Alien Hotel.

Chapter 24: Mirror Scene

This room didn't originally look like this!
Of course Yu Sheng reacted instantly - he still clearly remembered what the room that had trapped Irene looked like. It was empty, without any furnishings, not even a chair, and only a lonely oil painting hung on the wall facing the door...

Instead of being like it is now, with all kinds of furniture and a mirror hanging on the wall facing the door.

Although he felt doubtful and a little uneasy, Yu Sheng did not sense any dangerous aura in the room.

Of course, he knew that this so-called "sense of crisis" sounded mysterious, but after several near-death experiences, he did feel that he had some perception of danger, and here... he felt that the room in front of him was very safe.

After hesitating at the door for a few seconds, Yu Sheng walked into the house.

Everything in the room looked normal. There was no monster with a pitchfork suddenly appearing from the corner or a brazier falling from above his head just as he walked in. The sun was shining brightly outside the window and the air in the room was fresh, without any smell of corruption or suspicious fishy odor.

Yu Sheng checked the room and confirmed that the furniture here were just ordinary items, and finally came to the mirror facing the door.

In his impression, mirrors are generally not placed in a position facing the door. According to his understanding, feng shui considerations are one reason, and another reason is that a mirror facing the door can easily frighten people who open the door and enter the room at night.

But he was not sure whether there was a similar saying in this "boundary city".

He just felt that the mirror facing the door gave him a somewhat... weird feeling.

And this weird feeling is not only because there was Irene's oil painting hanging here, but also because the scene in the mirror... looks weird.

It was an indescribable weirdness. The scene reflected in the mirror was actually very normal, just like the room at the moment. Yu Sheng looked at it carefully for a long time, but couldn't find the source of the strange feeling in his heart. The more he looked, the more suspicious he became - what was wrong?

Is it that the size and position of the objects in the mirror have shifted so much that they are hard to detect with the naked eye? Is it that the brightness and darkness of the picture are inconsistent? Or... is there something in the mirror that is not originally in the room?
Yu Sheng thought for a moment, then stretched out his fingers and gently brushed the surface of the mirror.

He felt a cool touch, and ripples like water waves appeared on the mirror where his fingers touched. The image in the mirror shattered with the ripples in the blink of an eye!

Yu Sheng's eyes widened instantly and he subconsciously took a half step back. In less than a second, the mirror turned pitch black. The originally reflected scene of the room shattered and melted in the ripples. The thick inky darkness finally filled the entire frame, as if it had swallowed up everything, slowly wriggling, undulating, and spinning in front of Yu Sheng's eyes.

Then, something new gradually emerged from the darkness. Yu Sheng suppressed his uneasiness and took a step forward to take a closer look. Gradually, the thick black veil-like darkness faded away from his eyes, allowing him to see the scene in the depths of the mirror clearly:

A doll - but it was not Irene, but a strange face - was lying in pieces in a ruin that could not recognize its original appearance. Her limbs were broken, her clothes were torn, and she was covered with scars, as if she had experienced a brutal battle and finally died of exhaustion.

In astonishment, Yu Sheng opened his eyes wide, trying to see more in the mirror, and the mirror seemed to really respond to his thoughts. The picture in the dark slowly moved. Yu Sheng noticed that the perspective presented by the mirror was zooming out and tilting, showing a wider panorama -

He saw the situation around the dead puppet, and saw the ruins of a larger scale. He saw many structures that looked like classical columns and cornices, but those structures were broken and collapsed, collapsing in the dark and muddy chaos. Many of the puppet's broken body parts were scattered around, as if telling him a message:
Everything here was destroyed because of this battle.

Suddenly, Yu Sheng recalled what Irene had said to him before:

"...The living doll is blessed. I can fight much better than those so-called investigators and spirit world detectives in the foreign land..."

"Are these 'living puppets' really so good at fighting...?" Yu Sheng couldn't help but mutter to himself.

But even with such a powerful fighting ability, the doll in the mirror still died. Something more powerful than her killed her - as the perspective shifted, Yu Sheng saw the "enemy" that killed the doll.

A...huge shadow. Yu Sheng didn't know what it was. He just felt that it was very big, almost ten times the size of the puppet. Its outline was roughly human-shaped, but it seemed to have twisted and overlapping wings on its back. It also fell among the ruins. Part of its huge body melted like mud, merging with the chaos around the ruins, and with the puppet's limbs scattered in the ruins, while the remaining body structure was twisted and damaged.

Yu Sheng didn't know whether the distortion and damage on the giant shadow were caused by the beating of the puppet or whether it had always looked like that - after all, this thing looked quite abstract.

But there is one thing he could guess, the puppet and the huge shadow that seemed to have wings would perish together in the end.

Just when Yu Sheng wanted to see more details, the scene in front of him suddenly rippled again like water waves.

Everything in the depths of darkness shattered and melted in the blink of an eye. The thick darkness like a curtain surged up instantly and then retreated into the surrounding mirror frames. In the blink of an eye, what Yu Sheng saw turned into an ordinary mirror again, reflecting the scene in the room.

Yu Sheng stared at the scene in a daze, then tapped and touched the mirror a few more times, but failed to evoke any abnormality. What on earth was that just now?
Maybe it was because he had been dealing with a lot of abnormal things in the past two days, Yu Sheng felt that his ability to accept things had become much stronger. At this moment, he did not think that the strange scene just now was scary at all, but he just felt a strong curiosity about what he saw.

Did what appeared in the mirror really happen? Who was the dead doll? What was the huge shadow that died with the doll? Where was the ruins? And why did all this appear in this house, in front of him?
Yu Sheng frowned as he pondered, and couldn't help but think of another question:
Does the scene recorded in the mirror have anything to do with Irene?
The dead doll did not look like Irene. Although her face was unrecognizable when she died in battle, at least the striking blonde hair was completely different from Irene. But for some reason, when Yu Sheng saw the doll, he couldn't help but think of a girl who was watching TV on the first floor and was sealed in an oil painting.

After a while, Yu Sheng ended his thoughts. He looked at the mirror on the wall, reached out to hold the mirror frame, exerted a little force, and tried to see if he could take it down and move it to another place.

The mirror did not move at all, as solid as if it were cast into the wall.

After trying several times, Yu Sheng chose to give up.

He turned and headed for the door, but before leaving the room he turned back suddenly and glanced quickly around the room.

The furnishings in the room remained the same, and the mirror hadn't changed at all.

Yu Sheng frowned and closed the door.

After two or three seconds, he pushed the door open again, as if to catch the room off guard.

There was no change in the room, it remained the same.

Yu Sheng stood at the door holding the door handle, sticking his head into the room and looking around suspiciously, gradually feeling like a lunatic.

After confirming it again and again, he finally stopped bothering with the door.

But he did not go back to his bedroom. Instead, he ran down the stairs and came to the dining room.

Irene, who was watching TV at the dining table, heard the noise coming from the side and leaned over to look at the edge of the picture frame: "Hey? Yusheng, didn't you go to bed? Are you suffering from insomnia? I don't know how to tell bedtime stories..."

He is still that heartless and familiar person.

Yu Sheng didn't say anything. He just sat opposite Irene and looked at her seriously, as if he was observing something carefully.

This finally made the doll in the painting feel a little awkward.

"Why are you looking at me..." Irene shrank her neck. "I'm telling you, I know I'm pretty, but you and the paper man have no future..."

The topic that Yu Sheng had been planning all along was ruined by Irene's words.

"Ahem, let me tell you something serious!" He had to cough twice and stiffly changed the subject to the main track. "Do you still remember what the room where you were hung on the wall looked like?"

"I remember," Irene thought for a moment and answered naturally, "There's nothing there, it's empty, you can see a door across the street, and there's wallpaper - the wallpaper at the corners is moldy and curled, and you didn't fix it."

Yu Sheng nodded: Very good, at least on this matter, Irene’s memory is consistent with his.

"The second question is, do you remember a place that looked like a ruin, with many classical columns, collapsed stone walls, and cornices. The ruins were completely 'immersed' in darkness, and there was also a puppet - don't worry about whether it was you, there was a puppet that died in the ruins, and it died miserably, with its arms and legs broken all over the ground..."

Irene shrank her neck instantly: "That sounds scary."

"Don't worry about whether it's scary or not, just tell me whether you have any impression of this scene."

"No."

Erin answered without hesitation.

(End of this chapter)