Chapter 43: Mission Complete
Having narrowly escaped death, Chen Ge’s heart pounded wildly, his chest heaving, lips tinged purple, his hands still gripping the cleaver tightly.
After a minute or two, he finally calmed down, the dizzy sensation in his head fading somewhat.
Wiping the sweat from his face, he staggered to his feet from the bathtub.
Under the flickering candlelight, the room seemed unchanged.
“I swung the blade and should have hit something, and I heard a crisp sound.” Chen Ge followed the angle of his slash and saw a mark left on the edge of the bathtub.
“I hit the bathtub? That can’t be right. I clearly felt someone pressing down on my head, and that strike should have landed on them.” Chen Ge desperately wanted to know the truth. He stepped out of the tub and grabbed the phone that was still recording.
He stopped the recording and started the video from the beginning.
“At 3:30, I sat in the tub, and nothing unusual happened until 3:43.” Chen Ge leaned against the wall, eyes fixed on the screen. At 3:44, he lay down in the tub.
“Watching it like this is indeed a bit eerie.” It hadn’t felt that scary while doing it, but seeing it from a bystander’s perspective in the video sent chills down his spine.
Chen Ge compared the timestamps. Twenty seconds before he lay down, everything in the bathroom was normal, with only the occasional sound of dripping water.
Ten seconds later, Chen Ge frowned. He noticed that the content in the video didn’t match what he had experienced in the tub!
According to his mental count, footsteps should have sounded in the hallway by now, but the video showed nothing—no strange noises at all.
Another five or six seconds passed, and the banging on the door that Chen Ge remembered didn’t appear in the video either. The screen only showed the dark, still water and the dancing candle flame.
“Were the footsteps and door banging just my imagination?”
A full fifty seconds went by. On the screen, the previously calm Chen Ge had veins bulging on his arms, and his face took on an unnatural purplish hue.
The Chen Ge in the tub was about to reach his limit.
And then, something that made his scalp crawl happened.
A palm-sized shard of mirror by the tub slowly darkened, and a black shadow emerged from it. It crouched beside the tub, a scene of utter eeriness.
From its silhouette, it looked a lot like He Feng.
Then came the critical moment.
In the video, Chen Ge’s body and will were at their breaking point. He couldn’t hold on any longer, bracing his hands on the tub floor, ready to give up.
But just as he was about to quit, the black shadow beside the tub suddenly reached out, pressing down on his head and covering his mouth!
Unable to breathe, Chen Ge struggled desperately, swinging the cleaver wildly. The shadow swayed, and the cleaver seemed to affect it slightly, but barely.
At the brink of life and death, the dolls placed around the tub stirred as if blown by the wind. The smallest one pressed its body against the palm-sized mirror shard.
The mirror surface was covered, and the shadow instantly became much fainter. Then, Chen Ge accidentally slashed its head with the cleaver, and the monster dissipated.
The blade’s momentum carried it onward, finally striking the tub’s edge and leaving a shallow mark. In that instant, as the force vanished, Chen Ge stood up.
The video ended there. Having understood the sequence of events, Chen Ge’s determination to eliminate the mirror monster grew stronger.
“It can’t stay!”
Chen Ge carefully saved the video and picked up the doll lying on the mirror. Its back was cut by the mirror’s edge, and its body was soaked.
“They’re both beings from another world, but their natures differ greatly—some are inherently kind, others filled with malice.” Chen Ge dried himself off, put on his clothes, and stuffed all the dolls into his pockets before feeling at ease.
“Smashing the mirror is useless; it can still appear in the shards. How do I deal with this thing?” Appearing and disappearing, invisible and elusive—fighting something like that put him at a natural disadvantage.
He picked up the palm-sized mirror shard from the floor. It was an absentminded move, but he noticed water droplets rolling across the surface, forming a faint Arabic numeral—“3.”
“Did the mirror monster leave this? Is it taunting me? Does the three stand for Heshan, He Feng, and me, or does it mean it’ll kill me within three days?” Chen Ge didn’t understand the number’s meaning, but he was sure it boded no good. “Do you really think I’m afraid of you? One day, I’ll drag you out of that mirror and roast you alive under the strongest midday sun!”
Chen Ge muttered the most vicious curse he could think of. He had been on the brink of death just moments ago—it had been far too close.
Gasping for fresh air, he rested against the sink for a while before picking up the black phone. He hadn’t held out much hope, but when he swiped the screen and saw the notification, his eyes lit up. “The mission succeeded?!”
“Lucky favored one of the vengeful spirits, you held your breath underwater for sixty-two seconds. Congratulations on completing the nightmare-level daily mission! Reward obtained—Yin Pupil.”
“Yin Pupil: Seeing the ominous, connecting to the earthly yin, viewing yin spirits with a yang body (vision greatly enhanced; other functions unknown).”
“Having completed two nightmare-level daily missions, after finishing the third, a random horror scenario trial mission will be unlocked!”
“With three consecutive missions achieving over 95% completion, a new feature will be unlocked—Vengeful Spirit Affinity!”
After reading through the series of notifications, Chen Ge felt an indescribable mix of emotions. The nightmare-level daily mission required holding one’s breath for sixty seconds. Due to nerves and other factors, he had only lasted about fifty seconds before preparing to give up, making the mission seem impossible. But because the mirror monster had tried to kill him, forcing him to hold on a few seconds longer, he had barely completed it.
Losing something only to gain something else—though he had been on the verge of death, the outcome was ultimately good.
Chen Ge scrolled through the black phone. This nightmare-level mission seemed crucial to him.
If it had failed, not only would he have missed out on the reward, but unlocking the new scenario would also have been delayed. Most importantly, the new feature in the phone wouldn’t have been accessible.
Curious, he found the newly appeared Vengeful Spirit Affinity section and tapped it.
The phone screen changed, displaying five completely unfamiliar names.