Free Web NovelChapter 177: Chapter 177: The World in the Mirror
The dormitory building where Bai Wu resided, Building Four, had a view from the window above the laundry basin that did not allow one to see the other dormitories; he only felt darkness.
And it grew darker and darker.
He chose not to peek outside through the crack of the door. It was likely that he would see some abnormal colors through that slit again. fɾeeweɓnѳveɭ.com
In fact, the odds were high; ever since he entered this room, Bai Wu had constantly felt like he was being watched.
He did not lie on the bed but sat at the desk, looking at a few notes.
"Four people have all experienced some supernatural phenomena, four... no, precisely five notes with the same handwriting. Who left these notes? What is he guiding me to find?"
Bai Wu had his suspicions about Cain, since this was, after all, the area of the Traction Disc. But the ghost stories about this school were too numerous. freeωebnovēl.c૦m
"From what I’ve seen, the ghost stories happening in the male dormitory of Building Four are very likely the work of a certain force. But before this, these missing boys might have experienced other paranormal stories; the school’s powers are too complex. Bad teachers, good teachers, bad students, good students, and that mentioned source of the curse."
"One of the notes mentioned that accidents would happen if one left the school, which means the curse in the school has taken hold, and leaving the school is of no use?"
"Moreover, I should also take a look at the source of the curse. But first, I need to confirm whether there will be a supernatural event happening in this dormitory tonight."
The night fell early, and after Bai Wu had tidied up the bed, he bravely lay down and began to wait for time to pass.
After a little over an hour had passed, quite a few noises could be heard from outside.
He heard a knocking at the door.
But he did not hear any sounds of the door opening.
Who was knocking at the door, Bai Wu did not know, but he vaguely sensed that the knocker was an old man, taking slow steps as if carrying a lamp.
Each series of knocks on the door was rhythmic, always three times.
The whole school was dead silent.
So much so that Bai Wu felt as if he had been exiled, as though he had come to some silent Different Space.
Apart from the unsettling sound of footsteps, and the creak of the old lantern, there were no other sounds.
"This must be a patroller, and a very powerful Evil Fallen at that. All the Evil Fallen are playing dead, perhaps because they are afraid of being discovered by this one. Is he one of the disciples?"
The footsteps grew closer.
Based on the sound, the patrolling old man should now be standing outside Room 405.
But this time, he did not knock. Bai Wu knew this was because Room 405 was unoccupied. Rooms 405 and 403 were special dormitories, places not even the Evil Fallen dared to inhabit.
And so, the patrolling old man did not knock at the door of Room 405.
But what happened next caused some doubts to arise in Bai Wu.
When the patrolling old man reached the door of Room 403, he began to knock very slowly—
Thump thump thump.
Bai Wu did not respond. He waited for the patroller to hurriedly leave.
Thump thump thump.
To Bai Wu’s surprise, the patrolling old man knocked again. Unlike before, where he only knocked three times, the patroller seemed to have extra patience when facing Room 403, or perhaps he had detected that there was something wrong with this room.
Thump thump thump.
The knocking would come in sets of three, with a slight pause after each set, and then continue.
It was like the telephone inside the Food City phone booth; once it rang, if it wasn’t answered, it would never stop.
But Bai Wu did not choose to open the door. In that moment, many thoughts flashed through his mind—
"Has he discovered me? But why doesn’t he just come in... Is it because he’s afraid of the other things in this room?"
"No, if he were afraid, constantly knocking on the door would still alarm the creatures in the room, wouldn’t it?"
Bai Wu couldn’t come up with an answer.
He painted such a scene in his mind, guided by his intuition.
An expressionless old man with wrinkles deep enough to kill mosquitoes, holding a lantern, knocking on the door slowly.
"Room 405 didn’t have knocking, but room 403 did... The difference between 403 and 405 should be me... Or is an Evil Fallen hiding in room 403?"
Thud, thud, thud...
The person outside continued knocking on the door, the rhythm slow and steady, never changing.
"There’s a contradiction here; room 405 is empty, he doesn’t knock, but room 403 has me in it, and the other dorms have Evil Fallen, so he knocks. This means he can sense other beings, but if that’s the case, what’s the purpose of knocking?"
Round after round of knocking sounds continued, and after a long while, the patroller finally moved on, stepping towards the next room.
Bai Wu noticed that, upon reaching the next room, the patroller knocked only three times before moving to the next.
"How strange..."
He didn’t open the door to check if the patroller was like the odd, lantern-bearing old man he had imagined.
While the patroller was knocking, Bai Wu also encountered his first negative attribute—Evil Soil.
This was his first encounter with such a negative attribute, which didn’t make him feel any discomfort.
However, if he fought an Evil Fallen, it would put him at a significant disadvantage.
[Good gracious, are you the turncoat leading the enemy? The Evil Fallen near you will recover two percent of their maximum health per second, and twenty-five percent of the damage you deal to them will temporarily add to their maximum health. You’re quite the Evil Fallen nanny now.]
This is indeed a treacherous skill...
If your teammates are fighting an Evil Fallen and you rush in to get close, outputting damage, you might turn a winnable situation into an unwinnable one.
"It’s a good thing I didn’t bring anyone with me this time; this negative attribute is disgustingly problematic. I need to avoid combat as much as possible."
Bai Wu continued to wait.
He estimated the time; he had left the High Tower at dawn, but he arrived at Baichuan University Affiliated Middle School by evening.
He had waited for four hours; to reach four in the morning, he still had to endure another negative attribute.
As time ticked by, seconds and minutes passed, and after several hours, the second negative attribute arrived. Bai Wu was somewhat lucky this time; it was a freebie attribute—Weak Fire.
"Hmm... not a big problem, just avoid any fire sources."
Bai Wu lay on his bed like a corpse, his mind filled with the strange incidents he encountered that day.
With only a few dozen seconds left until 4:04 a.m., he finally sensed something unusual, but it caught him off guard.
Noises of the mirror shattering echoed as if cracks appeared due to high temperatures, but Bai Wu heard no sound of the mirror pieces hitting the floor.
Immediately after, he caught glimpses of numerous shadows with the corner of his eye.
These shadows were no different from normal students, human silhouettes, and they moved fast... as if the world around them operated at normal speed, and they were living at one and a half times that speed.
"The papers mentioned Chang Yuan encountering fast-moving shadows in the restroom, climbing onto his bed at four in the morning. In the dim light, what the person recording the information saw might have been these kinds of shadows. But why... are there so many?"
It was like in a humid summer, someone at home ate a piece of pizza, then suddenly received a call to go on a business trip. In the rush, they packed the pizza in a box but forgot to throw it away.
When they returned home days later and accidentally touched the box... countless cockroaches crawled out, causing goosebumps.
That’s exactly how Bai Wu felt now.
These shadows varied in shape and size, including men and women, tall and short, fat and thin. The only difference from the description in the papers was that they hadn’t climbed onto the bed.
And because they seemed to be but shadows without true form, these shadows could overlap.
Soon after the sound of the mirror shattering, even with only a glimpse from the corner of his eye, Bai Wu felt countless black shadows surge out from the mirror like a tide.
He didn’t speak.
These shadows didn’t climb onto the bed, and since they moved at one and a half times normal speed, all their movements seemed extremely rapid.
The corner of his eye caught the trajectories of these shadows, which, to Bai Wu, seemed as if agile cockroaches were scuttling back and forth.
It was now four o’clock and four minutes in the morning.
Bai Wu suddenly heard many voices.
It was as if he were in the midst of a bustling market, with sounds of crying, roaring, as well as exclamations and laughter.
Just like the shadows... the voices overlapped and attacked in waves, pouring a picture of wandering souls into Bai Wu’s mind through an auditory form.
"What on earth is going on? Why are there so many shadows? Are they ghost shadows? This scene is like hell has cracked open."
Prayle’s Eye provided no hints, and Bai Wu even suspected that it was because the shadows were from the world inside the mirror.
Suddenly, his pupils subtly dilated and contracted.
It was not because Bai Wu was scared, or had seen something unbelievable, but rather he was adjusting himself.
In that instant, Bai Wu seemed unable to see the things around him.
"I must calm down. If even I think that these events here are supernatural... then the puzzle of this campus can really never be solved. Stay calm, calm..."
For a fraction of a second, Bai Wu also thought that these black shadows were ghosts, but he quickly realized he had fallen into rigid thinking.
Unable to explain the phenomenon before him, he had actually tried to attribute the answer to ghosts and deities.
Subconsciously, he began to change his mindset.
"I can’t deduce anything about the speed of this room for now, it’s not yet time to draw conclusions."
Bai Wu waited for the next variable to occur, but the shadows grew more numerous, some sitting, some standing, and others pacing back and forth.
Since their bodies could overlap, sometimes an area would appear to be one solid mass of darkness.
Bai Wu had thought they would make a ruckus for a long time, but when footsteps from outside the door were heard, all of the shadows in a puff of smoke ran back into the mirror.
The entire scene was like all of the cockroaches fleeing rapidly the moment the homeowner turned on the light.
Bai Wu didn’t move.
He continued to lie there as if he were a dead man.
"Is the patrol back again? No..."
The brisk footsteps made Bai Wu quickly realize that this person was different from the patroller.
"Could it be from the Security Department?"
Bai Wu was inclined towards this idea.
Unlike the person who had been knocking on door after door incessantly earlier, the footsteps outside the door this time were rapid.
The Evil Fallen passed by room 405 without pausing, and also didn’t stop when passing by 403.
Its existence seemed to serve the purpose of a brush, the footsteps arriving and causing the night, which had been as noisy as a marketplace, to quiet down instantly.
Only after the footsteps grew faint did Bai Wu slowly exhale.
"Perhaps I should go and check out room 405!"
Outside the room, inside the room, everything had become completely quiet. Bai Wu could no longer hear the brisk footsteps, nor the dull ones.
He suddenly felt some regret.
"I should have bought that 100% pee pot hit rate. Taking Lin Wurou to experience this broken school in the future, he might never dare to get up in the night again. And then I could sell it to him at a high price. What a pity."
Like missing out on winning a billion, Bai Wu got off the bed after realizing there was no movement around.
Earlier, in the heart of Well Four’s area, he got a pair of shoes, and in order not to disturb some strange and mysterious existence in this school, Bai Wu put on the shoes.
His footsteps became silent and soundless.
He gradually opened the door to room 403, and closed it just as gently, his movements now more tender than a mother’s to her baby.
Then he took advantage of the darkness before dawn to sneak into dormitory 405.
The dormitory doors all had integrated locks, which Bai Wu could easily unlock. After entering 405, his first reaction was to head to the bathroom to see if the two dorms were symmetrical.
Whether there was a mirror, right opposite the door.
But upon reaching the bathroom, Bai Wu frowned.
With the help of Enhanced Vision, he could see everything inside 405 clearly.
No mirror...
So Bai Wu prepared to search the entire room, trying to find some other clues.
But when he directed his gaze elsewhere, he found the note popping up for every object in sight was the same.
[Stop searching, fate differs among people; they were on the left of 404, taken to the world of 404, we were on the right, we were "404’d". Wuu wuu wuu, it turns out there’s good and bad luck when haunted by ghosts, they are good, we are bad.]
"They were on the left, taken to the world of 404... we were on the right, ’404’d’. Is this saying that both groups disappeared but not because of the same urban legend?"
Bai Wu’s eyes widened, and at that moment, he suddenly had an idea.
"Pencil Fairy, mirror, Black Cat... Could it be that they’re protecting certain students, sending them to an unknown space through the guise of urban legends?"
"And the reason it’s protection is because if they didn’t do that, they would end up dead like the people mentioned disappearing outside the school in the papers, and like the disappeared person from 405?"
There were two kinds of disappearances.
One is just missing but still alive. The other is being erased from this world.
"Judging from the information given by the eyes, did the people in dormitory 403 hide inside the mirror? Were the people in 405 erased?"
Bai Wu returned to room 403 once more.
He was not afraid of mirrors at all, even if he had just seen unexplainable paranormal anomalies.
The mirror was intact, and although he indeed heard a shattering sound, looking at it now, the mirror was smooth and unbroken.
Touching the mirror, Bai Wu felt enmeshed in a very large and complex puzzle.
"Baichuan City... The zoo where Lou Xiaoping is located, belongs to Baichuan City; Hong Yin is at the Ninth Psychiatric Hospital, which is also in Baichuan City; and the earliest information about the Masked Strange Person also pertains to Baichuan City."
"It seems the secrets within this city are no less substantial than those of Food City..."
It was now four thirty in the morning, and Bai Wu said to his reflection in the mirror:
"One side is good, the other bad. If you live in the world behind the mirror, then whether you intend to kill me or guide me, please give me a direction."
Of course, the mirror didn’t dramatically crack to provide Bai Wu with a direction.
But at that moment, moonlight slanted through the bathroom window, and a beam of light reflected off the mirror’s surface.
Bai Wu looked in the direction of the light, remembering that place was the source of the curse and the most dangerous location according to the warning from the eyes.
(The early parts of this script may be a bit convoluted; I hope everyone can be a little more patient, as multiple powers are involved, but I promise the later parts will fill the gaps and leave you satisfied. Next, there will be a single Chapter, not for votes, just a monthly and yearly summary.)
