Chapter 88: Strange Things and Stranger Events
This novel is translated and hosted on bcatranslation
Yu Sheng leaned closer to the mirror, carefully examining the faint “second reflection” that seemed to be lurking there. The doubled image gave him the feeling of looking through a window on a dark night, where the reflection of the room and the scenery outside mixed together. The blurry cave, with its snowy landscape beyond, seemed real, almost as if it existed somewhere just beyond the mirror. Yet, it was hazy, like an illusion that couldn’t quite be grasped.
Irene scampered up Yu Sheng’s shoulder, wrapping her tiny arms around his head while curiously staring at the mirror on the wall. After a long moment, she finally murmured, “Could the snow be blowing over from the other side of the mirror?”
“You can see it too?” Yu Sheng looked at her, surprised.
“Of course I can. What’s so surprising about that?” Irene seemed confused. “I’m not blind, you know.” Beside them, Foxy nodded before Yu Sheng could respond. “Benefactor, I can see it too,” she said.
Yu Sheng scratched his head, feeling a little awkward. “It’s just that, recently, with all the dealings I’ve had with Little Red Riding Hood and Li Lin, I started to feel like maybe not everyone could see the same things I do. It’s made me a bit paranoid.”
As he spoke, Yu Sheng weighed his options for a few moments before cautiously extending his hand toward the mirror’s surface, attempting to touch it.
He remembered the last time he had touched this mirror—it had shown him a strange wasteland, with a broken doll and a shadowy monster both destroyed in the middle of it. What would happen this time? What new vision would appear in the mirror?
Irene immediately clutched his hair tightly, her tiny body tensing in fear as she watched him. “Hey, be careful! What if something weird—”
“Ouch, ouch, ouch! Let go first!” Yu Sheng yelped.
“Oh, right, sorry. I just got nervous…” The little doll released his hair, and at the same time, Yu Sheng’s fingertips touched the mirror.
It was cold. It felt like touching a block of ice. But other than the chill, nothing happened. The image in the mirror didn’t change at all.
“It doesn’t seem like anything happened,” Irene said, cautiously reaching out to touch the mirror as well. “It’s just really cold.”
Yu Sheng nodded, pulling his hand back. His brow furrowed as he studied the mirror. Then, he noticed something—the layered reflection in the mirror was slowly fading. Within just a few breaths, the snowy cave scene vanished, leaving only the ordinary reflection of the room.
Yu Sheng hesitated for a moment, then touched the mirror again. The ice-cold feeling was gone. It was just at normal temperature now.
“Benefactor,” Foxy said, breaking the silence after watching the whole scene unfold. “Was the mirror always like this before?”
“It’s always been strange,” Yu Sheng replied, his tone heavy. “Sometimes it shows scenes from who knows where. But until today, it was just strange reflections—never anything like this. There was even snow in the room this time, and a weird metal thing fell onto the floor.”
He glanced at the strange metallic device he had picked up from under the table. The pile of snow in the corner had melted, leaving a small puddle on the floor. The black metal thing was still in his hand. The strange image in the mirror had disappeared, but the objects, seemingly from that other place, had not. They were real, left behind in the world.
Just like Irene often said: this was truly bizarre.
“I’m staying in your room tonight,” Irene declared, clutching Yu Sheng’s head tighter. Her tiny body was visibly trembling. “I’ll sleep on the chair or the desk, whatever! But I’m not staying in this creepy room!”
“I wasn’t planning on letting anyone stay in here anyway,” Yu Sheng said, pulling her hands off his head. “This room’s way too strange. From now on, if I’m not around, don’t open this door for anything.”
Irene and Foxy nodded quickly, agreeing without hesitation.
“Besides,” Yu Sheng added, lifting Irene off his shoulder, “even if you don’t sleep in this room, you could just stay with Foxy. Why insist on being in my room?”
“The fox hits people with her tail in her sleep!” Irene protested, flailing in the air as he held her up. “You might kick me off the bed, but at least I just fall to the floor. When she whips her tail, I get slammed into the wall!”
Then came a whole stream of complaints—about not having her own room, being overlooked because of her size, not even having her own bed, getting kicked out of places at night. Dolls didn’t need to breathe, so Irene could complain nonstop without pausing for air, making Yu Sheng’s head pound.
He even thought about stuffing her into Foxy’s tail—but he knew the chaos that would cause, so he resisted the urge. Instead, he carried the chattering doll and led Foxy out of the strange room. He locked the door carefully, checking and double-checking it.
“Benefactor, should I stay outside the door tonight?” Foxy asked softly, seeing how worried Yu Sheng seemed. “If anything happens inside, I can call you.”
The image of a nine-tailed fox sitting in the hallway like a guard dog flashed through Yu Sheng’s mind, and he shook his head. “No, it’s fine. It’s not like this room just started acting weird today.”
He paused, as if remembering something, then set Irene down on the floor and pulled out the new phone he had gotten from the Special Affairs Bureau. Irene stopped her complaints, curious about what he was doing. “What are you doing?”
“When strange things happen, ask the experts. I’m going to post about it on that ‘Borderland Communications’ forum. Maybe someone will recognize it.” Yu Sheng fiddled with the phone as he spoke, trying to figure out how to use the app. “There’s got to be an option to upload photos somewhere… Those detectives and investigators who go to strange places all the time must need something like that… Ah, here it is.”
He held the weird metal object in one hand, his phone in the other, snapping several pictures from different angles. Then he uploaded them to the message wall on the public channel.
He thought for a moment, then searched through the available channels, eventually finding “Ancient Relics Discussion” and “Unusual Phenomena Discussion.” Both seemed relevant, so he posted the photos there too, adding a brief message like the ones he had seen others post:
“Unknown object, made of metal. No signs of corrosion or life. Found it in a room that seemed to have experienced snowfall. Also suspect it’s related to a mirror that shows distant scenes.”
Yu Sheng had originally wanted to write “found it at home,” but deleted that part. After all, most people didn’t find strange objects like this in their homes, or piles of snow in sealed rooms. Wutong Road No. 66 was a special place, and it wouldn’t be wise to reveal too much about its secrets.
Yu Sheng considered himself to have pretty good common sense for a normal person.
“Will anyone reply?” Irene asked, skillfully climbing back up to his shoulder to peek at the phone screen. “With just a few pictures and such a short description—other people write at least a few hundred words, some even include videos…”
“I don’t have much more to add,” Yu Sheng sighed. “The room’s just a regular room. And the thing itself doesn’t seem to do anything unusual.”
“True…” Irene murmured.
Yu Sheng returned to the living room, waiting for replies while watching TV with Irene and Foxy. It wasn’t until late in the evening that a notification finally popped up on his phone.
He opened it to find a response from a user named “Three Thousand Wicked Disciples” in the “Ancient Relics Discussion” channel: “Can you describe the environment where you found this object? Is it in an Otherworld? If so, what type? Are there any intelligent beings, or traces left by them?”
Yu Sheng was a bit taken aback by the string of questions. Still, it was the only response he’d gotten so far from a fellow “investigator,” and his first interaction with a stranger on this platform. Feeling a bit excited, he quickly typed a reply:
“Otherworld, an old residential house. It’s just a regular modern living space,” Yu Sheng typed, looking around. “Pretty peaceful, no monsters. As for intelligent beings—”
He paused, glancing at Irene, who was sitting on his lap, and Foxy, who was busy grooming her tail beside him. “There are intelligent beings.”
Irene peeked at his phone and then looked up at him. “Do you really think someone will have an answer for you? Even the Special Affairs Bureau didn’t know about Wutong Road No. 66 until a few days ago, and now you’re seriously discussing it with some random stranger?”
“I know, but asking doesn’t hurt, and who knows?” Yu Sheng shrugged. “Maybe nobody knows what’s going on with Wutong Road No. 66, but this weird thing that suddenly appeared in our home—that might be from ‘out there.’ There’s a chance someone’s seen it before.”
Irene thought for a moment, then shrugged and went back to watching TV. Yu Sheng’s phone buzzed again soon after.
It was another message from “Three Thousand Wicked Disciples”: “I’ve never heard of such an Otherworld. Your description is quite peculiar… But the object itself is interesting. It appears man-made, yet the inscriptions on the corner are strange. Someone at the ‘Academy’ might be interested.”