Chapter 232: Guess Who I Am

The sentence seemed to carry a strange magic, and I felt my thoughts grow sluggish.

I couldn't speak. My body froze as if plunged into an icy pool, my very blood chilling to a halt.

'It's a girl's voice. She's young, but it's not Yi Yi. Who is she?'

'Could it be Lu Xing in disguise? Impossible. If it was Lu Xing, I'd already be dead. He wouldn't waste time on pointless tricks; seizing the chance for a fatal strike is his style.'

'Is this a fatal move by the maze designer? Is this his trap?'

My consciousness seemed to cling to the edge of an abyss. I couldn't turn back, and everything around me was pitch black.

I couldn't move my body, but I could still hear my own heartbeat. I was still alive, though my mind was growing somewhat hazy.

"Guess who I am?"

"Guess who I am!"

The voice behind me grew increasingly shrill, as if something had pierced her to the core and awakened her most terrifying memories.

"Who are you?" I asked, my lips trembling as I voiced the question in my heart. The sound behind me abruptly vanished. The hands covering my eyes parted just a fraction, revealing a sliver of sight, and I saw the massive floor-to-ceiling mirror in front of me.

I stood before the mirror. Behind me was a girl with disheveled hair and a face streaked with blood, reaching out with heavily scarred hands to cover my eyes.

She wore a light red dress. Her expression was a complex mix of resentment and anger, but mostly, it was filled with despair and agony.

"So it's you..." The first time I saw the Girl in Red was on the tunnel coaster, sitting right behind me. The second time was in the Haunted House; just as I was about to head to the third floor, she suddenly appeared and lured me to another building. This was my third time encountering her.

"Why are you following me?"

"Guess who I am?"

My question went unanswered. The voice behind me remained monotone and unchanging, as if the phrase "Guess who I am?" had been permanently branded into her soul. It was precisely because of her obsession with this sentence that she had never been able to move on.

The gap between her fingers slowly widened. Through the sliver, I noticed the mirror in front of me turning blurry.

One by one, fragmented, broken images flowed through the girl's hands and seared themselves into my mind.

A banner at the Amusement Park displayed an advertisement from five years ago. A young father was walking his daughter through the park. The girl was overjoyed, wearing her favorite light red dress.

They had a wonderful time that day, trying out almost all the attractions except for the maze and the Haunted House. They played from morning until dusk. The sky darkened, and just as they were getting ready to leave, the girl spotted a Clown.

He wore exaggerated eye shadow and used clumsy movements to draw laughter from the crowd. People loved the funny Clown. But the little girl was the only one who noticed that the Clown wasn't happy at all. Blue teardrops were painted falling down his face; he was a weeping Clown.

"Someone died! Someone died!" The shouts rang out from the crowd. Everyone looked toward the commotion. A child around the girl's age had fallen from the Ferris Wheel.

Blood pooled beneath the small body, spreading out like a blooming dahlia.

People surged forward to look, including the girl's young father.

"Someone died?" The girl had never seen death before. At the sight of the massive pool of crimson, she stumbled backward in a panic—and bumped right into the weeping Clown.

"Want a balloon?"

The girl looked up. She realized that the Clown, who had been crying just a moment ago, was now smiling with terrifying brilliance. His bright red painted mouth stretched wide open, revealing rows of teeth.

Terrified, the girl shook her head and turned to leave.

"Then let's play a game." The Clown grabbed the girl's arm. She struggled desperately to break free and run toward the crowd, but she barely made it two steps before hands clamped over her mouth and eyes.

"The name of this game is: Guess who I am."

The subsequent images grew bloody and cruel. The girl was hidden inside the Haunted House by the Clown and tortured in a sunless secret room. She became the Clown's plaything. Every night, she was forced to play various games according to his demands. Sometimes, just to spice things up, the Clown would deliberately drop the girl into the maze and let her try to escape.

In the pitch-black mirror world, the girl spent countless nights trapped in that very terror.

Eventually, she smashed the glass. But when faced with the endless, terrifying reflections of even more mirrors behind the first, the girl fell into total despair. She picked up a glass shard and ended her own life.

Afterward, she watched her own corpse being carried away by the Clown. It was embalmed, wrapped in rubber to look like a mannequin, and placed inside the Haunted House.

She also saw that beneath the ground, in the cement of the walls, and in so many other places, similar tragedies were constantly unfolding. She wanted to stop it, so she never stopped wandering.

"Guess who I am?"

Listening to the mechanical, repetitive voice behind me, I inexplicably felt a pang of sorrow. The Girl in Red was one of the victims of this Amusement Park. She held deep resentment in her heart, yet she hadn't transformed into a malicious spirit—likely because her nature was simply too kind.

Thinking back carefully, I remembered hearing the driver mention on my way here that during the tunnel coaster accident five years ago, the only surviving little boy had narrowly escaped death by curling up and protecting his head, all because he had listened to the advice of an older sister.

Now that I thought about it, that sister in red had to be this girl. She had constantly been trying to save the tourists targeted for murder by the Clown.

"So that's how it is."

Many questions were instantly answered. For example, on the tunnel coaster, I had seen a red shadow pulling at the safety harness behind me. That was the girl warning me—telling me that I was already being targeted and needed to leave immediately.

Also, in the Haunted House, I had seen a ragdoll suddenly appear on the stairs. The doll looked ordinary, except for a mole specifically drawn onto its cheek.

That must have been the girl trying to warn me to be careful of Li Manman. And when I was about to go up to the third floor of the Haunted House, she didn't hesitate to reveal herself just to lure me away. Judging from that, there had to be something truly terrifying hidden on the third floor of the Haunted House.

It was her protecting me the whole time. Amid my astonishment, I also felt a mix of relief and regret. The past few streams had been close calls but ultimately safe, which had inevitably made me a bit arrogant. I had come into this stream without even redeeming many defensive talismans. It was far too reckless.

'The Underworld Live Show streams are performances staged with my very life. I have to go all out. If I can survive this time, I will never be careless or underestimate the enemy again.'

The images in my mind slowly faded, but the girl still showed no sign of letting go. She kept her hands clamped over my eyes, seemingly trying to stop me from looking at the mirror in front of me.

'The girl means no harm. Why is she doing this?' I peeked through the gaps in her fingers at the massive floor-to-ceiling mirror. I didn't know if it was just my imagination, but the previously blurry surface had grown clear again. Under the beam of my flashlight, I could only see my own reflection in the glass.

But the bizarre part was—the me in the mirror was smiling.

A smile is a common expression for anyone else, but not for me. Ever since I became an Underworld Live Show Streamer, my mind had been overwhelmed by all sorts of things every day. Smiling had become a luxury.

'The person in the mirror isn't me!'

It seemed this giant floor-to-ceiling mirror was the true fatal trap set for me by the maze designer and Lu Xing. I stared into my reflection's eyes through the girl's fingers. The longer I looked, the more an incredibly strange sensation washed over me.

It felt as if I were the one trapped inside the mirror, while it was the one standing on the outside.

The boundary between illusion and reality was blurring. Yet, whenever I began to doubt myself, the voice of the Girl in Red would ring out behind me, constantly reminding me to believe in myself and not lose my way!

Time lost all meaning. I didn't know how long this stalemate lasted before the me in the mirror finally dropped its smile. It reached out both hands, seemingly trying to step out of the glass.

'How is this possible?'

I watched helplessly as my reflection walked outward until its hands touched the surface of the mirror.

The smooth glass rippled like a tranquil lake, and then an even more shocking sight occurred.

Its hands passed right through the mirror. Transitioning from an illusion into reality, its splayed fingers clawed toward my head. An icy aura washed over my entire body.

I couldn't move at all. Behind me, the Girl in Red was also shivering, desperate to flee.

'Just what the hell is this thing?'

Half of my reflection's body had already emerged from the mirror. Its torso was stretched and warped into a grotesque deformity. The monster's hands drew closer and closer to me.

But just as those hands were about to touch me, strands of black hair shot out from my pocket, coiling and folding like giant, ink-black pythons!

"Fate Ghost!"