If Du Sanying had been here, he would've shouted for everyone to run. He would have sensed something wrong with the mirror immediately.
Unfortunately, he was still dizzy from hitting his head and hadn't come over.
Perhaps that was his luck—allowing him to narrowly avoid disaster.
"What's inside the mirror?" Mu Sicheng muttered. "What did Puppet Zhang see before it exploded?"
Bai Liu also felt rather unlucky.
He clearly disliked water, yet every time, he ended up in a game involving it. Water seemed strangely fond of him—but he hated it. And to make matters worse, he couldn't swim.
With a quiet sigh, Bai Liu paddled awkwardly through the water like a dog, making his way toward Mu Sicheng.
Mu Sicheng honestly recounted everything he knew, then asked, "Still, no matter what Puppet Zhang was trying to say, our top priority is finding the remaining twenty broken lenses. Where do you think they are?"
"It's impossible for them to be on the passengers," Mu Sicheng continued, thinking aloud. "Antique City is the terminal station. There should only be passengers getting off, not boarding. Could they be in the station? But we boarded at Antique City Station. I searched around back then and didn't see any broken lenses."
"We've also searched the train several times. They shouldn't be on the train either…" He frowned, still analyzing. "Could there be another group of passengers at Antique City?"
Bai Liu interrupted him.
He turned to look at Mu Sicheng. "I know what Puppet Zhang was trying to tell you."
Mu Sicheng paused. "What did he want to say? You mean—what's inside the mirror?"
Bai Liu's gaze shifted to the mirror, his eyes darkening.
"The last monster is inside the mirror."
"All the broken lenses were found on monsters. Whether it was the exploding passengers or the Brother Thieves, the lenses were embedded in them. Our monster book is still missing the final page—in other words, the final monster. The remaining twenty lenses are most likely on that last monster."
Mu Sicheng frowned. "What last monster? Generally speaking, the monsters in this game are based on dead people or animals. According to the news reports, the only confirmed deaths were the passengers and the thieves. That means only those two types should exist as monsters. Is there some kind of ghost in the mirror? But the game never gave us any hints about that. We didn't trigger any mirror-related story tasks either."
"No," Bai Liu said calmly. "There doesn't need to be a ghost in the mirror. Something else died in this incident."
His eyes shifted slightly. "The broken mirror itself."
Mu Sicheng glanced back at it. "You mean… the mirror is the final monster?"
"Yes." Bai Liu bent down, staring at the mirror. "That's probably what Puppet Zhang was trying to tell you."
"I already felt something was off," Bai Liu continued. "The system announced that Puppet Zhang died because his mental value reached zero. That's strange. He was at the center of the explosion and had only a dozen HP left. Under normal circumstances, he should have died from HP depletion, not mental collapse. I thought you used some item to torture him."
Mu Sicheng went silent for a moment. "I'm not that bored."
"Apparently not." Bai Liu studied the mirror thoughtfully. "Which means something else drove his mental value to zero—something like this mirror monster."
"I originally thought the mirror was strengthening the monsters," Bai Liu continued, drifting slightly in the water as he examined the cracked surface. "That's why they weakened after we removed the lenses. But you mentioned the Mirror City Bombing incident. In reality, the thieves were afraid of the mirror. If this game is based on that event, then the lenses shouldn't have had a beneficial effect on them. That would be illogical."
Mu Sicheng grabbed onto a hand ring to steady himself and looked at Bai Liu in confusion. "Then how do you explain the monsters weakening whenever we take the lenses?"
"To us…" Bai Liu held his gaze steady. He paused briefly before continuing. "Let's change our perspective. The mirror shattered into four hundred fragments on the train. All four hundred fragments supposedly ended up embedded in passengers and thieves. But it's impossible for every fragment to have landed perfectly inside their bodies. It's even stranger that they're lodged in vital, well-protected areas."
"…That is strange," Mu Sicheng admitted. "So what caused it?"
Bai Liu lowered his eyes.
"The only reasonable explanation is that the fragments weren't distributed by the explosion. The monsters collected them themselves. They deliberately embedded the broken lenses into the most important parts of their bodies."
"Collected them themselves?" Mu Sicheng looked surprised. "But didn't you say they're afraid of the mirror?"
"Yes. That's precisely why they collected them." Bai Liu's expression darkened. "There are two teams collecting lenses in this game—us and the passengers. We're collecting them to reassemble the mirror. They're collecting them to stop us."
"They fear the mirror. They don't want us to complete it. So they hid the fragments they gathered—distributing them across different bodies, embedding them in vital areas to protect them."
"We're the ones stealing them."
"They didn't weaken because the lenses were enhancing them," Bai Liu concluded calmly. "They weakened because the thing they feared ended up in our hands. They were afraid of us."
Mu Sicheng frowned. "Then why did they do all this?"
"There's only one reason." Bai Liu's gaze settled on the mirror. "It's because of the mirror itself."
The moment he finished speaking, the mirror beneath the water suddenly lit up. Flames roared inside it.
Puppet Zhang appeared within the mirror's surface.
The triangular gap in the glass happened to align perfectly with where his eyes should have been, leaving him sightless. He stumbled around blindly, muttering in confusion while tapping against the mirror's inner surface.
"Where is this place?" Before he could process what was happening, flames erupted behind him. They began to burn him.
Puppet Zhang screamed and ran, desperately slamming against the mirror as if trying to escape. But the fire chased him relentlessly. There was nowhere to run.
Soon, the flames consumed him entirely, reducing him to a charred corpse.
It was exactly the same as the passengers.
"I was wondering earlier," Bai Liu said lightly, raising an eyebrow as he watched the burning figure, "why were there so many severely burned corpses in what was supposedly an explosion. Explosions usually cause concussive injuries. They rarely burn people to death. Yet every monster we encountered, passengers and thieves alike, was a burned corpse. Now I understand."
Finally, the flames in the mirror slowly extinguished, and Puppet Zhang's burnt corpse also disappeared. The clean and smooth surface of the mirror clearly reflected the contents of the train. The only difference was that there was a broken lens in the train in the mirror.
"It seems like we've found the last piece of the broken lens. It was on the last monster."
[System Tip: Congratulations to player Bai Liu for completing all background settings of Exploding Last Train and entering the final epilogue—Train in the Mirror.]
[System Tip: Congratulations to player Bai Liu for unlocking the complete Monster Book.]
[The Exploding Last Train Monster Book has refreshed — Exploding Passengers (1/3)]
[Monster Name: Exploding Passengers]
[Features: Extremely high movement speed (1,000 movement points). Flames grant bonus effects.]
[Weaknesses: Broken lenses, water, Ghost Mirror.]
[Attack Method: Being burned by an Exploding Passenger reduces both Health Points and Mental Value.]
[The Exploding Last Train Monster Book has refreshed — Brother Thief (2/3)]
[Monster Name: Older Brother Thief / Younger Brother Thief]
[Features:• Younger Brother Thief — Extremely tall and strong. Very fast movement speed (1,400 movement points; flames grant bonus effects). Can unleash one large-scale attack every minute. Prefers using his fists to subdue opponents. Extremely high attack power.• Older Brother Thief — Extremely fast movement speed (3,400 movement points; flames grant bonus effects). Skilled at stealing.]
[Weaknesses: Broken lenses, water, Ghost Mirror.]
[Attack Methods: Scratching and stealing / Fire attacks / Rage Hammer.]
[The Exploding Last Train Monster Book has refreshed — Ghost Mirror (3/3)]
[Monster Name: Ghost Mirror]
[Features: ??? (Unknown. Cannot be analyzed by the system.)]
[Weaknesses: None. (Players are not required to discover its weaknesses.)]
[Attack Method: ??? (Unknown. To be explored.)]
[You have triggered the wandering god-level NPC — Ghost Mirror!!]
[The survival rate of the game instance "Exploding Last Train" is rapidly declining. Recalculating… The original clearance rate was 23%. It has now dropped to ??%!!]
[Warning! Warning! This NPC is extremely dangerous and has no clear weaknesses. Once the NPC initiates a killing sequence, players cannot rely on weaknesses to escape. Death is inevitable. Please accelerate game progress and exit the instance before the NPC begins killing!]
[The god-level NPC will awaken once all broken lenses are collected. Please leave the game immediately after completing the mirror!]
"Wow." Bai Liu studied his panel with mild curiosity. He showed no sign of panic despite the situation. "Isn't it supposed to be rare to encounter a god-level NPC?" he asked lightly. "Why do I keep running into one?"
Meanwhile, Mu Sicheng's mentality had completely collapsed. After checking his own panel, his face shifted between green and white. His expression twisted ferociously as he ground his teeth and glared at Bai Liu, looking as though he might throw him straight to the shark lurking in the darkness. "That luck value of 0 is really living up to its reputation."
"Seems like God thinks I'm lucky enough to meet him every time." Bai Liu shrugged calmly. "I can't help it."