Chapter 57: Where is the Light?

When Mo Qi was dragged into the mirror, he fell into a fragment of a lost memory once again.

“It seems I chose an unsafe place, little one,” the figure in the painting said.

Mo Qi saw the figure in the painting struggling to stand, his back burdened with a mountain of steel and concrete. Blood trickled down his resolute face from his forehead, gathering in droplets at his jawline and falling one by one.

“You’re hurt!” Mo Qi heard his own panicked voice.

Mo Qi found it quite novel. It had been a long time since he had felt such fear. It seemed that after the college entrance exams, he had grown up in an instant. No matter how difficult life became, he never felt afraid. The word “fragile” had long since departed from him.

“It’s nothing,” the figure in the painting said, wiping the blood from his forehead with his thumb and tossing the hundreds of tons of steel and concrete off his back with one hand. “I’ve got quite a few abilities.”

Where his thumb had wiped, not only did the blood disappear, but the wound also healed. Young Mo Qi was utterly stunned.

“Look at you, acting like you’ve never seen anything before. It’s just a few special abilities,” the figure in the painting said with a smile, ruffling Mo Qi’s hair. “This place is no longer safe. I’ll take you to the ‘armory.’ If even that collapses, then I’m finished.”

“‘What is a ‘Weapons Cache’?” the young Mo Qi asked curiously.

“It’s my base of operations.” The person in the painting took out a bullet, inserted it into a magazine, and pointed it at his own forehead, firing a shot.

The young Mo Qi rushed forward and hugged his waist. “What are you doing?!”

The gunshot rang out, but the person in the painting was unharmed. Mo Qi saw that the bullet had merged into the person’s body through his temple.

“Don’t worry, how could I harm myself?” The person in the painting also wrapped his arm around Mo Qi’s waist. “I just gave myself the ability to teleport. Hold on tight, we’re changing locations.”

Mo Qi hugged the person in the painting tightly, closing his eyes. He felt a whirl of motion, and when he opened his eyes again, he found himself in a massive space filled with weapons.

“This is…” Mo Qi curiously touched a bizarrely shaped weapon next to him.

“This is my… no, our base of operations,” the person in the painting said. “Here, countless players’ abilities are stored.”

Mo Qi didn’t understand and tilted his head, looking at the person in the painting.

The person in the painting explained, “My ability, like this game world, is both giving and plundering. I insert an empty bullet into a player’s body; this bullet can enhance the player’s abilities and increase their survival rate. At the same time, my bullet continually siphons away the player’s strength.”

“Why give it and then take it back?” Mo Qi asked, puzzled.

The person in the painting said, “Because scattered power is insufficient to overcome this mysterious force, everyone needs to unite. Abilities are the weapons our world gives players to protect it, while players themselves are the medium through which the mysterious force devours the world. They possess two kinds of power within them, and my bullets can merge these two powers completely. When a player reaches a certain level and their body can no longer bear the immense power, they will enter the ‘Weapons Cache’ and return that bullet to me.”

“What happens to players who lose their abilities?” Mo Qi asked.

The person in the painting said, “Not only will they lose their abilities, but they will also lose the energy of the mysterious world, becoming an ordinary person. They’ll return to their original world, forget everything about the game, and start over.”

“Return to the original world?” The young Mo Qi’s eyes were filled with confusion. “I don’t want to go back.”

“Why are you so serious for a child? Stay hidden here. I’ll deal with that mysterious force and drive it out sooner or later,” the person in the painting said.

Seeing his smile, Mo Qi’s heart suddenly tightened. He grabbed the person’s arm and asked, “Are you confident you can win? Will you be okay?”

“My ability has always been special. As long as I recover all the bullets, I’m sure to win,” the person in the painting reassured, gently ruffling Mo Qi’s hair. “Don’t worry, child.”

Mo Qi sighed with relief but still asked, “Have you recovered all the bullets?”

“All the ones I sent out have been recovered,” the person in the painting said.

Mo Qi, sharp as ever, immediately noticed a gap in the person’s explanation: “Are there any bullets that haven’t been sent out?”

“Why is this child so smart?” the person in the painting laughed. “It’s just one bullet. It won’t be a problem.”

“Just one bullet? Why hasn’t it been sent out?” Mo Qi asked anxiously.

The person in the painting took out a silver bullet and told Mo Qi, “Each bullet has a different meaning. Only by gathering all types of bullets, becoming all-knowing and all-powerful, can we overcome the mysterious force. But if this bullet were given away, the risk would be much greater than not using it.”

“What kind of bullet is this?” Mo Qi asked, touching the silver bullet.

“It symbolizes… love. First, I haven’t found a suitable player for it. And secondly… do you know what love is? Have you ever been in love, child?” The person in the painting gently tapped Mo Qi’s nose.

“I haven’t been in love, always busy with my studies,” Mo Qi shook his head. “But I think love should be about mutual affection, mutual effort, and tolerance for each other. There might be occasional hurts and being hurt, and the final outcome might not always be perfect, like with my parents… their ending wasn’t very good. But… love itself is beautiful.”

“A student’s simplistic view on love,” the person in the painting disagreed with Mo Qi’s words. “Love is about control and enslavement. I won’t give anyone the chance to enslave me.”

He put the bullet away, leaving Mo Qi in the “Weapons Cache,” and turned to walk out.

Mo Qi suddenly woke up, finding himself in a vast, white space. Turning around, he saw the world outside the mirror, while in front of him was an endless, blinding expanse of white.

He touched the bullet wound on his chest and recalled the scene he saw while resonating with Xiaocao, where he had seen the person in the painting give the last bullet to him.

In the end, the person in the painting had sent out the bullet he was reluctant to use.

“He gave it to me…” Mo Qi couldn’t help but smile.

For some reason, Mo Qi felt a sense of happiness.

Perhaps Mo Qi was suited for this bullet, or maybe there was indeed no other way at the time. Regardless, Mo Qi received the last bullet from the person in the painting, crossing time and space to arrive in this world of his own.

Because of this bullet, all the scattered fragments of the person in the painting would appear before Mo Qi.

When Mo Qi used “Gaze” on the mirrored version of himself, he wondered if this person could be a fragment of the one in the painting. Now, seeing new memories, he realized that this was indeed a fragment.

“How coincidental…” Mo Qi couldn’t help but mutter to himself. Why did the mirrored version he chose happen to have a bullet fragment inside?

Gambling relies on chance, and Mo Qi despises gambling and doesn’t believe in coincidences. He doesn’t think his luck is so good that just by casually glancing at Liao Ruxue, he finds a fragment that has accompanied him for two years; or by casually looking at the roadside grass, he discovers a fragment inside it; or by picking up a porcelain doll, it turns out to be a fragment; or by choosing any one of the countless mirrored figures, he still encounters a fragment.

This cannot possibly be coincidence; rather, it’s the fragments being drawn to the bullet within him.

Thinking of this, Mo Qi suddenly felt a bit of tightness in his chest. He wasn’t sure what was causing it, but he felt vaguely unsettled.

“What’s coincidental?” A voice spoke beside Mo Qi—it was Xia Yao.

It turned out that Xia Yao had been hiding in the mirror’s inner world all along, which is why they couldn’t find him.

“It’s nothing,” Mo Qi said fearlessly as he looked at Xia Yao. “So this is what it looks like behind the mirror.”

“Yes, I finally… trapped you here,” Xia Yao took a deep breath.

Mo Qi realized this was a negative effect of Xia Yao’s ability and didn’t blame him. Instead, he said, “You can’t trap me. You know I have many special powers. I can get out.”

“Even if you have immense power, as long as you don’t kill your mirrored self, you’ll never get out,” Xia Yao said, looking at Mo Qi. He seemed to want to reach out and hug him but ultimately held back. “I’m going to kill him now.”

With that, Xia Yao turned and walked towards the mirror, moving effortlessly through it and out of sight.

Mo Qi followed, but he was blocked by the mirror and could only watch as Xia Yao left.

Calm and composed, Mo Qi closed his eyes and quietly maintained contact with his mirrored self. He was fully aware of everything happening with the mirrored Mo Qi outside.

Seeing the mirrored Mo Qi dominating Qin Xunfeng and Liang Tianxiu, Mo Qi felt no concern for the mirrored Mo Qi or Qin Xunfeng. Instead, he grew more worried about Xia Yao.

“Good luck with that,” Mo Qi offered Xia Yao insincerely.

“Mo Qi, Mo Qi!” a voice called out—it was Liang Tianxiu.

“Here,” Mo Qi replied.

In the next moment, Liang Tianxiu appeared before Mo Qi. He had initially looked very angry, but upon seeing Mo Qi, his anger inexplicably vanished. He stared at Mo Qi for a while, then began banging his head against the mirror repeatedly, muttering, “Why do you look exactly like him?”

It seemed he was a person driven mad by his ability. The way his power had twisted and become so terrifying in the mirrored Mo Qi was baffling. Mo Qi couldn’t help but sigh.

“Because he’s my mirrored self,” Mo Qi said as he stepped forward and patted Liang Tianxiu’s shoulder, offering a somewhat insincere comfort.

Liang Tianxiu, whose mind was being controlled by the mirrored Mo Qi, initially brimming with resentment, found that he couldn’t stay angry upon meeting the real Mo Qi.

“You don’t know how to travel through mirrors yet, right? Let me teach you,” Liang Tianxiu said.

“Thank you,” Mo Qi responded politely.

“Moving here is different from moving in our world. In the same mirror, you rely on your feet; in different mirrors, you rely on light. You need to find the light,” Liang Tianxiu explained.

Light? Mo Qi looked around the bright, white world, but he couldn’t find any direction of the light.

Indeed, while the Mirror Maze appears quite daunting, the key element is light, isn’t it? A mirror without light is just a regular piece of glass.

But where is the light in this task? Whether inside or outside the mirror, Mo Qi hasn’t found a clear light source.

“Come over here and stand in front of this mirror,” Liang Tianxiu patiently instructed. “You see, as long as you get close to the mirror’s surface, you can see many mirrors outside.”

Mo Qi approached the mirror and realized that looking out through it was like standing in front of a 4-meter by 1-meter glass window. Through this glass, he could see many mirrors on the opposite side, above, and below, but he couldn’t see any on the same side.

“Focus on a mirror and imagine yourself as a beam of light, you can…”

Before Liang Tianxiu could finish his sentence, Mo Qi appeared in the mirror above.

“Learning quite quickly, I see,” Liang Tianxiu said, hurrying to follow.

Mo Qi arrived at the mirror on the ceiling. Here, he seemed to defy gravity and align parallel with the mirror. The mirror was perpendicular to the floor, so he stood upright. Since the mirror was parallel to the floor, his body also aligned parallel, as if it were sticking to the ceiling.

“How did you end up in the mirror above?” Liang Tianxiu asked as he caught up. “Everything looks skewed here; it’s really uncomfortable for the eyes.”

“But if you want to kill someone, it would be easier from up here,” Mo Qi pointed downward. “If you had been in the mirror above just now, no matter how Qin Xunfeng moved, his reflection would only show his head, making it very difficult to hit you. Additionally, being in the mirror above makes it harder for people to notice you. When people encounter danger, their first reaction is to look around and turn, only then do they notice what’s above or below, with the upper area usually being the last place they check. If you want to kill and escape, the best way is to twist your clothes into a rope, hook it from the mirror above around the person’s neck, lift them up, and hang them. This position leaves no room for resistance, and no matter how much they struggle, their reflection won’t touch you.”

Liang Tianxiu: “…”

He stared at Mo Qi in shock. “Are you a murderer?”

“No, I’m just more familiar with the perspective of looking down from above,” Mo Qi replied.

He had once stood on top of the highest building in the city, looking down, and felt how insignificant the people below seemed. While underestimating life, he was saved by someone.

He still didn’t know that person’s name.

“I’ll take you to find the mirror shards,” Liang Tianxiu said.

Mo Qi, who had already known everything through “Resonance,” asked, “All the mirrors here are the same. How do you find the mirror shards?”

“In the reflections,” Liang Tianxiu replied. “You need a bit of skill to catch the mirror shards in the reflections.”

He led Mo Qi to a vertical mirror, where only Qin Xunfeng’s reflection was visible, and Mo Qi’s image did not appear in the mirror.

“Look, it’s Mo Qi and Liang Tianxiu!” Qin Xunfeng said, waving at the two in the mirror and gesturing to the reflection of Mo Qi.

Mo Qi nodded to Qin Xunfeng but ignored the reflection of himself standing nearby.

The reflected Mo Qi’s expression darkened: “He can’t see me.”

“Why?” Qin Xunfeng asked.

The reflected Mo Qi explained, “What he sees is not the real world through the mirror, but the reflection in the mirror. Therefore, he can only see you and not me.”

“I see,” Qin Xunfeng said, touching the mirror. At that moment, he saw Liang Tianxiu and Mo Qi reach into his body through the mirror, and Mo Qi pulled out a mirror shard from within him.

“What’s going on?!” Qin Xunfeng said, feeling his stomach. “They took a mirror shard out of my body!”

“The shard inside you… no, in your reflection?” The reflected Mo Qi stopped in his tracks.

In the mirror, Mo Qi retrieved the shard.

Whether it was during the recent position shift or retrieving the shard from Qin Xunfeng’s body, Mo Qi found it fascinating.

At that moment, it was as if he had become light, merging with it, and grasped a fragment that obstructed the light’s path through reflection.

Mo Qi examined the mirror shard repeatedly. “Why would the mirror shard be in the reflection?”

“How should I know? Are you going to choose someone to kill next?” Liang Tianxiu asked. “Don’t pick Qin Xunfeng; he’s mine.”

Inside and outside the mirror, Mo Qi and the reflected Mo Qi spoke simultaneously: “I know where the light in the Mirror Maze comes from.”