Chapter 129 The Man in the Mirror
Lin Muyu and Si Yu'anbing searched the space in two groups, but they were not far apart. They searched face to face within each other's sight. Although this affected their efficiency, at least they felt at ease.
The final outcome was that no clues were found. There was a half-length mirror that looked like a passageway, hanging in a vintage women's clothing store, with some cracks on the edge.
The two men stood by the mirror, lost in thought, silently staring at their own reflections. The two men were too eye-catching in this small women's clothing store, and some customers who were choosing clothes couldn't help but take a few glances at them. The old lady who owned the shop was sitting in a rocking chair, swaying back and forth, glancing at the two men calmly.
"The mirror is not for sale." She said slowly.
Lin Muyu's smile froze: "I'm sorry, boss, we're not here to buy a mirror. My sister will probably be here soon. Please help me choose a style then."
"Yes, grandma, we rarely come here to shop, and we thought it was a bit novel so we wanted to stare at it. This mirror is quite retro!" Si Yu'an laughed and went over to chat with the old lady who owned the store. "Grandma, how long have you been running a store here? I've always wanted to open a store, too."
The young man's friendly smile and junior's attitude made the old lady raise her head. She also felt like talking, so she started talking and chatted with Si and An about the past.
Since there was someone asking some flattering questions over there, Lin Muyu didn't respond. He just turned around and continued to look at the broken mirror, thinking secretly.
"Could it be that some spaces are simply smoke bombs, used only to prolong the player's time and speed up the alienation, with no clues?" He thought with his hand against his lips, and took two steps to the side after someone borrowed it, so as not to touch the mirror and be teleported on the spot.
"Not necessarily." He denied this option, "Maybe I missed it or went in the wrong direction. NPCs and finding clues on your own are two different aspects. The NPCs become more and more vivid as you go deeper. Maybe the clues are actually with the NPCs."
Lin Muyu recalled the man and woman at the beginning. For some reason, the faces of those two people always looked familiar to him, as if he had glimpsed them in space more than once. Unfortunately, there were more important things to do at the time, and the NPC was as stiff as a rudimentary human-machine, with no other information except that it looked familiar.
"...Did we miss them?" He pursed his lips and murmured, "NPCs can pass through air walls, so we can't catch up. If the next space is the deep area, according to Xiao Heng, the area is very large, and it won't be easy to find two people."
The clues provided by just one person are still too few, and I have to reunite with my teammates as soon as possible.
The question in his mind changed. Lin Muyu shifted his gaze slightly and secretly stared at Si and An's reflections in the mirror.
The amulet on his chest was getting hot, and he sensed that two of his teammates had overlapped, with the other one still staying in the same place as usual. According to the wooden sign's recognition mechanism, he could feel that the real Si and An's vital signs were good, and nothing had happened.
Well, the probability of losing the amulet has greatly increased. When it comes to recognizing people, Lin Muyu still trusts his intuition. Moreover, a replica created solely based on memory, even if its behavior and details are exactly the same as the real person, is ultimately not the person you have been with for a year. After all, human beings’ sixth sense is always so mysterious. Moreover, if we can only rely on external objects to identify our companions, wouldn’t it be a bit too useless?
But even though they had judged each other's identities in their hearts, on the surface they still did not trust each other. This was to prevent the group of clumsy replicas from absorbing their memories and taking advantage of the opportunity to act while their teammates were scattered.
On the other side, Si Yu'an finished talking to the old lady owner and then leisurely returned.
"Hey." He winked, "Why hasn't your sister come yet? Is something delaying you? Just now, grandma said that there is only one piece left of the best-selling item in the store. If you don't come soon, it will be snatched away by another young couple."
Lin Muyu raised an eyebrow: "She must have been delayed by something. Let's go find her first, in case she has encountered something bad... Don't worry, there are people accompanying her, so nothing will happen."
"That's good."
Si Yuan patted his chest and sighed exaggeratedly. He glanced at the mirror beside him and said, "Let's... go? Be careful not to get lost. This place is so big and hard to find."
"Well, let's go." Lin Muyu curved his eyes, "Don't worry, as long as we go together, we won't be far away."
Both of them had identical smiles on their faces, and raised their hands as if to touch the mirror, seemingly waiting for the other to reach out first.
Passerby:?
What are these two guys doing in this women's clothing store?
——
Ye Yunhe and Qi Heng squatted on the stone steps and waited quietly.
The amulet's ability is still highly effective. Every time it senses a location, it gives people the illusion of sharing their companion's heartbeat. That feeling of being united even though the person is not there always makes people feel at ease. The two of them sensed Lin Muyu's position again and again, and had already treated it as a daily routine like breathing.
The steady sensation was suddenly interrupted at some point, followed by a blurry, roller coaster-like chaos of both near and far. Ye Yunhe was startled for a moment, and the next second the young man next to him patted his shoulder to comfort him.
"Don't worry." Qi Heng, who was bored and wanted to sense his teammates, was calm. "It's because of the mirror shuttle. It will stabilize soon."
Sure enough, within a few breaths, that direction suddenly calmed down again, and appeared at a very close distance like a flash, almost face to face with them on the small map, causing the two people who were squatting to stand up instantly, look at each other, and run in the direction.
When they arrived at the captain's landing site, the same exclamation popped up in their minds:
Amazing! It’s buy one get one free!
On the beautiful altar, which was originally trimmed and rounded and decorated with flowers, suddenly there appeared two young men in awkward postures, who were stuck in the prickly altar and crushed a piece of grass and flowers. Passersby on the sidewalk nearby screamed, followed by uncontrollable curious looks after seeing what was happening.
Qi Heng and Ye Yunhe took a deep breath, and had no time to think about why Si and An were also here. They immediately stepped forward, grabbed the two men by the collars and pulled them up. Not caring that they were still dizzy and dazed, they dragged them away and quickly got away from the another round of screams.
Fortunately, although the two young men did not react in their brains, their bodies still reacted subconsciously. When they smelled the familiar scent of their companions, they lifted their legs and ran after them.
It took five minutes for the accident to subside.
Lin Muyu leaned against the wall, rubbed his aching temple with his knuckles, and felt that this was the most painful internal injury he had suffered in the past few hours. Si and An Liso slid down to the ground against the wall, bent their legs and cried out, their eyes almost dizzy.
Both of them had the same reaction as Ye Yunhe when he first entered the space, except that they felt a little heavier because they were dizzy and ran a long circle.
Qi Heng bought two cans of iced drinks from the vending machine and handed them to the two of them. Lin Muyu raised her head and smiled at him, then took the drink, opened it and drank it.
"Really? What's going on?" Ye Yunhe shook his head and sighed, brushing the tattered cloth on the young man's chest with his fingertips. "Yu'an, your amulet is too far away from you. What plot did we miss?"
She pressed the iced drink to Si Yu'an's face, who was unable to raise his hands, and unzipped it considerately: "Since you don't have the amulet, please show me your ID first."
"I really am—"
Si Yu'an started to whine again, and drank half a can of refreshing drink. "If you lie to me, I will eat the tonic soup made by the captain for a month straight--!"
Lin Muyu turned her head and smiled: "I don't want to yet."
"However, can two people travel together?" Qi Heng recalled the miserable state when the two appeared. "It seems that as long as we hold on to each other tightly and don't get swept away by the turbulence, it will just be more painful when we land."
There is one more way to prevent the replica from coming up.
Lin Muyu nodded: "That's right. After An and I met by chance in the previous space, we secretly made some moves after confirming each other's identities, just to prevent the failure of the shuttle together and the separation of positions, so that the back copy could take advantage of the opportunity to sneak in."
"It turns out that this is not necessary. The two people can avoid being separated by holding each other tightly."
Si Yu'an nodded in response. After hearing the last part, he suddenly felt sad. He grabbed the sleeve of the young boy and used it as a handkerchief to wipe his crocodile tears. "Oh, my amulet. If I had known this would happen, I would have held it tightly. Who knew that the whirlpool would have such a strong force!"
Qi Heng calmly let him wipe it. He looked a little dazed after hearing the news that the "amulet was lost", his eyes dull as if he had escaped into the void of the universe. It seems that the person is still here, but the soul has flown away.
The one who reacted the most among the four was Qi Heng, which surprised the other three. After all, according to the boy's usual style, the other party would obviously care more about the safety of his companions than the whereabouts of the amulet. But based on the function and level of the wooden sign, several people felt that this was not very surprising.
"What's wrong, Xiaoheng?" Ye Yunhe patted the boy's shoulder worriedly, "Why do you look like that? Don't worry, An, at worst you won't be allowed to act separately from An, and you can just get the amulet back when the time comes."
Si and An also noticed something was wrong and looked up, shaking the boy's sleeves: "Wow, Xiao Heng, I don't believe you can't tell the real you and An. Believe me, I will definitely get the amulet back, our team building props can't be lost like this!"
Lin Muyu also came over, her worried eyes lingering on Qi Heng's completely alienated hands, as if she could see through the cloth the crystal clearness that had already spread to his elbows.
The young boy came back to his senses after hearing his teammates' calls one after another, and blinked as if waking up from a dream.
"Don't worry, I'm fine. I'm just thinking about some clues." He poked Si Yu'an, who was still shaking his sleeves, and pulled back his wrinkled sleeves. "Let's talk about the amulet later. I'm sure we can get it back."
"The most important thing right now is sharing clues, right?"
"Well, it's like this. Before you two came, I had a brief talk with Xiao Heng. You two are the only ones left." Ye Yunhe raised his eyebrows. The equipment to prevent wiretapping and surveillance was turned on after the four of them gathered to protect the safety of the conversation in all aspects. "In order not to waste time, let's just talk about it here."
"According to the distribution of clues, the focus of the areas I passed through was mostly on props rather than NPCs, so..."
She placed the clues she found on the ground, arranged them neatly, then looked up at her two teammates.
"Have you come across any women of note? Or a man and a woman?"
A man and a woman?
Then you've asked the right person.
Si Yuan straightened up suddenly, changing his weak and droopy appearance just now, slapped his thigh and began to speak: "Then I must have seen it!"
"The NPCs I've seen in the previous space are basically completely made of glass. Even if you dance ballet in front of them, they won't even glance at you, but they will always suddenly scare you."
He was filled with righteous indignation: "I still remember that I landed in a suite, which happened to be the neighborhood where I delivered food before. Before I had time to be thankful that I remembered the route, I was startled by the couple in the living room the next second."
"They were stiff and pale like paper dolls, their two bodies huddled together on the sofa, staring at the TV. The TV was also a thing from the underworld, and the pile of wedding ceremonies next to them were also things from the underworld. Neither of them was a good thing."
"Thank you for your hard work. You always cover your eyes when watching horror movies, but you still can't escape the maliciousness of the copy." Ye Yunhe hesitated and finally patted Si Yu'an's head gently, "And then?"
Qi Heng failed to repair the wrinkled sleeves and silently stuffed the sleeves back into Si Yu'an's hands.
"Then!" The brown-haired young man curled his lips, "Then I forced myself to search the entire apartment. The light was broken and couldn't be turned on. It had no other function except to emit a dim light. I searched in the dark."
"In the end, we found nothing. There was nothing next door either. There was only that couple sitting there from beginning to end. Every time I turned my back to them, I felt like there were thorns in my back, and a chill went straight to the top of my head."
“Finally I just left.”
He suddenly remembered something: "Oh, no, I also found a plate of pills that had been eaten in the soil of the potted plants in the study. The words on it were crossed out, and I couldn't tell what type of medicine it was."
He took out an empty medicine plate from his pocket and showed it to me. It was a plastic shell with all the medicine paper torn off except for the groove for the medicine. There were fine scratches on it, as if they were made with a sharp object like fingernails.
Ye Yunhe caught the key point. She pointed at the big brick that attracted the most attention from her teammates, showed them the densely packed marks on it, and briefly told them the information she had learned and a few incomplete guesses.
The fact that "women have the ability to travel through mirrors" shocked everyone else.
"So you think that pills might be psychiatric drugs used by women?" Qi Heng concluded.
Lin Muyu nodded: "According to the eight-shaped shuttle rule Xiaoheng mentioned, the order of these three clues is the order in which you picked them up. Therefore, the most reasonable one at the moment is that the man died for unknown reasons, and the woman's spirit was severely hit, which led to her doing things that were not conducive to society and was arrested by the mental hospital. In the end, she traveled through the mirror because of her own special characteristics."
"Poor crazy woman"... From the nurses' comments on the woman, we can see that they do not have a bad impression of the woman. Instead, they reveal a sense of sympathy and pity, which is obviously related to the fact that she lost her husband just after getting married.
As an important character in the main storyline, the woman is qualitatively different from ordinary NPCs, so it is not surprising that she has this ability. But at the moment, no one knows whether he is alive or dead, and it is suspected that he has become the final BOSS waiting for their arrival. The main plot of each dungeon is more or less tainted with sin. For example, the circus dungeon revolves around "greed", and the center of this dungeon probably revolves around "lust".
In this case, what exactly is hidden in this huge illusion that serves as the in-depth area? What is the profound meaning of the spatial pattern of the figure “8”? Is the depth area at the center of these two points the starting point or the end point? Is the man who is suspected to be dying still alive?
Countless questions loomed in my mind. After piecing together the clues, it was still a leaky wall, and I had no idea how much information I had missed. This completely different copy mode from the past also makes previous experience nowhere to be used.
When will the piece of puzzle that is enough to break through all the fog appear?
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