Chapter 88: Strange Things, Strange Events

Chapter 88: Strange Things, Strange Events

Yu Sheng leaned closer to the mirror, studying the faint “second layer reflection” even more carefully. The overlaid image inside the mirror felt like the reflection of a window glass at night, where the scenery outside and the reflection on the glass blended together. The dim cave and the heavy snowfall outside its entrance seemed to exist in some real place on the other side of the mirror, yet remained impossible to see clearly, layered and obscured.

Irene quickly climbed up along Yu Sheng’s body and onto his shoulder, hugging his head as she curiously looked at the mirror on the wall. After a long while, she muttered, “Are those snowflakes being ‘blown’ over from the other side of the mirror?”

“You can see it too?” Yu Sheng looked at her in surprise.

“Of course. What’s so strange about that?” Irene found it baffling. “I’m not blind.”

Hu Li on the side nodded before Yu Sheng could even speak. “Benefactor, I can see it too.”

“Uh,” Yu Sheng scratched his hair. “It’s mainly because I’ve been dealing with Little Red Riding Hood and Li Lin recently. It always feels like what I can see isn’t necessarily what others can see. I might be a bit paranoid.”

As he spoke, he weighed the situation for two or three seconds, then cautiously reached out to touch the surface of the mirror.

He still remembered that last time he touched this mirror, it had reflected an unfamiliar ruin, where a fragmented doll and a massive shadow creature made of darkness had perished together in the center. So what about this time? What would the mirror show now?

Irene immediately grabbed Yu Sheng’s hair tightly, watching nervously. “Hey, be careful, if something goes wrong…”

“Ow, ow, ow… let go first!”

“Oh, right, sorry, I got nervous and did it unconsciously…”

The doll finally released her grip, and Yu Sheng’s fingertip touched the mirror surface.

It was extremely cold, like touching ice directly. But aside from that abnormal chill, nothing in the mirror changed.

“Seems… nothing happened?” Irene also boldly reached out and touched the mirror. “Just a bit cold.”

Yu Sheng gave a quiet “mm,” withdrew his hand, and frowned as he stared at the mirror. At that moment, he noticed the overlaid image inside the mirror gradually fading. Within a few breaths, the snowy cave scene vanished completely.

Only the normal room remained.

After a moment of hesitation, he touched the mirror again and found that the ice-like coldness was gone as well. It had returned to normal temperature.

“Benefactor,” Hu Li said after watching for a while, finally unable to hold back, “was this mirror always like this?”

“It’s always been a bit wrong. Sometimes it reflects strange scenery from nowhere,” Yu Sheng said casually, though his tone was serious. “But before, it only showed unusual images. It never did something like today… snow even appeared in the room, and some iron chunk I picked up from nowhere fell on the floor.”

As he spoke, he glanced again at the strange metal device he had picked up from under the table.

The snow in the corner had already melted, leaving damp marks on the floor. The blackened metal object was still in his hand. The strange imagery in the mirror had disappeared, but these things that seemed to have “come out” of the mirror had not faded like illusions. They remained in reality.

Just like Irene often said: truly damn strange.

“I, I’m sleeping in your room tonight!” Irene clung tightly to Yu Sheng’s head, her small body visibly tense. “I’ll sleep on a chair or a table, anything is fine! I absolutely do not want to stay in this room!”

“You think I’d let anyone stay in here even if you didn’t say it?” Yu Sheng said while pulling her hands off his head. “This room is too wrong. From now on, don’t open it casually when I’m not around.”

Irene and Hu Li both nodded repeatedly.

“Also,” Yu Sheng continued, lowering Irene from his shoulder, “even if you’re not sleeping here, you can stay in the same room as Hu Li. Why are you so determined to cling to my room?”

“Her tail will smack people in their sleep!” the doll immediately protested mid-air. “You kick me once and I only fall to the floor, but if she swings that tail I’ll be plastered against the wall, don’t you see that?”

She continued rattling on without stopping: no room of her own, being small means being ignored, no bed, constantly being shuffled around at night. Being a doll meant she didn’t need to breathe, so once she started talking she could go on endlessly, making one’s head buzz.

Yu Sheng even considered stuffing her into Hu Li’s tail for a moment, but given how that would inevitably lead to even greater chaos later, he only thought about it.

After that, he carried the endlessly complaining doll out of the strange room with Hu Li, carefully locked the door again, and pushed it several times to make sure.

“Benefactor, should I stand guard here at night?” Hu Li asked softly, seeing how uneasy he still looked. “If anything happens inside, I’ll call you.”

Yu Sheng imagined a nine-tailed fox lying in the hallway on guard duty and immediately shook his head. “No need. This room has been strange for a while anyway.”

As he spoke, he seemed to recall something. After setting Irene down, he pulled out the new phone he had received from the Special Operations Bureau.

Irene finally stopped complaining and looked at him curiously. “What are you going to do?”

“When strange things happen, you ask the experts in strange things,” Yu Sheng said while opening the app. “I’ll post on that ‘Border Communication’ platform. Maybe someone recognizes this thing. There should be a photo upload feature… investigators must use it often… ah, found it.”

He took several photos of the strange metal device from different angles, then posted them in the public channel message board.

After that, he thought for a moment, searched through several preset channels, found “Ancient Relics Discussion Group” and “Anomalous Phenomena Discussion Group,” and reposted the images there as well. Then he wrote a short description imitating others:

“Unknown object, metal material, no signs of corrosion or living properties. Found inside a room. When discovered, the room seemed to have experienced snowfall. Also suspected to be related to a mirror capable of reflecting distant scenery.”

Originally, he had intended to write “found at home,” but deleted it after reconsideration. Ordinary homes did not usually contain such things, nor did they typically experience indoor snowfall. Wutong Road 66 was special, and its secrets should not be exposed too much.

Yu Sheng felt he still had a decent sense of normal human judgment.

“Will someone reply?” Irene asked, already skillfully climbing onto his shoulder again and peering at the phone. “That description is so short. Other posts usually have hundreds of words, sometimes even videos…”

“I don’t have that much information,” Yu Sheng sighed. “The environment is just a room. The object itself doesn’t give any feeling either.”

“That’s true…”

The doll muttered quietly.

Yu Sheng returned to the living room and watched TV with Irene and Hu Li while waiting for replies on Border Communication. He waited until nightfall, when a notification finally appeared.

It was from a user named “Traitor Three Thousand” in the Ancient Relics Discussion Group:

“May I ask about the exact environment where the item was found? Was it within an Other Domain? What type of Other Domain? Are there intelligent beings within it, or traces of intelligent beings?”

Reading the string of questions, Yu Sheng looked a little confused. But since this was the first “colleague” who had responded to his post, and his first real interaction on the platform as a spirit-world investigator, he felt a surge of curiosity and quickly typed his reply:

“Other Domain, inside a residential house. Environment is an ordinary modern home,” he typed while looking around. “Fairly peaceful. No monsters spawning. As for intelligent beings—”

He paused, then looked strangely at Irene sitting on his lap and Hu Li carefully grooming her tail.

“There are intelligent beings.”

Irene leaned over to glance at the phone, then looked up. “Do you really think someone can answer your question? The Special Operations Bureau didn’t even know Wutong Road 66 existed a few days ago. And you’re seriously chatting with random strangers about this?”

“I know,” Yu Sheng said. “But asking costs nothing. Maybe someone knows something. And besides, even if no one knows about Wutong Road 66, this thing that fell into our house might have come from outside. Someone might recognize it.”

Irene thought about it and simply went back to watching TV.

The phone vibrated again soon after.

It was another reply from “Traitor Three Thousand”:

“I have not heard of such an Other Domain. Your description is quite unusual… However, this object is somewhat interesting. It appears man-made, but the inscriptions on its corners are quite peculiar. Perhaps someone from the Academy would find it of interest.”