Revolving lantern, back to zero

When Lin Shen got home, it was already dark.

He stood at the door of the rented room, the key in the lock, but he didn't turn it. Light shone from under the door—not the light from the lamp he had left on before leaving, which was yellow, but this light was white, a cold white, like the light in a hospital corridor.

He turned the lock and pushed the door open.

All the lights in the living room were on. He hadn't turned them on. There was something new on the wall—a mirror. A large mirror, almost filling the entire wall, with a dark brown wooden frame, carved with patterns, and worn edges. Exactly the same as the mirrors stolen in the mirror theft case.

Lin Shen stood at the doorway, not going in. The mirror reflected the corridor behind him, the stairwell window, and his own back. Everything in the mirror was normal, except—he was smiling.

He himself wasn't smiling. But the "him" in the mirror had a slight upturn at the corners of his mouth and his eyes narrowed into slits, as if he were looking at an interesting toy.

Lin Shen walked into the living room and stood in front of the mirror. The person in the mirror moved at the same time as him, but their expressions were never synchronized. He was expressionless, while the person in the mirror was smiling. He frowned, and the person in the mirror smiled even more deeply. He raised his right hand, and the person in the mirror also raised his right hand—but with an extra movement: the person in the mirror took something out of their pocket with their left hand and held it up to the mirror.

It is a key.

It's bronze-colored, and the label says "317".

Lin Shen reached out to touch the mirror. The moment his fingertips touched the glass, the surface rippled like water. It wasn't cold, hard glass; it was warm, soft, and had a skin-like feel. His fingers sank into the mirror, passed through it, and reached the other side.

He could feel the air, the temperature, and something breathing over there.

His phone vibrated. He had one hand inside the mirror and the other hand was taking out his phone.

Unknown number:

"Come in. Haven't you been looking for cabinet 317? 317 isn't a cabinet, it's a door. This mirror is the door to 317. You saw it in the Origin World. Now, it's waiting for you in your home."

Lin Shen looked at his phone screen, then at himself in the mirror. The smile vanished, replaced by a serious, almost pleading expression. He shook his head, meaning: Don't come in.

But Lin Shen had already made his decision.

He walked entirely into the mirror.

Passing through the mirror felt like passing through a soap bubble—a slight resistance, a slight popping sound, and then weightlessness. He felt himself falling, yet also rising. All around was white emptiness, devoid of up, down, left, or right, without sound or smell. Then his feet touched the ground.

He was standing in a room.

The room wasn't large, about twenty square meters, with white walls and a stark white light. A white bed, white cabinets, white floor. It was exactly the same as ward B7, but this wasn't ward B7. Because the person on the bed wasn't Shen Ruo, it was himself.

Lin Shen stood by the bed, looking down at "himself" on it. "He" was wearing a hospital gown, his wrists wrapped in gauze, his eyes closed, and his breathing shallow. He looked exactly like the shadow he had killed in the Origin World.

But this time, the person in bed opened their eyes.

Those eyes were brown, normal, warm, like those of a living person. He looked at Lin Shen and smiled. Not the eerie smile you see in the mirror, but a genuine, warm smile, like seeing an old friend.

"You've come." The person on the bed sat up, the gauze on their wrist loosened, revealing intact skin underneath. "I've been waiting for you for a long time."

"Who are you?" Lin Shen asked.

“I am the shadow you killed in the original world,” he said. “But after you killed me, I didn’t die. I was released. I escaped from the trunk of the ‘Holy Spirit’ and found a new vessel—this body. This body is your backup in this parallel world. You never came to this world, so this body has always been empty. I moved in.”

Lin Shen's hand rested on the gun handle. "You want to possess Lu Ming's body."

"That's a backup plan," Shadow said. "If I could find your backup, why would I use Lu Ming's? Your backup is 100% synchronized with your consciousness frequency. Lu Ming's is only 90%. With your backup, I can utilize 100% of my abilities. With Lu Ming's, I can only utilize 90%."

"What ability?"

Shadow got off the bed and stood barefoot on the white floor. He was half a head shorter than Lin Shen—because the Lin Shen backup in this world had a slight difference in height from the original. But other than that, they were almost identical.

"The ability to create doors," the shadow said. "The core ability of the 'Holy Spirit' is not to absorb parallel worlds, but to create doors. Every mirror is a door. Every door leads to any parallel world. The 'Holy Spirit' uses this ability to travel between countless worlds, absorbing their energy. Now, the true form of the 'Holy Spirit' has been released by you, and its power has scattered into fragments. I have obtained one of them—the fragment of creating doors."

He raised his right hand and drew a circle in the air. Where his fingertips touched, the air cracked open, and blue light shone through. The light grew brighter and brighter, the crack grew larger and larger, and finally it became a door—a blue-glowing door floating in the air.

"Look," the shadow said, "this door leads to your world. Your rented room, the living room, in front of that mirror. You came in from there, and this door can take you back."

He drew another circle, and another door appeared. This time, it was glowing red.

"This door leads to Lu Ming's world. In the parallel world where he died three years ago, his body is still lying there, without a life support system, but also without decay. Because time is frozen in that world."

The third door. Green light.

"This door leads to Shen Ruo's consciousness space. I lived there while she was unconscious. There are seven floors there, you should have heard of them. I lived on the bottom floor, the seventh floor. There is a black tree there—the root of the 'Holy Spirit'. You've already seen it."

Lin Shen looked at the three doors floating in the air, blue, red, and green, like three eyes of different colors.

"You stole the mirror just for this?" Lin Shen asked, "To create the portal?"

"I need a mirror as an anchor," the shadow said. "A door can open anywhere, but without a mirror as an anchor, it will disappear within minutes. Mirrors are stabilizers. Every mirror used by someone with the 'carousel' ability retains their consciousness frequency. I use those frequencies as coordinates to create a stable, long-lasting door."

He walked up to Lin Shen and extended his hand.

"I am not your enemy, Lin Shen. I am your brother. We share the same source of consciousness, the same genetic sequence, and the same soul frequency. I do not want to absorb you like the 'Holy Spirit.' I want to cooperate with you."

"What kind of cooperation?"

The shadow pointed to the blue door. "In your world, there's an organization called 'The Reapers.' They hunt down those with the ability to use the 'Lantern' ability and steal it. You've already encountered them—in the warehouse, the murderer who killed your other self was a member of 'The Reapers.' They're not acting alone. They have an entire organization spread across all parallel worlds. Their goal is to collect all the ability fragments and synthesize them into a complete ability user—an existence stronger than 'Holy Spirit.'"

Lin Shen stared into the shadow's eyes. "How do you know all this?"

"Because the true form of the 'Holy Spirit' was created by the 'Reapers'," Shadow said. "The 'Reapers' aren't hunters of ability users—they are the creators of ability users. They plant seeds in every parallel world, waiting for the seeds to sprout, grow, and bear fruit, and then harvest them. You are a seed, Lin Shen. From the moment you awakened, you have been the target of the 'Reapers.' They have been waiting for you to grow up."

The white light in the room flickered suddenly.

The shadow looked up at the ceiling, and its expression changed.

"They're here."

"Who?"

“The Reapers.” The shadow turned and walked towards the red door. “They’ve tracked me down. They want the fragment of the Creation Gate I have. You’d better get out of here.”

"And you?"

"I'm returning to Shen Ruo's consciousness space. It's the only safe place—the 'Reaper' can't get in because Shen Ruo's consciousness space has seven layers of defense, each requiring a different key." The shadow stood before the red door, turning to look at Lin Shen. "You will come to me. When you need answers, when you have nowhere else to go, you know where to find me."

He pushed open the door and went inside. The red light engulfed him, and then the door vanished as if it had never existed.

The white light in the room flickered again. This time it was more intense, and the bulb emitted a piercing buzzing sound.

Lin Shen turned and walked towards the blue door—the door leading to his rented room. The moment he stepped over the threshold, he heard the sound of shattering glass behind him. He glanced back.

Countless mirrors appeared on the walls of the room. They were of all sizes and shapes, some embedded in the walls, others floating in the air. In each mirror stood a person—dressed in black and wearing a black mask, their faces obscured. They emerged from the mirrors, as silently as if they were rising from the water.

One of them looked up and saw Lin Shen.

"There it is." His voice was low but clear. "The seventh seed."

Lin Shen didn't hesitate. He went through the blue door and returned to his rented room.

He tumbled out of the mirror and crashed onto the living room floor. The mirror behind him rippled violently before returning to its normal state—reflecting his disheveled appearance.

He got up and turned to look at the mirror. He saw only himself in the mirror. There was no shadow, no person in black, no door.

But in the lower right corner of the mirror, there was an extra line of text, as if it had been carved in with a fingernail:

"They've found you. Run."

Lin Shen did not run away.

He walked to the window, drew back the curtains, and looked out at the city. The night was deep, and the city lights shone brightly, everything as usual. But he knew that something was moving in the gaps between those lights, in the reflections of those windows.

My phone vibrated. It wasn't an unknown number; it was a call from the hospital.

"Team Leader Lin, Xiao Chen is awake. He wants to see you. He said—" the nurse paused, ""he said he knows how to kill the person in the mirror."

Lin Shen gripped his phone tightly and glanced at the mirror on the wall.

This time, his expression in the mirror was synchronized.

But in those eyes, there was something new—a tiny, almost invisible tattoo of a black snake coiled around a rose, reflected in the deepest part of the pupil.