Chapter 265: Letting It Slide |
A perfectly smooth skull tumbled to the ground like a ball. The headless torso protruding from the bronze mirror froze, then frantically drew its hand back, desperately trying to retreat inside.
But Ji Bai was not about to let it escape. Seizing its neck, he yanked the entire skeleton out and slammed it violently to the floor as [Tranquility] pierced straight through its body, pinning it dead where it fell.
Its disembodied jaw snapped in stubborn defiance, but his fist shattered it into pieces.
Sensing an opening, a small human-faced spider lunged from the artifact — only to be impaled against the stone wall by a flying silver longsword before it could touch the ground.
He recognized that creature. Ever since the Border Town incident, they had appeared wherever disaster struck.
This time, their conduit seemed to be the mirror. It seemed to function as a space-time passage to some distant realm — one that only allowed passage into this world, not the other way around.
He had confirmed that earlier when his attempt to pass his hand through its surface failed.
The thick layer of dust coating the wardrobe told him the strange object had been stored here for many years. Yet despite its presence, the Northern Suburbs remained untouched by monster attacks — someone must have been stopping them all this time.
‘Could it have been that old knight? The one who locked this mirror away in the basement and built this fortress-like chamber to keep those things from invading our realm? If so, this artifact must be far more dangerous than I thought.’
“Clang!” The impact jarred his hands, yet the surface remained utterly unmarred.
‘Figures. If the portal could be broken, he would have shattered it a long time ago. You don’t lock a monster nest in your basement unless you have no other choice.’
‘Whoever walled it in knew it was indestructible, and had the power to build a stronghold around it. It had to be the old knight.’
“I take it you’re the father of the previous owner?” He asked without turning around.
A shadowy form coalesced out of the pitch-black darkness and gave a subtle nod.
“Did you summon me here to deal with this mirror?”
The specter of the hunched elder bowed slightly, then shook its head.
‘Well, that was helpful.’
“Aren’t there better choices out there? Why call on a long-retired knight like me to handle this problem?”
After a moment of silence, the figure pointed to the stack of papers1 on the wooden table.
‘So, these weren’t meaningless after all.’
Whoever had locked them away had intended to leave something behind. The real question was what that message was meant to be.
“Do you know what these mean?” Ji Bai chose the most efficient approach and asked him outright.
The elder stood silently in the darkness, offering neither a nod nor a shake of its head.
It suddenly occurred to him that the shadow had not uttered a single word the entire time.
‘Is it because he’s a spirit…?’
Though he still could not make sense of the pages, the old man’s intentions were clear. It would rather bring in a retired outsider like him, than leave this matter to the Order.
“Other than dealing with this mirror, is there anything else you’d like me to do?”
It pointed towards his pocket.
Reaching inside, Ji Bai pulled out the paper he had neatly folded earlier.
‘Is this diagram with seven dots what he wants me to handle next?’
He rubbed his temples in frustration. While he loved a good deduction, trying to solve a mystery with so many missing clues left him utterly lost and offered him no satisfaction at all.
In the blink of an eye, the shadow was gone.
He was now left with a mountain of questions — and no one to answer them.
Leaving the mirror here was dangerous, yet he could not remove it; in the wrong hands, the consequences would be unimaginable. Ordinarily, the Chivalric Order would have been the natural choice, but given the figure’s misgivings, he thought better of handing it over to them.
He could faintly sense the discord within their ranks, and with an impostor of unknown motives hiding among them, they were hardly in a state to be trusted with something like this.
For now, there was nothing more to be done. Ji Bai shut the cabinet, tucked the folded paper away and looked at the scattered sheets on the wooden table. After a brief hesitation, he relit the candle and set the pages alight. As the last of the ashes settled, he finally left the basement with some peace of mind.
Once back on the surface, he moved the tiles and metal bed back into their original position and walked out of the bedroom.
The deeper he thought about it, the less any of it added up. Why had the family’s spirits not moved on? Among the several tombstones, the original owner’s was conspicuously missing — so where were his remains? And that demon, Bohlmann… What role did it play in their story?
He could feel his mind becoming an unsolvable yarn of thoughts.
The sight of a half-open door across the hall caught his eyes. After a brief pause, he pushed it open.
There, he found a room unlike anything else in the hallway. Where the rest of the quarters were dusty with simple white bedding and minimal furniture, this place was spotless and orderly.
Dark-gray wallpaper covered the stark white walls underneath. Even more striking was the bedside table, where a meal had been left out.
He examined the food. The bread had hardened, and the milk and steak had gone cold, but none of it had spoiled, suggesting it had been placed there only yesterday.
‘Could that demon have set it all up? But why here? As far as I remember, this wasn’t even his room to begin with. Yet a full day’s meals was laid out, as if someone’s still living here. Considering this place is haunted… I can’t help but have a bad feeling about this.’
His gaze shifted to the other nightstand, where a photo frame stood.
Picking it up, he took a closer look. Despite the paper yellowing with age, he could tell it was a family portrait.
A man stood with his arms around his wife, while an elderly man with a kind expression looked on behind them. A child sat at their feet, alongside another young boy, who seemed bashful and reluctant to face the camera.
The black and white picture held one unusual detail: the husband’s face had been cut out, apparently on purpose.
‘I guess this person is likely the original owner of the residence — though I wonder who removed his face. The youngster in front of the couple is probably the son, and the elderly man behind them the shadow I just encountered. But who is the other figure? He doesn’t seem like a part of the family, so why is he in the photo at all?’
He set the old frame down. It was impolite to stare at someone’s family photo without permission — doubly so when all of those pictured were long gone. The dead deserved their respect.
“Growl…” Ji Bai’s stomach rumbled. He was beginning to feel hungry — thankfully, no one was around.
He glanced around and slowly crouched down. The next instant, a swirl of bats wove itself into a black and white skirt.
A silver-haired girl knelt beside a bed, her brow slightly furrowed.
She suddenly realized she did not carry any blood bags.
‘This is troublesome.’
Suddenly, a small bat approached her, flapping its wings as it carried a pouch of crimson liquid in its mouth.
“Where did you find that?” One meaningful look at the slightly ajar doorway gave Bai Ji her answer.
‘So he knew all along? Whatever. I’m not petty enough to hold a grudge against a bunch of dead people.’
- Removed the descriptive information of the papers, since Ji Bai already examined them in the last chapter.