Chapter 088

Chapter 88: Strange Things, Strange Events

Yu Sheng leaned close to the mirror, studying the faint “second reflection” even more carefully: the layered image felt like the way a window throws back a dim glow at night, with the outside view mixing into the glass. A dark cave and the mouth of the cave full of falling snow looked as if they really existed somewhere just beyond the mirror, yet everything stayed blurry and doubled.

Irene scrambled up his body in a few quick moves and perched on his shoulder, hugging his head as she stared at the mirror; after a long moment she muttered: “Could that snow be ‘blowing’ in from the other side of the mirror?”

Yu Sheng glanced at her in surprise and asked, “You can see it too?”

Irene sounded confused as she answered, “Of course, what is there to be surprised about? I’m not blind.”

Foxy spoke up before Yu Sheng could say more and nodded: “Benefactor, I can see it as well.”

Yu Sheng scratched his hair and said, “It’s just that after dealing with Little Red Riding Hood and Li Lin lately, I keep feeling that what I can see isn’t always what other people can see. I’ve gotten a little jumpy.”

As he talked, he weighed things in his head for two or three seconds, then slowly reached out to touch the mirror’s surface.

He remembered that the last time he touched this mirror, it showed a strange ruin. In the middle of the ruins, a broken doll and a huge shadow monster perished together. [So what about this time? What will it show now?]

Irene instantly clutched his hair, watching his move with worry: “Hey, be careful. If anything feels wrong…”

Yu Sheng winced and said, “Ow, ow, ow… let go first.”

Irene loosened her fingers in a hurry and mumbled, “Oh, right. I got nervous and did it without thinking.”

Her little doll hands let go, and Yu Sheng’s fingertip touched the mirror.

It was very cold, like touching ice. But besides that icy chill, the scene in the mirror didn’t change at all.

Irene gathered her courage and tapped the glass too, then said, “Seems fine… just really cold on the hand.”

Yu Sheng hummed in reply and pulled back his finger, frowning at the mirror. Right then, he noticed the layered image begin to fade. After only a few breaths, the cave mouth with all that swirling snow vanished without a trace.

Only the normal reflection of the room remained.

He hesitated, reached out again, and found the icy chill was gone. The mirror had returned to a normal temperature.

Foxy had been watching for a while and finally asked, “Benefactor, has this mirror always been like this?”

Yu Sheng answered in a heavy tone, “It’s been off for a long time. Sometimes it shows views from who-knows-where. But before, it only showed strange scenes. It never did this… the room actually ended up with snow in it, and some iron lump fell onto the floor from who-knows-where.”

He glanced at the weird metal gadget he had just picked up from under the table.

The snow in the corner had already melted, leaving wet marks on the floor. The dark iron lump still sat in his hand. The mirror’s odd image had disappeared, but these things that looked like they came out of the mirror did not fade like illusion arts. They stayed in the real world.

[Like Irene always says: this is seriously cursed.]

Irene hugged his head tight again and blurted, “I’m sleeping in your room tonight! I can sleep on the chair or the desk, I don’t care. I am not staying in this room!”

Yu Sheng pried her hands off his head and said, “I wasn’t planning to put anyone in this room anyway. This place is way too strange. From now on, if I’m not around, don’t open doors at random.”

Irene and Foxy nodded at once.

Yu Sheng lifted Irene off his shoulder and looked at her with a serious face, then added, “Even if you don’t sleep here, you can share a room with Foxy. Why do you have to cling to my room?”

The little doll flapped in midair and protested, “The tail monster whips people with her tail when she sleeps! If you kick me, at worst I fall to the floor. When she swings her tail, I get slapped into the wall. Didn’t you see?”

Then she went off in a nonstop string of complaints, saying she didn’t even have her own room, that nobody took her seriously because she was small, that she had no bed, and that at night people kept shooing her around. Since she didn’t need to breathe, her rant never paused, and it made Yu Sheng’s head buzz.

Yu Sheng even thought about stuffing her straight into Foxy’s tails, but he imagined the chaos that would follow and let the idea drop.

He carried the chattering doll, walked out of the creepy room with Foxy, locked the door carefully, and pushed it several times to make sure.

Seeing how uneasy he still looked, Foxy whispered, “Benefactor, should I keep watch by the door tonight? If I hear anything, I’ll call you.”

Yu Sheng pictured a Nine-Tailed Fox sprawled in the hallway staring at a door, then shook his head: “No need. This room being cursed isn’t new.”

He suddenly remembered something. After setting Irene down, he took out the new phone he had gotten from the Special Affairs Bureau.

Irene finally stopped babbling and asked with interest, “What are you doing?”

Yu Sheng said, “If it’s a cursed-door kind of problem, ask the experts. I’ll post on Border Communications and see if anyone recognizes this thing. There should be a photo upload, right? Those detectives and investigators who explore weird places would need it… ah, there it is.”

He held the phone in one hand and the odd metal gadget in the other, took several pictures from different angles, then posted them to the public message wall.

After thinking a bit more, he searched the channel list and found two that seemed related, “Ancient and Odd Objects” and “Anomalies,” and posted the photos there too. He copied how others wrote and added a short note:

“Unknown item, metal. No corrosion or living traits. Picked up in a room. When found, the room looked like it had snowed. Suspect it is linked to a mirror that can show a faraway scene.”

He had first typed “picked up at home,” then deleted it. He figured most people would never find such a thing at home, and they would never see snow piled up in a sealed room. Wutong Road 66 was a special place, and he shouldn’t give away too many of its secrets.

[See? I do have normal common sense.]

Irene climbed back onto his shoulder, peeked at the screen, and asked, “Will anyone reply? With just a few photos and barely any description… I see other posts with hundreds of words, some even with videos.”

Yu Sheng sighed and said, “I don’t have more to add. The environment is just a room. As for the object, holding it feels like nothing special.”

“That’s true,” Irene muttered.

Yu Sheng went back to the living room and watched TV with Irene and Foxy while waiting for replies on Border Communications. He waited all the way until night when a message alert finally popped up.

He opened it. A user named “Wicked Disciple 3000” had replied in “Ancient and Odd Objects”: “Please describe the surroundings in detail. Is it inside an Otherworld? What type? Are there intelligent beings present in that Otherworld, or signs left by such beings?”

Staring at the long list of questions, Yu Sheng felt a bit dazed. Still, this was the only person so far who had noticed his post, and it was also his first time talking with a stranger on that platform as a Spirit Realm Detective. Feeling a little excited, he typed quickly:

“Otherworld. A private house. It looks like a normal modern home,” he wrote while glancing around, “very calm, no monsters spawning. Intelligent beings…”

He paused, looked at Irene sitting on his lap and at Foxy carefully grooming her tails, then added, “Yes, there are intelligent beings.”

Irene tugged at his phone, peeked at the screen, and tilted her head: “Do you really think anyone can answer you? The Special Affairs Bureau didn’t even know Wutong Road 66 existed a few days ago, yet you’re seriously chatting with some stranger about it?”

Yu Sheng said, “I know. But asking doesn’t cost money. You never know. Maybe no one understands Wutong Road 66, but this thing that dropped into our place might have come from ‘outside,’ and someone might recognize it.”

Irene thought about it, went “oh,” and kept watching TV.

His phone buzzed again. It was still from Wicked Disciple 3000: “I have not heard of an Otherworld like that. Your description is truly unusual… but the item itself is interesting. It looks man-made, yet the corner inscriptions are quite odd. Experts at the Academy might be interested.”