The First Mirrored Instance.
Dawn was just breaking, and the western side room of the ancestral hall was thick with the smell of paper ash and sweat.
The blue-brick floor was damp, and the lime line outside the base of the wall was soaked soft by the snowmelt, forming a mushy white layer.
Ten players huddled together, sleeping fitfully.
Another day had passed.
...
Su Ya and Yang Asha leaned against the wall, dozing off as they huddled together—the two of them had only managed to get a bit of rest right before dawn.
Ten people squeezed into one room made for a foul odor, compounded by midnight teeth-grinding, flatulence, and sleep-talking.
Coupled with the eerie nature of the Instance, everyone's face carried a deep, unshakable exhaustion.
Lin Jianguo was the first to wake.
He had been constantly worrying about the Instance quests and couldn't sleep soundly. He opened his eyes as soon as dawn broke, but he didn't get up immediately, instead leaning against the wall and staring blankly.
Yang Hexuan was snoring away lightheartedly, a long trail of drool hanging from the corner of his mouth.
Lin Jianguo frowned at the sight.
No lamps were lit in the room, and the fire used for warmth had died out long ago, leaving only a faint glimmer of embers.
Yang Hexuan's face looked dusty and gray. Lin Jianguo thought his eyes were playing tricks on him.
A peaceful night.
They had survived their second night in the Instance, which went smoother than expected.
—Although the cats had meowed fiercely last night, sounding as if they would burst through the door at any moment, they ultimately hadn't broken in.
He wondered if the lime had done its job.
As he was thinking, the system notifications suddenly rippled out:
【The second night has been passed safely.】
【Current total survivors in the Instance: 23 people】
【The First Mirrored Instance Truth-Solving Progress: 30%】
【The Second Mirrored Instance Truth-Solving Progress: 25%】
【The Third Mirrored Instance Truth-Solving Progress: 0%】
...
The players, who had been sleeping in a daze, opened their eyes. Upon seeing the ink-wash text, confusion appeared on their faces first, followed by the relief of surviving a disaster.
...
“It's dawn... We survived another night?”
One player rubbed their eyes, their voice filled with disbelief.
“The second night passed safely. It doesn't seem that hard after all.”
Another player let out a sigh of relief, patting their chest. “The cats meowed so fiercely last night, I thought they were going to break in. It scared me to death.”
“As long as it was a safe night, as long as it was safe...”
A player muttered, their tense nerves finally relaxing.
Everyone chimed in, and the tense atmosphere eased considerably.
Some stretched, some rubbed their shoulders, and some fumbled around looking for water to drink.
The western side room was a chaotic mess, but it added a touch of life to the place.
Xiao Ding woke up too.
She sat up groggily, only to feel a slight itch on both sides of her cheeks, as if fine hairs were brushing against her skin—numb and itchy.
Thinking she had gotten some dry straw on her, she raised her hand to brush it away.
But the moment she touched the sides of her mouth, Xiao Ding froze on the spot.
Two exceptionally long, upturned whiskers that felt coarse and somewhat stiff had grown from the corners of her mouth.
She frantically fumbled through her makeup bag for a mirror, and the moment she looked into it, a shriek shattered the silence.
“Ah—!!”
Startled out of their sleepiness by the sudden scream, everyone reflexively looked at Xiao Ding, only to widen their eyes in shock.
On either side of Xiao Ding's mouth, two or three long, grayish-black whiskers had grown.
They jutted out stiffly from her lips like prominent needles, piercing her originally delicate face.
It was ugly yet bizarre, comical yet terrifying.
...
“What is this thing?!”
Xiao Ding recoiled violently as if burned, scrambling backward on all fours. She grabbed a companion, urging them to look closely. “Look at me! Look at me! Something is growing on my face!”
“Something's growing?”
Everyone's heart tightened.
Xiao Qian subconsciously touched his own face, and the others grew tense as well, scanning one another's faces.
Su Ya and Yang Asha were still asleep.
“Take your hands away and let us see.”
A player approached, trembling, and reached out to pluck at them a couple of times. “My god... rat whiskers... they really are rat whiskers!”
His voice cracked. “Xiao Ding... how did you grow this on your face?!”
Fear gripped everyone.
“I don't know either!”
Xiao Ding covered her face, crying out in grievance. “I don't know! I just felt an itch on my face when I woke up. What should I do? Am I going to turn into a rat...?”
As she mumbled, she suddenly caught sight of Yang Hexuan lying down. In the next moment, the terror in her voice could no longer be concealed. “He has them too! Look at Su Ya and the others—they have hair on their faces!!”
Everyone froze and reflexively turned to look at Yang Hexuan.
With this look, everyone gasped, their hair standing on end.
Although Yang Hexuan and Lin Jianguo didn't have prominent long whiskers like Xiao Ding, their entire cheeks were covered in a layer of fine, light black fuzz.
It was very short and dense, like a thin layer of newly grown lanugo.
It wasn't enough to obscure their facial features, but if one looked closely, they would see it densely blanketing the skin, exuding an inhuman eeriness.
Lin Jianguo was older, and his skin was naturally coarse; the fine black hairs grew within his wrinkles, making it easy to mistake them for elderly facial hair if one didn't look closely.
Yang Hexuan's was much more obvious.
And it wasn't just the two of them; Su Ya and the sleeping Yang Asha had it on their faces as well.
Especially along their jawlines, the fuzz grew along the contours, faintly outlining the curve of a rat's pointed snout.
It made their originally handsome faces look inexplicably sinister and rat-like.
...
...
“Oh my god...”
Yang Hexuan didn't even have time to wipe his drool before scrambling back in fear. “You guys—how did I grow this stuff on my face?! What is this?!”
“What on earth is going on!”
Xiao Qian panicked too, his voice trembling. “How can a perfectly normal person grow rat fur on their face?”
The few who hadn't grown the fuzz looked as if they had seen monsters. They backed away in unison, distancing themselves from Su Ya's group of four.
Their eyes were filled with terror and vigilance, along with a trace of undisguised disgust.
—As if they were looking at a source of plague.
Su Ya had just woken up, and her heart sank as well.
She raised her hand to touch her cheek.
Her fingertips brushed against the dense fuzz—coarse and stiff, completely different from normal facial hair.
Her heart skipped a beat.
The mutation had occurred silently. She had been perfectly fine when she kept watch last night.
How did she end up like this after just one night of sleep?
Suppressing the panic in her heart, she forced herself to calm down.
“I don't know either,” she spoke, relieved that her voice was still normal. “Let's figure out the cause first—”
“The cause? What cause?!”
A player who had long disliked Su Ya sneered, taking pleasure in her misfortune. “You've all turned into this. What other cause could there be? You must have touched something filthy!”
Someone else raised a doubt.
“You two were on watch last night, right?”
Xiao Zhuang chimed in, questioning them. “Could you have touched something you shouldn't have during the night?”
“Impossible.”
Su Ya immediately realized she couldn't take the blame for this:
“Asha and I took turns keeping watch. We stayed awake the entire night and only rested right before dawn. Last night, aside from the fierce cat meows outside the ancestral hall, absolutely nothing happened.”
“Yes, I can testify to that. The doors and windows were never opened, and the lime was all sprinkled.” Yang Asha nodded vigorously, adding in a low voice, “Neither of us even stepped over the threshold. How could we have touched something we shouldn't have?”
“Then why did you grow it and we didn't?!”
a player clamored. “It can't just be that you're unlucky and it grew out of thin air!”
Lin Jianguo didn't react as strongly as Xiao Ding. For one, it didn't itch or hurt, and secondly, he felt that getting out alive was far more important.
“The food.”
He spoke, his voice not loud, yet it quieted everyone down. “Could there be an issue with the continuous banquet we ate yesterday at noon?”
“The continuous banquet?”
Everyone was taken aback.
“This village is strange in every way. The dishes looked normal, but maybe something was put in them,” Lin Jianguo speculated. “That village chief is weird too. Who knows if he added something to the food.”
“But wait, we ate the rice too. Why didn't we grow anything?”
“The food should be fine. I don't feel anything unusual.”
“I ate it too.” Xiao Qian nodded in agreement. “I ate three bowls of rice and feel perfectly fine.”
Su Ya's head throbbed from thinking. Beside her, Yang Asha was curiously touching the hair on her face, more curious than afraid.
“Who knows if we'll keep changing?”
Xiao Ding said with a long face, “We still have to stay in this damned Instance for seven days. What if I wake up tomorrow and black hair grows on my face too? I don't want that!”
“No, that shouldn't happen... don't scare me.”
Yang Hexuan trembled, rubbing his cheeks continuously with both hands, on the verge of tears. “We won't end up turning into those things in the mortuary's rice vats, will we?”
His words struck a chord with everyone's hidden fears.
Right now, it was just growing fuzz and whiskers. What about tomorrow? The day after?
Would their faces completely turn into rat faces? Would their entire bodies turn into human-headed rats?
Just thinking of the disgusting image of a pointed chin, monkey cheeks, a rat body, and a human head that Yang Hexuan described, everyone present shuddered in unison.
“The human-headed rats we saw yesterday... they couldn't have been transformed from players, right?”
One player cautiously raised the question.
As soon as these words were uttered, the room fell into a deathly silence.
This thought was too terrifying, far more unacceptable to them than dying directly.
If they died, at least it would be over.
But if they really turned into those half-human, half-ghost things, chased and gnawed on by cats, unable to even die peacefully—that would truly be a fate worse than death.
...
...
Already terrified, Xiao Ding completely broke down upon hearing this, wailing aloud.
“I don't want to turn into a rat! I don't want to!”
She pointed at Su Ya, her venomous words slipping out without a second thought. “It's all your fault! It's all your fault, Su Ya!”
Su Ya was taken aback.
She clearly hadn't expected Xiao Ding to suddenly turn the spearhead toward her.
“My fault?” She pursed her lips, slightly angered. “What do you mean?”
“It is your fault!”
Fear overwhelmed all other emotions, making Xiao Ding's mind sharper than ever. She yelled, “Every single person who grew rat fur is someone who listened to you and went to do the shrouding quest!”
Instantly, everyone's gaze snapped onto Su Ya.
Xiao Ding pointed at Su Ya, Yang Asha, Lin Jianguo, and Yang Hexuan, her voice fast and frantic. “You, Yang Asha, Uncle Lin, and Yang Hexuan—the four of you successfully completed the shrouding quest, which is why the hair on your faces is the thickest!”
“I touched the corpse too, but my quest failed, which is why I only have two whiskers and the mildest symptoms!”
“The rest who didn't touch the corpse and didn't do the quest are completely fine, not a single hair grew on them!”
“If this isn't because of the quest, then what is it?!”
In her panic, Xiao Ding spoke without thinking, even letting slip the secret of her failed quest.
But no one paid attention to that now; all eyes were fixed on Su Ya, waiting to see her reaction.
...
...
Xiao Ding's words were powerful and resonant, and upon closer reflection, everyone was shocked to find that they actually made some sense.
If it were the food, then all of them had eaten it.
If the cat meows were bizarre, why hadn't Lin Jianguo, who kept watch on the first night, undergone any changes?
It seemed... Xiao Ding was absolutely right.
Those who had actively touched the corpse and completed the shrouding quest had undergone physical changes.
Meanwhile, Xiao Zhuang and Xiao Qian, who hadn't drawn a quest slip or had failed their quests, had escaped unscathed.
It was as if a bucket of ice water had been poured over Su Ya's head. She began to panic, her mind in utter chaos.
Lin Jianguo's face darkened instantly.
He opened his mouth, wanting to refute it, but the facts were right before his eyes, leaving him unable to argue.
He had indeed completed the soul-guiding quest, and he had indeed grown fuzz.
There was nothing to say.
Yang Hexuan was dumbfounded too, his face full of disbelief. “Are you serious? Doing quests is a mistake now?”
“Of course it is!” Noticing the sympathy in the eyes of the other players, Xiao Ding instantly bristled. “I said back then that we shouldn't do the quests, that we shouldn't do them! Is it so hard to just stay put? But Su Ya just had to insist she was a veteran player, pushing us to do some stupid quests to get clues, get clues—and now, we barely have any clues, but we're turning into monsters first!”
“You're a veteran player, you have more experience, so we all trusted you and listened to you to do the quests. And the result? The result is that I'm going to turn into a rat!”
“What are your intentions?! Did you do this on purpose?!”
Accusations flew toward Su Ya like knives.
She stood there, her face turning pale bit by bit.
Rate on N.U.
