The bathroom was pitch-black and utterly silent. Chen Ge could faintly hear his own heartbeat.
He stared at the mirror before him. When the clock hand swept past twelve, the surface of the glass grew hazy, as if something had been smeared across it. Then a number appeared dead center in the mirror — "0."
The number on the mirror's surface shifted again, which caught Chen Ge completely off guard. In his mind, that number had been left by the mirror creature. Now that the creature had been devoured by Zhang Ya, the number should have disappeared as well.
"Could this number have nothing to do with the mirror creature?"
He took out his phone, intending to photograph the number, but the moment he raised his hand, he froze.
The scene in the mirror had diverged from reality. The stall door inside the bathroom had turned blood-red!
It was the kind of red that soaked through from the inside out, thoroughly saturated, as though the stall were brimming with blood and it kept seeping through every crack in the door.
"Why did the stall door in the mirror change color?" Chen Ge took out his phone and started recording, then turned around and slowly pushed open the stall door.
In reality, the stall door swung open. In the mirror, the stall door opened as well.
In reality, the stall was empty. But in the mirror, everything inside the stall had been dyed red — the divider panel, the wastebasket, even the small advertisement stuck on the wall.
In the pitch-dark bathroom, the blood-red stall was blindingly conspicuous.
Chen Ge couldn't make sense of it. He took one step forward, half his body crossing into the stall, and his skin immediately took on a sticky sensation — as though something were pressing down on him, wrapping around him.
He pulled back in a hurry. Roughly a minute later, the stall door in the mirror returned to normal.
When Chen Ge stepped into the real stall again, the strange feeling was gone.
The blood-red door in the mirror had appeared for only one minute after midnight, and then everything returned to normal.
"Why did the bathroom stall door in the mirror turn red? And when that door panel was pushed open, the walls and decorations behind it were all blood-red too." Chen Ge turned on the light, leaned against the windowsill, and thought in silence. "Could that be the mirror world? Did the mirror creature escape from that blood-red world?"
To confirm his theory, Chen Ge scrolled through the black phone to the information from the first nightmare mission.
The mission prompt had read — *To see another world requires extraordinary courage, exceptional luck, and a small helping hand.*
"The mission explicitly said 'see another world.' That world must be the blood-red world inside the stall."
Recalling that eerie mission, even though Chen Ge had kept his eyes closed, his ears had been paying close attention to everything around him.
"I'm certain — I heard the stall door creaking back and forth! At first everything was normal. All the strange things started happening only after the door began to swing."
Halfway through the mission, he'd heard the stall door suddenly make a sound. At the time, he'd figured it was the wind and hadn't thought much of it. Now that he considered it, the sound of the door swinging back then had very likely come from inside the mirror.
"The mirror might be a buffer zone connecting two worlds. The stall door inside the mirror was pushed open, and the creature fled from the blood-red world. Because the stuffed dolls blocked its way, it was forced to remain trapped in the mirror." Chen Ge stared blankly at the wooden stall door, and a strange thought crossed his mind. "What if I entered the real stall while the door in the mirror was red? Would that count as stepping into another world?"
He shook his head to dismiss the crazy idea and walked back to the mirror. "Once the number hit zero, the blood-red door appeared. Looks like all my earlier guesses were wrong — this number has nothing to do with a kill count. It's probably just a countdown, likely representing how long the mirror creature is allowed to remain 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 was entirely possible that as long as the mirror creature hadn't returned, that door would appear punctually at midnight every night.
"If it shows up again tomorrow night, I'll take the mirror down. That's the only option for now." Chen Ge found a thick black cloth, draped it over the mirror's surface, and left the bathroom.
Back in the employee break room, Chen Ge opened the black phone and started reviewing today's daily missions.
*Easy difficulty: A thrilling experience should not leave participants with lasting psychological trauma. Surely you understand the principle that too much of a good thing is a bad thing. Improve the haunted house's safety protocols and identify potential hazards within the facility.*
*Normal difficulty: One pillar cannot hold up a roof. A great haunted house needs an outstanding team to run it. Recruit more talented people — they will help you weather the storm.*
*Nightmare difficulty: Someone else has been living in your room all along. Don't you want to know who it is?*
Chen Ge was familiar with all three missions. In truth, he was torn. To help the haunted house develop faster and better, the nightmare mission was the obvious choice. But after the mirror creature incident, the black phone's nightmare missions gave him pause.
"Forget it. I'll get some proper rest today and figure things out tomorrow." Ever since obtaining the black phone, Chen Ge hadn't had a single peaceful night's sleep. At this rate, his body might not hold up.
He pulled the blanket over himself and fell asleep before long.
At eight the next morning, fully recharged, Chen Ge dashed out of his room. He went straight to the Zombie Revival Night set on the first floor. The area he'd selected the night before had already changed — a new passage leading underground had appeared in the scene.
"The black phone works fast."
The floor had been hollowed out. He descended the staircase and arrived directly at an abandoned underground parking lot.
He looked around. The lot didn't have a single light. It was in a state of complete disrepair.
"That's it? The expansion just added a staircase?" Chen Ge felt a mild twinge of disappointment, but the thought that this entire underground parking lot was now his territory quickly rekindled his fighting spirit. "The East Suburb's virtual theme park will be completed in three months at the latest. In those three months, I need to unlock as many horror scenes as possible, upgrade the haunted house, and build a theme park that can rival theirs."
Back on the first floor of the haunted house, Chen Ge grabbed his 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 pressed together.
"This is the midnight ticket booth? It's awfully crude." He opened the door and sat inside to get a feel for it. The interior was cramped and claustrophobic, like being locked inside a coffin.