Chapter 2986: The Shadow Moved
At Xu Huo's speed, it was impossible for him not to catch up to Wang Chengren, and in fact, he did catch up to him. However, the moment he reached out, he realized that the "Wang Chengren" in front of him wasn't real. Upon brief contact, his hand passed straight through the other's shoulder.
It was only after his hand had indeed passed through that "Wang Chengren" fell into the lake. Moreover, falling in that posture, he didn't splash water like a real person would; instead, he vanished into thin air!
"What happened?" Wang Chengren, who had jogged over following the Painting Woman, hadn't seen the other version of himself and couldn't help asking.
Xu Huo turned around and said expressionlessly, "Do you have a twin brother?"
Wang Chengren was a bit confused. "No, what does that have to do with anything?"
"Does Wang Xiaohui have a twin sister?" Xu Huo asked again.
"No, she's an only child..." Wang Chengren, who still had some wits about him, immediately caught on. "You mean the one chasing me wasn't the real Xiaohui... Then what was that thing?"
The more Wang Chengren thought about it, the more frightened he became, even more so than when he knew Wang Xiaohui was hunting him.
"They both want you dead. What's the difference?" Xu Huo said indifferently.
"It's different. Killing is just a matter of losing your head, but if it's a ghost, you might die of fright before you're even killed!" Wang Chengren said.
"What ghost?" The Painting Woman was very interested. "Are there ghosts here?"
"Didn't you check out the Wang Family Manor before you came? A lot of people died in this mansion before. It's very unlucky. If it weren't for the Wang family's property, I definitely wouldn't live here." Wang Chengren was shamelessly frank, showing no shame at all. "Just that lake alone, they say no fewer than thirty people have died in it. Every room in the entire manor, whether occupied or not, has had people die in it. They died so tragically, it's entirely possible they turned into ghosts!"
Seeing that Xu Huo didn't believe him, he quickly added, "I know you players don't believe in ghosts, but aren't there instances in the game that are like horror movies? Ghosts are just a form of energy, aren't they? Players can evolve, so they can too. What's so strange about them coming out to scare or kill people?"
"Let's just find a way out quickly," Wang Chengren urged.
They had already finished exploring the area where the Wang family currently lived, with no results. Besides one "Wang Chengren," there was Wang Xiaohui, the players hired by the Wang family who entered later, the Enforcement Department players mistakenly pulled into the instance, and the later-arriving Wei Mang.
With so many people, they had only encountered one Wang Chengren... Xu Huo stopped walking again as he went, turning his head to look at the glass window beside him. His reflection was also on the glass.
He looked at the Painting Woman, who immediately understood. She walked to the window, stared at her own reflection for a while, then reached her hand toward the glass. However, after trying several times, she couldn't get in.
The real Wang Chengren had emerged from the lake, and the fake Wang Chengren had voluntarily jumped into the lake. It seemed the lake was like a passage connecting two different spaces. But Xu Huo had checked the lakeside and found no abnormal energy in the lake. Or rather, the lake water only became a medium at specific times.
If that were the case, then any place in this manor that could reflect a person's image could become a passage.
Everyone was in the manor, but they couldn't see each other. In fact, even if they collided face-to-face, they might not sense each other's presence.
"Hey, hey, hey! The shadow moved! My shadow moved!" Wang Chengren suddenly shouted, pointing at the glass behind him. But before he could say anything more, Xu Huo kicked him, sending him crashing through several door panels and into the room behind.
The glass shattered all over the floor.
Wang Chengren instinctively wanted to ask Xu Huo why he kicked him, but when he saw the glass shards near his hand, he immediately cried out in terror, "When I turned my head just now, my shadow didn't turn in time!"
The Painting Woman hadn't seen it, but Xu Huo had noticed. He had kicked the person over immediately, but Wang Chengren hadn't passed through the glass as he had imagined.
However, to avoid trouble, he said, "You're seeing things. Don't scare yourself."
"I really saw it!" Wang Chengren didn't dare look at the glass fragments and just kept insisting he was telling the truth.
Xu Huo ignored him, but the Painting Woman imitated his action, standing with her back to the glass, pretending to listen to music, then suddenly turned her head... Her reflection on the glass window was very clear, with no abnormalities.
The Painting Woman was very disappointed, while Wang Chengren breathed a sigh of relief, as if he had indeed just been seeing things. "Maybe the wind made me mistake a tree shadow for my own shadow."
Xu Huo, however, studied Wang Chengren. This was an instance that could affect a person's mental state. So many people had entered, and Wang Chengren, with his weak will, was the most likely to lose control first. That was why he could see his own shadow "come to life."
And it seemed they could encounter Wang Chengren precisely because his shadow had "come to life."
Wang Chengren's entry point was on a street not far from the Wang family's main gate, with shops around. But according to him, after being suddenly swallowed by the instance, several people around him disappeared. They had actively entered the Wang Family Manor from outside, and on the way, they hadn't come into contact with any reflective objects like mirrors or lake water.
The "ghost" theory had some merit, but in Xu Huo's view, it was more like there was a shadow world within the manor. Any object that could reflect a person's image could be a passage to that shadow world. The real Wang Chengren emerging from the lake and the fake Wang Chengren disappearing into it both proved this.
The question was whether the two worlds were opposite. If Wang Chengren had entered the shadow space from the beginning, then emerging from the lake to meet Xu Huo and the others meant he had returned to the real world. But in this real world, there was no Wang Xiaohui or the others. With so many players, it was impossible for them all to have sunk into the shadow space from the start—this was based on the example of himself and the Painting Woman, who couldn't find the entrance to the shadow space at all.
So, was this a multi-space mental instance?
After entering, Wang Chengren had only encountered Wang Xiaohui and no one else. Of course, he couldn't sense the presence of others either. The two players who came in with him were killed shortly after entering, so they couldn't provide any clues.
Looking on the bright side, perhaps the one chasing Wang Chengren really was Wang Xiaohui, and Xu Huo and the Painting Woman had been in the shadow world from the moment they entered.
But for the rest of the journey, Wang Chengren was extremely nervous, constantly watching his shadow. Besides looking at reflective surfaces, he would also glance down at his feet from time to time, looking as if he was terrified his shadow would suddenly come to life.
"The more afraid you are, the more easily you'll be affected," Xu Huo said. "If you want to live a little longer, stop looking around."
Given the current situation, it seemed their shadows wouldn't have any problems for a while. If the shadow mutation was the way to open the passage between the two sides, then for now, they could only wait for Wang Chengren to "perform."