This room wasn't like this before!
Of course, Yu Sheng realized this instantly—he still clearly remembered what this room that had once trapped Irene looked like. It was empty, with no furnishings, not even a chair. Only an oil painting hung alone on the wall directly opposite the door…
Not like now, with various pieces of furniture and a mirror hanging on the wall directly opposite the door.
Doubts and a trace of unease emerged in his heart, but Yu Sheng didn't feel any dangerous aura in the room.
Of course, he knew that this so-called "sense of crisis" was very mysterious, but after several near-death experiences, he did feel that he had already developed some perception of danger. And here… he felt that the room in front of him was very safe.
Standing at the door and hesitating for a few seconds, Yu Sheng stepped into the room.
Everything in the room looked very normal. Nothing suddenly spawned from the corner with a pitchfork or dropped a brazier from the ceiling when he stepped in. The sun outside was just right, and the air in the room was also fresh, with no smell of decay or suspicious fishy odor.
Yu Sheng checked the room and confirmed that the furniture here was just ordinary items. Then he finally came to the mirror that was directly opposite the door.
In his impression, mirrors were generally not placed directly opposite the door. According to his understanding, feng shui was one aspect, and another reason was that a mirror directly opposite the door could easily frighten people who opened the door and entered the room at night.
But he wasn't sure if there was a similar saying in this "Boundary City."
He just felt that this mirror directly opposite the door gave him a somewhat… strange feeling.
And this strangeness was not only because Irene's oil painting used to hang here, but also because the scene in the mirror… looked strange.
It was an indescribable strangeness. The scene reflected in the mirror was actually very normal. It was the appearance of this room at this moment. Yu Sheng carefully examined it for a long time but couldn't find the source of the strange feeling in his heart. He just became more and more suspicious as he looked—what was wrong?
Was it that the size and position of the objects in the mirror had shifted in a way that was imperceptible to the naked eye? Was there a dissonance in the brightness and darkness of the picture? Or… did something appear in the mirror that was not originally in the room?
Yu Sheng thought for a moment and gently brushed his finger across the surface of the mirror.
A cold touch came, and the surface of the mirror rippled like water where his finger touched it. The reflection in the mirror shattered with the ripples in an instant!
Yu Sheng's eyes widened in an instant, and he subconsciously took half a step back. And in this less than a second, the mirror had turned into a pitch black—the original reflection of the room shattered and melted in the ripples, and a thick, ink-like darkness eventually filled the entire frame, like it had swallowed everything, slowly writhing, rising and falling, and spinning before Yu Sheng's eyes.
Then, something new gradually appeared in the darkness. Yu Sheng suppressed the unease in his heart, took a step forward, and looked carefully. Gradually, the thick, black veil-like darkness faded before his eyes, allowing him to see the scene deep in the mirror:
A doll—but not Irene, but a strange face—was lying shattered in a ruin that was unrecognizable. Her limbs were broken, her dress was tattered, and she was covered in wounds, as if she had experienced a tragic and fierce battle and had finally died of exhaustion.
In astonishment, Yu Sheng widened his eyes, trying hard to see more in the mirror. And the mirror seemed to really respond to his thoughts. The picture in the darkness slowly moved. Yu Sheng noticed that the perspective presented by the mirror was pulling away, tilting, and presenting a wider panoramic view—
He saw the situation around the dead doll, saw the even larger ruins. He saw many structures like classical columns and flying eaves, and those structures were all broken and dilapidated, collapsing in the chaotic darkness like mud. Many fragments of the doll's broken limbs were scattered around, as if telling him a message:
Everything here was destroyed by this battle.
Suddenly, a sentence that Irene had said to him before echoed in Yu Sheng's mind:
"…Living dolls are blessed. I'm much better at fighting in Otherworlds than those so-called investigators and spiritual detectives…"
"Are these 'living dolls' really that good at fighting…?" Yu Sheng couldn't help but mutter to himself.
But even so, the doll in the mirror still died. Something more powerful than her had killed her—as the perspective shifted, Yu Sheng saw the "enemy" that had killed the doll.
A… huge shadow. Yu Sheng didn't know what it was. He just felt that it was very large, almost ten times the size of the doll. Its silhouette was roughly humanoid, but it also seemed to have twisted and overlapping wings on its back. It was also lying in a ruin. Part of its huge body had melted like mud, merging with the chaos around the ruins, and also with the fragments of the doll's limbs scattered in the ruins. The rest of its body structure was full of twists and damage.
Yu Sheng didn't know if the twists and damage on the huge shadow's body were caused by the doll or if it was originally like that—after all, this thing already looked quite abstract.
But there was one thing he could guess. The doll and the huge shadow with wings should have perished together in the end.
And just as Yu Sheng wanted to see more details, the picture in front of him suddenly rippled like water again.
Everything in the depths of the darkness shattered and melted in an instant. The thick, curtain-like darkness instantly surged up and then retreated towards the surrounding frame. In the blink of an eye, what was in front of Yu Sheng was again an ordinary mirror, reflecting the scene in the room.
Yu Sheng stared blankly at this scene, then knocked and touched the mirror several more times, but failed to evoke any more abnormalities.
What was that just now?
Probably because he had dealt with too many abnormal things these two days, Yu Sheng felt that his ability to accept things had become much stronger. At this moment, he didn't feel that the strange scene just now was scary at all, but was just full of curiosity about what he had seen.
Was what appeared in the mirror something that had really happened? Who was that dead doll? What was that huge shadow that had perished with the doll? Where was that ruin? And why… would all this appear in this house, in front of him?
Yu Sheng frowned deeply as he thought, and couldn't help but think of another question:
Did the scene recorded in the mirror have anything to do with Irene?
The dead doll did not look like Irene. Although her face was disfigured when she died, at least her striking golden hair was completely different from Irene's. But for some reason, when he saw that doll, Yu Sheng couldn't help but think of a certain girl who was watching TV on the first floor, sealed in an oil painting.
After a moment, Yu Sheng stopped his deep thoughts. He looked at the mirror on the wall, reached out to hold the frame, and gently pulled, trying to see if he could take it down and move it to another position.
The mirror didn't move at all, as solid as if it had been cast into the wall.
After trying several times, Yu Sheng gave up.
He turned and walked towards the door, but before leaving the room, he suddenly turned back and quickly swept his gaze over the entire room.
The furnishings in the room were still the same, and the mirror had not changed at all.
Yu Sheng frowned and closed the door.
After two or three seconds, he suddenly pushed the door open again, as if to catch the room off guard.
There was no change in the room. It was still the same.
Yu Sheng stood at the door, holding the doorknob, his head poking into the room and looking around suspiciously. He gradually felt like a lunatic.
After confirming it several more times, he finally stopped messing with the door.
But he did not return to his bedroom. Instead, he ran down the stairs and came to the dining room.
Irene, who was watching TV at the dining table, heard the noise from the side and poked her head over the edge of the frame to look. "Hey? Yu Sheng, didn't you go to sleep? Insomnia? I don't tell bedtime stories…"
Still that carefree and familiar manner.
Yu Sheng didn't say anything, just sat opposite Irene and looked at her seriously, as if he were carefully observing something.
This finally made the doll in the painting feel a little awkward.
"Why are you looking at me…" Irene shrank her neck. "Let me tell you, I know I'm very good-looking, but you have no future with a 2D character…"
The topic that Yu Sheng had been brewing all the way was completely broken by Irene's sentence.
"Ahem, I'm talking about serious business!" He had to cough dryly and awkwardly brought the topic back on track. "Do you still remember what the room where you were hung on the wall looked like before?"
"I remember," Irene thought for a moment and replied naturally. "There was nothing, it was empty. You could see a door opposite, and wallpaper—the wallpaper in the corner was moldy and peeling, and you didn't even fix it."
Yu Sheng nodded. Very good, at least on this matter, Irene's memory was consistent with his.
"Second question, do you remember a place—it looks like a ruin, with many classical columns and collapsed stone walls and flying eaves. The ruins are 'soaked' in darkness, and there's a doll—don't worry about whether it's you or not, anyway, there's a doll dead in the ruins, a very tragic death, with arms and legs scattered all over the place…"
Irene instantly shrank her neck. "That sounds really scary."
"Don't worry about whether it's scary or not. Just tell me if you have any impression of this scene."
"No."
Irene replied without hesitation.