195: Chapter 195 The Person Who Released the Mirror Spirit

Donghai City, South District Police Station.

Officer Li, the dispatcher, tugged at his hair while staring at the call log, feeling as if the world had gone mad.

In just one morning, he had received nine reports.

The callers' tones grew increasingly terrified, yet the content of their reports was shockingly consistent.

"Officer, there's a ghost in my mirror! When I turned my head, the me in the mirror took a beat longer to turn, and it was smiling at me! I wasn't even smiling!"

Under standard procedure, cases like this could only be handled as hallucinations or pranks.

But seventy-two hours later, the situation spiraled completely out of control.

The number of reports across all districts in Donghai City surged to twenty-three.

The three most severe victims had already developed extremely dangerous symptoms of split personality.

They were tied to their beds with hemp ropes by their families, screaming wildly, "Let me go! The one inside the mirror is the real me! This flesh sack outside is fake! I want to go back!"

Two of the victims even broke free from their restraints, rushed into the kitchen, and smashed every reflective surface in the house, not even sparing the stainless steel pot lids.

Psychiatrists held an emergency consultation overnight and ruled out all psychological factors.

The neurology department performed a full set of brain CT scans and found no organic lesions.

At noon on the fifth day, a sixteen-year-old high school student had an episode in public in front of a glass display window at a downtown shopping mall.

The boy pressed himself hard against the glass, kowtowing frantically to his reflection in the window, before finally laughing and smashing through the glass, covered in blood.

The video taken by onlookers went viral online, and Donghai City fell into a state of collective panic regarding "mirrors."

Many people spent the night covering their floor-length mirrors and bathroom mirrors with newspaper.

The case bypassed the municipal police department and landed directly on the desk of Gu Changan at the Bureau of Anomalous Affairs.

Gu Changan watched the mall surveillance footage, his brows furrowed tightly.

This did not fall under the category of a standard public security incident; something was clearly using glass and mirror surfaces to spread mental contamination.

He took Old Wei with him and personally visited the seven severely affected victims who were being held in isolation.

In the isolation ward, the victims were secured to hospital beds with restraint straps, their eyes dull, and the corners of their mouths all involuntarily upturned.

Gu Changan stood before the hospital bed, his eyes slightly closed.

[Yin and Yang Eyes] activated.

The world before him instantly lost its color, turning into black and white.

He could clearly see a semi-transparent phantom clinging tightly to the back of each victim.

The phantom looked exactly like the victim, but its eyes were as hollow as two dried-up wells, and its mouth was curved in an eerie, perfectly standard smiling arc.

Like parasites, grey threads connected them to the back of the victims' heads, constantly feeding on something.

Gu Changan opened his eyes, his gaze cold and sharp.

"Wake these seven people up and have them recall one thing carefully."

Gu Changan turned to look at Old Wei.

"Where were they when they first noticed that their reflections in the mirror were abnormal? Did they come into contact with any specific, unusual mirrors?"

Half an hour later, the statements were compiled.

The seven people's answers were shockingly consistent.

Nanluo Lane in the old district, an antique shop that opened three months ago.

They had all seen a dusty ancient bronze mirror in that shop.

Gu Changan led the Special Task Force and headed straight for Nanluo Lane.

The antique shop's rolling shutter door was closed, with a sign hanging on it that read "Closed for Inventory."

Gu Changan had someone pry open the lock and lift the shutter.

The shop owner, a middle-aged man in his forties, was huddled in the corner of the counter, his head tightly covered by a tattered cotton-padded jacket, shivering all over.

Old Wei walked over and pulled the jacket away.

The shop owner screamed suddenly, waving his hands frantically with his eyes closed: "Don't make me look! I don't want to smile! I really don't want to smile!"

This honest man was, shockingly, also one of the victims, and his condition was even more severe than those in the hospital ward.

Gu Changan ignored the shop owner and walked straight to the deepest part of the shop.

Amidst a pile of cluttered old furniture stood a half-human-tall ancient bronze mirror.

The surface of the mirror was covered with a thick layer of verdigris, looking dull and rough.

But strangely, there was an extremely smooth circular area in the very center of the bronze mirror, as if it had been repeatedly rubbed by someone countless times.

Gu Changan stood before the bronze mirror, his gaze not falling on the mirror surface, but instead locking onto the patterns on the edge of the mirror frame.

[Eye of True Appraisal] activated.

Pale blue data streams cascaded rapidly across Gu Changan's retinas.

[Target: Mirror Spirit]

[Category: Attached Consciousness Entity]

[Characteristics: Uses mirror surfaces as a medium, specializing in "reflecting desires" and "amplifying obsessions." Capable of consciousness parasitism through visual contact.]

[Seal Status: Broken by human intervention.]

[Time of Breaking: Approximately three months ago.]

Gu Changan looked at the last line of red warning text and let out a cold snort.

"It didn't wake up naturally; someone released it on purpose."

Old Wei, listening from the side, felt his scalp tingle: "Director Gu, how do we handle this thing? Should we just smash it?"

"Smashing it is useless. The consciousness entity has already spread along the lines of sight of those people. If we smash the main body, the neural circuits in the brains of those parasitized will instantly collapse, turning them into vegetables."

Gu Changan drew three specially made silver rods from his waist and inserted them into the wooden floor around the bronze mirror in a triangular formation.

[Domain Solidification] initiated.

An invisible, distorted barrier instantly formed, locking the bronze mirror tightly within a two-square-meter area and cutting off its path for continuing to emit mental contamination outward.

"Take this shop owner back to the Bureau's medical room and administer a sedative."

Gu Changan turned and walked out of the antique shop, giving orders into his headset.

"Chen Xiaobei, retrieve all internal and external surveillance footage of this antique shop from the past three months."

"No matter who released this thing, since they dared to conduct such large-scale mental poisoning on my turf, they must pay the price."

Bureau of Anomalies, Technical Division.

Chen Xiaobei stared at the screen, his eyes bloodshot.

Thousands of hours of surveillance footage were being scanned at high speed by a large computer.

"Director Gu, I found it!"

Chen Xiaobei slammed the enter key and magnified a segment of the footage.

"This woman has been to this shop eleven times in the past three months."

In the image was a middle-aged woman wearing a plain-colored trench coat.

Every time she came, she was alone. She didn't look at any merchandise, nor did she speak to the shop owner; she simply walked straight to that bronze mirror and stood there for half an hour.

"The last surveillance record was that afternoon three months ago."

Chen Xiaobei dragged the progress bar.

In the footage, the woman slowly reached out and touched the center of the bronze mirror.

The moment her fingers touched the mirror surface, the surveillance footage of the entire shop suddenly experienced intense static interference.

The interference lasted for a full three seconds.

When the picture recovered, the woman had already turned and left the shop, and that abnormally smooth area had appeared in the center of the bronze mirror.

Gu Changan stared at the woman's profile on the screen, his voice cold.

"Dig up all her identity information and investigate her."