Chapter 132 The Man in the Mirror
The driver, who had been waiting there obediently because he had received the money, rolled down the window, bared his teeth and greeted the four people who were approaching. After hearing the destination chosen by the young boy, he stepped on the accelerator and turned around in a cool manner, whizzing towards the return road.
It may be that the law that "the way back is always faster than the way here" is still reflected even now. The journey that takes half an hour here may take several minutes faster on the way back. Qi Heng stared at the electronic watch in the car which was ticking slowly, and smiled back at his teammates who didn't understand but blindly trusted him.
The destination was the most prosperous commercial street in the central city. It was the afternoon rush hour, so after arriving at the outskirts, Qi Heng got off the car with the three of them and pushed through the crowd to walk inside.
The shops and walls around the commercial street are inlaid with many long square mirrors, which are wiped clean by sanitation workers every day and reflect the many people passing by. The mirror is one-way, so there are always some women who are putting on makeup standing in front of it and using it as a makeup mirror to free their hands.
But that's reality. In the world of dungeons, no matter how vivid the NPC's movements and expressions are, the reflection in the mirror will only show the reality underneath. Countless people covered in warm skin walked back and forth, and their reflection in the mirror was just a cold glass product, without bones or flesh, with clear skin but no facial features, like a mannequin displayed by the window of a clothing store.
The replica has no reflection, and the glass man shows his original form.
In this dungeon, the only thing the player can trust and touch is the mirror that runs through the main storyline.
"Xiao Heng, is there anything worth paying attention to here?"
Si Yuan, who had been patient for a long time, leaned close to the boy's ear and asked in a low voice like a thief. He looked at the images reflected in the long mirror; the stiff movements of the glass dolls made his scalp tingle.
Ye Yunhe and Lin Muyu followed the two of them, paying attention to the movements around them. Their peripheral vision suddenly caught a glimpse of a more densely packed crowd, and they shifted their gazes to look over.
At the same time, Qi Heng also stopped. His eyes kept scanning around, finally stopping on a man and woman standing side by side not far away. He then raised his chin and motioned the three to look over there.
The woman had a conspicuous long red curly hair, which was dry and split at the ends, and was tied up messily behind her head. Even though there was only an inconspicuous figure, it was obvious that he was one of the protagonists in the wedding photos taken not long ago. Next to her was a thin man, his suit jacket hanging down as if it was covering him, making him stand straight like a bamboo pole next to the woman, his body language showing very irritable.
The expressions of the two men were extremely ferocious, their mouths opened and closed, and saliva was sprayed into the air due to their fluctuating emotions. They were arguing in the street without paying attention to the people around them, and they had carved out a small space of their own in this usually bustling commercial street. The moving crowd came to a standstill here, and those who stopped gathered together, pointing and talking as if they were watching a show. As time went by, more and more people came.
The faint sound of the argument was blocked by the crowd. The four of them decisively ran over there, and relying on their superior physical fitness, they squeezed through the crowd and came to the observation deck on the second floor above. Looking down, they saw a considerate parasol propped up above their heads.
"Fuck, a couple quarreling." Si Yu'an complained quietly, "Is this copy really about love and lust? It's completely different from what I thought."
"Good question." Ye Yunhe responded in a low voice, "But Xiaoheng, how did you know these two people were here? Could it be that you saw them before and stuffed the locator into them?"
That's not something bad to say.
The young boy smiled leisurely and tilted his head to signal them to continue reading, and the mystery would be revealed.
So mysterious, yet he seems to be very confident. Lin Muyu raised his eyebrows and continued to stare at the man and woman in the center of the circle.
The reason why the couple quarreled was simple. When you are close to them, those words shouted at the top of their lungs go straight into your eardrums. In the end, the topics are about infidelity, which are the topics that are most likely to satisfy human's desire to pry into other people's private lives.
The man is obviously thin-skinned.
More and more people gathered around to watch the show. Even if they were just whispers with their hands covered, as they grew in number, they would turn into burning thorns that could not be ignored, pricking the skin of the face, causing pain and itchiness, and making the skin swell and redder like a balloon. He shut up and stopped his meaningless argument with the woman.
He glared at the people around him fiercely. His originally handsome face became terrifying due to his anger, but his overly thin appearance reduced the threat, and in the end, his anger did not hurt anyone at all.
The crowd stepped back a few steps, and the whispering became louder, but the wall was still impenetrable.
Then the anger shifted direction and attacked the weak woman closest to him. The man's eyes were wide open, he was breathing heavily, and his bloodshot eyes were fixed on the woman who was still chattering and complaining to him.
Then, in the next second, a fierce slap landed heavily on the woman's face.
Scream.
The frail body fell heavily to the ground, the friction with the rough ground rubbed off the fragile skin, and the exposed flesh was stained with dust and filth. Even a few bright red spots were enough to show the pain.
The woman's long red curly hair was disheveled, covering the swollen patch of flesh on her cheek. She fell silent.
The man continued to stand by, his hand raised high, the anger on his face had not yet dissipated, but the scene that seemed to be the prelude to victory was stained with complacency, representing his final position in this game.
He was trembling and breathing heavily, and laughing intermittently. As the people around him looked at him in disbelief and confusion, like he was a madman, he laughed and shouted to his silent wife on the ground:
"You crazy idiot—!"
He grabbed the woman's hand with a wild laugh and roughly pulled off the diamond ring on her ring finger, not caring about the fact that her pale skin was broken and stained red. The woman raised her face in horror, and her hand that tried to take back the ring was thrown aside again.
"Go to hell! I won't keep you company! Even if I changed my mind and found a new love, so what?! It's all because of you, a psychopath!"
"Go get treatment if you are sick! My work, my life, everything I have, has all been ruined in your hands! And you even insulted me just because of one wrong thing I did! Okay, then I'll grant your wish, we'll get a divorce today! Right now! I want to see who else would want a psychopath like you besides me!"
The ring that embodies love slammed heavily to the ground. It was firmly imprinted in the woman's shrinking pupils, and bounced away without a trace under the huge force.
The man screamed at the top of his lungs:
"It's all because of you that things turned out like this!!!"
The whispers died away.
Everyone stared at the scene.
The woman lying on the ground in a mess, the man laughing crazily, the people around her retreating unconsciously, and the scream that seemed to echo in her ears.
The weak raised their machetes against the weaker ones, while the others stood aside as if watching a pantomime, staying where they were and holding their cell phones. No one tried to stop it, and no one tried to help it up.
To the extent that this scene seems like a farce in a tragedy.
In the stands, Lin Muyu stared at the scratch on the woman's forearm for a long time, and for a moment he felt that the color was extremely unfamiliar.
Blood.
The first NPC in the dungeon with a flesh and blood body.
Surrounded by the crowd, he seemed to be the only one who was different.
Does this represent her importance? Or is it a unique and unknowable information? Why does she have the ability to travel through mirrors? Is the red curly-haired woman lying on the ground at this moment the real woman on this timeline, or an outsider who has taken over the magpie's nest?
There was a vague sound of glass breaking, which was lost in the noise of the crowd.
Si Yuan frowned from beginning to end, and after a brief hesitation, he gritted his teeth and was about to jump off the railing to stop this invisible bullying.
The restraining force came from the side, and the brown-haired young man paused. He looked sideways and saw the young boy with a calm expression, shaking his head slightly at him.
"Calm down." The other person said softly, "Look."
“Ah…Ah…”
A hoarse moan of pain escaped from the corner of the woman's mouth. She tilted her head, and her hanging red curly hair covered half of her cheek, then slid down to reveal a few gaps. Her eyes, red and swollen from crying, stared at the complacent man through the gap. The faint pain in her knuckles reminded her all the time: her most precious ring was smashed away by her own husband.
The words of a loved one are like the tip of a knife, piercing into the fragile heart mercilessly. The handle of the knife is twisted deliberately, cutting the beating flesh and blood into pieces.
Her hands twitched unconsciously and pressed against her chest, as if trying to comfort her wounded heart through layers of skin.
This is where the strange changes happened.
The sharp fruit knife was hidden in the chest. It was no longer cold after being ironed by the body temperature, but it pierced into the clothes and pierced the skin due to the huge movement just now. The blood and cloth stuck together and were torn apart after the fruit knife was pulled out.
"Suddenly"
Without hesitation.
The loud sound of cloth and flesh being torn exploded in the air, once again falling into everyone's ears in disbelief.
Screaming, shouting, panicking. Someone was crying and shouting "Murder", and the impenetrable human wall collapsed in an instant, leaving only debris.
Warm blood splashed, spilled on the ground, and flowed on his face. With each rise and fall of the knife, he became increasingly crazy.
The withered red curly hair became bright. As the sword was chopped with all his strength again and again, the wailing below disappeared with time. White bones mixed with blurry blood and sticky flesh were exposed in the air. The face that was originally laughing could not even show pain. The winner was pressed down hard and suffered the most genuine and insane hatred.
The only mouth that remained intact opened and closed like a thirsty fish, and the chopped eyeballs were mixed in the mess, rolling back and forth like the eyes of a dead fish.
Finally, it all stopped at the tip of the knife that was deeply inserted into the mouth and into the back of the head.
The fruit knife slipped to the ground, and the woman covered her face and cried out at the top of her lungs.
“It’s like this again… It’s like this again…!!”
——
Several security guards came running over from a distance, their electric batons in their hands becoming a little unstable after seeing this scene from afar. They scolded the people around them for holding up their cell phones, shouting at the crowd to move back and away, saying they were going to notify the police and pin the woman to the ground.
“…”
The quartet looked down at the scene, with different expressions on their faces.
"I saw this atrocity two hours ago."
Suddenly, Qi Heng spoke and revealed to them why he knew the reason.
"I was standing right here at the time, looking down at the couple's every move, just like I am now. From the beginning to now, everything that has happened is exactly the same as it was two hours ago."
"...A cycle?" Ye Yunhe's voice was a little hoarse, "When did it start?"
“Yeah, it’s a cycle.”
The young boy tilted his head and looked at the approaching security guards: "In about three minutes."
"I was originally thinking that the woman would be taken to the police station for murder. This place is well-staffed, so it would be difficult to sneak in. Should I try to take the woman away in front of so many people, get the name of a wanted criminal, and then get as much information as possible from the woman?"
His fingertips tapped regularly on the metal railing.
"When I was planning to put on a mask and kidnap the woman before the security guards could see her, heresy happened again. A new protagonist joined the atrocity that I thought was over."
"Did you hear the glass breaking?"
He asked suddenly.
What? The other three people were somewhat confused and thought to themselves. Lin Muyu's eyes flickered, and he subconsciously recalled the sound that flashed by in a trance.
Isn't this an illusion? He was about to open his mouth to ask back.
The next second, when the security guard was about to touch the crying woman, a deafening noise exploded from nearby, accompanied by countless shattered glass fragments. The fragments reflected cold light and scratched the people around who were caught off guard, causing greater chaos amidst the crying and screaming.
The long mirror embedded in the wall was broken.
The security guards were stunned by this unprecedented noise, staring at the scene with wide eyes, not even bothering to wipe the blood from their cheeks.
Qi Heng, who was well prepared, was not frightened a second time.
But the three teammates around him were all frightened by the sudden loud noise. They all bent down and tried to check what was happening in the blind spot. For a moment, they did not pay attention to the main idea that had been revealed in their brains after the sound opened up their Ren and Du meridians.
The sound of staggering footsteps.
A man walked out, stepping on the debris all over the ground.
No one knows why she appeared from this place, just like no one knows why the glass that has always been safe suddenly shattered, and no one knows why someone would walk out of the enclosed and thin space when the mirror is broken and the wall is intact.
It was as if this woman with long red curly hair was trapped in a mirror.
Ridiculous scene.
The woman crying with her face covered not far away seemed to have lost all sense of the outside world. She just knelt on the ground and cried hoarsely. Even the loud noise that could have broken the eardrums did not get any response from her.
But she was awakened by the light footsteps. She raised her head, her lips twitched, her pupils trembled, and her reflection was of the woman opposite her who had the same appearance as her. Her facial features twitched nervously and her eyes were empty.
Beside her, several security guards had dazed expressions, standing stiffly in place, staring at the second person who walked out of the mirror, like a worn-out cassette stuck together. The people nearby who were crying and screaming in pain fell silent in the dead silence, covering their wounds and looking around in shock.
Their eyes were all fixed on the woman who had appeared out of nowhere. He scanned her expressionless and pale face, her ill-fitting, dirty hospital gown and her bloody hands, and finally returned to her cloudy, red eyes.
Someone exclaimed, feeling disbelief at the familiar face and appearance in front of them, but swallowed their doubts when stopped by people around them, and looked at the scene in panic.
A belated sense of crisis came over them. The security guards swallowed their saliva, raised their electric batons and pointed them at the expressionless woman who walked in. Whether in expression or actions, the other party is obviously not a normal person. They took a few steps back and quickly picked up the communication machine to seek support.
Can there be two identical people in this world at the same time?
Qi Heng leaned against the railing, lowered his head and looked down.
When a person is replaced by his/her self from another timeline, he/she is trapped in a cage from then on, unable to see the light of day. He/she smashes the mirror day after day in an attempt to escape, but nothing can be done except for a slight crack. Her five senses were blocked, leaving only her sight. The world was left with only one-way mirrors, and people outside had no idea where she was.
Then when the overwhelming rage takes over the body, the cage that confines it shatters to the ground.
So what will this mentally disturbed person with pre-existing illness do?
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