Chapter 233: Mirror Ghost

The fingers stretching from the mirror were like moths drawn to a flame. Their tips elongated, grabbing the black hair in front of me.

"Hiss!"

A wretched scream rang out from the mirror. Wisps of green smoke rose from its illusory arms, as if they were being burned.

It felt the pain, but the black hair coiled in front of me acted like a viper scenting blood. Baring its fangs, it clamped fiercely onto the illusory arm, wrapping tightly around it and gnawing relentlessly!

"What a fierce Fate Ghost."

Even with its arm entangled in the black hair, the phantom in the mirror remained expressionless. Soon, a scene unfolded that made my scalp tingle.

Swaying figures appeared in the mirror in front of me, emerging from who knew where. Most were blurred and indistinct, while others bore my exact appearance, looking like illusions formed by light striking from different angles.

Like residents of a mirror world, their figures moved slowly, stepping forward one after another to emerge from the glass.

The Fate Ghost's black hair was still entangled with the hands stretching out of the mirror. For now, it held the upper hand. But if this dragged on, it would definitely be unable to hold them off alone.

Countless versions of me walked out from inside the mirror. They wore expressions I had never seen on my own face—unfamiliar, terrifying, and seething with killing intent.

More black hair surged out as a pure black eyeball rolled from the Embroidered Cloth Bag. The sinister hair formed a young man of my height, standing right in front of the mirror.

In terms of sheer terror, the Fate Ghost—woven entirely of black hair—far surpassed the monsters in the mirror.

In both presence and appearance, the Fate Ghost looked much more wicked and bizarre. Its only disadvantage was its lack of numbers.

The monsters in the mirror seemed endless. I could even see overlapping faces identical to my own marching forward.

The mirror in front of me was like a tunnel separating the worlds of the living and the dead. These monsters that shared my face crowded and shoved each other, reaching out to grab the Fate Ghost.

There were just too many. The Fate Ghost gradually struggled to fend them off. Pairs of pale hands gripped its black hair. These monsters wanted to drag the Fate Ghost into the mirror as well!

'What the hell are these things?' I thought, shocked and furious. I couldn't just rely on the Fate Ghost; I had to find a way to break this deadlock.

My focus rose into the spirit platform, centering between my eyebrows. Scanning with Chasing Eye, I noticed a fundamental difference between these mirror monsters and myself.

Under the beam of the flashlight, they cast no shadows. These illusory things relied entirely on the mirror in front of me. It could even be said that they were merely illusions I had conjured, things that had never existed in the first place.

'If I can just smash the mirror, I should be able to escape!'

I connected with the Fate Ghost through my mind, but its current situation wasn't much better. It struggled to hold on, doing its utmost to protect me beneath countless pale, ghostly hands.

'I can't count on the Fate Ghost, and my body can't move. Looks like I can only ask the Girl in Red behind me for help.'

My eyes were still covered by those thin little hands. I could feel her standing behind me, but I didn't know how to communicate with her.

The black hair coiled around the Fate Ghost was scattered by the mirror monsters and then reformed. Its figure slowly blurred; it seemed to be reaching its limit as well.

'What do I do?'

I opened my mouth but couldn't speak. My body was freezing, and an insidious, evil aura paralyzed my limbs.

The situation was growing more and more grim. It had reached a moment of life and death.

"Focus your mind and regulate your breath! Channel your qi to the Governing Meridian!" At this critical juncture, a voice inexplicably echoed above my spirit platform.

'Is it that Blood Fox?' I had no time to get to the bottom of it. I hastily followed the voice in the spirit platform, holding my breath and concentrating as I guided a gossamer wisp of qi from my inner dantian toward the Governing Meridian. To be honest, if this person hadn't reminded me, I would have even forgotten that I was half a cultivator. The sliver of dantian qi left from breaking through to the Following the Middle Path Realm was mobilized, surging straight up the great dragon of my spine.

"Mind and breath in harmony, ward off filth and dispel evil!"

I had no idea what the other party was talking about. I merely chanted the incantation they taught blindly, letting that gossamer strand of dantian qi rush into my spirit platform.

Strange to say, the moment the inner qi from my dantian circulated, I felt a bit of warmth in my mouth and tongue, as if a frozen winter lake had been struck by a ray of sunlight.

The dantian inner qi melted a hole through the chilling, evil intent. My fingers twitched, and the feeling akin to sleep paralysis faded significantly.

"Hurry! Use the iron tongs to smash the mirror!" My body still couldn't move freely, so I had no choice but to shout and plead with the girl behind me.

The hands covering my eyes hesitated for a moment before slowly releasing. Then, a red blur flashed past, grabbing the iron tongs I had tucked into my lower back and rushing straight for the floor mirror.

Without the girl's palms blocking my vision, my eyes landed fully on the mirror. In that instant, it felt as if something was desperately trying to drill into my mind.

'They want to assimilate me?' I bit down hard on my tongue, using the pain to stimulate my brain and holding on bitterly.

"Bang!"

The red figure had barely gotten close when she was blocked by deformed arms reaching from deep inside the mirror. She threw the iron tongs with all her might, but only managed to smash a single crack into the smooth glass. Immediately after, her petite body was grabbed by countless palms. The monsters twisted her form and tore her light red dress to shreds.

The Girl in Red was nowhere near as tyrannical as the Fate Ghost. She struggled to resist. Her rapidly dissipating body was dragged bit by bit toward the mirror. She thrashed frantically, but every time she writhed, even more hands snatched at her.

I watched all this happen, my head spinning, but I couldn't just sit by and do nothing. When the crack appeared on the mirror, the dark and evil aura suppressing me had largely dispersed.

I gritted my teeth and stepped forward, like a survivor desperately crawling out of a muddy swamp—refusing to let any opportunity slip by, and refusing to abandon any companion.

Taking a stride, I snatched up the iron tongs that had fallen to the ground. Glaring at the countless reflections of myself in the mirror, I threw myself headlong at the glass without a hint of hesitation!

"Crash!"

The iron tongs smashed down. The mirror exploded, shattering into pieces.

Flying shards of glass cut my hands, and blood dripped down my fingertips onto the iron tongs.

The horde of monsters that had been baring their fangs and brandishing their claws just a moment ago shattered abruptly, vanishing right along with the mirror.

Only the phantom that had leaped more than halfway out of the mirror remained. It was tightly bound by the Fate Ghost's black hair, completely immobilized.

"Thank you," I said. Lowering my bleeding hands, I tried to hug the girl, but all I embraced was a bone-deep chill.

She still had that terrifying, blood-stained appearance. Seeming not to understand my gesture, she stood with hair obscuring half her face, her figure looking far more illusory than before.

"Resentment and obsession bound you here. Don't worry, I'll help set you free tonight." The girl before me looked exactly like a vengeful spirit, her appearance hideous, but her true nature wasn't bad.

Stepping over the shattered glass littering the floor, I turned to look at the ghostly figure trapped by the Fate Ghost.

"What the hell is this thing?"

Away from the mirror, it was like water without a source. Its face, which had been identical to mine, began to change. Its features blurred, and finally, it transformed into a completely different face.

It was incredibly ordinary. If tossed into a crowd, it would likely vanish in the blink of an eye.

"It's different from a Little Ghost, and it's not a vengeful spirit either. Just from the surface, I can't even feel a trace of resentment. This is vastly different from how it acted just now."

The half-illusory, half-solid figure was currently being devoured by the Fate Ghost. Its expression was completely flat, as if it weren't the one about to be eaten.

"Fellow livestream viewers, does anyone know what this is?" I asked the chat room for help. "Is Half-Immortal Liu here today? Are there any other immortal masters or Daoist priests in the stream who can come out and explain this?"

After a long while, I didn't see any reliable answers, but that Socrates Paradox sent a few more messages in the chat.

"This thing came out of a mirror. In the Middle Ages, some philosophers argued that there was a magical connection between a person or object and their image. Therefore, mirrors—capable of reflecting images—were also thought to be objects that could capture a person's soul and life force."

"In many cultures, there's a custom of covering all the mirrors in a house after someone dies. This is to prevent the person's soul and residual energy from staying trapped in the mirrors and being unable to enter the afterlife."

"I always thought this was just representative of armchair philosophy. I never expected it to be proven true in your stream today."

"This soul must have been sealed into a mirror by someone after death, existing in a world opposite to reality. It lacks self-awareness and can only mimic the images generated on the mirror's surface. If you have to give it a name, I think 'Mirror Ghost' would be quite fitting."