Chapter Eighteen: The Strange School and Its Clubs
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March 12th. The rumor is true. Participants: Zhang Lan, Sun Wenbin, Feng Zhenghao.
Experiment content: Mirror Corner.
Experiment result: The three did not encounter anything resembling what the urban legend describes.
March 14th. The rumor is true. Participants: (redacted)
Experiment content: Mirror Corner.
Experiment result: (redacted)
“What’s going on?” Chen Qing stared at the contents on the screen, a vague feeling of unease growing in his chest. He glanced at the people outside the room, his hand continuing to scroll downward with the mouse.
March…
It’s real. It’s real! Everything is real!
They’ve come… they’ve found us…
No… he said there would be a way to handle this… I can’t panic.
(redacted)
Test subject: Mirror Corner.
They’re doomed… I have to find a way to save them…
That person… No… No, that’s not right! Who tampered with our records?! Who the hell are you!!!
Whoever you are… If you see this message, delete all records on this computer! Delete everything! Stop prying into our records! Get out of here!
As he watched the cursor flickering on the screen, his expression changed.
He looked up at the people outside—how much truth was there in what that young man had said?
He had watched Jiang Wan and the boy for a long time from behind, only looking away with a sullen face when Jiang Wan finally told him to leave.
“They may have left behind some information…”
He studied the screen. There were three aspects in the document worth investigating: past records, edit history, and modification times.
Past records logged every change ever made to this document, while the complete file after each change was preserved in the edit history.
Corresponding to these were the modification times.
He stroked his chin, the cursor moving repeatedly over the fourth and fifth sentences.
Just then, Jiang Wan came over to his side.
“What’s going on?” She saw Chen Qing’s grave expression and sensed something was off.
“That boy just now—there’s something wrong with him.”
He spoke in a low voice, pointing out the text on the screen to Jiang Wan.
“He’s seen it too?”
“He gave me the password.”
Jiang Wan’s face darkened. She turned and walked out of the room.
Chen Qing, meanwhile, began searching through the information on the screen one by one.
There were only twelve past records.
Most of the edits matched their corresponding results.
There were even fewer entries in the edit history—just six.
The modification times matched the edit history; nothing seemed amiss there.
Looking further, he noticed that three edits were identical; three only involved correcting typos.
He extracted all the altered files, totaling nineteen documents.
At that moment, Jiang Wan finished her call outside and came back in.
She looked at Chen Qing, her expression even more troubled. “Something’s wrong… it’s all wrong…”
“How so?”
“There’s no such person.”
Her face had gone pale. She showed Chen Qing a file on her phone. There was no record of this person in the identity database—no one by that name enrolled at No. 4 High School.
His thoughts raced and he asked Jiang Wan, “What about Zhang Lan’s friends?”
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“I checked. Those people are… well, not exactly normal, either.
Every one of them has recently filed for psychiatric treatment.
All of them. Almost everyone in this school—I found a record for nearly every single one.”
Chen Qing’s face went ashen. He turned his head to look out the window.
From here, it just so happened that he could see the small alley leading to the deserted hills.
He looked that way, pulling his hat brim lower.
“He’s over there.”
Chen Qing didn’t move further, turning his attention back to the document.
“Zhang Lan must have realized something was wrong… That’s why she had the chance to put some kind of safeguard in place.”
“But in a critical situation… what kind of information could she have left?”
Jiang Wan pulled over a chair and sat down next to Chen Qing.
“Exactly… exactly… Think about it—a person in extreme danger, would they use some complicated encryption method?”
As Chen Qing spoke, he quietly closed the encoding website he had opened.
“If she wanted someone to see this file and also leave a message for those who came after…”
He spoke softly, pressing the delete key within the document.
He looked at the file, now reduced to just a handful of characters. The highlighted red marks in the history log had changed.
“As I thought… that’s it.”
Comparing the information in the files, he right-clicked the document with his mouse.
“But it’s not enough… The hidden content isn’t important… There’s still a key left somewhere.”
He spoke quietly, finding a file that had been uninstalled from the computer’s system.
“This computer… used to have a file transfer program over the local network.”
Chen Qing glanced at Jiang Wan; she understood his meaning.
She went to the computer’s network cable, waiting for his signal.
“Get ready. Three… two… one… Pull!”
For data, the transfer speed would have been fast enough to finish in the instant he clicked.
But for Chen Qing, there was more than one connection he wanted to cut.
“Okay, the surveillance is down for now,” he muttered, starting some kind of device in his pocket with his fingers.
“All right. My phone has no signal now,” Jiang Wan said, shaking her head with a hint of resignation.
She returned to Chen Qing’s side, and in that program, they saw the message Zhang Lan had left for those who would follow.
In the log, there was a string of characters—s4, a3, something like that.
Jiang Wan glanced at it and in an instant understood what it represented.
Comparing the files marked red in the edit history, the two of them finally pieced together Zhang Lan’s intended “final words.”
“Why did she… do this?” Jiang Wan looked at him, searching for an answer.
“I don’t know. To be honest, even if you asked those two people at home… they wouldn’t know either.”
Chen Qing frowned, equally puzzled. “If this information is only in Zhang Lan’s memory…
That’s not safe either.
Unless… she chose to forget it entirely.”
“Is it possible… that’s exactly what she did?” Jiang Wan’s face turned pale, a sudden realization hitting her. “She said that sometimes she’d recall memories she’d forgotten. We all thought those were Zhang Lan’s own memories, right?
But what if they weren’t?!”
“What if, after splitting herself in two, she split again?!”
She looked at Chen Qing, voicing a reality they couldn’t avoid: “According to the records… she didn’t just go in once…”
Chen Qing paused for a long time, staring at the file on the screen for ages before finally bowing his head.
“This girl is incredible.”
“You make compliments sound so weird.”
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“You just can’t stand to see others do well.”
“Nonsense.”
On the computer screen, on the interface the two of them had deliberately ignored, a remarkably complete ritual for the Mirror Corner experiment was recorded.
There, she had also documented exactly what had happened in this school.
…
“Holding the largest shard of a round mirror, walk through the hallway at night, taking seven steps, then raise the mirror above your head.
Look up at it and ask your reflection a question; then walk seven more steps, turn around, and place the shard at the hallway’s corner.
Go up and down the stairs twelve times; each time you pass, ask your reflection, ‘Where is this? Where is this? It’s so dark here. Can I come over to your side?’
The thirteenth time you pass, if you see no one in the mirror, it means you’ve entered the other world.
Here, everything is reversed, everything is false.
On our third experiment, we succeeded.
But the world inside the mirror wasn’t what we imagined. According to the legend, you could reach any place through the mirror, but… it’s not true. That part of the rumor is wrong.
Second, this world—everything here feels as if something is missing, but after leaving, we can never say what it was.
It’s like… like there’s only one gender among humans; like light doesn’t shine.
On the fourth entry… monsters appeared in the mirror world…
But fortunately, as long as you obey the rules, they can’t hurt you.
Unfortunately… Sun and Feng had an accident. I must go save them.
###”
At the very end, there was nothing left but a string of meaningless garbled characters.
Chen Qing thought that perhaps this had much to do with her separating herself twice.
He looked up, and Jiang Wan’s expression was just as grave.
“Are you going to try it?”
She looked at Chen Qing and pressed on, “Maybe we could…”
“How likely do you think I am to successfully imitate your superiors?”
He fixed his eyes on Jiang Wan, his tone serious.
“Very likely,” she sighed. “Really, very likely…”
“You’ve seen them, too. I refuse to believe no one is covering for them in a situation this serious.”
Jiang Wan seemed about to say something, but the words caught in her throat and she swallowed them back.
In the end, what was left unsaid came out as a regretful sigh: “Then go. I’ll keep you safe.”
He smiled, half in jest, half earnestly: “Just hope it doesn’t end up with me having to protect you instead.”
“To be honest, firearms are still powerful enough.” She looked at Chen Qing, her tone questioning: “Those monsters in the backrooms… those entities.
They don’t seem able to withstand modern weapons; they’re biological, after all. Are they really that dangerous?
If we went back with backup, wouldn’t our firepower solve everything?”
But hearing this, Chen Qing pondered for a moment: “Would they really be killed? You can’t even be sure they’re truly alive.
It’s good to have weapons, but in the backrooms… brains are far more important than force.
People who haven’t dealt with the supernatural are likely to drag us down.
Besides—”
Chen Qing sighed, then continued to Jiang Wan, “Frankly, I don’t trust most people in your organization.
Whether in a crisis or in terms of security,
I could never trust them. These organizations… this situation has been brewing long enough.”
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