Stranger Danger

Chapter 415: The Woman Inside The Mirror

The rooms decor was simple but elegant. There was also a faint, sweet scent in the air. At first glance, it looked like a womans boudoir.

There was another room partially located deeper inside the room. The entrance was partially covered by a curtain of beads, but he could vaguely tell that there was a bed and a dressing table.

When his eyes swept across the dressing table, a gasp nearly escaped his throat. There was a person. A woman. It looked like she was combing her hair. She wasnt sitting in front of the dressing table, however. No, she was inside the bronze mirror. A reflection of someone who didnt exist in reality.

Cold sweat broke out of Ye Qings back. He was immediately struck by the impulse to turn around and get out.

Of course, he didnt do that. If he opened the door, then he would die for sure. If he stayed inside, he might yet live to see another day.

Ye Qing hid his aura as best he could while watching the woman inside the mirror warily. He didnt want to draw her attention one bit. It was at this moment he saw the woman slowly raising her arm and reaching forward. To Ye Qings shock, the arm actually poked out of the bronze mirror and into the real world before waving in his direction. She seemed to be beckoning him to come closer?

An incredulous thought flashed through his mind. No fucking way! I aint going there if its the last thing I do! If you want me so bad, then you can come to me instead!

The woman waved again, but Ye Qing didnt move as a matter of course. His refusal must have angered her, because bright red blood abruptly seeped out of the bronze mirror, and the temperature inside the room dropped ten degrees in an instant.

The blood on the mirror slowly came together to form five words:

Do you want to die?

Of course Ye Qing didnt want to die, so he obediently walked over to the dressing table. After he arrived, the words turned into a single word:

Sit.

Ye Qing did as she ordered.

Comb my hair!

What? Ye Qing blurted instinctively. And how am I supposed to do that? Youre inside the mirror, and Im not crazy enough to climb inside no matter how strong you are!

Before Ye Qing could think of anything else, the woman pulled her head off her neck and thrust it into the real world.

Ye Qing: ...

Oh. So this is how it is.

Ye Qing had a choice then. Should he accept the head and do as the woman asked, or should he sent it flying like a soccer ball?

Unfortunately, this room was the womans turf. He was almost certain that his head would fly off his neck the second after he kicked her head.

The woman in the mirror felt as strong as the pipa player he encountered earlier. This meant that it was impossible for him to settle this via brute force. Left with no choice, he caved to her demand and accepted the human head, placing it on the dressing table and allowing her hair to hang loosely at the sides.

After the headless body on the other side of the mirror handed him a wooden comb, Ye Qing began combing the womans hair.

Ye Qing shuddered as soon as the comb made contact with the womans hair. It was because an evil, indescribable energy had invaded his body. As the comb slowly slid down her soft hair, Ye Qings eyes lost all focus, and his mind plunged into a dark nightmare.

Despite having lost his consciousness, Ye Qings movements didnt stop. As if his body had a mind of its own, he continued to comb the womans hair stiffly and mechanically like a puppet.

Slowly, hair began growing out of the arm he used to comb the womans hair. His skin was also growing pale and stiff like its vitality was drained away by something.

Even worse, the paleness and the unnatural hair was growing rapidly and spreading to the other parts of his body. More specifically, they spread every time he combed the womans hair once.

At this rate, the unusual phenomenon would overtake his body completely. The moment he lost all of his vitality was the moment he transformed into a puppet.

An unknown amount of time later, a light suddenly shone out of Ye Qings unfocused eyes like a star. He then began coughing violently.

Every time he coughed, a thick ball of hair would fly out of his mouth. It was endless, however. No matter how many times he coughed, he could never empty his stomach completely.

The woman was cackling evilly on the dressing table, and the bronze mirror was leaking blood non-stop. He was starting to see all sorts of terrible and inexplicable illusions.

Worse still, the paleness and the hair were still spreading even though he had stopped combing the womans hair. Knowing that he couldnt wait any longer, Ye Qing spat out another ball of hair before growling out, Break!

"Heavenly Demon Captures The Soul

As he tapped the space in front of him, demonic thoughts rippled out like waves. The hair, the paleness, the cackling head, the bleeding mirror, and the rest of the illusions immediately disappeared like a bubble.

The next moment, Ye Qing found himself sitting in front of the dressing table and combing the womans hair. In fact, he had just completed exactly one stroke.

Ye Qing broke out in cold sweat. If the Paranirmitavaavartin Heavenly Demon Sutra wasnt such a godly cultivation art, if his demonic thoughts and the demonic lotus in his head werent naturally resistant to illusions, he wouldve perished inside his nightmare already. The death of ones spirit was no different from true death.

Continue.

A bloody word appeared on the mirror.

First it was death by music, now it was death by combing? Why the hell am I so unlucky today?

The bloody word on the mirror felt just as threatening as the pipa players gaze when he tried to leave earlier. He had no doubt that something terrible would happen if he refused the order.

So, Ye Qing gritted his teeth, shielded his mind with his demonic thought, and picked up the wooden comb once more. Then, he began his grim task anew.

As the comb slid down the womans head, a familiar, terrible sensation assaulted him once more.

Hah hah

In front of the dressing table, Ye Qing was breathing heavily and sweating like crazy. His face was also as pale as a sheet. This was the fifth time he combed the womans hair, and each time he would experience a nightmare that was filled with endless horror and despair, pain and hopelessness.

The illusions felt so real that even with his foreknowledge and power, he was just barely able to snap out of it. If he wasnt practicing the Paranirmitavaavartin Heavenly Demon Sutra, and if his willpower hadnt been tempered by Nanke, he wouldve succumbed to the nightmares already.

He was mentally exhausted, however. He could only do this a couple more times before he was finally spent.

Continue.

The bronze mirror was as relentless as ever, but this time, Ye Qing didnt obey the command. Instead, he lowered his head thoughtfully.

Continue.

A few seconds later, when the woman saw that Ye Qing wasnt moving, her headless body slowly raised its hands and reached out of the bronze mirror. The bloody word started bleeding profusely, and a cold, strange, terrifying aura gushed out of the bronze mirror and caused the room temperature to nosedive.

It was so cold that a layer of ice appeared on Ye Qings body. Even his blood seemed to be frozen in his veins. The womans arms reached for his neck as if she would strangle him to death.

Despite the crisis, Ye Qing still refused to move a muscle. When the womans hands were an inch away from his neck, he suddenly broke into a grin and declared, This too is an illusion.

Begone!

His demonic thought-infused command broke out like a thunderclap in spring. As if on cue, the pair of arms slowly faded away like sand, and his very surroundings flickered like the disturbed surface of a previously calm lake. Then, the bleeding mirror, the headless body inside the mirror, the head on the dressing table and even Ye Qing himself scattered into nothing like a bubble. The real Ye Qing was still standing at the entrance, and there was no one inside the bedroom. The dressing table was empty, and there was no woman combing her hair inside the mirror.

It was almost as if everything he experienced before was just a dream.

A nightmare was terrible, but what could it do when the dreamer had awakened back to reality?

Phew that was way too close, Ye Qing muttered under his breath.

He had figured out everything. From the moment he set foot inside the room, he was struck by some sort of anomalous power and pulled into an illusion. Everything he experienced afterward was just that, an illusion. In reality, he had never even taken a single step away from the door.

Had he failed to recognize that the reality where he was forced to comb the womans hair again and again was also an illusion, he would never have snapped out of it. He would have been forced to repeat the illusion until he went crazy, or he angered the woman and was strangled to death. It was death either way.

The only reason Ye Qing managed to figure out his situation was all thanks to the Annon Sutra. The illusion itself was quite impressive, and it managed to replicate practically everything on his person except one: the Annon Sutra.

At first, he didnt notice that he was still trapped in an illusion. But when he realized that the bronze mirror would never stop asking him to comb the womans hair, he realized he needed to do something.

His first thought was to seek help from the Annon Sutra, but when he looked inward, he realized in shock that he couldnt find it anywhere. The Annon Sutra was Ye Qings most treasured item, which was why he kept it close to his chest instead of storing it inside the Nine Heavens.

At first, he thought he somehow lost the Annon Sutra and panicked a little. But after he calmed down, he realized that that was impossible. He realized that he was still trapped inside an illusion. The anomalous power that dragged him into the illusion probably failed to replicate it because it was too special.

In the end, he was able to return to reality, but Ye Qing couldnt feel happy at all. After all, he still had no idea when or how he got dragged into the illusion in the first place. The killer fog was still outside the room, and now he knew that an unknown horror lurked inside the room. How could he possibly relax under these circumstances?

Now that he thought about it, he had probably succumbed to the illusion when he looked at the dressing tableor more accurately, the bronze mirror set on top of the dressing table.

Ye Qing split his attention between the dressing table and the fog outside the room, ready for anything. It was deathly silent both inside and outside the room.

Once, Ye Qing tried to poke his demonic thought outside the room, but he immediately and involuntarily tensed up like he had caught the attention of something monstrous. He didnt hesitate to dispel his demonic thought and gave up trying to find out what was happening outside.

A long contemplation later, Ye Qing ultimately chose to remain inside the room, terrified as he was. Each minute felt as long as a year.

Thankfully, nothing else happened after he broke out of the illusion. When he was certain that he was safe for the moment, he finally allowed himself a small sigh of relief.