04:45 AM.
I left the warm lobby and stepped once again into the pitch-black junkyard in the backyard.
The moment the rusty iron door closed behind me, I felt like I had stepped from the human world into a ghost domain. My phone screen brightness was turned down to the lowest setting; on that green radar grid, the Yellow Dot representing the target was still flickering on the edge.
Not far from me, a straight-line distance of about two hundred meters.
But with every step I took, my heart sank a little lower.
The air here had changed. It was no longer just the smell of rot, but a strong scent of scorched old wires mixed with the metallic tang of rust. A faint ringing began to appear in my ears—Zzzt... Zzzt...—like the static noise of an old TV with no signal, constantly irritating my eardrums.
[Sanity: 60 -> 59]
I hadn't even seen the target yet, and my Sanity was already dropping.
Like a bird startled by the twang of a bowstring, I lowered my body, trying my best to step on soft trash. But I discovered that the closer I got to the target area, the weirder the surrounding scenery became.
The scrap metal on the ground began to appear distorted. An abandoned tire was round on the top half, but the bottom half looked like it was pixelated, stretching out in jagged shapes. A steel bar was stuck in the soil, but a section in the middle was "disconnected," floating in the air like a rendering error.
"The data here... is broken."
My throat felt dry. This wasn't just a garbage dump; this was a Glitch Zone.
Finally, I crawled over a small hill made of abandoned washing machines.
The scene before me made my breath hitch.
It was a clearing that had been hollowed out. The ground was covered with countless broken mirror shards, reflecting the dim shimmer of the gray sky, looking like scattered silver, or perhaps eyes opening one by one.
And in the center of the clearing stood a massive, distorted full-length mirror. There were countless cracks on the mirror surface, yet it stubbornly reflected the scene in front of it.
Woo... hee... woo...
The crying sound became clear. It wasn't continuous crying, but intermittent sounds carrying strong electronic interference. One moment it was a miserable wail, the next it suddenly turned into sharp, high-pitched laughter. The two sounds superimposed on each other made my scalp numb and my stomach churn.
I hid behind a scrapped refrigerator, covering my mouth tightly, and carefully peeked half my head out.
I saw her.
In front of the full-length mirror, standing with her back to me, was a slender figure. She wore a dirty Red Trench Coat, the color piercingly bright, as if dyed with blood. A head of messy black hair cascaded down her back, covering most of her body.
She just stood there in front of the mirror, her body twitching slightly at an extremely unnatural frequency. Like a character model in a game that was dropping frames, her movements were stuttering and lagging.
[WARNING: High-Risk Anomaly Source Detected!] [Threat Level: FATAL]
That oppression was ten times stronger than the Paper Effigy Ghost. I felt the air around me become viscous; every breath felt like swallowing glass shards.
Just then.
Clatter...
A soft sound came from the ruins on the other side.
A lone Mechanical Hound (the same model I encountered before) drilled out of the shadows. It seemed to have been attracted by this eerie sound.
The dog saw the Woman in Red. Its camera head glowed bright red; it clearly regarded this woman with her back turned as prey.
"ROAR!"
The mechanical hound didn't hesitate. Pushing off with its hind legs, it lunged with a foul wind! Those sharp metal fangs aimed straight for the woman's neck.
I held my breath, my heart in my throat.
However, the Woman in Red didn't look back. She didn't even stop crying.
Just the moment before the mechanical hound pounced on her.
Space dislocated.
I didn't see clearly what happened at all. I only felt the image before my eyes suddenly "jump," as if the video had skipped a few frames.
The next second.
Zzzt—POP!
The mechanical hound froze in mid-air. Immediately after, its body disintegrated without warning.
Not sliced open. But Glitch-Dismantled.
Its metal skeleton was like a Lego structure made of countless small blocks, falling apart instantly, turning into sky-filling data fragments and scrap iron, clattering to the ground. Before it could even let out a scream, it turned into a pile of meaningless code garbage.
Insta-kill. This wasn't a battle; this was Deletion.
In the Woman in Red's hand, a pair of giant, rusty Tailoring Shears had appeared out of nowhere. There was no blood on the shears, only swirling black garbled code.
Woo...
She maintained that posture with her back turned, her shoulders twitching as she cried. As if that hound just now had never existed.
I shrank back behind the refrigerator, cold sweat instantly soaking my clothes. My legs couldn't stop shaking.
This is what I thought I could just recruit? This is simply a Mobile Meat Grinder! As long as I get close to her, or am judged by her as hostile, the outcome is becoming that pile of scrap metal!
Gulp.
I swallowed hard, my brain sounding alarms frantically: Run! Run fast!
But I couldn't move.
Because I discovered that the broken mirror shards on the ground around me were no longer reflecting the sky.
They were reflecting Countless Eyes.
Countless eyes belonging to her were staring dead at me hiding behind the refrigerator from inside the mirror shards.
I was discovered. Discovered from the very beginning.
Running away is meaningless. If I turn around now, the one falling apart in the next second might be me.
Despair. Suffocating despair.
I am empty-handed now, with nothing but a silver tongue. No mirror, no weapon, no retreat.
"Gamble on it..."
My trembling hand adjusted my tie. Since I can't run, I can only bite the bullet and go for it.
I stepped out from behind the refrigerator. My footsteps crushed the mirror shards on the ground, making a crisp sound.
Ding.
The crying over there stopped abruptly.
The entire world seemed to freeze in this moment. The wind stopped, the static noise stopped too.
That red figure stiffened.
Then.
Crack... Crack... Crack...
Accompanied by a tooth-aching mechanical sound resembling bone friction. Her head, slowly, inch by inch, turned backward.
Not her body turning around.
Her HEAD turned directly 180 degrees.
In that moment, I felt my heart stop.