Chapter 111: I Kill Myself (Part One)

“Looking for a room?”

Xiyue nodded.

I stood beside her, staring at the innkeeper behind the counter. He was exactly as I remembered him from my previous visit. He did not ask my name; instead, he immediately took up his calligraphy brush and wrote down both my name and Xiyue’s. What I had not expected was that my name appeared in red, while Xiyue’s was written in black.

What did this mean?

I suddenly remembered that every name I had seen written in black before belonged to someone who had been killed. Senior Brother Feng Yang and his companions were living proof. Yet the innkeeper had not changed brushes, so why were the words written in different colors?

Just as I was about to ask Xiyue, she turned around and placed a finger against my lips. In a soft voice, she said, “Inn boy, please show us to our room.”

The waiter hurriedly nodded, then turned and led Xiyue and me upstairs to the room I had stayed in before.

At that moment, I could clearly feel my heartbeat accelerating. At the same time, my mind was filled with confusion. I truly had no idea why I had returned here again, why I had seen people who had already died, or why I had entered the room I had previously fled from.

What exactly was going on?

Xiyue kept hold of my hand. I could feel the meticulous care she was showing me. Because she was holding my hand, I was gradually able to calm down. I decided to ask her later what was happening. She must have known the answer; otherwise, she would not have stopped me from asking just now.

When we reached the room, the waiter behaved exactly as he had the previous time. He said nothing. After ushering us inside, he closed the door behind us.

The moment I saw the waiter shut the door, my first reaction was to question Xiyue about everything troubling me.

She did not answer immediately. Instead of telling me whether everything I had experienced was real or false, she pointed at my feet and said, “Take a look for yourself.”

Only then did I lower my head.

I had never expected what I saw. My feet were not touching the floor at all. In other words, I had existed all along as a wandering spirit, and I had not realized it in the slightest.

“This…”

At that moment, I found it impossible to believe what I was seeing. Anyone faced with such a sight would have reacted the same way. But when I reached out to grab a chair, my hand passed straight through it.

“Xiaodong, you were far too careless!”

I stared at her in confusion.

Seeing my bewilderment, Xiyue shook her head and said softly, “Actually, I arrived at this inn a day earlier. But by then, you had already become a wandering spirit, so I couldn’t find you. If I hadn’t discovered the waiter’s head in the rear courtyard, I would never have known what had happened, and I would never have been able to save you.”

“If I hadn’t intervened this time, you would have vanished completely by now—and another you would have appeared in your place!”

My heart jolted violently. I stared blankly at Xiyue.

“What do you mean, another me?”

That was precisely what I wanted to know. What did she mean by “another me”? Could there really be several versions of me in this world?

“Forget that for now. We need to retrieve your body from the Yin Eye first. Otherwise, you really will become someone else’s stepping-stone!”

My heart was filled with questions, but I did not press her further. I could clearly feel my mind beginning to flicker and flash. Countless voices seemed to arise within it all at once—strange yet familiar, so muddled that I could not make out a single word.

What was happening?

“This is bad, Xiaodong. Don’t move!”

As she spoke, Xiyue raised her hand and pressed one finger against the center of my brow. Then she began chanting an incantation.

I felt utterly dazed. A pitch-black passage appeared before my eyes, and at its far end shone a light. It was so warm and comforting that I wanted to rush toward it and embrace the sunlight at once.

My body sprinted relentlessly toward that radiance. I began to tremble all over, as though my strength were draining away. Just then, the light seemed to sense my weakness and began releasing a tremendous force of suction toward me.

“Xiaodong, hold on! If you surrender to that white light, you will be imprisoned in Eyebrow Village forever! Take my hand!”

Just as I felt utterly helpless, a gentle voice rang out. It was Xiyue’s.

“Xiyue…”

I called her name, but when I opened my mouth, no sound came out. From the place where the light shone, however, I heard an aged voice.

“Yang Dong, hurry and come out! We can truly leave this place only by passing through here!”

“Who are you? Who are you really?”

I roared inwardly.

“I am you, and you are me. Do you think I would harm myself? I told you long ago that anyone here could hurt you—except me. I will never harm you, because we are the same person, the same soul, the same body, the same past, and the same dream…”

By then, Xiyue had already seized my hand.

A wave of icy cold instantly swept through my entire body. At that moment, I could clearly see my own shadow within the black passage. But that shadow was not really mine. It was an object I could not understand at all—something that looked more like a mirror.

A mirror?

The thought of a mirror immediately reminded me of what the innkeeper had said before: that I had released them from inside the mirror. Then why was my shadow a mirror?

Could it be that I had truly been keeping them trapped all along, just as the innkeeper had said? Had I created Eyebrow Village for them so that they could be freer here than they were inside the mirror?

Buzz!

At that moment, everything before my eyes suddenly brightened. Xiyue was standing beside me, watching me anxiously. In her eyes, I saw worry, fear, and courage all at once.

Pffft!

The instant I looked at Xiyue, she suddenly spat out a mouthful of blood essence.

“Come on, we need to get out of the bathroom!”

The bathroom?

Only then did I realize that I was actually inside the bathroom of this room. The pair of Yin Eyes had closed, but even a single glance at them made me tremble all over, as though my soul were about to leave my body once again.

I helped Xiyue back into the room and sat her down. Only after letting out a long sigh did she say softly, “How long ago did you enter the bathroom? From that moment on, everything I saw was an illusion!”

When had I entered the bathroom?

My mind suddenly rang with a loud buzz. Could it be that after witnessing the innkeeper’s brutal actions that night, I had been unable to sleep and, in a daze, had actually walked into the bathroom? Had I believed the entire time that I was dreaming?