Chapter 244: Seen Through

Of course, the chances of that were incredibly slim. Perfectly impersonating someone was exceedingly difficult and likely required the aid of several special tools.

The two Tie Ningxiangs continued their standoff in the corridor, each trying to find holes in the other's story to prove she was the real one.

They argued fiercely. To win Yi Yi over, every topic they brought up revolved around her.

Perhaps it was a case of Those Involved Are Blind, but this particular detail left me slightly puzzled. I had nearly lost myself in the maze; the culprit could use a Mirror Ghost to view a person's memories. It was an insidious, ruthless trick that was almost impossible to defend against.

But the problem was that in my previous conversation with Tie Ningxiang, she hadn't mentioned the maze at all. If she hadn't entered it, how had her memories been stolen?

The two women's voices echoed down the corridor as shadows gradually materialized throughout the Haunted House.

I had burned half the Soul Bewitching Dolls on the Haunted House's second floor, but the killer had already released the rest, allowing them to escape the flames.

Drawn by the commotion, these yin souls were all rushing toward the underground level. The endless stream of them looked as though a gate to the underworld had opened right here, and they were all hurrying through to be reincarnated.

"Stop arguing!" I struck the wall with my iron tongs, rapidly organizing the clues in my head. "Let's get out first. It isn't safe here."

Both Tie Ningxiangs ignored my suggestion.

"Gao Jian, have you thought about why the killer would impersonate me? They want to get close to you so they can kill you the moment you let your guard down!"

"I would never hurt you, Gao Jian. You have to believe me."

As they went back and forth, the sheer danger of our environment made my head throb. The suspicion and confusion were driving me insane.

"Calm down. I have to stay calm. Panicking is exactly what the killer wants," I told myself, forcing my breathing to steady. This opponent was even more psychotic than Lu Xing. He was full of sick humor, treating crime as a game and murder as a form of entertainment. His mind was far more warped than Lu Xing's.

"Every topic revolves around Yi Yi. Tie Ningxiang didn't enter the maze, but what about Yi Yi? The killer uses the Mirror Ghost to steal memories and is skilled at disguise..." A sudden realization flashed through my mind. I stepped right between the two Tie Ningxiangs.

"I have a way to tell which of you is real. I need both of you to answer me honestly." I directed that last part at the real Tie Ningxiang, because she shouldn't actually know the answer to the question I was about to ask.

"Have either of you been to the Amusement Park's Magic Mirror Maze?"

"No."

They both answered with absolute certainty. I nodded and asked five or six more everyday questions. They all shared one common thread: almost all of them were about Yi Yi.

Their answers were nearly identical, leaving no obvious flaws. I didn't rush. Maintaining my original pace, I casually tossed out another question.

"Yi Yi and I first met on the Midnight Route 14 Spirit Bus. Do you remember if the driver of that spirit bus was a man or a woman?"

"A man. He wasn't very old..." the Tie Ningxiang standing next to Yi Yi blurted out. Meanwhile, the Tie Ningxiang using her jacket to bandage her arm wound just opened her mouth, entirely at a loss for words.

Faced with this question, the two women's answers finally diverged.

The Tie Ningxiang who couldn't answer turned pale, racking her brain to recall the detail.

The Tie Ningxiang who had answered correctly also blanched, suddenly realizing her mistake.

"You finally gave yourself away!" Without another word, I grabbed my iron tongs and lunged straight at Yi Yi.

"What are you doing? Gao Jian, stop!" The "Tie Ningxiang" standing beside Yi Yi recoiled in shock at my sudden attack. She grabbed Yi Yi and tried to scramble backward, but I blocked her path, swinging the iron tongs directly at her forehead without holding back.

"Are you crazy?" she shouted, still trying to keep up the act, but I gave her no quarter. I attacked relentlessly. The sudden violence left both Yi Yi and the real Tie Ningxiang stunned in the corridor.

"Help me! She's the fake!" I roared. Seeing that I had backed this "Tie Ningxiang"—the one whose wound was bound tight with a hair tie—into a corner, she suddenly whipped out a short knife from behind her back and pressed the blade against Yi Yi's neck.

That action alone confirmed my suspicions. The real Tie Ningxiang would never point a blade at Yi Yi.

"Back off!" the Tie Ningxiang with the hair-tie bandage snapped, putting distance between us. Her expression slowly began to change, and her voice dropped into a raspy gravel. "How did you figure it out?"

She stared at me with morbid fascination, her eyes like a viper's.

I had attacked the moment I deduced the truth, but unfortunately, I was still a step too slow. "You left too many holes. This trap was clever—every link interlocking with the next—but you made several glaring mistakes."

"Glaring mistakes? I don't think so." The woman's face continued to shift. An exquisite cloth doll suddenly dropped from her back; its facial features had been drawn with a marker, making it look remarkably like Tie Ningxiang.

"Your biggest mistake was your arrogance. You think you're a genius and that the whole world is your plaything, but the truth is, you're an idiot! You rely on evil arts to commit your crimes and actually believe your schemes are flawless?" I snapped at her. "Five years ago, when I had absolutely nothing, I still managed to catch your trail. And looking at this little setup today, five years later, you haven't improved at all!"

I had kept those words bottled up inside for five whole years. Every ounce of misunderstanding and misery I had endured over that time was entirely because of the person standing right in front of me.

"Didn't you want to know the reason? Then let me break it down for you." My mind raced, linking every clue together as I stared at the woman whose features were still shifting.

"You're exceptionally skilled at disguise and mimicry. With the Mirror Ghost's help, you can even steal other people's memories. It made this trap seem flawless, but the truth is, you screwed up right from the start."

"You wanted to use Li Manman and Xiaobei to lure me into the maze. To make it more convincing, you didn't hesitate to expose yourself, deliberately letting the security cameras catch you disguised as Tie Ningxiang."

"But the Tie Ningxiang I saw on those monitors had an unfamiliar expression, and she kept reaching back to scratch her own back. That kind of bizarre behavior naturally put me on guard. Looking back, you were probably rushing to finish your disguise using the Mirror Ghost's power, and it was clinging to your back the entire time."

"That was your first mistake. Your appearance alone told me that there was more than one Tie Ningxiang wandering around the Amusement Park."

"Your second mistake happened in the center of the maze. You used the corpses of Xiaobei and Li Manman to numb my senses and lower my guard, and then you set up a death trap in the third room, hoping the Mirror Ghost would steal my memories—or just kill me outright."

"It was a meticulous plan. Too bad you've committed far too many sins. The vengeful soul of someone you brutally murdered actually ended up helping me."

"So not only did I keep my memories, I also made my way into the maze's underground section and discovered the photos of the rainy night serial murders from five years ago."

"By the time I walked out of the maze, you had already lost the initiative, completely missing your best window to kill me."

"Of course, I also have to thank Tie Ningxiang for that. If she hadn't kept you occupied so you couldn't focus on dealing with me, I never would have escaped the maze so easily."

With every word I spoke, the woman's face grew darker. As she kept the blade pressed to Yi Yi's neck, the bones throughout her body began to let out a series of sharp cracks, sounding like dislocated joints violently snapping back into place.

By the time the cracking of bones finally stopped, the woman's physique had expanded, becoming visibly broader. Her voice dropped into a deep, sinister register. At this point, it felt far more appropriate to refer to her as a 'he.'

"Your third mistake happened just a moment ago. Both you and the real Tie Ningxiang said you hadn't entered the maze, which meant it was highly likely her memories were never stolen. And that created a blatant contradiction: if her memories weren't stolen, how did you know so much about her?"

"I was confused about that at first, too. But as you two kept arguing, I realized every single thing you brought up revolved around Yi Yi. That led me to a bold theory: you hadn't stolen Tie Ningxiang's memories at all. You used the Mirror Ghost to steal Yi Yi's memories!"

"To prove it, I asked you a few questions. The real Tie Ningxiang didn't actually know the answer to that last one. It was a secret between Yi Yi and me. Since the events on the spirit bus that night involved Yi Yi's birth mother, I highly doubted Yi Yi would have told her aunt about it."

Once I finished speaking, the "Tie Ningxiang" holding Yi Yi finally dropped the act. He rubbed his cheeks and peeled away a thin layer of human skin.