did you find something? Don't scare me."

Hiran leaned against the headboard, a series of things that had recently happened around her or that she had heard about flashing through her mind. She tightened the blanket wrapped around herself.

Fan Ning swept his gaze around the room, then slowly walked over to her bedside.

"You mean there's something wrong with my bedroom?" Hiran asked again.

She instinctively made to move away a little, but instead, clutching her blanket, she scooted closer to where Fan Ning stood.

"The area that feels wrong covers the entire house. I'm not sure of the specifics yet."

At that moment, Fan Ning realized that her silk nightgown was far too thin. He took several steps back, then turned his back to her.

"Sorry... do you need to put on another layer?"

"Thank you." Hiran spoke timidly, then rose from the bed and slipped off the blanket wrapped around her.

Bending over, she reached toward the little chair before the folding screen, picked up the violet cotton robe she had worn in the living room, and draped it over her silk nightgown.

Fan Ning carefully sensed every corner of Hiran's bedroom. Once he confirmed that nothing seemed amiss, he temporarily breathed a sigh of relief.

After advancing to Knower, he seemed to have developed a strange kind of perception toward the Aether Bodies and Emotional Bodies of nearby living beings, as well as the spatial environment where living beings had been active...

He tried closing his eyes for a moment, slightly longer than a blink, attempting to imprint the surrounding scene upon the darkness before his eyes.

It made him feel as though a pale golden beam had entered his Astral Spirit Body through the top of his head and emerged from beneath his crotch, with neither beginning nor end.

Then came a second pale golden beam, likewise without beginning or end, entering his Astral Spirit Body through his left armpit and leaving through his right.

The third entered his Astral Spirit Body through his chest and shoulder blades from the front, and emerged from behind him, still without beginning or end.

The beams converged at his chest. There, he seemed to imagine a bright sphere. Driven by the Inspiration of "Candle," it took on a pearly sheen, blazing with cold fire as it slowly expanded, like a field of Inspiration enveloping the things around him.

Fan Ning's field of vision was now veiled in dark gold, somewhat like wearing 3D movie glasses from his previous life. Yet different objects revealed all kinds of light and shadows he had never seen before.

He discovered that every object possessed various Phase attributes, though ordinary things—especially inanimate objects—were extremely weak.

And when he tried looking at Hiran, who stood barefoot on the bed—

The girl's Aether Body was primarily a pale green halo with a relatively even texture. Fan Ning felt that this vitality might be the Phase of "Cocoon." Around her heart and major arteries, it transitioned from dark green to peach-red, the Phase of "Pool." Her outer Emotional Body was overall milky white, with dark blue and bright red lights and shadows flickering through it. Her outermost Astral Spirit Body was paler still; only her head held a small amount of golden-yellow "Candle" Phase, transitioning through light yellow into the silvery-white Phase of "Wasteland"...

But he still did not understand how to interpret those colors.

"Caloen, what's wrong?" Seeing Fan Ning constantly staring at her, Hiran felt a little restrained. Her small hands kept folding and unfolding the hem of her clothes.

"It's nothing. Let's go out and take a look. For safety's sake, come with me." Fan Ning withdrew his thoughts and made the suggestion.

"Do we really have to go out?" Hiran pouted. "I think if something is wrong, it would be safer if we locked ourselves in the room together."

With a hiss, Fan Ning struck a match and walked toward Hiran's dressing table.

"Caloen, the gas lamp is already on," Hiran said.

Fan Ning still lit the tallow candle on the candlestick.

Then he blew out the match with a puff. "If there really is something mysterious here, a door won't do any good."

"Come on, let's go take a look. I'll protect you."

"Alright." Hiran looked at Fan Ning, sensing the seriousness and certainty in his eyes, and finally felt a little more at ease. The two of them first went down to the basement storage room, then searched the reception room, study, dining room, and kitchen on the first floor.

At every place, Fan Ning turned on the room's gas lamp for illumination.

Fan Ning grew increasingly puzzled. His initial Inspiration had indeed detected something abnormal in the house—when he had just advanced to Knower in the bedroom, he had sensed an abnormal silvery-white presence nearby, as well as an unfamiliar azure Phase.

"The intensity of this abnormal Phase fluctuation isn't low. It's not 'Candle,' and probably not 'Key' or 'Pool' either. Nor is it the 'Cocoon' that symbolizes vitality. It seems to contain 'Wasteland,' along with something I don't understand..." Fan Ning recalled the Phases he had only begun to understand.

During the carpet-style search, this intuition of his kept flickering in and out.

Fan Ning searched very carefully. He checked the fireplace, the piano, behind the curtains, inside the kitchen cabinets, and the cloakroom, opening everything to inspect it.

"Calling the abnormal Phase 'flickering in and out' isn't accurate. What Inspiration makes me feel should be 'discontinuous'... No, that still isn't accurate..."

Fan Ning stopped before the full-length mirror on the first floor, carefully sensing something.

"Caloen, I'm a little scared. How about we go back to the bedroom now?" Hiran tugged at Fan Ning's sleeve and pleaded.

"Don't be afraid. We'll go back to the second floor now, to Teacher Anton's old master bedroom, and take one last look." Fan Ning comforted her.

"It's highly erratic! Yes, this abnormal sensation from the Phase is extremely erratic!" As they went upstairs, Fan Ning finally found the right word in his heart.

When he had first been preparing to sleep in the guest room, he had felt the abnormality right beside him. But when he tried to sense it more deeply, the feeling vanished.

So, to be cautious, he had immediately gone to Hiran.

Later, he had felt that the abnormality seemed to be downstairs, but now he could not detect anything there either.

The two arrived at Teacher Anton's master bedroom on the second floor and turned on the gas lamp.

The room had been cleaned very neatly. New bedding had been put on, while some of his clothes from before his death had been locked in a storage cabinet in the basement. It looked like nothing more than a larger guest room.

Within Fan Ning's dark-gold-tinged vision, a halo flashed past. In the lingering memory it left in his mind, it seemed to shift from azure to gray-green, then dark gray, before reaching a silvery-white edge.

Fan Ning followed its direction, looking over two armchairs, a small walnut table, playing cards, a small copper mirror, and a model airship.

"Could I have misunderstood the symbols I saw through Inspiration? Or perhaps, because I've only just advanced, some of my states are unstable?" Fan Ning began to doubt himself.

"Hiran, let's go back." Seeing the little girl's exhausted, nervous, and utterly bewildered expression, Fan Ning sighed.

Sigh, in the middle of the night...

She probably had barely slept during the first three nights of keeping vigil, and today she had been dragged through all this again.

The two returned to the bedroom steeped in a faint, secluded fragrance. The moment they stepped inside, Hiran hurriedly locked the door from within.

Fan Ning dropped onto the upholstered armchair in the bedroom, stretched his legs onto the little stool in front of him, and leaned back slightly. "Hiran, turn off the light and get some sleep first."

Hiran showed an expression of immense relief, let out a long yawn, and crawled beneath the blanket in her robe.

The gas lamp was extinguished. Outside the window, the cold wind howled, yet the tallow candle flame on the dressing table seemed frozen in place.

Fan Ning rested both hands behind his head and closed his eyes to rest.

About ten minutes later, Hiran spoke softly. "Caloen, if sitting like that is uncomfortable, you can lie down for a while." Three or four seconds later, she added, "I mean, on the edge of the bed."

"I'm fine. Go to sleep," Fan Ning said.

"Oh."

After a while, the girl's breathing began to grow even and barely audible.

In the dim light and faint fragrance, Fan Ning's entire body gradually relaxed as well, and his eyelids began to droop.

Just as the consciousness flowing through his mind was about to turn into fragmented, logicless words—

Beside the wooden embroidered folding screen not far from him, something suddenly seemed to flash through the full-length mirror, apart from the things it normally reflected!

Fan Ning's eyes snapped open. When he made out what was happening in the dim light, his heart nearly stopped.

A shadowy hand was reaching out from the lower right corner inside the mirror!

"Fuck!" The first Chinese he had spoken since transmigrating burst from Fan Ning's mouth just like that.

His entire body jolted in fright as he sprang out of the chair!