Footsteps echoed down the corridor outside the reading room — the library's custodian was heading this way. Chen Ge still had a thousand questions, but there was no time left to ask them.
"Chang Gu, I hope you're not lying to me. I'll do everything in my power to help your sister, but you have to guarantee that my friends and I can leave this school safely."
Chen Ge gathered the other club members around him. He was a man of his word — he'd promised to get Zhang Ju and the others out, and he would do everything he could to see it through.
"I can promise you that, but the question is whether my promise carries any weight here. In this place, anything can happen. Even the Painter can't give you a hundred percent guarantee." The crimson glow in Chang Gu's left eye flickered slightly. No one knew what he was thinking.
"You've changed a lot since you walked through the door. Looks like I need to reassess the nature of our relationship." Chen Ge's expression remained calm. It was always like this — he was impossible to read, impossible to tell whether he was bluffing with an empty hand or hiding something far more dangerous.
"We're friends. We both came from outside the door. I know you inside and out, and I won't hurt you." Chang Gu raised the backpack in his hand. "See? I even brought your things back for you."
"We are friends, but I've also made some friends inside the door. Everyone's a friend, so I hope you won't put me in too difficult a position when the time comes." There was one thing Chen Ge hadn't told Chang Gu — on the top floor of the teaching building, in the bathroom, he'd promised to be someone's friend.
He'd been watching Lin Sisi's phone at the time, viewing footage of how she'd been bullied in the past. When the video ended, he'd heard a voice right beside his ear — a voice that wanted to be friends with him.
Operating on the principle that more friends meant more paths forward, Chen Ge had agreed without hesitation.
Now that he thought about it, the voice most likely belonged to the Painter.
A great many people wanted to use Chen Ge. But if they truly understood the kind of person he was, they would very likely regret it.
"Fine. We'll do it your way." Chen Ge led the other club members over to Chang Gu's side. "Can you give me my things now?"
"Sure, but you have to wait until you've passed through the mirror before you open the backpack." Chang Gu didn't hand the pack over to Chen Ge — instead, he walked alongside him to the last row of bookshelves.
Working together, they pushed the bookshelf aside, revealing a mirror draped in black cloth.
"This mirror can't be used many more times. You'd better hurry — get the school's will to acknowledge you before the Painter finds out about this place." Chang Gu pulled away the black cloth and handed the backpack to Chen Ge. "Stand in front of the mirror, place your hand on its surface, and look with your heart. You'll see the world on the other side."
Chen Ge took the backpack but didn't immediately press his palm to the glass. He took a step back.
"What are you doing?" Chang Gu frowned.
"Relax. It's my first time entering this hellhole, and I don't have any experience, so I'd like to watch how it's done first." Chen Ge restrained the urge to open the backpack and gave Zhang Ju a meaningful look. "These scenes should have appeared in your memories before."
Zhang Ju nodded, handed Zhou Tu off to Zhu Long, and stepped to the front of the mirror. "To be honest, I wouldn't mind living in the Painter's beautiful dream. But if it costs me my freedom, forget it."
His scarred arm pressed against the mirror's surface, and Zhang Ju raised his head to look at his own reflection.
Chen Ge had noticed something a long time ago — inside the world beyond the door, mirrors were exceedingly rare.
It seemed that in this blood-red world, mirrors held some other, deeper meaning.
He stood at the back of the group and watched patiently. If there hadn't been others around, he would have found pen and paper to document the entire process.
Blood trickled from his arm and dripped onto the mirror. Crimson threads crept across the glass — it was impossible to tell whether they were on the outside or coming from the world within.
The blood threads multiplied. In the span of a single blink, the scene reflected in the mirror shifted.
It was still a library, but the library inside the mirror had turned blood-red. Crimson liquid ran in rivulets across every surface, and every book appeared to have been written in blood.
"Didn't think I'd ever come back here. This time, I hope I won't make the wrong choice again."
Zhang Ju murmured to himself outside the mirror, but his reflection inside stood motionless — like a soulless puppet, head bowed, eyes shut.
"Be careful in there. Don't wander around — wait where you land. We move as a group. There's strength in numbers." Chen Ge wanted to say more, but Zhang Ju's condition was growing unstable. He wasn't listening to a word.
The fire-scarred side of his head rotated slowly. Zhang Ju's only remaining right eye burned as red as blood. He fixed his gaze on Chang Gu, and every wound on his body split open at once — countless threads of blood surged across his skin.
"Your left eye is beautiful. I… I really want to eat it."
Something seemed to have triggered Zhang Ju. His expression twisted into a hideous grimace, and strangely, his reflection in the mirror began to change as well, gradually matching his face outside — expression for expression.
At the instant the two synchronized, the hand he'd pressed against the glass was yanked forward, and his body was pulled into the mirror.
"Was he dragged in by his own reflection?" Before Chen Ge could react, all that remained in front of the mirror was a pool of blood. Zhang Ju had vanished as though he had never been there at all.
"The mirror reflects your appearance, but not your soul. On one side of the mirror is your body; on the other, your desires. When you look into it, you can see the ugliest version of yourself — and you can also see the most dangerous one." Having sent Zhang Ju through, Chang Gu's tone grew noticeably lighter. "The mirrors behind the Horror School's door aren't the same as the ones in the real world. The Painter pushed everything beautiful to the inside of the mirror and put everything ugly, desperate, and terrifying on the outside. So each of you will see a different version of yourselves when you look in."
While Zhang Ju had been speaking, Zhou Tu had already passed through the mirror. He'd been so fast that none of the other club members — including Chen Ge and Chang Gu — had noticed.
"Mr. Bai, I know there's still a lot you haven't told me." Zhu Long seemed to want to say something more, but perhaps mindful of the strangers present, he held back in the end. "I rarely trust anyone. I hope you won't let me down."
His palm pressed flat against the mirror, Zhu Long stared at his own reflection. His tall body was being reassembled and stitched together — the figure reflected in the glass could hardly be called a person anymore. It looked more like a rag doll sewn together by a misbehaving child.
The bloodstains in front of the mirror grew darker and thicker. After all the other club members had passed through, Chen Ge set down both backpacks and stepped up to the mirror himself.