May 1, 2018, 8:30 a.m., Mirror Realm.
Fang Ziming was lying motionless on his bed, staring at the ceiling with a dead gaze, as if he wanted to see a hole in his roof before he would give up.
It had been three days since he woke up in the mirror world. Fang Ziming used these three days to go around the most famous business districts in Yangping City. Not only did he not meet people, even the wild cats and dogs, who usually roamed around the corners of the street, seemed to have all vanished, and even their tail hairs hadn’t been seen by him.
This situation made Fang Ziming feel that he had fallen into a false empty city.
“Well, since it has already happened, then in the face of the current situation, I can only think of two reasons to explain it.” He thought with an expressionless face, “First, I’m sick in the head. Second, the world is sick.”
On the bedside table was his laptop, which turned on and operated normally, and could connect to the Internet and browse websites without any problems, but all social channels were unavailable, which also cut off Fang Ziming’s means of saving himself by trying to contact his family and friends through QQ or WeChat, or by leaving a message in the Weibo comments section to alert the police.
It was clear that this strange world was preventing him from establishing contact with others.
Raising his hand on his temples and rubbing it hard twice, the youth violently rolled off the bed and left the bedroom barefooted.
The curtains in the living room were only half drawn, and the floor mirror that he used to talk to the man in the mirror was moved to the corner, reflecting half of the living room on the mirror. The person who looked exactly like Fang Ziming hadn’t appeared since the first day, and now it seemed to be an ordinary floor mirror that was sold on Taobao.
He was sure he wasn’t ill. Something was wrong with the world. Fang Ziming stared at the mirror with empty eyes.
Three days was enough time for him to think about some things, such as the strange corridor on the third floor, the Arabic numerals on the door panel, the city without people, and the floor mirror that suddenly appeared in the living room.
And the bizarre dream before he came to the Mirror World.
Wait, maybe it wasn’t a “dream”, it might have been a real experience.
Fang Ziming carefully recalled the dream, but then immediately gave up – for some reason, the harder he recalled, the thinner his memory of the dream became, and in the end the youth even began to wonder, did he really ever have such a strange dream?
When he noticed such thoughts, Fang Ziming immediately stopped thinking back, he realized that something was wrong, and had to temporarily shelve all exploration of the “dream”.
“What’s going on, I’m losing those memories?” He pressed his temples, struggling to think: “Is there something wrong with that memory. Or is it a world where I’m not allowed to think about it? Wait …… no, can’t think about that anymore ……”
He picked up the book spread on the coffee table, enduring a pang of headache, he quickly wrote about the “dream” and his speculation. He had filled more than ten pages, which was full of speculation and analysis of this strange world. It also recorded several precautions mentioned by the person in the mirror, as well as the various explorations he had made on this world in the past three days.
First, in this bizarre space, it seemed that he was the only living being who could move freely.
Secondly, the food and water within the mirror world were edible, and what was eaten wouldn’t be recovered, but the scraps thrown into the trash would disappear the next day, and it wasn’t known where all the disappearing items had gone.
Third, the circuit and network connection wasn’t interrupted. At night, the outdoor streetlights were still lit on time, the indoor power supply was stable, and he could use all the electronic devices at hand, but all social and communication software was completely unavailable. In short, it was impossible to get in touch with anyone.
Fourth, it was also the most painful point so far. Through these days of exploration, Fang Ziming gradually discovered that he could observe the real world’s real-time images through mirrors or reflective metal surfaces. If at this time, someone in the real world happened to be standing in front of the same mirror as him, then Fang Ziming could observe all the actions made by this person through the mirror, but this person could only see his own reflection from the mirror, and couldn’t discover that there was a Fang Ziming behind the mirror.
This discovery made Fang Ziming extremely frustrated – if the opposite person could see him, he might be able to find a way to leave the mirror realm.
Fang Ziming drew a pentagram and a question mark next to the fourth point with his pen, thinking that he could continue to try in this area afterwards.
And then after that ……
He paused and wrote down two words in his book.
Tidal Wave.
If the existence of the mirror world wasn’t a joke, then the most important thing he should address now was the “tidal wave” phenomenon that was likely to come in ten days.
“Shadow Ghost, Wormhole, Fanny Stone and Folding Two-sided Mirror.” These were the messages that the man in the mirror revealed to him, Fang Ziming while writing, wrinkled his brow and muttered to himself: “I have built a materialistic worldview for more than twenty years, it fell apart in three days, what is this all about ……”
“But, speaking of which, was it really me from the future that appeared that day.” He stopped writing and recalled the person in the mirror three days ago: “He does look very similar, but …… why do I feel weird?”
The strangeness, was mainly the difference in their temperaments.
Compared to Fang Ziming, the man in the mirror seemed more roguish, “he” spoke in a clear and orderly manner, dominated the conversation, revealing a strong confidence, but relatively, this made “him” even more strange.
After thinking for half a day, Fang Ziming concluded, “I seem to be doing pretty well in the mirror world.”
After summing up most of the “memo”, Fang Ziming looked at the time, it was almost noon.
“So, today’s task is to find a car that can be driven and go out of town to see what’s going on in Lin City. By the way, I need to see if I can gather any usable weapons.” He closed the book and slung the black backpack from the couch over his shoulder, turning into the kitchen again to look at the stock in the fridge before he left, “I wonder if fresh food will also rot in the Mirror Realm, and if it will, that could be a problem.” The longer he stayed here, the fewer fresh ingredients he would be able to eat.
With countless pressing burdens weighing on his mind, Fang Ziming sighed and fished out a bag of soft bread and mineral water from the refrigerator and stuffed them into his backpack, before turning around and leaving room 101.
Six days later.
Fang Ziming closed the book and put the third “memo” recording the mirror world back into the drawer under his desk.
In the past six days, he drove all over Yangping City and its surrounding cities and villages. If it wasn’t for the “tidal wave” that was approaching and he couldn’t go too far from the safe house, Fang Ziming even wanted to go out of the province to the capital to see what was going on there.
Now was the ninth day he entered this world, in three more hours, the legendary “tidal wave” would come.
×××××××××××
May 7, 23:50 pm, Mirror Realm.
The whereabouts of the two-sided mirror was still a mystery, Fang Ziming turned over all the things in the house, but did find a small mirror, but unfortunately, it wasn’t the one shown to him by the man in the mirror.
It was almost time. He locked the doors and windows, turned off the lights, and then stood sideways by the living room window, watching the situation outside carefully.
His house was next to a snack street downstairs. People usually came and went in a lively way. When he looked down from the third floor window, he could almost see most of the street. At this time, a row of dim street lamps were on the street, and some shops on both sides of the street were still open, but of course there was no one inside. It was eerily quiet all around. It seemed that there was no difference between now and the nine nights he had experienced before.
Fang Ziming’s gaze skimmed over the signboard of a convenience store’s front door, and without stopping, he searched further away again.
At 0:00 a.m., the phone in his pocket began to vibrate. Fang Ziming’s spirits lifted and he casually turned off the alarm clock.
0:01
0:05
0:10
A strange black shadow finally turned from the corner and stopped on the road in front of the convenience store.
When he passed by a store, the neon light next to the door hit “him”, and Fang Ziming’s eyes saw that the black figure seemed to shrink slightly.
“He” looked about two meters tall, arms and legs and body was long and thin, at first glance it looked like a moving electric pole. The silhouette of the black shadow was closer to male, but no matter how hard Fang Ziming blinked, he still couldn’t see the other’s looks and specific clothing – “he” seemed to be condensed from a black fog. In fact, Fang Ziming couldn’t even tell the front and back of this guy!
But from the shape of the man, he wasn’t a ghost, he should be a shadow.
The young man hiding behind the window subconsciously raised his hand to cover his mouth and nose, and he carefully controlled his breathing as he watched the tall, skinny shadow ghost sway and “float” past his house, finally disappearing at the other end of the road.
A few minutes later, a large group of shadows howled and whistled, pushing and shoving.
After another hour and a half, the snack street was crowded, as if it has turned into a sea of demons and monsters.
Fang Ziming: “……”
Well, the name “Tidal Wave” was really right, it was too alarming.
After that, Fang Ziming didn’t dare to move. When the sun rose higher and higher from the horizon, the number of shadow ghosts parading outside was so high that the whole neighborhood was about to burst.
The young man hiding in the safe house watched in silence for a while, and wrote down a line in his notebook: the ability to move during the day is much slower than at night, the shadow ghosts may belong to nocturnal species, and may be afraid of light, ultraviolet light or other things.
He rubbed his temples a little tiredly, then turned away from the window and walked to the foyer, looking through the cat’s eye on the security door to see the situation outside.
The corridor was empty, there was nothing.
Fang Ziming was relieved: fortunately, those shadow ghosts hadn’t invaded here yet.
TN:
I’M BACKK