Broken Mirror 2: Enclosure

As he⁠⁠⁠⁠​​​​⁠‍‌⁠‍‍‌⁠‍​⁠‍‍‌‌⁠ stepped out of the activity room, An Yu’s steps faltered.

Children surrounded the small building. In the dim night, their orphanage uniforms fluttered  in the wind, forming a continuous mass. On their sunken faces, empty, bulging eyes stared intently at them.

The aberrants on the second level had been almost entirely eliminated.

His teammates were exhausted from the fight. Pat and Slade sat on the ground resting and a few dandelions floated laboriously beside them. Fengjian’s face was pale, as he strained to control those dandelions with his gaze.

Jiang Xiao had questioned the children twice about what they wanted, but received no answer.

He lost patience and turned back to his teammates. A vine emerged from his palm, blossoming into vibrant pink poppies. Their petals curled in the wind, quickly forming plump fruits. From their tops, black poppy seeds sprayed outwards with the wind.

“No,” Slade immediately revealed his wolf claws, swatting away the eagerly approaching poppy seeds with a single swipe. “You’re not needed. Fengjian can still hold on.”

Jiang Xiao was silent for a moment, then the poppy fruit twisted in a different direction, eagerly turning towards Pat.

Pat held up a hand. “I’d rather die with dignity than trade my mental power for life.”

“Coward.” Jiang Xiao irritably retracted the flower in his palm.

Fengjian separated two dandelions from the remaining few to help heal Jiang Xiao’s wounds and wondered aloud, “Why don’t you heal yourself?”

Jiang Xiao’s face remained cold in silence for a while. “My mental stability is poor. This kind of exchange isn’t worth it.”

“Pffft.” Fengjian couldn’t help but laugh out loud, then immediately stifled it under Jiang Xiao’s sharp gaze.

Jiang Xiao waved away the dandelions. “Let’s go, to the next level.” He turned to the children. “If you’re just here to block the way, don’t blame me for being rude.”

The children remained silent, their hollow eyes staring, making the hair on his back stand on its end. He was about to reveal his snake tail to scare these kids, when in his peripheral vision, a figure swiftly brushed past him.

“I’ll do it,” An Yu said.

An Yu stood before the group of children. He was wearing his District 53 welfare uniform, which was very similar to the orphanage uniform. Although he had lived in the Main City for a while, his figure remained slender, so that even if he stood next to the Protectors, he seemed like he could step into and fit together with the group of orphans at any time.

An Yu spoke softly, “The Main City only recently discovered that time had stopped in the orphanage. I apologize. We might be able to make time flow again, but we cannot compensate for these ten years you’ve been sealed away.”

Silence hung over the crowd for a long time, until finally, a timid voice asked, “Can we still get out?”

An Yu honestly replied, “It’s hard to say for those who have had blood contact with the aberrants in the past few days, but the rest of the people are fine.”

Some sighed in relief, while others cried. The world situation was rapidly changing. When they were first admitted, everyone feared aberrant. Later, when the incident occurred, the smartest and bravest began to rack their brains to become aberrants. Now, order was suddenly being restored, and those people would pay for their actions.

Humans beings were so passive; all calamities befall them without reason, like capricious towering waves that never consider whether the small boats struggling to survive might be shattered to pieces by their relentless turns. Someone timidly asked, “What will happen after we get out? Is the outside world still okay?”

An Yu thought seriously for a while. “Not great, but everyone I know still has some hope. You’ll be randomly assigned to a Bait City. The wealth gap between Bait Cities is quite large, but even if you’re assigned to the poorest area, there’s always someone who can make their own way to a brighter place. Or you can stay and strive to find a livelihood, and those who don’t strive—”

He seemed to be distracted for a moment, then returned to himself, lowering his gaze and curving his lips. “—they can just get a welfare ration. Maybe they’ll meet interesting neighbors. That kind of life is also good.”

A little girl, only two or three years old, asked, “What’s a welfare ration?”

An Yu forced a smile at her, just like the first smile Ling Qiu had shown him years ago. “It’s bread. Not long ago, the Main City issued a new regulation: there are no longer limits on welfare bread for the slums. As long as you’re a human striving to live, you’ll always have bread to eat.”

“No limit?” A discussion immediately surged through the children. “That sounds pretty good.”

“It seems the outside world has changed a lot. Before I was admitted, welfare bread was rationed.”

“You’ve eaten welfare bread?”

“Yes, it’s much better than compressed biscuits.”

“Really?!”

An Yu turned back, his gaze cutting through the dim snowstorm, meeting the pair of dark eyes behind him.

Qin Zhilu nodded slightly to him.

The new unlimited welfare bread regulation was the Commander’s work.

The expenses were split three ways: Qin Zhilu himself, the Black Tower, and the Jin family, the Main City’s wealthiest family. The current head of the Jin family, Jin Xuyan, was indeed the Commander Yan from the 198^th floor. On the night of the prayer meeting in District 53, Qin Zhilu saw him in the church crowd and discussed this matter with him.

Grape told An Yu all of this later. Qin Zhilu himself never mentioned it. Now, in the newly built slums of District 53, welfare recipients were already living new lives.

The team arrived at the air wall between the second and third levels.

Jiang Xiao took out the second shattered mirror fragment.

“Before I met up with you, I tried touching the white mirror, and it seemed I could enter it too. But I didn’t get to see anything before my terminal’s mental power alarm went off, and I almost couldn’t get out.”

He sighed and handed the shattered mirror fragment to Qin Zhilu. “This thing has a huge impact on mental power. I’m sorry, Law, I can’t share the burden for An Yu…”

An Yu’s gaze fell on the deep, jagged blood gash on Jiang Xiao’s forearm. He silently watched the wound, and before everyone’s eyes, the blood gash slowly mended itself, and the torn skin gradually healed.

“Thank you…” Jiang Xiao’s red pupils wavered. “It’s just a minor injury. No need to waste…”

“I was just testing my ability,” An Yu retracted his gaze, noticing another bleeding wound on Jiang Xiao’s body, and frowned slightly.

Qin Zhilu asked, “No improvement?”

“No.”

As of now, the ability to accelerate time could only be used to accelerate the deterioration or healing of a wound. Its range of effect was so small that it could only act on one wound; he couldn’t even make all of Jiang Xiao’s wounds heal simultaneously.

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Qin Zhilu looked at him, warning, “Once you enter, it’s 10%.”

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Many years ago, Ling Qiu had also described him this way. But Ling Qiu was referring to his eating habits. The Commander seemed to be referring to something else.

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He didn’t have time to react. The vague clamor deep in his consciousness suddenly became clear. Countless clocks ticked, and he sharply lowered his head, seeing Bai Jing’s body once again.

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“Is it true?!” He stared wide-eyed at the archivist clacking away at the computer. “Where are they? Where are they? The person—”

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In a chaotic world, poor couples had no great loves or hates; it was just that his father always ignored warnings and took jobs in the wild, narrowly escaping aberrant attacks multiple times. His mother gradually couldn’t stand the fright, and chose to leave on a rare sunny day.

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Bai Jing was not strictly an orphan; he still had a mother, but he had lost contact with her for many years and thought she was long dead. Therefore, when a colleague told him—

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After a long pause, the little girl timidly looked up. Bai Jing almost shed tears on the spot.

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Bai Jing tentatively reached out to A-Ji. “I’m your… assistant supervisor from now on. Don’t be scared, come with me, okay?”

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When they left the medical examination room, he slowed his pace and walked beside her. A cold little hand suddenly slipped into his palm.

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“Yeah,” the little girl gently scratched his palm. “Because you’re like my mother.”

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But just after Bai Jing hid Chen Nian and returned to Zone A in a daze, hoping to ease his anxiety by catching a glimpse of his little sister’s sleeping face, he pushed open the sleeping nest door, only to find A-Ji unconscious.

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Her fragile body fell into a slumber under the impact of genetic fusion. No one knew how long she would sleep, but she would eventually wake up—waking as an aberrant who had lost her human will.

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Bai Jing walked into the high-authority medical supply room.

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He heard the voice in the smiling one’s heart.

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After a long while, Bai Jing came back to his senses and calmly took the syringe from the medicine cabinet.

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After this injection, if the person is sealed in a low-temperature environment, they will enter an indefinite dormant state, in which they can retain their life and be awakened at any time.

Although Bai Jing would never awaken her, at least this way, he could keep her forever.

At the end of the memory, An Yu appeared on a snowy plain.

All the orphanage buildings were engulfed in a blizzard.

The snow was knee-deep, and white shrouded everything between heaven and earth.

Mirrors were placed everywhere and their strong reflections almost blinded him.

He staggered, half-closed eyes, towards the center of this space. After traversing untold amounts of snow, he finally arrived at the coffin made of mirrors.

The mirror surface revealed the scene inside—A-Ji lay quietly amidst shattered ice, the slender limbs of the young girl covered in rosy pustules.

Her eyes were closed, and her face still looked like a little girl’s, pale and pitiful.

An Yu reached out to touch the mirror coffin, but before he could, a sudden clamor from deep within his consciousness abruptly pulled him out.

Clock hands spun wildly, and he suddenly opened his eyes.

Two overlapping terminal alarms drowned out the noise in his mind and he jolted fully awake.

Dandelions and poppy seeds surrounded him and his health on the terminal had just risen back to 40%, which was lower than the last time he woke up from the memory.

Fengjian gritted his teeth. “You’re finally awake! Last time your health only dropped to 50%, but this time it went straight to 30%!”

An Yu was disoriented for a moment, then followed the poppy seeds to look at Jiang Xiao—the other alarm was coming from Jiang Xiao’s pocket; it was an alarm for rapidly declining mental power.

Jiang Xiao gritted his teeth, still desperately releasing poppy seeds, until Qin Zhilu raised a hand to stop him.

“It seems your healing ability cannot escape the essence of exchange. Originally, it converted the target’s mental power into life, but since the Corner’s mental power isn’t infected, this ability automatically backfired on you.”

Qin Zhilu looked at the continuously decreasing numbers on Jiang Xiao’s terminal and said calmly, “He’s awake now. Let Fengjian slowly heal him; you don’t need to push yourself.”

Jiang Xiao angrily withdrew his hand, his eyes bloodshot as he resentfully looked at the flowers in his palm.

He had thought that An Yu, possessing absolute will, was destined to be the ultimate beneficiary of this ability, but he never expected the limitation to fall upon himself—with his mental stability, even if he treated An Yu at full capacity, to ensure he didn’t lose his sanity, he could only restore about 10% of An Yu’s life at most.

An Yu seemed to catch a hint of Jiang Xiao’s sadness, but he had no time to comfort him. He nervously stared at the terminal, counting the increase in his health points, and asked, “Commander, are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” Qin Zhilu said. “I woke up a few seconds before you. My mental power and health points both dropped by 5% in there.”

“5%?” An Yu abruptly turned back, looking at his Commander in disbelief.

His last bit of emotional intelligence stopped him from questioning, “Why only you?”

Qin Zhilu pondered, recalling, “I saw Bai Jing’s past with his sister, A-Ji, in there. I was in A-Ji’s perspective. The little girl lost consciousness after the mutation occurred, and I, too, fell into a daze. I vaguely felt immense despair in that trance, and then I felt very cold, so I simply came out early.”

“…”

Of course he’d be cold, being shoved into a mirror coffin with a bunch of ice and then buried in a snowfield.

An Yu used his ability to slightly accelerate his own recovery. Seeing his health numbers rise back above 60%, Fengjian breathed a sigh of relief and redirected some dandelions to heal Qin Zhilu.

Everyone held their breath, waiting for the results, wanting to see how much of their maximum health they had each lost. An Yu had already lost 10% last time. If it was the same this time, he could only reach a maximum of 80%. However, this time the Commander went in with him, so perhaps the situation would be better.

He nervously watched the numbers fluctuate. The two-digit number slowly rose from 60% to 65%, 66%… 69%, 70%—71%, 71%—

Fengjian Tianyu stopped, shocked, and the dandelion seeds withdrew from An Yu.

“It seems… that’s the limit?” Fengjian Tianyu’s face was pale. “How can this be? This time, 19% was sealed away all at once?”

An Yu anxiously picked up his terminal, trying to see if the display was wrong.

Beside him, Qin Zhilu suddenly let out a low “Hmm.” He turned his head, only to see that the numbers on the Commander’s terminal had also stopped fluctuating. The number stopped at 99%.

Only 1% of Qin Zhilu was sealed.

“It seems—” Slade raised an eyebrow. “The second shattered mirror fragment’s goal is to seal 20% of health points, randomly ‘slicing’ it from those who enter the Guardian’s Mirror. Some had a big slice taken, while others only lost a tiny bit.”

Qin Zhilu raised an eyebrow. “It seems I was the tiny bit.”

An Yu: “…” Unfortunately, he was the big slice.

Author’s Note: