Chapter 187: Extra - : Marriage-Pressuring United Front Alliance (3)

“This floor is fine for now, but… it looks like there’s trouble in the ICUs upstairs. I can’t be in two places at once, so I need you to go up and check every single ward.”

He pulled two palm-sized mirrors from his pocket and handed them to Yu Zhengze, who was leading the way. His voice was mysterious as he said,

“It’s different upstairs. Once you get up there, you have to be careful. Only those holding a mirror can walk into a mirror. Remember this, and I mean it: if you don’t have a mirror, you won’t be able to come back!”

Yu Xian froze for a moment. ‘Walk into a mirror? Why does that line sound so bizarre? Did we just jump genres from horror to fantasy? Still, this must be what the title, “Mirror’s 205 Ward,” is all about.’

“What does that mean?” Wen Xiao poked her head out from behind Yu Xian, asking with the excited curiosity of a total rookie.

“You’ll know when you get there.” The doctor gave a knowing smile and pointed to a rusty freight elevator at the end of the hall.

“Go on, now. Don’t keep the patients upstairs waiting.”

The four of them stepped into the elevator, their minds full of questions.

The elevator doors slid shut. Yu Xian marveled to himself, ‘This escape room is really something. The sets aren’t just realistic, they actually span two whole floors. This couldn’t have been cheap.’

The elevator rattled and swayed. A few seconds later, it ground to a halt.

However, as the elevator doors slowly slid open, all four of them froze.

Because the elevator didn’t open one set of doors as is typical. Instead…

The doors at both the front and the back of the elevator slid open at the same time.

Yu Xian first looked ahead. A long, dim corridor stretched out before him, with a layout similar to the floor below. The walls were a ghastly white, hung with a few posters and slogans. The floor was covered in terrazzo tiles.

Then, he turned to look behind him.

It was another corridor. Same dim lighting, same peeling walls, same posters and furnishings. Even the rusty wheelchair in the corner was positioned at the exact same angle.

The only difference was…

It was a mirror image.

“This is…” Wen Xiao squeezed Yu Xian’s arm.

“Are there paths on both sides? Which way do we go?”

“The words on the walls of the corridor behind us—’Emergency Room,’ ‘Safety Exit,’ ‘Quiet’—are all reversed.” Wen Yu pushed up his glasses, his eyes scanning from one side to the other.

“So that’s what he meant by ‘walk into a mirror.’ The two sides are perfectly symmetrical. One is the ‘Normal World,’ and the other is the ‘Mirror World.'”

Yu Xian nodded as well. The design was undeniably clever, creating a powerful sense of spatial disorientation.

“Since there are only two mirrors… it looks like we’ll have to split up.” Wen Yu’s gaze drifted over the other three before finally landing on Wen Xiao. The corners of his mouth curved into a smirk, and his tone was teasing.

“How about this: Captain Yu and I will check out the Mirror World, and you two can take the Normal World. Sound good?”

Yu Zhengze hesitated for a moment but said nothing, merely nodding in tacit agreement.

“Alright, we’ll go this way, then.” Yu Xian quickly pulled Wen Xiao out through the front elevator doors. ‘I’d better move before my cousin changes his mind,’ he thought. He wasn’t sure why Wen Yu had made this suggestion, but it was a once-in-a-lifetime wingman opportunity.

“Be safe,” his cousin added, then he and Wen Yu turned and walked into the bizarre, inverted “Mirror World.”

As the elevator doors slid shut on both sides, the small team of four was finally split apart.

Standing in the corridor of the “Normal World,” Yu Xian watched the elevator doors close and let out a long sigh of relief.

‘All according to plan.’

‘Now to see if “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” can generate some sparks of their own over there.’

‘And as for over here…’

He turned his head to look at Wen Xiao, who was gripping his sleeve tightly, her face pale.

“We should get moving, too.”

The corridor was eerily silent, the only sound the echo of their footsteps in the empty space.

Yu Xian took a deep breath, led Wen Xiao to the door of Ward 201, and gave it a gentle push. The door wasn’t locked.

The room was dim, lit only by a small nightlight in the corner that cast a faint yellow glow. The hospital bed was empty, holding nothing but a messy pile of bedding.

A little girl sat on a chair in the corner, her back to them. She was clutching a tattered cloth doll, her small shoulders shaking as she sobbed quietly.

“Sob… Mommy…”