Global Game: I Have Portable Store

Chapter 249: Chapter 248: The Man in the Mirror

Running forward following the previous route, the sounds around him gradually quieted down, and the shadow threads on the walls flowed like water.

The space gradually twisted.

It felt unreal.

Su Changxing was already familiar with this kind of change. It didn’t seem like the ability of an Extraordinary, but more like a naturally occurring phenomenon.

Darkness engulfed his vision.

This was a pitch-black corridor with no light.

Without changing expression, he continued to run forward quickly, estimating that this should be a level of a building that a Hunter had abandoned and rarely entered.

”I haven’t arrived at that place from before...”

Su Changxing frowned. This spatial shift seemed to be constantly changing. There might be some sort of pattern to it, but up to now, he hadn’t detected it.

At the end of the corridor was a reading room, its door glass had shattered, but it was tightly shut.

He glanced inside from outside, finding shelves lined with books and a large stack of paper books piled in a corner.

”Were they deliberately stored here?”

Su Changxing pondered for a moment, thinking that these Hunters might still hold some hope for the future.

Books represent knowledge and culture. In such a shattered world, if one wishes to pass down anything, books are essential.

”Bang~”

Su Changxing kicked the door open, causing dust to fall. As he walked further inside, he couldn’t help but be stunned by the scene in front of him.

Behind the shelves was an open space, with numerous twisted and bizarre characters and patterns drawn on the ground in some kind of red pigment. In the center was a dusty tri-sided mirror, with a black circular object hanging from each side.

”Is this another ghostly ritual?”

Su Changxing took a deep breath and couldn’t help but mock, sensing something was off about the environment; the temperature here was a bit lower than outside, possibly due to the room’s structure.

The head chuckled bizarrely, ”Heh heh, this is quite interesting. It seems to be some sort of structural ritual, a rather sophisticated kind of Extraordinary system, but...”

The head paused tantalizingly.

Su Changxing cooperated, saying, ”But what?”

The head was satisfied with Su Changxing’s cooperation and said:

”The problem is significant, there’s a sense of it being a crude imitation, resulting in the ritual being odd. However, the person who set up this ritual is somewhat of a genius. Without a foundational knowledge in this area, they created this setup purely through their own inspiration and understanding.”

[A broken yet still effective ritual.]

The information given by ”True Knowledge” was simple, and Su Changxing became more cautious, saying, ”So what is the function of this ritual?”

The head responded without hesitation:

”Not very clear, this ritual is chaotic and has deviated from its original purpose... But I know this type of ritual. It’s a standard structural ritual, roughly aimed at forcibly prolonging the life of someone who is dying. If I’m not mistaken, those hanging above are three eyeballs.”

Su Changxing moved closer to observe and found that there were indeed three dried-up eyeballs of different sizes, belonging to different people:

”This should count as a rather evil ritual, judging by the materials needed for it.”

The head chuckled, ”On the contrary, this is one of the most neutral rituals. The essence of a ritual is exchange, in all its forms... You must know that humans are not much different from other species, just more spiritual.”

”Do you think this might be related to that mole, should it be destroyed?”

Su Changxing debated with himself whether to destroy the mirror and terminate the ritual, but doing so might entail some risk.

In such a world interwoven with mystery, to kill someone, sometimes a knife isn’t needed—a mirror could suffice.

Conversely, he doubted whether these Hunters had such abilities. This belonged to a higher-level application of power, as the head claimed, this world was too young and shouldn’t have such profundity.

The head said nonchalantly, ”This thing probably doesn’t have much of a function; whatever you decide is fine.”

”Really?”

Su Changxing retained a degree of skepticism about this, mainly because the stuff in the head’s mind was inherently incomplete.

He advanced closer.

He was about to slash the mirror with a knife when he saw something moving in the dusty mirror, a shadowy figure.

Su Changxing frowned, wiped off the dust, and the reflection was not his own, but a chubby man in a black robe, with a stupefied expression, his mouth moving silently as if speaking, but no sound emerged.

This seemed to be the director of this hospital before the apocalypse!

”Is this some sort of image retention?”

Su Changxing frowned, wiping off more dust with a tattered cloth, discovering that the chubby man had only his head in the mirror, with blood dripping from below his neck, flowing onto the floor within the mirror.

The floor in the mirror was identical to the outside, but an additional head floated mysteriously in the air.

His eyes narrowed, and he turned to wipe the other two sides of the mirror clean, revealing a pair of hands and a pair of legs, similarly suspended in space, with blood flowing like a stream, as if ready to overflow the mirror.

The head wondered aloud, ”Why is it like this? Hmm, a bit strange. The chubby man in the mirror seems to be an Extraordinary, at least a Tier Eight in life.”

Su Changxing sarcastically retorted, ”So, things have exceeded your expectations?”

The slap in the face was immediate and undeniable.

Without giving it much more thought, Su Changxing turned to leave, suspecting that this might be a trap arranged by Teng Beng for him.

According to the traces on the corridor ground, no one had been here for a long time, yet he ended up coming here, seeming like a deliberate setup.

Just a few steps later, the sound of glass shattering came from behind.

Suddenly.

Su Changxing sensed something behind him rapidly approaching.

”Boom~”

A burst of flames accompanied by the roar of the revolver.

Half of one bookshelf was blown apart, wood fragments splattering everywhere.

There seemed to be nothing there, yet also something.

Su Changxing quickly retreated, observing his surroundings to confirm that something had indeed approached him just now.

He retreated all the way to the door, but nothing further happened.

”Has it gone?”

Su Changxing felt the creepy sensation fade away, the air temperature rising, much closer to the outside.

Because the thing appeared for such a brief moment, ”True Knowledge” hadn’t extracted any information.

He glanced at the shattered mirror.

[An abandoned ritual, you seem to have activated its final function just now]

”So I was trapped from the moment I entered this room, but it seems that thing wasn’t targeting me.”

Su Changxing furrowed his brow, feeling an ominous premonition, suspecting that he might have released something that never should have been released.