Chapter 15 The Cellar and the Mirror

Feng Bujue continued down the tunnel. The terrifying sight from before didn't affect him at all; he progressed normally, without any pressure.

Before long, he reached the end of the tunnel, a narrow and damp cellar.

There was a cell door in the cellar, which wasn't surprising. In more distant times, cellars like this under large houses were often used as prisons for some evil purpose; now, it had become a place to store bodies. The floor and walls of the corridor were carefully covered in copper sheeting. The heavy iron cell door was incredibly heavy, and when opened, the hinges made an unusually piercing squeaking sound. In the very center of the cell stood a coffin. Shining a flashlight on it from several steps away, it was clear that the lid wasn't nailed down, or even properly closed...

Feng Bujue boldly pushed open the iron door and walked in. However, he didn't rush to lift the coffin lid. Instead, he used his flashlight to search the surrounding walls. Sure enough, he found something. On one of the walls, he found another section of "The Haunted Palace," this time written in blood:

[But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
Assailed the monarch's high estate;
(Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow
Shall dawn upon him, desolate!)
And, round about his home, the glory
That blushed and bloomed,
Is but a dim-remembered story
Of the old time entombed.]

"Hmm... is this the fifth stanza?" Feng Bujue muttered after reading it.

The system prompt sounded: [Side Quest Progress Updated]

The mission log updated to: [Find all six stanzas of "The Haunted Palace," current progress 3/6]

Feng Bujue walked to the coffin, holding the flashlight in one hand and making a fist with the other. He knocked on the coffin lid three times, as if knocking on a door: "Hey, Miss Madeline, are you still there?" It was unknown how he knew this name.

…………

As time passed, Undefeated Warrior's scare value had gradually increased to around 15% and stabilized at that number. He wasn't panicking because he encountered any real monsters, but because after searching for a while, he couldn't find a way to leave the second floor…

Every corridor, every room, and the paintings, sconces, and decorations on the walls all seemed unfamiliar, yet vaguely familiar.

The building showed obvious spatial anomalies. Its interior was much larger than its exterior appearance suggested. The length of the corridors seemed to change constantly; counting the doors on either side of the corridor always yielded different numbers. And so far, Undefeated Warrior hadn't managed to reach the end of any corridor. Whenever he reached the end of a section, he would see a new corner or a T-junction.

Performing normal walking movements consumed very little stamina. Only "long-term" walking would cause a noticeable decrease in stamina. This was similar to the situation in reality. If you have a person walk continuously for more than twenty minutes, he will feel slightly tired. After forty minutes, his legs will feel sore. After an hour, he will definitely have to stop and rest. Of course, these are examples of ordinary people, not professional athletes.

This fatigue accumulated gradually, and the longer it went on, the more obvious it became. Under the corrosion of fear, Undefeated Warrior's reaction accelerated. When he saw his stamina value begin to decrease at a visible rate, he didn't calmly choose to rest, but instead chose to increase his speed…

He was no longer exploring; he was running.

He had a strong psychological suggestion that if he didn't do something quickly, he would be more than just trapped. When his stamina dropped to a certain level, something in the dark would probably come for him…

"Haa... haa..." Undefeated Warrior's breathing became heavy. He looked at the game menu. He clearly still had around 1000 stamina points, and he wasn't sprinting, just walking quickly. It shouldn't be like this.

He stopped, placing his hands on his knees to catch his breath, and swallowed. At that moment, he suddenly felt something strange inside his abdomen, but he couldn't quite describe what it was.

"What's going on..." Undefeated Warrior muttered to himself. Talking to himself could offset some of the fear and help him concentrate.

Suddenly, his gaze caught something. He turned his head and found a mirror beside him, a rectangular mirror about two meters high, embedded in the wall of the corridor. The frame was made of wood carvings, simple yet exquisite.

"Strange... was this here before?" he couldn't help but ask, his face showing doubt.

At this point, Undefeated Warrior was already numbly staring ahead, burying his head and moving forward towards the end of the corridor, no longer paying attention to how many doors were on either side of the corridor, let alone observing the decorations such as paintings, sconces, and sculptures. But this corridor wasn't particularly wide, and this was the first time something like a mirror had appeared, especially such a large mirror. There was no reason he wouldn't have noticed it.

When he discovered the mirror, Undefeated Warrior was facing it sideways, in a posture with his hands on his knees. But when he shifted his attention to the mirror, he instinctively straightened up and turned to face it. This turn almost scared the life out of him.

The image in the mirror looked no different from the real him, but the him in the mirror had his entire abdominal cavity exposed. There were no clothes or skin on his abdomen, and at a glance, you could see a mass of intestines.

Undefeated Warrior instantly gasped, his face turned pale, and he took several steps back, leaning against the opposite wall of the corridor. He stared wide-eyed, his breathing stopping for nearly ten seconds.

"Illu... this is an illusion..." After regaining some composure, he walked to the mirror with a fierce expression, "Who are you trying to scare... it's just seeing my own internal organs." Although he said that, the scare value didn't lie; he was still very scared. It was just that people had different reactions when they were extremely scared, and getting angry and acting tough was one of them.

Undefeated Warrior's gaze involuntarily fell on the position of his abdomen in the mirror. He could see that the intestines inside seemed to be wriggling. Looking more closely, he could see some strange details...

The cross-section of the intestines looked stranger and stranger... It looked like... like a corridor!

He felt a chill down his spine, and his neck was too stiff to turn. Two seconds later, he roared and kicked the mirror, shattering it, then turned to leave.

But as soon as he turned around, he found that many such mirrors had appeared on both sides of the corridor in front of him. The original doors were all gone, and mirrors were almost everywhere.

"Ah!!!" Undefeated Warrior roared, burying his head and rushing forward without looking to the sides. He didn't know if this situation was an illusion or an actual change in the mansion, but he felt fear and danger, and he didn't want to stay in these corridors for a second longer.

With a crash, a figure broke through a glass window and burst out of the mansion's second floor.

Falling from the air, Undefeated Warrior was completely unprepared. One second he was still in the corridor, running in the middle of it, with a clear path ahead. The next second, the pain of glass cutting his skin and the impact suddenly came. He seemed to have hit something, and then his body lost its balance and began to fall.

In the brief moment before death, he saw the scenery outside the house.

Stone walls covered in mold, withered trees surrounding the area, and the distorted and massive black reflection in the stagnant water of the mountain pool. A gloomy and terrifying aura continuously seeped out from the pool water, the mountain walls, and the depths of the mansion, darkness tilting into both the material and spiritual worlds.

In the silent stillness, Undefeated Warrior fell into the mountain pool outside the house. The ghostly marsh swallowed him, and he couldn't even make a sound in his throat. The giant mansion was like an indifferent demonic shadow, overlooking the withering of another life.

The last thing that was reflected in this professional player's eyes... was a blood moon setting wearily in the sky.

…………

[Team Member: Undefeated Warrior, has died. A plot item has been transferred.]

The system prompt sounded, startling Wang Tanzhi and Long Aomin.

"No way! A level 15 professional player just died like that!" Wang Tanzhi exclaimed. He specifically opened the game menu to check the team column to confirm. Sure enough, the player's name was displayed in gray, and the words "Surviving" next to it had changed to "Deceased."

At that moment, Long Aomin and he had searched quite a few rooms, but hadn't found anything substantial. Besides encountering a few traps where the floor suddenly collapsed and the underground was full of spikes, there were no clues or rewards.

"If the two of us were also acting separately, then the dangers we encountered just now could have been fatal," Long Aomin replied, then added, "I wonder if Brother Feng is also in danger acting alone."

"Don't worry about Brother Jue... since he was the one who suggested splitting up, he must have considered the risks," Wang Tanzhi said. "By the way, I was bored in the login space earlier, so I looked at some game instructions. If a player dies while carrying a plot item, the item will randomly respawn near one of his teammates."

Long Aomin had experienced more team scenarios and was more experienced than him. He replied, "Yeah, I know. Let's look for it now."

The two immediately began searching around. However, as the saying goes, unintended actions can bring unexpected results. They didn't find the letter, but they found another stanza of the Haunted Palace poem on the floor under a pile of debris:

[In the greenest of our valleys,
By good angels tenanted,
Once a fair and stately palace --
(Radiant palace) -- reared its head.
In the monarch Thought's dominion --
It stood there!
Never seraph spread a pinion
Over fabric half so fair.

Banners yellow, glorious, golden,
On its roof did float and flow;
(This -- all this -- was in the olden
Time long ago)
And every gentle air that dallied,
In that sweet day,
Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,
A wingéd odor went away.]

[Side Quest Progress Updated]

[Find all six stanzas of "The Haunted Palace," current progress 4/6]