Xu Jiawei, wrapped in a bath towel and with her hair half-dry, looked at Shao Lan with a puzzled expression.
“What’s wrong with you?” Xu Jiawei asked.
Shao Lan stared at Xu Jiawei, opening his mouth, but feeling he didn’t even have the strength to let his throat make a sound.
Xu Jiawei walked in on her own, took off the towel, and shook her damp hair: “I came out after taking a shower and didn’t see you, so I wanted to go next door and ask where you were. But that Zhang Fang was acting like he was possessed—he was lying on the bed with his eyes closed the whole time. When I patted him, he suddenly started singing, which scared me so much I hurried right back.”
“It’s so cold outside, I need to soak for a bit longer.”
Xu Jiawei walked toward the bathroom.
Enduring the surging nausea in his stomach, Shao Lan followed her in.
He witnessed a deeply bizarre scene—
A living Xu Jiawei humming a tune as she entered the bathroom and unraveled the towel binding her hair.
Yet inside the bathtub, Xu Jiawei’s corpse still lay there.
No.
This wasn’t right.
The feeling of nausea grew increasingly intense. Shao Lan pressed a hand against his stomach, forcing himself to calm down.
He needed to think.
To think rationally and properly.
Look, there were two Xu Jiaweis right in front of him.
One was alive, one was dead.
There could only be one real Xu Jiawei, right?
That left two possibilities.
One was that the real Xu Jiawei was already dead, and the one standing in front of you right now was fake.
The other was that the real Xu Jiawei was still alive, and she was talking to you, while the one inside the bathtub was fake.
So what you need to judge now is which one is real and which one is fake.
Something fake would definitely have a flaw.
The key was whether you could find that flaw.
Shao Lan, you need to find the flaw, to find that flaw…
“Shao Lan, Shao Lan?” Xu Jiawei’s voice seemed to come from a very far away place. “Are you standing here without moving—do you want to take a bath with me?”
Shao Lan forced himself to look at the scene before him: the woman in the bath towel sitting by the edge of the tub, with her corpse inside it.
He turned his head and looked at the mirrors.
Both the large and small mirrors reflected this eerie scene.
Suddenly, Shao Lan noticed something was amiss.
His gaze locked onto the small mirror, then shifted to the large one.
That’s right.
That’s right.
He knew what was wrong!
The corpse in the large mirror had its eyes wide open, just like Shao Lan had just seen.
However, the corpse in the small mirror had its eyes closed.
He had found the flaw!
Two mirrors could not reflect different things.
Unless that object didn’t exist in reality at all!
The female corpse in the bathtub was fake!
Shao Lan suddenly stepped back and knocked over the small mirror!
The mirror shattered on the floor, and Shao Lan fell down along with it, pressing his hand onto the glass shards as the sharp edges immediately pierced into his palm.
A sharp, piercing pain surged through him, and blood immediately welled up.
Yet at the same time, the persistent nausea in his stomach seemed to subside quite a bit all at once.
Shao Lan raised his head.
Inside the bathtub, there were only white bubbles, the tile floor was clean and bright as new, and the corpse was gone all the blood vanished completely.
Sure enough, those things weren’t real.
“What’s wrong with you?” Xu Jiawei asked, startled, hurrying over to help him up.
“I’m fine…” Shao Lan said. “Probably just low blood sugar.”
“Ah? Why didn’t you say so earlier? I have a cola in my bag.” Xu Jiawei hurried out and quickly returned with a can of cola, handing it to him. “Here.”
“No need, it seems to have passed already.” Shao Lan shook his head. “I’m going to lie down on the sofa for a bit.”
“You’re like this, and you’re still not going to sleep in the bed?”
“I don’t like mattresses that are too soft.”
Shao Lan slowly laid down on the sofa.
He wanted to carefully review what had just happened and figure out what was going on.
However, as if he had been forcibly shut down, the moment his head touched the sofa, he instantly lost consciousness.
In the pitch-black darkness, it seemed he heard that song again.
“Mother Ming, oh Mother Ming. Thank you for granting us the blooming flowers. Mother Ming, oh Mother Ming. With you, we have a home.”
So that was it.
It turned out to be because of that song.
…
Early the next morning, a faint beam of light filtered through the curtains.
Sunspots flickered across Shao Lan’s face. He frowned and opened his eyes.
He wasn’t woken up by the sunlight, but rather by the noise outside.
The corridor was in an uproar, as if something had happened.
Shao Lan stood up, walked to the door, and pulled it open.
In the corridor, Zhang Fang stood blankly in a corner, while a frantic Xu Jiaojiao struggled to hold onto a disheveled, frantic woman with loose hair.
The frantic woman pointed at the floor of the corridor and yelled loudly: “Shao Lan’s corpse is right there! Why can’t you see it?! Why?!”
Xu Jiaojiao broke down, crying out, “Jiawei, what on earth are you talking about? There’s nothing there!”
This unkempt, wild-haired woman whose face was covered by messy locks turned out to be Xu Jiawei.
At this moment, Xu Jiawei completely lacked her previous sophisticated and charming femininity; she was in a state of sheer madness and total chaos.
The moment she turned back and saw Shao Lan, that chaos reached its peak.
Xu Jiawei stepped backward, step by step, trembling all over: “Impossible… impossible…”
“Shao Lan is dead, you’re not Shao Lan…”
Xu Jiaojiao looked as though she was about to cry: “Sister Jiawei! What on earth is going on here?!”
Shao Lan looked toward Zhang Fang in the corner.
Zhang Fang wore a wooden expression, not even blinking, his mouth occasionally opening and closing—looking exceedingly eerie.
“Shao Lan is dead! You’re a ghost! You must be a ghost!”
Xu Jiawei shrieked hysterically, but it seemed all she could do was scream, devoid of any capacity to fight back.
“Brother Shao Lan, what should we do?” Xu Jiaojiao asked Shao Lan with reddened eyes.
“Knock her out.”
“Huh?” Xu Jiaojiao didn’t process it in time.
Shao Lan stepped forward, raised his hand, and struck the back of Xu Jiawei’s neck with a sharp chop.
Xu Jiawei’s eyes rolled back, and she collapsed to the ground, motionless.
“Sister Jiawei!” Xu Jiaojiao quickly reached out to support the upper half of Xu Jiawei’s body.
Shao Lan’s hand chop had been delivered without any hesitation. With her eyes closed, Xu Jiawei was completely unconscious.
Shao Lan took out a knife and pricked Xu Jiawei’s fingertip.
A drop of blood welled up. Feeling the pain, Xu Jiawei trembled faintly in her unconscious state.
A moment later, she slowly opened her eyes, looked back down the corridor, and then turned back to lock gazes with Shao Lan.
Observing her eyes, Shao Lan felt as though the familiar Xu Jiawei had returned.
“I… I looked…” Xu Jiawei rubbed her forehead hard. “Just now, that was…”
“It was an illusion,” Shao Lan said.
“You, like me, heard Zhang Fang singing.”
Mother Ming, oh Mother Ming. Thank you for granting us the blooming flowers. Mother Ming, oh Mother Ming. With you, we have a home.
The tune was very simple, yet it carried an ancient, lingering charm.
It inexplicably brought to mind a grand sacrificial ritual, with countless men and women in traditional attire dancing and singing in unison.
“This song is like a sacrificial chant. Those who hear it fall into hallucinations and grow increasingly deranged step by step,” Shao Lan said in a deep voice.
“Is that why you were acting so strangely in the bathroom yesterday?” Xu Jiawei asked.
“Mm,” Shao Lan nodded. “Fortunately, I knocked the mirror over and broke it. I discovered that the pain of the shards cutting my hand can help snap someone out of it.”
Xu Jiawei looked at her bleeding fingertips and nodded. “Thank you.”
She stood up, casting a cold gaze at Zhang Fang in the corner.
“Why would he sing something like that?”
Zhang Fang remained lost in his own world, completely unresponsive to Xu Jiawei’s words.
A thought flashed through Shao Lan’s mind, reminding him of the fluorescent glow flashing across Zhang Fang’s bandages when he saw him in the corridor yesterday.
That definitely wasn’t normal.
The problem likely lay right there in those wounds.
“Maybe it’s because he was bitten by those eyeless children,” Xu Jiaojiao said, seeming to arrive at the same conclusion as Shao Lan. “We need to watch out for those kids…”
Regardless, Zhang Fang had already fallen victim to it.
After pondering for a moment, Xu Jiawei picked up a heavy bronze vase and walked toward Zhang Fang.
“Wait, Sister Jiawei, what are you trying to do…” Xu Jiaojiao asked, blocking her path in a panic.
“Kill him,” Xu Jiawei said.