This room wasn't like this originally!
Yu Sheng of course realized it instantly—he still clearly remembered what this room that had once trapped Erin looked like: empty and bare, devoid of any furnishings, not even a chair in sight, just a lonely painting hanging directly opposite the door...
Not like it is now, filled with various types of furniture, with a mirror hanging on the wall facing the door.
A sense of doubt and unease arose in Yu Sheng's heart, yet he didn't feel any dangerous aura in the room.
Of course, he knew that such a so-called "sense of crisis" might sound mystical, but after several near-death experiences, he did truly feel that he had developed some kind of perception of danger, and here... he felt that the room before him was very safe.
Hesitating at the doorway for a few seconds, Yu Sheng stepped into the room.
Everything in the room looked very normal; there wasn't any creature suddenly charging out from a corner carrying a pitchfork or a brazier falling from above. The sunlight was shining through the window, and the air in the room was fresh without any rotten or suspiciously fishy smells.
Yu Sheng checked around the room and confirmed that the furniture and décor were just ordinary items, so he finally came to the mirror facing the room's door.
In his memory, it was unusual to place a mirror directly facing the door because, aside from Feng Shui considerations, a mirror opposite the door could easily startle someone entering the room at night.
But he wasn't sure if there was a similar belief in "Boundary City."
He just felt that the mirror facing the door gave him a feeling of... eeriness.
And this eerie feeling wasn't just because it had originally been the place where Erin's painting hung, but also because the scene in the mirror... looked strange.
It was an indescribable strangeness. The reflection in the mirror actually looked very normal, just the room as it appeared at the moment. Yu Sheng scrutinized it carefully for a long time, but couldn't pinpoint the origin of that weird feeling in his heart, the more he looked, the more he doubted—what exactly was wrong?
Were the sizes and positions of items in the mirror subtly shifted in a way that was hard to detect with the naked eye? Was there a discordance in light and shade? Or... was there something in the mirror that didn't exist in the room?
Yu Sheng pondered for a moment, then extended a finger to gently brush the surface of the mirror.
A cold sensation came to him, and as his finger touched it, ripples like water waves emanated from the spot, shattering the reflection in the blink of an eye!
Yu Sheng's eyes widened instantly, and he involuntarily took a half step back, and in less than a second, the mirror had turned pitch-black—the reflection of the room had fractured and dissolved into those ripples, a darkness as thick as ink ultimately filling the entire frame, slowly undulating, rising, and rotating before him as if it had swallowed everything.
Then, out of that darkness new things slowly emerged. Yu Sheng contained his unease, stepped forward, and looked carefully. Gradually, the thick black veil-like darkness before his eyes faded away, revealing the scene deep within the mirror:
A living doll—but not Erin, it was a stranger's face—lying broken and scattered among the ruins, which were indistinguishable from their original form. Her limbs were broken, her gown torn, and she was covered in scars as if she had suffered a ferocious and terrible battle, ultimately exhausting her strength and dying in combat.
In his astonishment, Yu Sheng's eyes widened as he strove to see more in the reflection, and as if the mirror truly responded to his thoughts, the scene within the darkness began to slowly shift. Yu Sheng noticed that the perspective in the reflection was pulling back, tilting, unfolding a broader panorama—
He saw the surroundings of the dead living doll, more extensive ruins around, he saw structures that resembled classical columns and flying eaves, all of which were broken, slumping, collapsing into the chaotic darkness like mud, with many pieces of the living doll's broken limbs scattered around, seemingly conveying a message to him:
Everything here was destroyed because of this battle.
Suddenly, a phrase Erin had previously said to him echoed in his mind:
"... Living dolls are blessed, I can fight better than those so-called investigators and Spirit Realm detectives in the Exotic Realm..."
"These 'living dolls' are really that strong, huh?" Yu Sheng murmured to himself.
Even so strong, the living doll in the mirror had still died, something more powerful than her had killed her—as the view continued to shift, Yu Sheng saw the "enemy" that killed the living doll.
A... gigantic shadow. Yu Sheng didn't know what that thing was, only felt it was very large, almost ten times the size of the living doll, its outline vaguely humanoid but appeared to have twisted, overlapping wings on its back. It too lay amidst the ruins, a portion of its massive body had melted like mud, merging with the chaotic surroundings of the ruins, as well as the scattered fragments of the living doll's limbs, while the remaining parts of its body were twisted and broken.
Yu Sheng didn't know whether the twisting and breaks on the shadow were caused by the living doll or if it originally looked like that—after all, the thing looked quite abstract.
But one thing he could guess was that in the end, the living doll and the gigantic winged shadow must have perished together.
Just as Yu Sheng wanted to see more details, the scene before his eyes suddenly rippled like waves again.
Everything deep in the darkness shattered and dissolved in an instant, the heavy darkness surged up quickly and receded towards the frame of the mirror, and in the blink of an eye, before Yu Sheng's eyes was an ordinary mirror once more, reflecting the interior of the room.
Yu Sheng stared at the scene before him, and after tapping and touching the mirror a few more times, he could not invoke any further strange occurrences.
What was that just now?
Perhaps due to dealing too much with abnormal entities these past two days, Yu Sheng felt his tolerance had grown quite a bit. He wasn't scared by the bizarre scene he witnessed; instead, he felt an intense curiosity about what he had seen.
Were the events that appeared in the mirror ones that had truly happened? Who was the dead doll? What was the huge shadow that perished with the doll? Where was that pile of ruins? And all of this... why did it appear in this house, before him?
Yu Sheng furrowed his brows in deep thought, and he couldn't help but consider another question:
Did the scene recorded in the mirror have anything to do with Erin?
The dead doll did not resemble Erin, even though her facial features were completely destroyed in battle, at least her distinctive blonde hair was completely different from Erin's. However, for some reason, when he saw the doll, Yu Sheng couldn't stop thinking about a girl who was sealed in a painting and watching TV on the first floor.
After a moment, Yu Sheng finished his contemplation. He approached the wall mirror, placed his hand on the frame, and lightly exerted force, attempting to see if he could take it down to change its position.
The mirror didn't budge at all, as if it were cast into the wall.
After several attempts, Yu Sheng chose to give up.
He turned and walked toward the door, but just before leaving the room, he suddenly turned back, quickly scanning the entire room.
The furnishings in the room were still the same, and the mirror had not changed.
Yu Sheng frowned and closed the room door.
After two or three seconds, he suddenly pushed the door open again, as if to catch the room by surprise.
There were no changes in the room; it remained the same.
Yu Sheng stood at the door, holding the handle, sticking his head into the room and looking around suspiciously, gradually feeling like he was going crazy.
After thoroughly checking several times, he finally stopped tampering with the door.
But instead of going back to his own bedroom, he ran downstairs to the dining room.
Erin, who was watching TV at the dining table, heard the noise and peered over the edge of the frame, "Huh? Yu Sheng, weren't you going to sleep? Can't sleep? I'm not going to tell you a bedtime story, you know..."
She was still in her carefree and overly familiar manner.
Yu Sheng didn't speak but sat opposite Erin, looking at her earnestly, as if observing something carefully.
This finally made the living doll in the painting feel a bit uneasy.
"What are you looking at me for..." Erin shrank her neck, "Let me tell you, I know I'm pretty, but you and a paper person have no future..."
The topic Yu Sheng had been brooding over all that way was ruined by this single sentence from Erin.
"Ahem, I'm telling you something serious!" He had to clear his throat twice, forcibly steering the conversation back on track, "Do you remember what the room where you were hung on the wall looked like before?"
"I remember," Erin thought for a bit and answered naturally, "There was nothing, it was empty. I could just see a door opposite, and wallpaper—the corner wallpaper is peeling off from mold, and you don't even fix it."
Yu Sheng nodded: Good, at least on this matter, Erin's memory matched his own.
"Second question, do you remember a place—it looks like ruins, with many classical columns, collapsed stone walls, flying eaves, and the entire ruins 'soaked' in darkness. And then there's a doll—you don't worry if it's you or not, but there's a doll that dies in the ruins, a terrible death, with arms and legs broken all over..."
Erin instinctively shrank her neck: "That sounds really scary."
"Never mind whether it's scary or not, just tell me if you have any impression of this scene."
"I don't."
Erin answered without any hesitation.