Ancient Mirror Mystery

Chapter 17

"Call the police!" Fang Jian realized what was happening and said in a tearful voice, "Yes! Call the police!" He took out his phone from his backpack, pressed a few buttons, and then said to Lin Wei with a mournful face, "My phone is broken again!"

"Take my phone!" Lin Wei carefully supported Ning Xia, whose eyes were tightly closed, and took out his phone from his waist and handed it to Fang Jian.

Fang Jian dialed "110" with trembling hands, and finally managed to explain the situation clearly before hanging up the phone.

Lin Wei helped Ningxia to a spot in the corridor and instructed him, "Go wait for the police by the main gate! I'm afraid they won't be able to find this place!"

Fang Jian hesitated for a moment, but seemed to be wary of Lin Wei's stern gaze, so he dragged his trembling legs downstairs and headed towards the gate.

Lin Wei glanced at Ningxia, who had fainted on the ground, and then at the corpse in the room. A wave of nausea washed over him, and he leaned against the railing in the corridor and began to dry heave.

Suddenly, a strange figure appeared out of the corner of Lin Wei's eye. He quickly looked up, but apart from Ning Xia on the ground and the corpse in the room, there was no one else there!

A chill ran through Lin Wei. He paused, then walked solemnly toward the stairwell where the figure had appeared...

Ningxia woke up to find herself alone, lying quietly in the second-floor corridor. Fang Jian and Lin Wei were gone. She didn't dare look up at the corpses hanging in the room and rushed downstairs. Finally, she couldn't hold back her vomiting. Only after emptying her stomach completely did she suppress her immense fear and run to the courtyard to look for them. In the center of the courtyard, she immediately spotted Lin Wei lying in the first-floor corridor.

"Lin Wei!" Ningxia noticed a red bump on Lin Wei's head, indicating that he had lost consciousness. She tried to pinch his philtrum, but it didn't seem to work; his eyes remained closed.

Fang Jian's voice came from the side door: "It's...it's up there!" Two men in police uniforms followed Fang Jian into the courtyard.

"What's wrong with you two?" Fang Jian looked at Lin Wei, who had fainted on the ground, and Ning Xia, who had regained consciousness, and felt strange. Why had the two suddenly switched places?

"Where's the body you mentioned?" one of the police officers asked, frowning as he looked around. Judging from his accent, he was a local from Black Town.

"It's in that room on the second floor!" Fang Jian pointed to the room with the door wide open, still shaken. Two police officers immediately ran up the stairs.

"What happened to him?" Fang Jian bent down to look at Lin Wei. "What happened to his head?"

Ningxia looked around in alarm, her intuition telling her that there were other people in the courtyard.

"Hey! You!" A police officer standing at the door of the second-floor apartment suddenly shouted towards the courtyard.

"Come up here for a moment!" The two police officers looked at Fang Jian and his companion with a very strange expression on their faces.

Fang Jian was a little confused, but he still immediately ran up to the second floor.

One of the officers standing at the door asked Fang Jian, "When you called the police, did you say there was a body here?"

"Yes! This is the room!" Fang Jian found his question strange.

"Look!" another officer gestured.

Fang Jian cautiously peeked out, and upon seeing the scene in the room, his mouth gaped open, his eyes widened in astonishment.

The room was empty; there was nothing there!

"Wait a minute! Where's that corpse?" Fang Jian shouted as he rushed into the room. The gruesome corpse that had been swaying on the rafters just moments before had vanished without a trace, as if it had melted into the air.

"Go look next door!" The officer suggested to another officer, seeing that Fang Jian didn't seem to be joking.

Two officers began searching the entire house, while Fang Jian stared blankly at the rafters: "What happened? What on earth happened?"

Lin Wei woke up in the courtyard: "Huh! How did I end up here?"

Ningxia overheard Fang Jian's conversation with the police officer, looked up at the second floor, and said to Lin Wei, who had just woken up, "Just now... just now the body was gone!" He looked extremely uneasy.

The two officers quickly returned to the courtyard and asked Fang Jian, who was coming down from the second floor, "Are you sure there really was a body here just now?"

Fang Jian quickly explained, "Yes! All three of us saw it at the same time, I'm not lying to you!"

Lin Wei also stood up and nodded along with Ning Xia.

The two officers exchanged glances, their expressions conveying a certain message. One of them frowned and said, "How did you get in? This place has been sealed off for over a decade!"

Fang Jian honestly replied, "We came in through the back door of the funerary goods shop at the alley entrance!"

"Oh! Really! This is the first time I've heard of a passage leading here from there!" The officer seemed somewhat surprised, and then asked, "Did you hear some legends about this Black Town and sneak in?"

"Well..." Fang Jian looked at Ningxia, unsure how to answer.

Ningxia was somewhat annoyed: "Even if we came in out of curiosity, the corpse we just saw was real. You have no reason to doubt us!"

"That's hard to say!" another officer interjected. "This manor has always been deserted. There are quite a few curious locals like you, some of whom have said they've seen strange things. We've received similar reports, but the final result is always the same: nothing!" He looked at Ningxia with a distrustful gaze.

"But all three of us saw it at the same time. Did we all hallucinate?" Lin Wei was also dissatisfied with the police officer's attitude.

"You saw it yourself, there's nothing in the room! And we checked the other rooms, and that's exactly what happened!" The officer's words weren't without merit.

The three from Ningxia were speechless for a moment, their expressions awkward.

"Then! Could you please find more people to search the entire manor?" Lin Wei suggested.

"Manpower? Our town's police station only has four people in total. One of them has to stay at the station, and the other went to the city for a meeting. Now it's just the two of us!" The officer seemed to have no other choice.

Another officer said, "You should go back first! In this place that the locals call a 'haunted house,' there are just too many people who claim to see strange things. At least five or six people see them every month, and quite a few report it to the police. But every time we come here after receiving a report, it's the same—we can't find anything! We have to come even if we don't! There's really no way to deal with it!" His words seemed to carry a sense of helplessness.

"Then! It must be true that I was knocked unconscious!" Lin Wei pointed to the lump on his head.

"Really?" One of the officers examined his injury, frowning. "Did you fall accidentally? Are you alright? Let's go back to town and get checked out!"

The three exchanged glances, realizing that further conversation with the two officers would be pointless, and had no choice but to follow them out through the main entrance of "Qilin Pavilion".

An old police car was parked at the main entrance of "Qilin Pavilion". The officer asked Ningxia and the others to get in the car and pointed to the main entrance, explaining: "Look, the seal on this door has to be re-applied at least several times a month. Quite a few daring young people always come here to explore. We've become regulars here!" The implication was that the three of them were just bored people looking for thrills.

The police car drove along a winding and bumpy mountain road through a forest, descended the mountain from another direction of Black Town, and took them to a small hotel in town.

Fang Jian looked extremely uneasy: "What exactly was that corpse we just saw? Was it really an illusion?" Ningxia looked at the black "Qilin Pavilion" on the distant mountain, a very strange feeling still lingering in her mind.

"I think there are people inside!" Ningxia said, looking at the "Qilin Pavilion" surrounded by trees.

Lin Wei looked at her, puzzled. "Why do you have this feeling?"

"I don't know, it's just a gut feeling!"

Fang Jian said in a nervous tone, "I think you sometimes look like a witch! You look kind of scary!"

Ningxia glared at him, then looked at Lin Wei: "I want to go take another look! What do you think?"

Lin Wei seemed not to have heard Ningxia's words. Lost in thought, he looked up and asked, "What?"

"What are you thinking? I mean, I want to go in and take another look!" Ningxia found Lin Wei's reaction a little strange.

"Oh!" Lin Wei glanced at the sky and suggested, "Let's go back first! It's getting dark, and I don't think it's safe there! Maybe we can come back another day!"

"Coward!" Fang Jian muttered under his breath.

Looking at the time, she thought it made sense and nodded, "Okay! We'll go tomorrow! We'll stay here tonight!"

Lin Wei was somewhat surprised: "You're going to stay here? But I have to go to work tomorrow!"

"Alright! You can go back first! I'll stay here with Ningxia!" Fang Jian immediately replied, a hint of smugness flashing in his eyes.

Lin Wei ignored him and looked at Ning Xia, saying softly, "Why don't we go back to the city first? I'll come with you in a couple of days!"

Ningxia sighed inwardly and replied softly, "If you have something to do, go back first! We'll go back tomorrow!"

A hint of helplessness flashed in Lin Wei's eyes: "Alright! I'll head back first. Be careful! Don't turn off your phone tonight! I'll call you!"

"Don't worry! I'm here!" Fang Jian was inexplicably happy.

Lin Wei gave him a cold look, then said to Ning Xia, "I'm leaving!" Ning Xia nodded and watched Lin Wei get into the car until the white sedan drove away from Heizhen.

As darkness fell, the sun finally set behind the mountains. They booked two rooms at a small inn, ate something at a roadside stall in town, and then went back to their room.

After taking a shower, Ningxia sat blankly on the edge of the bed, looking at the bed next to her. Suddenly, she recalled the last night she spent with Su Yunsheng a month ago.

"I must have done something wrong, and God is punishing me!!" Su Yun's mournful expression appeared before my eyes.

"What exactly did Su Yun see?" Ningxia kept recalling every word Su Yun had said that night, trying to find some clues. Why was she in Black Town? And how did Su Yun know that "Qilin Pavilion" was the "haunted house" those two drunkards had mentioned? Had she been there?

"Ningxia!" Fang Jian's knocking interrupted her thoughts. She frowned, got up, and opened the door.

Fang Jian walked in carrying his digital camera: "Ningxia! When you were taking pictures for me during the day, did you press any other buttons?"

Ningxia opened the window and sat down on the edge of the bed: "What do you mean?"

"That's strange, all the photos I took during the day have been deleted!" Fang Jian looked at the camera in his hand in confusion.

"Did you accidentally delete them? I didn't delete your photos!"

"No way! I wouldn't mess with my own camera! Could it be that kid Lin Wei who deleted it?" Fang Jian said.

Ningxia glared at him, somewhat displeased: "Don't you dare suspect others so easily! Do you have any evidence?"

Seeing that Ningxia was a little unhappy, Fang Jian said awkwardly, "Okay, okay! I won't say anything more! It's just really strange that the photos disappeared for no reason. I only bought the camera two months ago!"

"Never mind, you can just take a few more tomorrow!" Ningxia was a little absent-minded, she kept thinking about Su Yun's strange behavior that day.

"But the photos of the body in that house are gone!" Fang Jian said casually, then froze. He suddenly remembered that he had taken a picture of the body as soon as he saw it during the day, but he had been so frightened that he had forgotten about it.

"What? You took pictures of the corpse?" Ningxia exclaimed in surprise.

Fang Jian nodded, thought for a moment, then shook his head, leaving Ningxia confused: "Did you take the photos or not?"

"I definitely took pictures, and more than one!" Fang Jian suddenly stopped, looking at Ning Xia with a strange expression that made her feel uncomfortable.

"What's wrong?"

Ningxia looked at him, then suddenly realized something and immediately shook her head: "No way! How could it be Lin Wei! Why would he delete those photos!"

"Suspicious! Very suspicious!" Fang Jian thought to himself as he paced around the room.

"That's it!" Fang Jian suddenly shouted.

"What?" Ningxia was startled.

"I remember now! After taking a few photos of the corpses, I found that the memory was full, so I collapsed into my digital camera's companion!" Fang Jian said happily.

"Really! Let's take a look!" Ningxia was overjoyed; now they had evidence to show the police.

"But we don't have computers right now!" Fang Jian thought of this problem again.

"Let's go! Let's go find an internet cafe!" Ningxia said without further ado, grabbing Fang Jian and heading out.

It was late at night in Black Town. Almost all the shops on the cobblestone streets were closed, leaving only a few dim streetlights illuminating the ancient town. At this moment, Black Town resembled the entrance to a sleeping hell, dark and chilling.

Ningxia and Fang Jian explored the entire town in less than half an hour, but they couldn't find a single internet cafe. Only a few barbecue stalls were open on the narrow streets, while the rest seemed to be fast asleep.

"What's going on? There aren't any internet cafes in town?" Fang Jian was extremely disappointed.

"Let's talk about it when we get back to the city tomorrow!" Ningxia checked the time; it was already past 1 a.m., no wonder the streets were deserted. The two had no choice but to return to the hotel.

"I need to go back and make a phone call!" Fang Jian suddenly remembered something and hurriedly went back to his room.

Ningxia returned to her room just as her phone rang.

"Ningxia!" Lin Wei's voice came from the other end of the phone.