Chapter 69: The Door in the Mirror
The bathroom was pitch black, and the surroundings were silent. Chen Ge could faintly hear his own heartbeat.
He stared at the mirror before him. As the clock hand passed midnight, the mirror's surface grew blurry, as if something had veiled it. Then, a number appeared in the center of the mirror—"0."
The number in the mirror changed again, completely catching Chen Ge off guard. In his view, this number had been left by the mirror monster. Now that the mirror monster had been devoured by Zhang Ya, the number should have vanished.
"Could this number have nothing to do with the mirror monster?"
He pulled out his phone to take a picture of the number, but as soon as he raised his hand, he froze.
The scene in the mirror differed from reality. The door of the toilet stall had turned red!
It was a red that seemed to be thoroughly soaked through with blood, from the inside out. It looked as if the stall were filled with blood, and the liquid was constantly seeping through the gaps in the door.
"Why did the door of the squatting stall in the mirror change?" Chen Ge took out his phone to record, turned around, and slowly pushed open the stall door.
In reality, the stall door swung open, and in the mirror, the stall door also opened.
In reality, the stall was empty. But in the mirror, everything inside the stall was dyed red, including the partition, the trash bin, and even the small ads plastered on the walls.
In the dark, gloomy bathroom, the blood-red stall stood out starkly.
Chen Ge couldn't figure out what was happening. He took a step forward, and as soon as half his body entered the stall, his skin felt a sticky sensation, as if something were squeezing and wrapping around him.
He quickly retreated. About a minute later, the stall door in the mirror returned to normal.
When Chen Ge entered the real stall again, the strange sensation was gone.
The blood-red door in the mirror had only appeared for a minute after midnight, and then everything went back to normal.
"Why did the toilet stall door in the mirror turn red? And when I pushed that door open, the walls and decorations behind it were all blood-red too." Chen Ge turned on the light, leaned against the windowsill, and pondered silently. "Could that be the world inside the mirror? Did the mirror monster escape from that blood-red world?"
To confirm his suspicions, Chen Ge searched through the black phone for information from his first nightmare mission.
The mission prompt at the time was—To see another world, you need extraordinary courage, exceptional luck, and a little bit of help.
"The mission clearly said 'to see another world.' That world probably refers to the blood-red world inside the stall."
Recalling the eerie process of that mission, Chen Ge hadn't opened his eyes, but his ears had been constantly alert to his surroundings.
"I'm sure that at the time, I heard the sound of the toilet stall door swinging! Everything was normal at first; all the strange things started after the door swung."
Halfway through the mission, he heard the stall door suddenly make a noise. He thought it was the wind at the time and didn't pay it much attention. Now that he thought about it, the sound of the door swinging might have come from the mirror.
"The mirror could be a buffer zone connecting two worlds. The door of the toilet stall in the mirror was pushed open, and the monster escaped from the blood-red world. Because of the doll's obstruction, it was forced to stay in the mirror." Chen Ge stared blankly at the wooden door of the squatting stall, a strange thought crossing his mind. "What would happen if I entered the real stall when the door in the mirror turned red? Would that count as stepping into another world?"
Shaking his head to dispel this crazy idea, Chen Ge walked back to the mirror. "After the number hit zero, the blood-red door appeared in the mirror. It seems all my previous guesses were wrong. This number has nothing to do with the kill count. It's probably just a countdown, possibly representing the time limit for the mirror monster to act in the real world."
The door in the mirror had returned to normal, but Chen Ge couldn't guarantee it wouldn't appear again. It might even show up every midnight as long as the mirror monster hadn't returned.
"If it shows up again tomorrow night, I'll just take down the mirror. That's the only option for now." Chen Ge found a thick black cloth to cover the mirror, then left the bathroom.
Back in the staff break room, Chen Ge opened the black phone and started checking today's daily missions.
"Easy Difficulty: A terrifying experience should not leave psychological trauma on the participant. I think you understand the principle of 'too much is as bad as too little.' Please improve the haunted house's safety protocols and inspect for potential hazards."
"Normal Difficulty: One tree does not make a forest. A good haunted house needs an excellent team to operate. Recruit more talent; they will help you through tough times!"
"Nightmare Difficulty: There's always another person living in your room. Don't you want to know who it is?"
Chen Ge was familiar with these three missions. In fact, he was quite torn. For the haunted house to develop faster and better, choosing the nightmare mission was best. But after the mirror monster incident, he was a bit wary of the black phone's nightmare missions.
"Forget it, I'll take a good rest today and decide tomorrow." Since obtaining the black phone, Chen Ge hadn't had a single peaceful night's sleep. If this continued, his body might not hold up.
He covered himself with a blanket and soon fell asleep.
At eight in the morning, a "fully revived" Chen Ge rushed out of the room. He first went to the first floor's Zombie Resurrection Night scene. The area he had chosen last night had already changed, with a passage leading underground added to the scene.
"The black phone is pretty efficient."
The floor had been dug out. He walked down the stairs and directly reached the abandoned underground parking lot.
Looking around, the parking lot had no lights and was very dilapidated.
"That's it? The expansion just added a staircase?" Chen Ge was a bit disappointed, but remembering that the entire underground parking lot was now his space, he quickly reignited his fighting spirit. "The East Suburb Future Virtual Park will be completed in three months at the latest. I need to unlock as many horror scenes as possible and upgrade the Horror House within these three months, striving to build a theme park that rivals it."
Back on the first floor of the haunted house, Chen Ge took the black phone and walked to the entrance. Between the guardrail and the haunted house corridor, an opaque black wooden structure had appeared, shaped like two wardrobes pushed together.
"Is this the midnight ticket booth? It's way too crude?" Opening the door, Chen Ge sat inside to get a feel. The interior was cramped and narrow, as if he were trapped in a coffin.