Before going to bed that night, Qin Yun and Lian Xue comforted Li Xiao once more. After Li Xiao fell asleep first, the two of them also prepared to turn in.
Lian Xue said, “Qin Yun, should I sleep on the outside?”
The outside of the bed was closer to the door—if anything dangerous happened, the one sleeping there would be the most exposed.
But Qin Yun replied, “I’ll sleep on the outside.”
Not waiting for Lian Xue to object, she laid down on the outer side of the bed. Qin Yun avoided looking at Lian Xue, her conscience pricked. She didn’t dare sleep too deeply either—some part of her subconscious was still aware she had a meeting with Du Ge at midnight.
Du Ge had asked to see her tonight, saying he had something important to discuss. Qin Yun didn’t know what it was about.
She had been chasing Du Ge for two years now. Before him, she’d dated several boyfriends. But her biggest flaw was that the more she couldn’t get something, the more she wanted it. The more Du Ge ignored her, the more obsessed she became. Yet Qin Yun was also someone easily distracted—just seeing the villa’s owner briefly had shaken her interest. She had developed a small crush, but the host now seemed suspicious, so her attention swung back to Du Ge.
She was excited for the meeting tonight. But after a whole day of tension, even though she remembered the appointment, Qin Yun eventually drifted off to sleep.
In the middle of the night, she was suddenly awakened by an eerie creaking sound coming from beneath the bed.
She tried to ignore it, but the noise only grew louder. Frowning, Qin Yun opened her eyes—the room was pitch black, not even a hand could be seen in front of her face.
The sound continued, directly under her body. It was like something alive was crawling beneath the floorboards. Her drowsiness vanished. Panicking, she turned to wake Lian Xue and Li Xiao.
“Lian Xue, Li Xiao, wake up—there’s something wrong in the room…”
Qin Yun shook them several times, but they were fast asleep, unresponsive. She pushed harder and harder, her wrist aching from the effort, but they wouldn’t wake up. That’s when she realized something was very wrong. Lowering her head and squinting in the dark, she leaned closer.
When her face was nearly touching theirs, she finally saw clearly—their complexions were deathly pale, tinged with green. Like corpses.
Qin Yun’s breath caught. She recoiled in horror, trembling against the headboard. The sound beneath the bed grew louder. She could even feel the vibration of the boards being pushed upward.
Covering her ears, she shut her eyes tightly and clutched the protective talisman on her body. “I can’t see anything—I don’t see anything…”
Suddenly, her hair was yanked. Someone—or something—was tugging hard, making her scalp burn with pain. Fear and pain mixed and broke through her defenses. She screamed, “Lian Xue! Li Xiao! Stop pulling my hair!”
But then she froze.
Lian Xue and Li Xiao were still asleep.
Then who was pulling her hair?
She swallowed hard and slowly turned her head.
Right beside her was a pair of bloody severed hands, pressing down on her hair.
“Ahhh!”
Qin Yun screamed as she fell off the bed. A sharp pain tore through her body, but it allowed her to see clearly what was under the bedboard.
Beneath the cluttered bed, a head smeared with muddy spots and two disjointed legs were crawling. The moment it sensed Qin Yun’s movement, the head and legs turned toward her. The expression on the head was somewhere between fear and resentment, its white, lifeless eyes staring straight at her in a chilling gaze.
It was Duanzi’s head.
Qin Yun’s blood ran cold. She propped herself up with her limbs and scrambled to her feet in panic, bolting toward the door.
She crashed into the wooden door, throwing it open. Then, running faster than she ever had in her life, she fled. After putting some distance behind her, she risked a glance back—and saw the two legs still chasing after her relentlessly.
Qin Yun almost burst into tears, but she didn’t dare slow down.
What do I do? What do I do?
Am I going to die?
Where’s Jiang Luo? Can he save me?
Why was the talisman Jiang Luo gave her completely useless?!
At that moment, Qin Yun even felt a twinge of resentment toward Jiang Luo. But what she resented more was Duanzi. Why did he have to suggest looking into the mirror at midnight?
If it weren’t for Duanzi, they wouldn’t have been dragged into this mirror world… Qin Yun had felt sad about Duanzi’s death before and even shed a few tears for him. But now, all she felt was grim satisfaction.
You’re dead, so stay dead—why come after me?
I wasn’t the one who killed you!
Qin Yun ran all the way to the lakeside. Gasping for air and nearly at her limit, she suddenly saw a familiar figure emerge in the darkness ahead. Even without clearly seeing his face, she instantly recognized him—it was Du Ge, who had arranged to meet her that night!
A spark of hope flared in Qin Yun’s eyes. She shouted, “Du Ge! I’m here! Help me!”
Du Ge paused for a moment, looked around, as though trying to locate where the voice came from.
Qin Yun shouted louder, “Over here! Du Ge!”
This time, Du Ge heard her voice and began walking toward her.
Qin Yun was overjoyed. She didn’t notice that at some point, a thin mist had risen over the night.
The mist veiled the lakefront, making the twisted, crooked trees look all the more eerie and sinister.
Qin Yun’s steps slowed slightly as she stared at the looming tree shadows, a creeping fear rising inside her. Du Ge emerged from the mist and came up to her.
Du Ge looked at her with concern. “Qin Yun, what happened to you?”
Seeing a familiar face finally chased away much of the fear in Qin Yun’s heart. She ran up to Du Ge and said in a panic, “Du Ge, Duanzi came after me!”
“Duanzi?” Du Ge looked more confused than ever.
Seeing his skeptical expression, Qin Yun turned to point behind her. “Look! His legs have been chasing me the whole time…”
Her words cut off abruptly. She murmured, “Where did they go?”
Du Ge glanced behind her and frowned. “Qin Yun, are you sure you weren’t mistaken?”
“Impossible!” Qin Yun cried, trying to grab his hand. “I couldn’t have seen it wrong! Du Ge, please believe me—Duanzi really came back!”
Du Ge dodged her hand with practiced ease. Qin Yun, long used to being avoided by him, wasn’t surprised. She pleaded, nearly tearful, “Du Ge, you have to believe me. I’m not hallucinating… Duanzi’s become a ghost. This place is terrifying.”
By the end, she was sobbing softly.
Du Ge sighed. “I didn’t say I don’t believe you. Let’s walk and talk.”
Qin Yun nodded with a sniffle. They walked a few steps by the lakeside before she calmed down a bit and told Du Ge everything that had just happened in detail.
Du Ge thought for a moment and asked, “Did you keep the talisman on you?”
By now, Qin Yun had lost all faith in the talisman. She yanked the yellow charm from her collar. “I had it. But it didn’t work at all. If I hadn’t woken up quickly, I’d be dead by now.”
Du Ge stared at the yellow talisman in her hand for a few seconds. “You’ve been carrying it the whole time?”
“You haven’t?” Qin Yun asked in surprise. “Didn’t Jiang Luo say when he drew the talismans that we needed to keep them with us at all times? He said it would ward off evil. That’s why I’ve kept it on me this whole time.”
“I forgot to bring it when I came out,” Du Ge replied. Then, after a moment’s hesitation, he added, “Qin Yun, do you really think this talisman drives away evil?”
Qin Yun clenched the talisman tightly. “If it really worked, why did Duanzi still come after me?”
“I didn’t have the talisman with me,” Du Ge said slowly, “and nothing happened to me. The others are fine too. But it was you who encountered something strange…”
Qin Yun saw that he seemed to be working something out. Uneasy, she urged him, “Du Ge, what are you trying to say?”
Du Ge said in a low voice, “What if… this isn’t a protective talisman at all, but a ghost-attracting talisman?”
Qin Yun was stunned. “What did you say?!”
“I don’t want to suspect Jiang Luo or Lian Xue, but Duanzi died last night, and tonight you almost died too. The ones who’ve been harmed are all from our group of four,” Du Ge said grimly. “Is that really a coincidence? I didn’t bring my talisman and I was fine. You brought yours and ran into a ghost. I suspect this talisman wasn’t drawn to protect us—it was drawn by Jiang Luo to lure ghosts in!”
A chill crept up Qin Yun’s spine. She instinctively moved closer to Du Ge, her voice trembling. “But why would he do that?”
Du Ge’s expression darkened. “Maybe… he’s using us as bait. Trying to lure out the final malicious ghost through us.”
The theory made sense. The more Qin Yun thought about it, the more convinced she became. She looked down at the talisman in her hand as if it were a venomous creature. Her face shifted, and with a burst of anger, she tore the talisman to shreds and flung it into the lake. “I won’t let him succeed.”
Du Ge looked at the torn pieces of paper floating on the lake’s surface and revealed a strange smile. “Getting rid of the talisman will make you safe.”
Qin Yun didn’t notice anything odd about him. Gritting her teeth, she said, “Tomorrow, I’m definitely going to ask him about this. Using us as scapegoats? Worst case, we’ll drag him down with us!”
Du Ge walked up beside her and finally rested a hand on her shoulder, speaking gently, “We can talk about that later. Right now, let’s take care of something more important.”
Qin Yun blushed slightly, but she shifted uncomfortably. “Du Ge… your hand is really cold.”
“Is it?” Du Ge said lightly. “Maybe the temperature’s dropped.”
Suddenly, a voice came from beside them.
“Qin Yun?”
She turned her head and saw Jiang Luo slowly emerging from the mist.
The moment she saw him, wariness flashed across Qin Yun’s face. Though she’d just spoken so harshly earlier, in truth, she was still somewhat afraid of this mysterious man. Instinctively, she stepped back—straight into Du Ge’s arms.
Right, Du Ge is here too. Summoning her courage, Qin Yun glared at Jiang Luo and said sarcastically, “Coming to finish the job since I’m not dead yet?”
“What are you talking about?” Jiang Luo frowned, his gaze shifting from her face to Du Ge’s.
Qin Yun sneered, “We know everything now. Still pretending?”
But Jiang Luo said calmly, “Come here. The Du Ge behind you is a ghost pretending to be human.”
Qin Yun frowned. “Impossible!”
She turned to look at Du Ge, who also stared at Jiang Luo with suspicion. “Qin Yun, that ghost must’ve taken Jiang Luo’s form to deceive us. Don’t trust a word he says.”
“I know,” Qin Yun replied. “I won’t believe him.”
The black-haired young man she rejected remained calm, as if her decision didn’t affect him at all. In a steady tone, he said, “Is the arm around your shoulder icy cold? Is his skin as hard as a corpse’s?”
With each word he spoke, Qin Yun stiffened more—because, unbelievably, everything he said was true.
Du Ge grew anxious. “Qin Yun, don’t be fooled by a ghost! My skin is cold because I’m not wearing much!”
Jiang Luo continued, “Did he convince you to tear up the talisman I gave you? He only dared get close to you after you destroyed it, right? Because my talismans are lethal to ghosts. If one wants to kill you, it’ll use every trick it has—illusions, persuasion—to make you discard it.”
Qin Yun trembled.
A chill swept over her whole body.
Her neck turned slowly, as if rusted, to look back at Du Ge—then she suddenly backed away, step by step distancing herself from him.
Du Ge’s expression turned grim. His once-human face darkened, revealing a disturbingly sinister aura.
Qin Yun was on the verge of a breakdown. In that moment, she couldn’t trust anyone. She stumbled backward in panic and ducked behind the trunk of a tree between the two men.
Once she was hidden, Jiang Luo raised his hands and formed a seal in front of him. “Good, now that there are no bystanders—let’s see if you’re the malicious ghost we’ve been looking for.”
“Xun position. Wind.”
A sharp gust of wind swept through. Du Ge tried to turn and flee, but in the next second, the razor-sharp wind shredded him into pieces.
Qin Yun screamed at the sight, then immediately clamped a hand over her mouth.
But what chilled her even more was what happened next—Du Ge’s torn flesh suddenly turned into snow. Snowflakes swirled in the wind, and once it died down, there was no sign of Du Ge at all—just a thin, dirty layer of snow on the ground.
Jiang Luo walked up to the snow, crouched down, picked up a bit and rubbed it between his fingers. “It’s snow…?”
Before he finished speaking, a flicker of movement caught the corner of his eye. He turned his head and saw a black-robed figure darting away behind him.
That silhouette matched the last image left behind before the beggar’s death.
Jiang Luo curled his lips slightly and stood up. “So you finally showed yourself.”
He turned and gave chase.
Qin Yun, left behind, stared in a daze at the snowmelt soaking into the earth. She shivered, then hurried after him.
But she was much slower than Jiang Luo. By the time she caught up, panting heavily, she saw him standing inside a courtyard.
“This is…” Qin Yun looked around, stunned. “The courtyard of Young Master Chi?”
“So it really was him. I knew it!” she said, excited. “Jiang Luo, Young Master Chi must be the malicious ghost we’ve been searching for!”
Jiang Luo didn’t respond. Instead, he gave her a sidelong glance. “You should go back.”
Qin Yun bit her lip. She looked like she wanted to say something, but in the end, she said nothing and turned to leave.
Jiang Luo wasn’t in the mood to pay attention to someone else’s emotional struggles. He stood alone in the darkness for a while, until finally someone emerged from the lit room ahead.
Chi You smiled. “Young Master Jiang, not planning to sleep in your room tonight?”
Jiang Luo paused, then walked into the room.
Chi You didn’t ask what he had been doing, and Jiang Luo didn’t plan to explain. The two laid down in tacit understanding, each pulling up their own blanket and closing their eyes.
The night passed quickly.
So quickly, in fact, that Jiang Luo felt like he had only just closed his eyes before opening them again. He sat up and watched Chi You get dressed and leave. A faint unease rose in Jiang Luo’s heart—it felt like time in the mirror world was accelerating.
Was it just an illusion?
Jiang Luo got up too.
After breakfast, just as he was about to head out to investigate, he overheard two servant girls whispering under the corridor.
“Did you hear? Someone died again last night.”
“Yes, and it’s two more people again. One was a servant from our household named Du Ge, and the other was a night watchman from outside. I heard the night watchman died a horrible death—his head was chopped off and left on Wanbao Street, but his headless body kept crawling along the ground, covered in blood, all the way to the front gate of our house!”
“Ah… Why would it crawl all the way to our gate? Wait, how could it even crawl without a head?”
“Turned into a ghost, obviously,” the speaking maid whispered. “People in Bojiucheng are all saying that the malicious ghost who killed the night watchman is hiding in the Chi family! They say the night watchman was pointing out the murderer, and that the ghost that caused all the uproar before was someone from the Chi household!”
The other maid gasped in fear. “That’s…”
Then they spotted Jiang Luo. The two of them blanched, lowered their heads, and hurried off.
Jiang Luo watched them disappear, then turned and walked toward the Chi family’s ancestral hall.
Chi You usually went to the ancestral hall when he left.
Sure enough, when Jiang Luo arrived at the hall, he could already hear voices of Chi family elders coming from within.
“Hurry up and swallow this vengeful ghost.”
Swallow?
Jiang Luo’s interest was piqued. He stepped quietly to the window and looked inside.
In the ancestral hall, Chi You stood at the center. In front of him sat three family elders. Besides the four of them, there was also a particularly strong vengeful ghost.
The ghost wore a red wedding dress and was heavily pregnant. Her gown was torn and ragged, exposing pale-blue legs beneath it. Blood kept trickling from between her legs, and her face twisted in pain and rage as she screamed and thrashed inside a circle of talismans.
It was a pregnant bride ghost.
A woman dying on her wedding day harbors unusually strong resentment. Dressed in red, the chances of her becoming a ferocious ghost are even higher.
But this one… She had died during her wedding and was pregnant. She was no ordinary ghost—she was a ferocious ghost among ferocious ghosts. The resentment radiating from her was so thick it was nearly bursting out of the hall.
If Jiang Luo had encountered such a ghost himself, he would’ve turned and run without hesitation.
The three elders of the Chi family had expressions of barely concealed fear as they barked louder, “Use your ghost tattoo to swallow her, now!”
Chi You glanced calmly at the ghost. His tone remained indifferent. “She’s too strong. If I swallow her, the backlash will be too great for my ghost tattoo. I refuse.”
