Chapter 269: Wraith (16) – Pouring Out One’s Heart to a Mirror

Master Meng lived in the very center of Yanghua Town, right where Lin Chen remembered seeing two identical buildings standing side by side.

The two large mansions, with their black tiles, white walls, and vermilion gates, were closely connected and similar in design. Even the upturned eaves on the roofs and the peeling paint on the Jiaotu door knockers were identical, as if a giant mirror had been placed along their shared boundary, creating a perfect one-to-one reflection.

Led by the scholar, the players walked to the mansion closer to the West Town. Before they could knock, the heavy vermilion doors slowly swung inward.

Amidst the creaking sound, the scholar waited by the door, showing no intention of entering. The players stepped over the threshold one by one and stood in the courtyard paved with bluestone slabs.

The vermilion doors slammed shut behind them, sounding like a tomb being sealed with cement after a Coffin had been placed inside.

The courtyard was empty and desolate; aside from a stone table and a few stone stools, there was nothing. There were no flowers, trees, or any signs of human life.

“He invites us over but doesn’t send anyone to receive us. This Master Meng certainly puts on airs,” Tang Yu grumbled, drawing the saber from his waist.

Since the NPC was being unreasonable, he couldn’t be blamed for being impolite.

“Perhaps there aren’t many living people in this courtyard to begin with. Who knows?” Qi Si walked straight to the eastern wall of the mansion, stopped at its base, and tapped on it twice with his knuckles.

Two crisp “thud” sounds rang out in the silence, vibrating slightly like the lingering resonance of a plucked string.

“Lin Wen, you aren’t trying to find a secret room here, are you?” Tang Yu asked, puzzled, but he still stepped quickly to Qi Si’s side, holding his saber horizontally to protect him in case of an emergency.

While observing their surroundings, he commented, “That sound definitely isn’t right. Normal walls shouldn’t sound like that… Could there really be a hidden space?”

“It’s not a secret room. If there were a hidden space inside the wall, the sound would be even more ethereal,” Lin Chen said, shaking his head slightly.

Following Qi Si’s lead, he squatted by the wall and began tapping on its surface. “Brother Lin is likely trying to determine the material of the wall.

“In this dungeon, we couldn’t see the abnormality of the townsfolk who have scarecrows for bodies, which means vision can be deceptive.

“But hearing is not. To judge the true nature of an existence, perhaps one can work backward from the sound it makes.”

Qi Si nodded, withdrew his hand into his sleeve, and stood up. “Can you tell what it sounds like?”

Tang Yu spread his hands, indicating he couldn’t help.

Lin Chen frowned in thought for a moment before saying hesitantly, “The sound is very familiar. I might have heard it before.”

He stood up and took a Camera Lens out of his inventory.

【Name: Camera Filter (In Use)】

【Type: Item】

【Effect: Slightly adjusts appearance based on the player’s original facial features】

【Note: Are you ready for your ‘photo lie’?】

This was the very item Lin Chen used to change his appearance. Once the effect was activated, only a lens remained, which had to be carried at all times to ensure the effect stayed active.

Qi Si happened to take a step back, positioning himself between Lin Chen and Tang Yu.

Tang Yu was pushed beyond the maximum distance required to trigger item information and see the prompt text. He could only see Lin Chen holding a lens that didn’t look particularly special, treating it with extreme care and caution.

He couldn’t help but click his tongue in wonder. “Lin Ya, you brought this thing into the dungeon? It’s broken like this; you can’t even take photos with it.”

Lin Chen remained silent and tapped the lens lightly with his knuckle.

“Tink— tink—”

The crisp and familiar sound rang out again, echoing the previous sound of tapping on the wall.

Lin Chen made his judgment. “It’s glass. My lens is made of glass, and so is that wall, based on the sound. Combining that with previous information, I guess… it might be a mirror.”

The walls of Master Meng’s mansion were mirrors.

All previous speculations were now confirmed. There was indeed a giant mirror in the center of Yanghua Town, dividing the town into East and West, reflecting each other and making the architectural layouts identical.

“Wait, something’s not right…” Lin Chen put away the lens, frowned in thought for a while, and raised a question. “If there’s a mirror blocking the middle, how did we travel freely between the East Town and West Town?”

“Because we are spiritual bodies.” Tang Yu planted his saber into the ground and looked deep into the mansion. “The initial hint was very clear; none of us have shadows, and only Ghosts have no shadows.

“It’s perfectly normal for Ghosts to pass through mirrors. Female Ghosts crawling out of mirrors is a classic horror trope.

“What we need to consider is which side—West Town or East Town—is the reality and which is the reflection.”

As his words fell, the originally white-washed walls suddenly lost their color at a visible rate, becoming transparent and reflective.

In a few seconds, all the mortar joints and cracks became smooth and polished, reflecting the images of the people in front of them. A white line traced the outline of everyone’s bodies, looking like overexposure.

The false facade was seen through, exposing the reality beneath. The giant mirror stripped away the illusion of the walls, extending infinitely to the north and south from the boundary of the two mansions.

The sunlight, thinned by the mist, was reflected by the mirror, pouring down on the players with a blinding and scorching intensity. The sudden heat brought a roasting pain, triggering associations and fears of being burned alive.

In the upper right corner of the field of vision, a skeleton in blood-stained clothes struggled violently. The High Priest upon it seemed to have been disturbed from his slumber; he opened his crimson eyes and looked down.

The High Priest in red raised a black cross with both hands and slammed it down. The restless skeleton was impaled by the cross that burst out from the card, and it finally quieted down.

Qi Si looked up, his gaze passing through the card to the mirror surface, seeing another world behind it.

A towering inferno burned fiercely within the mirror, painting the entire surface a uniform orange-red.

The night was lit as bright as day by the fire. Wooden houses collapsed one after another from near to far, tiles and beams crashing down as ashes and dust rolled outward in a chaotic flow.

Soldiers in armor and armed with weapons rode on steeds, holding high their sputtering torches, tirelessly scattering sparks onto the houses that had not yet fully burned.

Men and women in coarse hemp clothes fled in all directions, their cries and pleas for help interweaving and echoing endlessly.

These scenes were undoubtedly confirmation of the dungeon’s background, affirming the fact that soldiers had set fire to the town.

If the players had missed the paper clues scattered in the Residence earlier, they would have had a way to supplement that missing part of the world-building by discovering that the walls were made of mirrors.

But as it stood, the players already knew this information, so being reflected by the mirror like this was purely for the sake of suffering.

“Brother Lin, catch!” Lin Chen was the first to react, taking the Umbrella Filled with Pain from his inventory and thrusting the handle into Qi Si’s hand.

Qi Si snuffed out his scattered thoughts and opened the black umbrella to serve as a shield, blocking the light in front of the three of them.

The light reflected by the mirror was partially blocked, but to little avail; the residual power remained, as if the fire within the mirror was spreading into reality.

Qi Si, positioned in the middle, had relatively intact clothes, but Tang Yu and Lin Chen on either side each had half a sleeve burned away, and their skin was covered in charred burn marks.

Fortunately, the polished mirror surface soon dimmed. The light projected toward the players subsided, and the burning sensation gradually receded, leaving only a stifling, humid heat.

The reflection of the fire faded, and the images of the three people reappeared in the mirror.

Tang Yu glared at the mirror for two seconds and cursed under his breath, “Damn! I almost forgot that Ghosts are afraid of sunlight…”

In truth, remembering wouldn’t have helped. The transformation of the wall into a mirror was too sudden, and there was no cover nearby; few could have reacted in time to find shelter.

“There… there’s someone in the mirror!” Lin Chen suddenly pointed at the mirror surface, his eyes wide.

“Of course there’s someone in the— holy crap!” Tang Yu’s shoulders visibly jerked, and his face took on an expression identical to Lin Chen’s.

Qi Si followed their gaze.

The figures of the three players were reflected one-to-one in the mirror. Looking at them now, their faces appeared as pale as paper and their eyes as dark as wells; it was clear to the naked eye that they were not living people.

Aside from where the players stood, the rest of the mirror surface appeared blurry like frosted glass, and even the reflections of the buildings were as faint as water stains.

All the gaps around them were filled with thick fog, making the players look as if they were walking among the clouds, surrounded by mist.

Deeper within the haze, faint glimmers of light flickered—two by two, like human eyes, appearing and disappearing in the murky gloom.

They weren’t just like eyes; they were human eyes.

Qi Si saw pale gray outlines extending around the glimmers, sketching out long-haired human faces that flowed downward like splashed ink, forming figures in long-sleeved robes.

Face after face crowded together, pressed tightly against each other in the mist, easily bringing to mind uncorrupted corpses piled up in a mass grave.

Qi Si felt something and turned his head to look around. There was no mist or faces in the courtyard; aside from the players, there was nothing.

A strong and dangerous curiosity surged in his heart. He felt as if he were being controlled by some higher-dimensional power, desperately wanting to know what the faces in the mirror were, uncontrollably turning his head back to look at the mirror.

Strange, ashen faces that clearly did not belong to the living faced Qi Si at the same angle. Their lightless, soulless eyes stared blankly at him, solidifying and magnifying inch by inch before his eyes.

His heart felt as if it were being bound layer by layer with water-soaked bandages. A sense of suffocation and a viscous sensation enveloped his skin, exactly like being locked in a steamer filled with heavy steam.

“Why drive us away? Why burn our houses? We won’t leave…”

“You are incompetent! You can’t hold the city, so you bully us common folk…”

“Changing dynasties is common. What does it have to do with us commoners?”

Cries of accusation, sorrow, anger, confusion, and resentment exploded in his ears, pouring into his mind like an overwhelming tide.

The veins on Qi Si’s temples throbbed uncontrollably. An inexplicable fear spread from his heart, flowing through his limbs in a few breaths, impossible to dispel.

That fear was like a physical entity, bringing a tearing pain as it passed. Every component of his body screamed to scatter and flee, on the verge of collapsing and disintegrating at any moment.

“Don’t look.”

The 【Crimson High Priest】 card emitted a low hum. The High Priest in red on the card embraced the cross and leaned down slightly.

The blood-colored sleeves extended outward. A watery red instantly painted the system interface and spread from the corners to fill his entire field of vision.

His vision was blocked for a moment, as if a pair of hands had covered his eyes.

Qi Si lowered his eyes in time, forcing himself to stop looking at the reflection in the mirror.

All discomfort vanished instantly, like ripples on the surface of fine sand being smoothed by a breeze.

The fear caused by the dungeon mechanism disappeared entirely once the trigger was gone, absorbed by a vast void like water poured into a desert, leaving no trace behind.

Non-narrative information merged into his thoughts, informing him of clues in the form of inspiration in his mind.

From this, Qi Si knew that those faces in the mirror were Nothingness.

Nothingness is silent and colorless, yet it is not void; it can be known and seen through mirrors.

The accidental glimpse of an illusion in a mirror, a face in the water after rain, or a fleeting shadow in the void after a lightning strike—all could be Nothingness.

Humans, Ghosts, Zhan, and Nothingness reinforce and counteract each other.

Zhan fear Nothingness, and Ghosts fear Zhan, just as humans fear Ghosts.

The mildest result is a trembling shock; the most severe is the dissipation of the soul.

【Hidden effect of the identity card ‘Secret Seeker’ has been triggered. It cannot be activated again in this dungeon.】

The watery red blocking his vision gradually faded. The High Priest in red leaned weakly against the cross, closed his crimson eyes, and fell into a deep sleep.

Qi Si kept his head lowered, staring at the bricks on the ground.

Without the reflection of the mirror, he could no longer see the reflection of Nothingness, allowing him to deceive himself and pretend he didn’t know he was surrounded by Ghosts that could make him vanish.

In his 【The Undying】 state, he lacked the perception of and reaction to emotions, both positive and negative. Aside from the influence of dungeon mechanisms, the natural generation of emotion had become a pipe dream.

Thus, from beginning to end, his breathing rate had not changed one bit, and his face remained calm, showing no sign of anything being amiss.

Beside him, Lin Chen and Tang Yu had also heard the voices of Nothingness in the mirror.

After recovering from the jump scare, they both leaned toward the mirror to investigate.

Tang Yu locked eyes with the phantom of a long-haired woman and said thoughtfully, “These people in the mirror are probably the townsfolk who were burned to death in Yanghua Town. Are they trapped in the mirror? Could it be that Master Meng was afraid of their revenge and hired someone to trap them?”

Qi Si snapped out of it and said calmly, “They aren’t trapped. It’s just that we usually can’t see them, and can only perceive their existence through the mirror. In other words, they are right beside us.”

The tone of these words was completely flat, adding a touch of chill to the air for no reason.

Lin Chen subconsciously rubbed his bare right arm and leaned closer to Qi Si. “Brother Lin, how do you know they are Nothingness?”

“It’s mentioned in the Underworld Record.” Qi Si pulled the ancient book from his robe, casually flipped through the later pages, and put it back. “I hadn’t read this part before, so I didn’t know. I saw it just now, so now I know.”

Lin Chen didn’t doubt him and gave a dull “Oh.”

Tang Yu looked at Qi Si suspiciously, opening his mouth to speak.

“Creak—”

The sound of a door being pushed open came from not far away, interrupting his unspoken words.

The players turned in response, looking toward the source of the sound.

A middle-aged man in green official robes walked out, wearing a high crown and a long beard, with the air of a scholar.

He cupped his hands toward the players from a distance and said in a loud voice, “I am Meng Fang. I have just finished attending to my mother and seen her to sleep. I have kept you brave gentlemen waiting.”

Qi Si looked down and saw that he had no shadow.