Years of studying human anatomy meant Gao Ruxue had spent more time with corpses than with her own roommates. She wasn't good with people — she understood the dead far better than the living.
"Our haunted house actors wear very special makeup, and combined with the complex environment inside and your own psychological suggestion, it's easy to experience visual hallucinations." Mortuary cosmetics and Black Friday were things that could never see the light of day — Chen Ge would absolutely never reveal them to outsiders.
He glossed over it without going into detail. "If there's nothing else, I'll get back to work."
After seeing off the medical students, he asked Xu Wan to tidy up the props in the ghost marriage scene, then ran alone into the master control room.
Only Chen Ge knew the truth about why Heshan had passed out. The monster hiding inside the mirror hadn't left — it was still lurking somewhere in the haunted house.
"Keeping it around is going to be a problem sooner or later." This was his first time accepting a nightmare-level mission, and he'd never anticipated consequences like these.
He shut off the haunted house's background music, pulled up the surveillance feeds, and watched the recording of Heshan entering the west wing room over and over, scrubbing through frame by frame. It didn't take long to find something.
At 9:24:11, Heshan entered the west wing room. He was already terrified out of his mind, charging around blindly.
At 24:14, he reached the inner room and caught sight of the bronze mirror for the first time. That was when something deeply unsettling appeared on the footage.
The panicked Heshan, the moment he saw the bronze mirror, suddenly went calm — as though time had stopped. He stood before the mirror, perfectly motionless.
The timestamp on the video kept ticking. At 24:17, Heshan abruptly raised his left hand and began walking toward the mirror of his own accord.
It looked as though someone were gripping his hand, trying to drag him forcibly into the mirror itself!
At 24:20, Xu Wan in her wedding gown rushed in from behind. By then, half of Heshan's body was already pressed against the mirror — the footage clearly showed something flash across its surface before Heshan collapsed to the floor.
"Was it Xu Wan's arrival that ruined the mirror monster's plan?" Chen Ge replayed the video. So much had happened in a bare ten seconds. He rubbed his temples, unable to come up with any good solution for the time being.
"I suppose for now I'll have to cover up every mirror in the haunted house. Once I figure out how to deal with this thing, I'll come back and finish it off for good."
He ducked into the prop room, grabbed a few lengths of black cloth, and headed into the ghost marriage chamber.
"Boss, what are you doing here? Just leave this to me." Xu Wan spotted Chen Ge from across the doorway — she was stuffing scattered paper dolls and spirit money back into the coffin.
"I came to tell you something. All mirror-related props in the haunted house are to be taken out of service for now. Also, when you're playing the ghost, stay away from mirrors." Chen Ge held the black cloth and helped Xu Wan reassemble the scattered coffin props.
Xu Wan didn't understand why Chen Ge was doing this, but she didn't press him for details.
After resetting the main room's scene, Chen Ge walked alone into the west wing.
White paper lanterns hung from the ceiling, casting the room in dim light. He stood in the spot where Heshan had collapsed and stared silently at the bronze mirror.
"A person living inside the mirror? Could there be another world hidden in there?" Chen Ge touched the cold surface of the mirror, gazing at his own reflection. The longer he looked, the stranger it felt. "When I handed Heshan that water bottle earlier, he reached out with his right hand instinctively — meaning he isn't left-handed. But on the footage, he raised his left hand the very first moment. Why would he do the opposite of what's natural to him? Was he already being controlled by whatever's inside the mirror, unable to resist?"