It was as if an icy steel needle had suddenly pierced his spine.
Yang Siguang jolted in shock, his entire body reacting as though he had been abruptly yanked out of a nightmare. His previously foggy mind became startlingly clear in an instant.
A shiver ran through him as he instinctively pulled his hand back.
When he looked at the small door again, he found it tightly shut, with no gap and no bloodshot eye behind it.
What had just happened felt like an illusion, but Yang Siguang knew—it wasn’t. It absolutely wasn’t!
“Siguang—hurry! I can’t hold on much longer!”
Li Bo was still urging him from behind.
Yang Siguang took a deep breath and slowly turned his head to look at Li Bo.
Li Bo was gritting his teeth, bracing himself against the door with such force that the veins on his temples and neck bulged prominently.
The paper figures and corpses outside were just as relentless as before, crashing against the ancestral hall’s doors with the ferocity of a bloodthirsty horde.
The once-pricey sandalwood doors, carved with intricate patterns, now looked unbearably fragile, as if they could be torn apart like soaked newspaper at any moment.
“Siguang—”
Seeing Yang Siguang standing frozen, Li Bo raised his voice in an almost panicked roar.
Yang Siguang stumbled out from under the altar, shaking.
“Li Bo, something’s wrong.”
The young man’s face was pale, his expression filled with fear.
He scrambled back to Li Bo, trembling all over.
“What’s wrong?”
Li Bo, still straining to hold the door, asked without turning his head.
“…It’s Li Chen.”
Yang Siguang bit his lip, looking weak and terrified, as though he might collapse into Li Bo’s arms at any moment. His voice was barely above a whisper.
“What?”
“It’s Li Chen!” Yang Siguang’s voice grew slightly louder. Before Li Bo could respond, Yang Siguang began speaking rapidly, his words tumbling out like a string of firecrackers.
“Li Chen told me…”
As he spoke, he leaned forward.
“You’re lying to me. Li Bo, are we really in the Li family’s ancestral hall right now?”
Before the words had fully left his mouth, Yang Siguang had already yanked the wooden sword from his neck.
The small, toy-like peachwood sword, so innocuous in the real world, now transformed into a sharp dagger radiating a cold, deadly aura. Without hesitation, Yang Siguang thrust it straight toward Li Bo.
Thud—
The dagger, imbued with an icy, piercing clarity, sank deep into Li Bo’s chest.
In that instant, all sounds ceased.
The sandalwood doors behind them fell silent, no longer echoing with ghostly wails or the rustling of paper figures.
Li Bo’s heavy, labored breathing also stopped abruptly.
He stared at Yang Siguang in stunned disbelief, his eyes wide with shock. The expression was so intense that, for a moment, Yang Siguang felt his heart tighten. He almost believed he had made a mistake.
Until he realized that the dagger lodged in Li Bo’s chest felt completely insubstantial.
There was no gush of blood, no resistance from flesh and muscle, no faint pulse that one would expect when piercing a human body.
He had stabbed Li Bo, but it was as though he had struck nothing but air.
“…Ah.”
Then, Yang Siguang heard a soft sigh.
It was Li Bo.
Li Bo tilted his head slightly, and the lifelike human expression on his face faded away with that small movement.
The pale-faced young man curled his lips into a sinister, ghostly smile.
“Well, you’ve found me out. I was hoping to make this easier for you.”
He raised his hand and gently grasped Yang Siguang’s wrist, the one holding the dagger.
“Now, I don’t even know what to do with you.”
As he spoke, Li Bo’s body began to crumble like flowing sand, disintegrating and vanishing.
In just a few moments, nothing was left of him.
Yang Siguang stood frozen in place, still holding his previous posture, his entire body chilled to the core.
A wave of intense dread swept over him, but he couldn’t move.
With Li Bo’s disappearance, the Li family’s old house also began to fade like a dissipating dream.
Soon, only an endless, impenetrable darkness remained.
From the darkness emerged countless long, slender hands.
They extended like tentacles from behind Yang Siguang, layer upon layer, until they enveloped him in a suffocating grip of palms and fingers.
Yang Siguang felt an overwhelming coldness, accompanied by a stifling, fishy stench.
It was as if some massive, indescribable entity from the depths of the dark was slowly advancing, pressing down on him with an inescapable, crushing weight until it forced him to the ground.
Yang Siguang instinctively struggled, but he quickly realized that his body was gradually becoming numb and uncontrollable.
It was as if… as if his entire body was slipping out of his control.
[Don’t cry now. If you do, I might really find it hard to hold back.]
“Li Bo” leaned close to his ear and let out a low, malicious chuckle.
Damn it—
Yang Siguang cursed inwardly, an overwhelming sense of dread washing over him.
In the midst of his intense fear, he forced himself to turn his head slightly to look in the direction of “Li Bo.” What entered his vision was Li Bo’s completely distorted face.
It was as if an invisible hand was gripping Li Bo’s head, squeezing and toying with it at will. Under Yang Siguang’s gaze, the man’s face twisted at an unnerving angle.
Slowly, ever so slowly, something began to push through the cracks in Li Bo’s skull, which was gradually splitting under the pressure.
Something broke through the skin, oozing out in a sickening flow.
Yang Siguang took only one glance and immediately felt like he was going to vomit.
What he saw were countless writhing, tangled soft-bodied creatures.
They emerged, clustering together, and finally, before Yang Siguang’s eyes, they slowly formed into the shape of Li Chen.
In some ways, the Mirror Immortal’s imitation was astonishingly accurate.
Even upon close inspection, it was impossible to tell that the handsome and aloof young man standing before him was actually a patchwork of those soft, slimy, wriggling masses.
The young man’s face even retained faint traces of worry and concern that could not be entirely hidden.
Yang Siguang’s body began to tremble.
“Ah, not happy, are you?”
“Li Chen” reached out and gently brushed away the sweat-dampened strands of hair sticking to Yang Siguang’s cheek. Then, he gripped Yang Siguang’s chin, forcing the young man to turn his head and meet his gaze.
“Why so unhappy? Don’t you like this guy?”
He murmured softly.
Yang Siguang’s heart pounded violently—even though he knew this sensation of a heartbeat was likely nothing more than a trick of the soul.
He suspected that ever since Aunt Qiao had pushed his head into the water basin, he had already left his body and crossed into the underworld.
And then, without any defenses, he had fallen into the Mirror Immortal’s hands. If not for Li Chen’s last-minute warning, what would have happened if he had walked straight into the small door prepared by the Mirror Immortal? Yang Siguang didn’t know, nor did he dare to imagine.
All he felt was an indescribable despair spreading through his body.
“What do you want?”
Yang Siguang couldn’t help but ask.
“Of course, I want you.”
The Mirror Immortal’s response was swift and candid.
“I like you, Siguang… You’re always ‘dancing’ in front of the mirror… It’s beautiful, mesmerizing… Every time Li Chen looks at you, I’m watching you too.”
“But in your eyes, there’s only ever him.”
“And I… I’ve been trapped here for far too long.”
The Mirror Immortal sighed, its wet tongue slowly trailing down Yang Siguang’s spine.
“Just think of me as having gone mad…”
“I want you, Siguang.”
*
The Mirror Immortal no longer remembered when it had become what it was now.
Some said it was an evil spirit; others said it was an immortal…
But in the end, it was nothing more than a ghost inhabiting an ancient mirror, drifting through different families over the passage of time.
It knew neither cold nor heat, hunger nor satiety. The only thing it could consume was the blood feasts offered by the families that worshipped it.
After absorbing so many souls filled with desire, it had long since become muddied and filthy—a stagnant pool of water…
Until one day, a pale, frail child was pushed before it.
As always, it reflected the child’s desires.
*
At first, it had only been observing out of boredom.
It watched how its current host used its power, peering through the mirror at the unsuspecting friend’s uneventful daily life.
But as time passed, the once-naive child grew up. And because of the Mirror Immortal’s eerie compatibility with this host, it unwittingly began to feel the surging emotions of a human.
By the time it realized…
“I’ve been watching you for a long time,” the Mirror Immortal sighed, its voice almost tender.
“Every time… every time Li Chen used the mirror to look at you, I was gazing at you too. And then I realized that even I could desire something so strongly, something I couldn’t resist wanting.”
“So what if the Li family promised me so many blood sacrifices? Even if they raised a host just for me, as soon as he awakens, I can never act freely. I can only watch you from afar, bound by your human laws and morals…”
“But if you die, it will be different.”
“You will belong to me forever… forever mine…”
Hearing this, Yang Siguang’s spine trembled violently.
“Then, what about Li Chen? Is Li Chen still with you?”
The young man murmured softly.
At this, the Mirror Immortal tugged at the corners of its mouth. The false, overly dramatic smile on its lips seemed to fade slightly.
“Li Chen? Hmm, he’s right here. Am I not speaking to you? I… I am him.”
“Back then, to save you, he made quite a worthwhile deal with me. Everything of his—from his body to his soul—he offered to me. As long as it could reverse the death curse cast on you, he was willing to do anything. Moreover, this way, the curse could backfire on the ones who cast it on you.”
Yang Siguang interrupted, trembling uncontrollably.
“You’re not him! I know you’re not him! He always… he always just wanted to protect me. He always wanted me to stay far away from you…”
Finally, Yang Siguang took a deep breath, suppressing the intense discomfort in his body, and murmured,
“What did you do to him? You said he made a deal with you, but you didn’t keep your end of the bargain! You’re still continuing!”
Before this, Li Chen could even appear before him in a shattered, deathly state.
But just now, in that brief glimpse, all he saw was a single blood-red eyeball.
Moreover, Li Chen’s presence had become so faint, so faint that even the warning from the deepest part of the underworld felt like it could have been Yang Siguang’s imagination.
The Mirror Immortal fell silent for a moment, its smile vanishing entirely. Then, it sighed.
“Li Chen’s deal was for me to relinquish that woman’s command and cause the death curse to backfire. I’ve done all that…”
“As for the rest, I’ve only given you a little scare. I didn’t truly put you in danger, did I? After all, if I hadn’t done this… how could you possibly have come to me on your own like this?”
Cold fingers rested on Yang Siguang’s trembling skin.
Fascinated by the fresh vitality and lifeblood emanating from a living soul, the Mirror Immortal coiled around Yang Siguang’s pale, slender body like a serpent from the depths of the jungle, hungry for ages, wrapping him layer by layer.
“You’re lying again,” Yang Siguang coldly retorted in the next moment.
“You didn’t fulfill the deal.”
The young man’s voice gradually shed its fear of the Mirror Immortal.
“Which means Li Chen is still here. You haven’t consumed him. He still has his own consciousness… so he’s been struggling, constantly trying to warn me, to protect me.”
As he spoke, Yang Siguang paused briefly, sensing that the Mirror Immortal’s body had already “swallowed” him up to his waist.
Yang Siguang took a deep breath.
He hesitated for only a fleeting moment before blurting out,
“Then, I want…” He paused, then said, “I want to make a deal with you too.”
Yang Siguang could hear the tremor in his own voice.
“I’ll trade myself for Li Chen. Is that okay?”
“Didn’t you say you liked me?”
“Then… I’ll stay here. You can do whatever you want with me. But I beg you, let Li Chen go.”
As the ghostly entity continued to erode him, Yang Siguang felt his strength rapidly fading, his consciousness growing increasingly blurred.
In his daze, he seemed to hear the Mirror Immortal chuckle softly.
