Artifact Report

Chapter 258 Mai Minghe: Mirrored Corridor and Wooden Door Mirror
As soon as she finished speaking, she felt that she was clearly Mai Fuermo River; after waiting quietly for a minute, she was forced to return to being Mai Ming River.

When the third minute passed, the conference room was still silent. The walls, photos, and furniture seemed like the dedicated extras who were holding back their laughter and not looking at her; only Mai Buweihe was left there.

...Guessed wrong?

Jones isn't in the picture on the wall?
She was so confident just now, luckily no one saw it.

There were eyes everywhere, but no people—counting Jones among them—anyone.

How come Jones isn't here?

Mai Minghe thought about her own reasoning process for a while, and played the role of a villain in her mind, trying to find fault and argue with herself - but no matter how she thought about it, she didn't know where she went wrong.

Could it be that... we must find out which photo shows Jones?
This is a bit overwhelming.

How could she, an outsider, possibly know which photo corresponded to which employee? She couldn't even be sure of the last six employees.

Faced with twenty strangers, how can Mai Minghe determine which one is Jones?
Did some of the den residents deliberately distort the fairness in order to encircle and suppress her?
Mai Minghe looked at them one by one, but on each A4-sized photo, there was the same frozen smiling face.

Even though she knew she couldn't trick Jones, she still tried to shout to the photo, "I found you!"

She shouted like this four or five times. It didn't seem like she was getting close to the end of the solution, but rather like she was going crazy alone in the conference room. Before the toy outside the door laughed, Mai Minghe stopped.

She frowned and subconsciously rested her chin on her thumb; this rest reminded her of another thing.

Chibelli said that the new form is very important for solving the level... Is the final step to find Jones from the photo on the wooden door mirror?

It seems worth a try.

Having said that, Mai Minghe didn't know how to try it.

She pinched the air in front of her cheek, found the position of the "handle", opened the "door", and then aimed her face at the photos - the portrait in the photo was just as big as a real person's face - but after looking at each photo, nothing happened except feeling stupid.

So, let’s see what the photo looks like when it is reflected in the mirror.
In order to make it easier to take selfies, Mai Minghe took down every photo from the wall and spread them out on the conference table. What surprised and worried her was that every photo was successfully taken down.

…She had just had a vague idea that Jones was standing inside the wall, with only his head stuck in the photo, smiling as he watched the people in the conference room try to find it.

But the photos were taken down… Did Jones not have a body?
Or did she really guess wrong?
Mai Minghe held his phone in one hand and a photo in the other. He held the photo right in front of his face, raised the phone slightly, and snapped a picture.

Twenty faces flashed across the wooden door mirror around her neck, fifteen of them marked with red crosses. She checked her phone, then the photos, comparing them back and forth, but still found nothing.

Mai Minghe felt a little anxious.

"If you don't come out, I'll tear up all the photos?" she threatened tentatively.

Still no one answered in the conference room.

"Did I tear it?"

But Mai Minghe didn't dare to actually tear the photo up. What if he did, that would mean his mission would fail, and he would be trapped to death, or eventually disappear like the toy company employees?
She grabbed a stack of photos, and for a moment she was at her wit's end, not knowing what to do. After thinking for a while, she suddenly had an idea and turned around and walked out.

The situation has come to this point. How much worse can it get if we try one more method?

There is another way, which is to check the reflection in the mirror of the wooden door.

Mai Minghe, clutching the stack of photos, strode into the bathroom and stopped in front of the sink. She glanced up—and in the mirrored reflection, she saw another seemingly endless corridor, one ring within another.

To avoid obstructing her view while holding up the photo, she stepped back quite a distance. Her eyes were positioned just above the wooden door mirror, allowing her to peer through the held-up photo and into the sink mirror. Mai Minghe put down the one she'd just looked at and replaced it with a new one. She put down another one and picked up a new one... Her movements became almost mechanical, like an assembly line. Sometimes she even had to remind herself what she was looking for.

After taking about ten photos, Mai Minghe found it.

She almost missed it.

In the reflection of the mirror, there was still a standard work photo with a smile. The face in the photo was plain and featureless, and was divided into four parts by two crossed red lines.

Even though this face was hard to remember, Mai Minghe became familiar with it after trying various methods with it - just when she was about to put the photo down and switch to the next one, the angle of the mirror tilted slightly, and she suddenly caught a ray of navy blue in her peripheral vision.

...a new navy blue line.

Mai Minghe didn't move. After two seconds, she looked in the mirror, adjusted the angle between the photo and her face, and finally saw Jones clearly for the first time.

In the mirror corridor formed by one layer embedded in another and mirror images connected to each other, things that clearly should not appear appeared.

…How can I describe it?
It turned out that she was right, Jones did put his head into the photo.

The smiling face in the photo is Jones's face - this face is even still connected to the neck and the body; the body is still covered with a navy blue casual suit.

But Jones's body was not standing vertically and hidden in the wall as Mai Minghe imagined.

The photograph was like a frame; Jones had thrust his head into the frame, lying on the ground on all fours, his body forming a horizontal line with the face in the picture.

In other words, Jones is crawling in a mirrored corridor like a giant gecko, with a photograph around his neck.

Mai Minghe's gaze met the gaze of the person in the photo in the mirror, and Jones suddenly burst out laughing.

The mouth under the red cross opened and closed. "Found it? It wasn't easy. You actually found it? The photo is flat because I was hiding in the mirror. The mirror is flat. Doesn't this all sound very reasonable? Isn't it very logical that you found me in the mirror? Actually, it was all improvisation. Hahahahahahahahaha. I was supposed to hide in the wall - Hey!"

The last word suddenly burst out from the air, echoing in the bathroom and startling Mai Minghe.

It didn't sound like the way a resident spoke, as if his artery had been cut and blood was spurting out; Jones seemed to be... seemed to be calling for someone?

"I've already done what you asked. Looking in the mirror, why don't you just crawl out and kill her, kill her, kill her?"

what?
Mai Minghe shuddered and suddenly realized that she was still holding Jones's photo; she quickly raised her hand and threw the photo out of her hand and the mirror.

When the image of Jones lying on all fours and crawling on the ground disappeared, Mai Minghe endured the dizziness and looked into the corridor formed by the mirror image.

From the depths of the corridor connected to the reflection of the wooden door mirror that her face had become—

The translucent face that only she had noticed not long ago suddenly floated up and pressed forward rapidly, as if trying to use Mai Minghe's face as a door to break free.

　I actually persisted in updating, and now it even feels like I'm completing a challenge...

　　This morning (or should I say yesterday) I went to the doctor and had my blood drawn (I'm such a jerk, the blood wouldn't come out, the nurse pressed on my veins and squeezed them out, one arm wasn't enough, so they switched arms). I'll just have to wait for the results...

　　I went to get three more vaccines this afternoon without stopping. I'm a bit of a painkiller. It's better than the COVID vaccine, not as painful, but I was warned that I might start to have a fever tomorrow.

　　I decided to take a day off tomorrow, as this part of the story has come to an end.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)