Chapter 123: Urban Legend·The Person in the Mirror

Chapter 123: Urban Legends · Person in the Mirror

Inside a tightly sealed dorm room, with windows and doors shut and curtains drawn, a suffocating darkness filled the room.

The duplicate sat rigidly in its chair, facing the door, as motionless as a statue trapped in endless darkness.

Suddenly, its pupils began to tremble uneasily, its eyes fixed intently on the door as if its gaze could pierce through the wood and see the hallway beyond.

"Shh, shh—"

It heard it!

The sound of footsteps gradually approaching from outside the door... It was him, he was coming!

The duplicate was seized by nameless terror. Apart from the increasingly rapid thumping of its own heartbeat and the rushing of blood in its ears, the footsteps outside the door rang painfully clear, each step landing heavily on its newly formed heart.

Finally, the footsteps stopped right outside the dorm room.

As the door was pushed open, blinding sunlight flooded in like liquid gold, dispelling the lifeless darkness within and outlining the silhouette that made the duplicate's blood run cold.

Chu Fu stepped into the room, his expression concerned as he greeted, "Zhou Cheng, how're you holding up?"

Chu Fu believed his demeanor was warm and friendly, his smile perfectly ordinary for a friendly college kid looking out for his roommate.

But from the duplicate's perspective, the black-haired young man stood silhouetted against the light, his face half-obscured by shadows that swallowed his smile, lending him an air of mystery and danger.

Not friendly at all—it only made the duplicate too terrified to move.

The duplicate didn't respond, but a voice came from its abdomen instead: "I'm... managing. Just... not used to this yet."

The real Zhou Cheng hesitated for a moment before deciding that Chu Fu seemed safe enough to talk to, so he voiced the questions weighing on his mind:

"I think I remember now... I died last night, didn't I? Why am I still conscious? Am I even still alive?"

"And..."

Zhou Cheng paused, trembling, then gritted his teeth and continued, "You're not my roommate. I remember my actual roommate wasn’t named 'Chu Fu' at all, and he didn’t look like you!"

"Just who the hell are you?"

Chu Fu closed the door behind him, turned on the light, pulled out a chair, and sat down before leisurely answering Zhou Cheng’s questions: "You were indeed supposed to die last night. But I've never met a wish I wouldn't grant."

He pointed at the duplicate’s face. "It wanted to become the real 'Zhou Cheng.'" Then, his finger drifted downward, hovering over where Zhou Cheng’s face would be. "And you didn’t want to die."

"So, as long as you grew within its flesh until you replaced it, both of your wishes could be fulfilled at once."

After several hours of growth, the duplicate’s belly had sprouted a perfectly formed human face—Zhou Cheng’s features, distinct yet grotesque.

Perhaps out of fear of the unfamiliar being before him, or perhaps still unaccustomed to speaking in such a bizarre manner, Zhou Cheng’s expression was tense, his gaze almost too afraid to meet Chu Fu’s.

He murmured dazedly, "Become the real 'Zhou Cheng'... So this is the duplicate mentioned in the campus notice?"

"I should’ve taken that notice seriously and stayed inside. Then I wouldn’t have gotten drunk and been torn apart by it, watching it tear into my gut, devour my organs, until it scooped out my eyes..."

As he spoke, the bloody scene seemed to replay before Zhou Cheng’s eyes. His eyes burned with raw hatred, lending a faint flush of color to his pale, stomach-embedded face.

Suddenly, he burst into laughter, hysterical and vindictive. "How ridiculous! I wonder if it ever imagined, while chewing on my organs, that I’d reconstitute myself from that pile of shredded flesh?"

Talk about karma!

Even as he reveled in his vengeance, Zhou Cheng’s awe of Chu Fu deepened.

Not only was he stunned by Chu Fu’s unfathomable power, but also by how this entity had perverted their wishes...

It reminded him of the deal-making demons from folklore—like the ones said to live for tricking humans with bargains, only to drag them into hell through trickery and wordplay.

If Chu Fu’s interpretation was correct, the duplicate would surely be the first to protest. But if it wasn’t... Zhou Cheng couldn't help but admire the cruel genius of it.

—After all, wasn’t Zhou Cheng awakening within the duplicate’s body technically fulfilling the duplicate’s wish to "become the real Zhou Cheng"?

Gratitude aside, Zhou Cheng had learned a harsh lesson:

Never make wishes or deals with unknown entities.

Once a connection was formed, all the cards were in the hands of the stronger party. "Wishes" and "deals" were nothing more than tools for them to wield as they pleased.

Snapping out of his thoughts, Zhou Cheng forced himself to ask, "Then... what about my real roommate, Chen Mu...?"

Without hesitation, Chu Fu replied, "He's been erased."

Zhou Cheng pressed his lips together, saying nothing, but his wide eyes screamed what he couldn't say.

The way Chu Fu had said it so casually—as if the life he'd wiped out was as inconsequential as wiping chalk from a blackboard...

Zhou Cheng couldn’t help but spiral into frantic speculation. Just why had this being, who called himself "Chu Fu," usurped Chen Mu’s life?

Surely not just to experience college life?

And unlike the duplicate, he could outright alter everyone’s memories, seamlessly replacing every memory of Chen Mu with himself—as if negating Chen Mu’s very existence at its root...

Even when Zhou Cheng first woke up, he had automatically said "Chu Fu’s" name. Only as his mind cleared did he realize his roommate had never been Chu Fu at all!

The more he thought about it, the more horrifying it became. Each realization was more chilling than the last. Chu Fu was far more terrifying than the duplicate!

Meeting Zhou Cheng’s gaze, Chu Fu immediately guessed the horror movie playing in his head.

But he couldn’t exactly explain the system’s existence, so he silently accepted the blame for the system’s identity overwrite and offered a limp excuse: "Your roommate’s death had nothing to do with me."

He hadn’t expected Zhou Cheng, after dying once, to shake off the system’s influence and remember who he really was.

For these selected corpses who became player vessels, perhaps having someone remember them was one small kindness.

Zhou Cheng instinctively started to nod before remembering he was just a face now, so he spoke instead: "I understand. There’s no need to explain."

Chu Fu, seeing the doubt in his eyes, thought: *No, you don’t.*

With a sigh, Chu Fu drummed his fingers absently on the desk, his expression thoughtful. "Since you remember your real roommate, do you know what he did before he died?"

"For example—why did he place a full-length mirror in the dorm? Did he ever mention any strange urban legends to you?"

"I think I remember something," Zhou Cheng said, scraping together the memory. "It was some kind of ritual his club agreed to try together. Something called..."

After a few seconds, the fog in his eyes lifted, and he slowly uttered three words:

"Person in the Mirror."

***

Meanwhile, Chang Shuyue crossed the threshold into her dorm.

This was a standard four-person dormitory with lofted beds and desks underneath. Currently, only one girl was sitting at the desk under Bed 4, while the other two roommates were nowhere to be seen.

Chang Shuyue cautiously observed the roommate at Bed 4. Watching her scrolling through her phone while happily eating lunch, she concluded that this girl didn’t seem like an imaginary "ghost" and relaxed, asking in a deliberately casual tone, "Did they both go to class?"

"One went to the library," the girl at Bed 4 said in a hushed tone and pointed toward Bed 2, "and the other is still behind the bed curtain. She hasn’t come down or made a sound for hours—probably exhausted from last night."

Chang Shuyue's eyes snapped to Bed 2.

Through the light pink curtain, she could vaguely make out a dark figure curled motionless on the bed. Only the raised blanket proved her presence, looking like a small, pitch-black mound at a glance.

Something wasn’t right.

Chang Shuyue's guard went up, and she commented casually, "It’s almost noon, and she’s still sleeping so soundly? Not even shifting position?"

The roommate at Bed 4 remained indifferent, eyes still glued to her phone, mumbling without looking up, "Probably exhausted from last night."

Chang Shuyue shook her head, deciding to gather some essentials and clothes while it still felt safe, planning to stay at a hotel for the night.

But as her gaze swept the room, she suddenly noticed the food on Bed 4’s desk. A jolt of alarm shot through her, sending chills down her spine.

Swallowing hard, Chang Shuyue, fighting to keep her voice steady, asked, "I never noticed before—do you like eating offal?"

"Yeah," the girl at Bed 4 lifted her face, her mouth still smeared with grease, giving Chang Shuyue a satisfied smile. "Offal is delicious. It’s my favorite. Want a bite?"

On the desk were containers of food—aside from a box of plain rice, the takeout consisted entirely of various animal offal: chicken gizzards, duck livers, duck intestines, pork lungs, pork hearts…

Some of the offal looked undercooked, oozing a sticky dark red and piled messily in the containers, emitting a raw, coppery smell.

This suddenly reminded Chang Shuyue of that campus announcement—

"The Replicants are carnivorous Urban Legends, particularly fond of raw offal."