Xu Jiawei was wrapped in a bath towel, her hair still half wet. She looked at Shao Lan in bewilderment.
"What's wrong?" Xu Jiawei asked.
Shao Lan stared at Xu Jiawei. He opened his mouth, but he felt as though he lacked even the strength to make a sound.
Xu Jiawei walked in, took the towel off her head, and shook out her wet hair. "I didn't see you when I came out of the bath, so I went next door to ask where you were. But that Zhang Fang was lying on the bed with his eyes shut like he was possessed. I patted him, and he suddenly started singing. It scared me so badly I rushed back."
"It's really cold out there. I need another soak."
Xu Jiawei headed toward the bathroom.
Fighting the nausea churning in his stomach, Shao Lan followed her.
He saw an utterly bizarre sight-
The living Xu Jiawei walked into the bathroom humming and removed the towel wrapped around her hair.
Yet Xu Jiawei's corpse still lay in the bathtub.
No.
This wasn't right.
The nausea grew stronger. Shao Lan pressed a hand against his stomach and forced himself to calm down.
Think.
Think this through rationally.
Look, there were two Xu Jiaweis in front of you.
One alive, one dead.
Only one could be the real Xu Jiawei, right?
That meant there were two possibilities.
Either the real Xu Jiawei was already dead, and the one standing before you was fake.
Or the real Xu Jiawei was still alive and talking to you, and the one in the bathtub was fake.
Now you needed to work out which was real and which was fake.
Anything fake had to have a flaw.
The key was whether you could find it.
Shao Lan, find the flaw. Find that flaw...
"Shao Lan? Shao Lan?" Xu Jiawei's voice seemed to come from far away. "Are you standing there because you want to bathe with me?"
Shao Lan struggled to focus on the scene before him. The woman in the bath towel sat on the edge of the tub, her corpse lying inside it.
He turned to look at the mirrors.
There were two, one large and one small, both reflecting that bizarre scene.
Suddenly, Shao Lan noticed something wrong.
His gaze fixed on the small mirror, then shifted to the large one.
Yes.
Yes.
He knew what was wrong!
The corpse's eyes in the large mirror were wide open, just as Shao Lan had seen earlier.
But in the small mirror, the corpse's eyes were closed.
He had found the flaw!
Two mirrors couldn't reflect different things.
Unless what they reflected didn't exist in reality at all!
The corpse in the bathtub was fake!
Shao Lan suddenly stepped back and knocked the small mirror over!
The mirror hit the floor, and Shao Lan fell with it. His hand pressed down on its broken pieces, and the sharp edges immediately pierced his palm.
A sharp stab of pain shot through him, and blood flowed out at once.
At the same time, however, the persistent nausea in his stomach seemed to ease considerably.
Shao Lan raised his head.
There were only white bubbles in the bathtub. The tiled floor was spotless, and the corpse and blood had all disappeared.
Sure enough, none of it had been real.
"What's wrong?" Startled by Shao Lan, Xu Jiawei came over to help him up.
"Nothing..." Shao Lan said. "Maybe my blood sugar's low."
"Huh? You should've said so. I've got some cola in my bag." Xu Jiawei hurried out and soon returned with the cola. "Here."
"I don't need it. I think I'm better now." Shao Lan shook his head. "I'll rest on the sofa for a while."
"Even now, you still won't sleep in the bed?"
"I don't like mattresses that are too soft."
Shao Lan slowly lay down on the sofa.
He wanted to go over what had just happened and figure out what was going on.
But it was as though someone had forcibly shut him down. The moment his head touched the sofa, he lost consciousness.
In the darkness, he seemed to hear that song again.
"Mother Ming, oh, Mother Ming. Thank you for the flowers you grant in bloom. Mother Ming, oh, Mother Ming. Only through you do we have a home."
So that was it.
It was because of that song.
Early the next morning, faint light spilled through the curtains.
Patches of light shifted across Shao Lan's face. He frowned and opened his eyes.
It wasn't the sunlight that had woken him, but the noise outside.
The hallway was full of commotion. Something seemed to have happened.
Shao Lan got up, walked over, and opened the door.
In the hallway, Zhang Fang stood in a corner with a vacant gaze, while a frazzled Xu Jiaojiao tried to restrain a madwoman with disheveled hair.
The madwoman pointed at the hallway floor and shouted, "Shao Lan's corpse is right there! Why can't you see it? Why?"
Xu Jiaojiao was at her wit's end. "Jiawei, what on earth are you talking about? There's nothing there!"
The madwoman whose tangled hair covered her face was actually Xu Jiawei.
There was now nothing left of Xu Jiawei's refined, alluring femininity. She was frantic, her face full of confusion.
The instant she turned and saw Shao Lan, that confusion reached its peak.
Xu Jiawei backed away one step at a time, trembling all over. "Impossible... impossible..."
"Shao Lan's dead. You're not Shao Lan..."
Xu Jiaojiao was on the verge of tears. "Jiawei! What's going on?"
Shao Lan looked at Zhang Fang in the corner.
Zhang Fang's face was blank. He didn't even blink. Only his mouth opened and closed from time to time, making him look extremely eerie.
"Shao Lan's dead! You're a ghost! You must be a ghost!"
Xu Jiawei screamed hysterically, but screaming seemed to be all she could do. She had no strength to fight back.
"Shao Lan, what do we do?" Xu Jiaojiao asked, her eyes red.
"Knock her out."
"Huh?" Xu Jiaojiao didn't understand.
Shao Lan stepped forward, raised his hand, and chopped down on the back of Xu Jiawei's neck.
Xu Jiawei's eyes rolled back, and she collapsed motionless on the floor.
"Jiawei!" Xu Jiaojiao hurried to lift Xu Jiawei's upper body.
Shao Lan hadn't held back at all with that chop. Xu Jiawei's eyes were closed, and she was unconscious.
Shao Lan took out his knife and pierced Xu Jiawei's fingertip.
Blood dripped down. Xu Jiawei shuddered in her unconscious state at the pain.
A moment later, she slowly opened her eyes, glanced back down the hallway, then turned to meet Shao Lan's gaze.
Watching her eyes, Shao Lan felt that the Xu Jiawei he knew had returned.
"I... I saw..." Xu Jiawei rubbed her forehead hard. "Just now, that was..."
"A hallucination," Shao Lan said.
"You heard Zhang Fang singing, just like I did."
"Mother Ming, oh, Mother Ming. Thank you for the flowers you grant in bloom. Mother Ming, oh, Mother Ming. Only through you do we have a home."
The melody was extremely simple, yet it carried an ancient air.
It inexplicably brought to mind a grand ritual, countless men and women in traditional clothing dancing and singing in unison.
"The song seems to be a Sacrificial Song. Anyone who hears it starts hallucinating and gradually goes mad," Shao Lan said gravely.
"Is that why you were acting so strangely in the bathroom yesterday?" Xu Jiawei asked.
"Yes." Shao Lan nodded. "Luckily, I knocked the mirror over and broke it. I discovered that the pain from the glass cutting my hand helped clear my head."
Xu Jiawei looked at her bleeding fingertip and nodded. "Thank you."
She stood and coldly studied Zhang Fang in the corner.
"Why would he sing a song like that?"
Zhang Fang was lost in his own world and didn't react to Xu Jiawei's words at all.
Something stirred in Shao Lan's mind. He remembered the fluorescent glow flickering on Zhang Fang's bandage when he had seen him in the hallway yesterday.
That definitely wasn't normal.
The problem probably lay in that wound.
"Maybe it's because those children with no eyes bit him." Xu Jiaojiao seemed to have reached the same conclusion as Shao Lan. "We have to be careful around those children..."
Whatever the reason, Zhang Fang had already fallen victim to it.
Xu Jiawei considered for a moment, then grabbed a heavy Bronze Vase and walked toward Zhang Fang.
"Wait, Jiawei, what are you doing...?" Xu Jiaojiao blocked her in fear.
"Killing him," Xu Jiawei said.
Before you continue