Chapter 10: The Cousin in the Mirror

Then, he began to search.

He lifted the sofa cushions, checked under the coffee table, and even pulled out the drawers of the TV cabinet one by one.

Nothing. Nothing at all. The woman in the golden dress was nowhere to be found.

With a long, woeful face, he ran into the room with the Door of Light, stood before the full-length mirror by the bed, and ran his hands up and down the mirror’s frame.

An angry voice spoke from his glasses. “Jiang Xiaoyu! Put those wandering hands away. Don’t think you can act like this just because you’re my older cousin.”

Jiang Xiaoyu hurriedly pulled his hands back, his face crumpling as he spoke to the mirror. “Cousin, I just wanted to confirm if you planted a microphone in these glasses and are hiding in another room, messing with me over Bluetooth. If you’ve really turned into a pair of glasses, how am I supposed to explain this to our family?”

The glasses went silent for a moment.

Then, Dongfang’s tone suddenly softened, and she let out a soft laugh.

“You want to confirm that I’m alright?”

Jiang Xiaoyu nodded.

“Stare at the mirror. I’ll reveal my form right now.”

Jiang Xiaoyu stood squarely before the mirror, pinching the frame of his glasses as he stared fixedly at the glass.

The mirror reflected his face, along with the bed behind him, draped in a golden halo of light.

At that moment, a dense golden light drifted from his glasses and slowly coalesced behind him. First came a head of long, flowing black hair, then a long golden dress, and finally, those distinct, black-and-white phoenix eyes.

She tilted her head and stared at him, a mischievous smile hanging on her lips.

Jiang Xiaoyu was stunned.

Could such a woman truly exist in the mortal realm?

Her skin was so incredibly pale it hardly looked real, as translucent as ice sculpted by sunlight.

Seeing his dumbfounded expression, Dongfang rested her chin on his shoulder and chuckled softly. “Cousin, see that? I’m fine.”

Jiang Xiaoyu abruptly snapped back to his senses.

He stared at the face right next to his in the mirror, his mind a completely jumbled mess. But there was one thing he was certain of!

This was not his cousin, Xiaoqi.

Though his memories of his cousin were hazy, combining them with the side-profile photo on his phone gave him a decent enough impression!

‘She isn’t her!’

‘Then who is she?’

‘Is this a prank?’

He began to recall every single conversation he had had with the woman behind him tonight.

He called her cousin, and he claimed to be the Dark Conqueror of the Light Clan—that was a game quote.
He casually agreed to form a contract with her—he thought she was just acting.
He said, “When the first ray of flame ignites, the darkness is also our territory”—that was also a game quote.

Every single piece of ambiguous nonsense he had spouted, she had taken as absolute truth.

He steadied his nerves and decided to probe her, step by step. “C-Cousin, you said your name is also Xiaoqi. What’s that all about?”

The smile on Dongfang’s face vanished instantly.

Her brows knitted tightly, and she spoke through gritted teeth. “Over a hundred years ago, Lengyue, Wanxing, and I all appeared here in Room 1314 at the same time, completely unable to break free. The three of us share one common trait—our memories are severely fragmented. We have no idea who I am, who she is, or why we are here. We argued about it together for many years, but ultimately couldn’t figure out why any of this was happening.”

She paused, her tone softening slightly.

“Later on, we unanimously concluded that the woman sitting cross-legged in the living room must be the key to unraveling the mystery. Because we could all control that body to step outside of Room 1314. Xiaoqi’s body had absolutely nothing left, save for a single phrase etched into her heart: that her name was Xiaoqi.”

“The three of you shared one body?” Jiang Xiaoyu struggled to comprehend her words.

“No, Xiaoqi’s body could only accommodate one person at a time. Not just because our attributes conflicted, but because the rules simply didn’t allow it. As for the exact reason why, we don’t know.”

“So you took turns going out to explore?”

“Yes. Each of us would go out for thirty years, and upon returning, the next person would take their turn. This way, everyone had a chance to visit the outside world and bring back information gathered from different perspectives to share.”

“This rule… the three of you established it together?”

Dongfang’s voice suddenly turned chillingly cold.

“Yes. But during one of Lengyue’s turns to go out—”

Her voice sank.

“She left for an entire century. One hundred years. The two of us were trapped in here, completely unable to go anywhere. We had no idea whether she was dead or if something had happened. It was only later that Wanxing and I figured it out—she betrayed us and stole Xiaoqi away.”

Her fingers curled into fists, the golden halo of light crackling between her knuckles.

“Tell me, cousin, isn’t she a traitor?”

Speaking of this infuriated Dongfang to no end; her chest heaved violently as golden light surged around her body.

Jiang Xiaoyu, however, suddenly burst into laughter.

He abruptly spun around and grabbed at Dongfang, smugly shouting, “Good thing your older cousin is quick on his feet! Now that I’ve caught you, let’s see if you can still go around scaring people! You’re not my cou—”

Before he could finish his sentence, he froze in place. His hand swiped right through thin air, grasping absolutely nothing.

He stood rooted to the spot in shock.

In the mirror, Dongfang was still standing behind him, tilting her head as she looked at him. Her expression was even angrier now than when she had been talking about Lengyue.

“So after I poured my heart out to you, you thought I was lying? Jiang Xiaoyu, you… you really aren’t human, are you!”

Taking a deep breath, she added, “If you don’t believe me, go ask that traitor, Lengyue! I can confront her face-to-face and prove that everything I said is true!”