Kuang Feifan raised the Zippo lighter toward the hair coiling around his wrist, and the flame instantly severed a large section. The hair seemed terrified of fire; wherever the flame touched, the strands that had been clawing and lunging forward recoiled repeatedly.

Kuang Feifan held the Zippo high as a threat with one hand, while bracing the other on the ground to retreat rapidly backward. As he slowly managed to stand up, he finally saw clearly that hidden within the hair oozing from the walls was a human face—the face of a woman. If he remembered correctly, it was the very same face belonging to the female ghost in red who had appeared in the room earlier. At this moment, she was staring at Kuang Feifan with an expression of profound malevolence.

After a succession of bizarre incidents, Kuang Feifan’s nerves seemed utterly numb, leaving him to rely solely on instinct and the last vestiges of rationality to control his actions. Now, watching the hair enveloping the face on the wall writhe without any wind, he waved the lighter with one hand while fumbling for the pendant with the other. He raised it, shaking it toward the face, and ground out through clenched teeth, “Come on, if you dare.”

The face fixed him with a stare from its sightless eyes for a long moment before gradually fading. Just as Kuang Feifan was about to breathe a sigh of relief, the sweat from his forehead nearly streaming into his eyes, he rubbed them vaguely. In the haze, he suddenly noticed a man’s figure, pale-faced and covered in cold sweat, flickering in and out of existence amidst a ball of light directly opposite him. Startled, he immediately realized it was his own reflection, and the ball of light was nothing more than the flame from his lighter.

Kuang Feifan hadn't fully relaxed when he saw countless hazy orbs of light behind his reflection in the mirror ahead. He then recalled the two facing mirrors hanging at the entrance to this room—he was standing directly between them. Suddenly, he thought he saw a dark shadow flicker past the back of his head in the mirror. He whirled around sharply, but aside from the mirror behind him and his own silhouette, there was nothing unusual. Yet, at that exact moment, another dark shadow flickered behind his head in the reflection.

A sense of foreboding washed over Kuang Feifan. A flash of light illuminated his mind, and stories his ex-girlfriend had told him began to surface from the deepest recesses of his memory.

Midnight at twelve, never stand between two facing mirrors, or misfortune will befall you—his girlfriend had once told him this.

At that moment, the time on his phone in the room had been stuck at twelve o’clock, and now, he was standing precisely between two mirrors. As for misfortune, it had already begun the moment he entered this building.

Kuang Feifan was about to lift his leg to move from that spot when he was horrified to find his feet mysteriously pinned to the ground by an unseen force, making it impossible to move.

Not only that, but countless strands of hair abruptly burst forth from the mirror behind him. Several strands instantly wrapped around the wrist holding the lighter. Startled, Kuang Feifan’s grip loosened, and the Zippo fell to the floor. He quickly lowered his head, intending to see where it had landed so he could retrieve it. However, in the brief instant before the lighter hit the ground while the flame was still lit, he happened to glimpse directly beneath his feet: a pair of dry hands, like withered tree bark, tightly grasping his ankles through the carpet. Even through his trousers and socks, he could feel the hardness of those dry hands and the chilling cold emanating from them.

Kuang Feifan dared not delay. While struggling fiercely against the hair binding his wrist, he bent over, reaching desperately to hook the lighter on the floor. Gritting his teeth, he stretched his arm as far as he could. Just as his fingertips were about to brush the lighter, the hair in the mirror instantly intensified its grip, pulling Kuang Feifan’s upper body so close to the mirror that only a sliver of space remained between him and the surface.

Kuang Feifan was both shocked and enraged. He felt something wriggling behind his neck, realizing hair would soon wrap around it. If he hadn't already looped the pendant chain around his fingers, he might have dropped it in his initial fright. Forgoing any attempt to grab the lighter, he focused on keeping his body from pressing against the mirror. He could already feel something slowly coiling around his neck, about to form a complete loop. If it constricted forcefully, he could very well be strangled to death.

Kuang Feifan had no intention of becoming a wandering spirit in this building. The instinct to resist deep within him solidified a decision. He gripped the pendant tightly, clenched his fist, gritted his teeth, squeezed his eyes shut, and swung his fist with all his might toward the mirror behind him.

With a solid smack, his fist collided heavily with the mirror. There was no shattering sound as he had anticipated. He couldn't tell if this wretched hanging mirror was even made of glass. The hair had already wound around his neck. The suffocating lack of oxygen turned his face crimson, his tongue involuntarily lolled out, and his eyes began to roll back, showing only white.

His hand began to weakly slap against the mirror surface as a wave of fatigue gradually overwhelmed his entire body, and his consciousness started to blur. In a daze, he suddenly recalled a line his ex-girlfriend had told him—something she mentioned when giving him the pendant: “If you ever encounter strange and bizarre things one day, this ‘Mani Stone’ can keep you safe. If the situation becomes critical, remember to shout with all your might…”

Kuang Feifan snapped his eyes open, gathering every ounce of strength, and slammed the pendant in his hand against the mirror surface, shouting loudly, “Lin Bing… Lin Bing… Lin Bing…”

As his cry and the pendant struck the mirror surface simultaneously, a brilliant yet gentle light instantly erupted from the pendant, momentarily illuminating everything around Kuang Feifan. In that instant, he could even clearly see his own image in the mirror opposite him. An unprecedented terror seized Kuang Feifan, causing him to cry out, because he saw that in the mirror behind him, the one controlling the hair wrapping around his body was himself. He had never seen such a ferocious and terrifying expression on his own face. And just behind the head of his reflection, huge clumps of black hair appeared, seemingly enveloping his head.

It was then he realized that the image in the mirror behind him was not merely a reflection; it was as if it were independent. It seemed less like a mirror and more like another space containing another self—a self that resembled a vengeful spirit.

However, these images began to blur within moments. The instant the pendant struck the mirror surface, countless fissures radiated outward from the point of impact, spreading across the entire mirror until it was covered in dense, web-like cracks in the blink of an eye. Yet, it did not shatter; it was as if the fragments were tightly adhered to one another.

All the hair dissolved into a puff of dust as the mirror cracked, and the dry hands gripping his feet vanished bizarrely. Kuang Feifan didn't even give himself time to gasp. He rolled over on the ground, taking the opportunity to snatch the lighter. Given the current situation, having no handy weapon nearby, this lighter seemed almost as useful as the pendant.

He deliberately moved a short distance away from the wall where the mirror remained intact, spitting out the dust he had inhaled. His clothes were already filthy, his undershirt soaked with sweat and extremely uncomfortable. His face was streaked with grime where sweat and dust had mixed, yet strangely, despite looking like a mud monkey, there wasn't a single scrape or cut anywhere on his body, save for a lump on the back of his head.

But he had no time to attend to that now. While struggling to draw air into his lungs, he looked at the pendant in his hand, muttering, “Lin Bing, Lin Bing, what does that mean? A person’s name?”

He had never asked before, never even thought about it again until this near-death experience forced these memories to the surface. He knew, deep in his heart, that if he managed to escape this small building alive, he would do whatever it took to find his ex-girlfriend and tell her that he had been terribly, fundamentally wrong before.

Kuang Feifan shot a lingering, fearful glance behind him, then slowly turned and began moving toward the other end of the hallway. Everything that had just happened made him feel that this building was a path strewn with mortal danger. He was only a few steps away from the room he had previously checked with He Shaoqing, but Kuang Feifan moved agonizingly slowly. For one, he needed the time to rest and recover some strength; secondly, he genuinely could not imagine what dangers might still await him. For the first time, he worried he might die without even knowing how.

He desperately wanted to run, but the sight of the mirror opposite the wide-open doorway of that room made him hesitate. Perhaps his recent ordeals had instilled in him an involuntary terror of mirrors and walls.

Kuang Feifan cautiously shuffled forward along the center of the hallway. He could see pale moonlight filtering through the doorway, spreading across the floor. Countless tiny dust motes danced and swirled in the moonlight. The mirror opposite the door likewise reflected the white moonlight, which reflected eerily, casting countless strange shadows on the floor and walls.

He squeezed the pendant in his hand, bracing himself. Mustering his courage, he took a sudden step toward the doorway, first poking his head in to check the room’s interior, then quickly withdrawing and darting away from the opposing mirror. Only then did the tension in his heart ease slightly. His gaze swept past that mirror, and his throat tightened instantly, causing him to swallow reflexively.

In the mirror, besides reflecting the scene inside the room opposite, the female ghost in red was standing exactly where the doorway was positioned, head slightly bowed, her long, flowing hair obscuring her face. Although she was only a reflection, Kuang Feifan felt her face was subtly turning toward him, revealing the white, pupil-less eyes through the strands of hair, staring fixedly at him, instantly giving him the sensation of being in a cold, desolate hell.

Kuang Feifan shuddered uncontrollably, his impulse screaming at him to turn and flee. But he forced every ounce of his strength to suppress the feeling, and a surge of anger inevitably welled up from the bottom of his heart. Gritting his molars, he lunged forward, opening his hand and bringing the pendant held in his palm down forcefully onto the spot where the ghost’s face appeared in the mirror, roaring, “Lin Bing…”

Although the blow struck the mirror surface, it felt as if it had directly struck the ghost’s face. A piercing, sharp female shriek echoed out of nowhere. The ghost in the mirror raised a hand to cover her face, her entire body trembling as if electrocuted, and the mirror began to develop countless hairline cracks, exactly as it had done before.

Kuang Feifan rapidly backed away a few steps, the tension draining from his face. At this moment, for the first time, he felt a surge of confidence about finding He Shaoqing in the building ahead.

He turned around and shouted loudly down the corridor ahead, “He Shaoqing, where are you?”