It took Mo Bai about seven or eight minutes to walk this stretch of road the first time. Not because the path was long, but because she hadn't yet adjusted to being blind. She had to feel her way forward step by step, even asking the whip wielder for directions, and got struck by the whip several times along the way.

Based on her judgment, the distance was actually only about thirty to forty meters. A normal person could walk it in half a minute, and if they ran, it would take less than ten seconds.

She gradually adapted to her blindness and became more proficient with her cane. She was still not quite as fast as a normally sighted person, but finishing the path within a minute was no problem.

Silently counting numbers in her head, she moved forward at top speed with one hand sliding along the wall for guidance.

By the time she finished the corridor, she had already counted to fifty. She counted slowly, so even though she only reached fifty, nearly a full minute had probably passed.

After stepping out of the corridor, Mo Bai touched the wound she had just cut on herself.

It had long since stopped bleeding and already formed a faint scar.

"The corridor really does distort time," Mo Bai said with certainty. "One minute inside equals about one hour."

"Based on the player's hunger level, we estimated the previous time was around 8 p.m. The player spent one minute in the corridor, which is one hour, so the current time should be about 9 p.m. There's still one hour before the start time the magician mentioned," Xiao Qi calculated helpfully.

"The magician deliberately mentioned 10 p.m. and 8 a.m.," Mo Bai said. "I suspect those are two key time points. Something might happen at those times."

"There's only one hour left until 10 p.m.," Xiao Qi said anxiously. "If the player crosses the corridor again at the same speed, that'll waste another minute, meaning one hour will pass. By the time the player exits, it'll be 10 p.m. If time keeps slipping away like this, it'll be 8 a.m. before we know it."

"No rush," Mo Bai replied. "When there are no clues, just go back to the beginning and start over."

This was where she had first entered the instance. By habit, she always assessed her surroundings immediately upon entering an instance. But this time, because she was blind, she didn't complete that step.

She woke up in a room with an iron door. Only after realizing that she had lost her sight was she called out.

Recalling the path she had first taken, Mo Bai traced the wall and eventually found the iron door.

The door was slightly ajar. When she gently pushed it open, it creaked loudly.

In the darkness, unable to see and unsure whether someone might be spying on her, the sound was deeply unsettling.

"Player… Xiao Qi is a little scared," Xiao Qi admitted sheepishly.

"Then play something cheerful," Mo Bai comforted. "If this setting had horror movie background music, of course, it'd be frightening. But with festive music, the mood will ease up."

"Won't that affect your ability to hear what's outside? Or your thinking?" Xiao Qi worried.

"No. I may seem calm, but I'm a little tense too. I need something to steady my nerves. And when I'm focused on thinking, even if you smashed a wall next to my ear, I wouldn't hear it. Your music won't affect my thoughts or my awareness of external sounds."

At her suggestion, Xiao Qi began playing Spring Festival Gala songs. The bright, jubilant melodies about family reunions instantly diluted the horror atmosphere.

Amid the music, Mo Bai sliced another bleeding wound into her arm before stepping into the room.

She first felt her way around the walls.

The room wasn't large, just about three meters by three meters. There was no bed, and the floor was piled with straw, which must have served as bedding.

"The employee benefits here are terrible," Xiao Qi muttered.

After making a full circuit, Mo Bai said, "The walls are too smooth. There's no grainy texture, so it's not plaster. The front walls have no seams, so they're not tiled. The texture feels like the glass lab where they injected the extract at the research institute. Could it be that these three walls are made of glass?"

Except for the wall with the iron door, which was ordinary plaster, the other three were perfectly smooth.

She knocked and listened carefully. There wasn't the crisp, hollow sound of glass but rather a dull thud, as if there were walls behind the glass, with sheets of glass affixed to them.

"Glass pasted onto three walls…" Mo Bai thought briefly and smiled. "Isn't that just mirrors covering three walls?"

No one would stick transparent glass onto walls for no reason. Unless it were mirrors.

She crouched down, brushed aside the straw, and felt the floor. It was uneven. Not glass, but red brick.

A room has six surfaces: up, down, left, right, front, and back. Three were now confirmed to be mirrors. The door wall and the floor were unpainted red brick. Only the ceiling remained.

"Do you want to jump up and check?" Xiao Qi asked. "Given that you once jumped from the tenth floor to the ground, you could probably do it. But you're blind now. I'm afraid you'll get hurt."

"No need for something that troublesome," Mo Bai said.

She found the iron door and dug hard at the wall beside it. With sheer brute force, she pried loose a small brick.

All this time, she had been exploring by hand, causing her palms to be covered in tiny cuts. But she didn't care. She was an Indestructible Diamond. Minor abrasions meant nothing.

She tossed the brick upward, and it struck the ceiling with a sharp impact.

She retrieved it and threw it at the walls and floor in turn, comparing the sounds.

"It sounds the same as the walls. The ceiling is mirrored too," Mo Bai concluded. "Four mirrored surfaces in this room. Even with sight intact, staying here would be terrifying."

Mirrors were tools of magic and tools of hypnosis. A person's first impression of themselves comes from mirrors. An ordinary person confined in this room would be easily hypnotized.

After confirming the room's structure, Mo Bai carefully brushed aside the straw and searched the floor inch by inch. Then she examined the one wall without mirrors.

"What is the player doing?" Xiao Qi asked curiously.

"Looking for carvings," Mo Bai said. "If someone were locked in a room like this, they'd easily develop psychological issues. And without anyone to talk to, they might carve words."

"Why carve words?"

"They're afraid that they'll go insane and want to record something while still lucid to remind themselves."

She searched carefully and finally found carvings in a corner of the floor.

Mo Bai traced the shapes with her fingers, and Xiao Qi reconstructed the characters in her mind as she outlined them.

[I don't know how many days I've been here. My damn sense of time is messed up.]

[I'm afraid of light. Light makes me see countless ugly versions of myself in the mirrors.]

[The me in the mirror has turned into a monster. It opens its bloody mouth at me. I can only shut my eyes in fear.]

[I gouged out my own eyes. I'm safe now.]

The carvings ended there.

"Sounds like someone was driven mad by the mirrors," Xiao Qi said sympathetically.

"Does it?" Mo Bai looked at the reconstructed words in her mind and smiled. "The handwriting is actually quite nice."

"It is. Though not as nice as yours," Xiao Qi replied.

When she was in school, Mo Bai was required to practice calligraphy, and her handwriting had always been beautiful, though somewhat delicate.

After the accident, whenever she felt agitated, she practiced writing to calm herself.

Gradually, her handwriting changed along with her temperament. The delicateness disappeared, replaced by a sharpness forged through struggle. There was restrained strength in every stroke; stare at it long enough, and an inexplicable defiance against the world would rise in your chest.

The carvings she found, however, were reserved. The writing was neat and steady. Every stroke was controlled, never overly extended. It showed a calculating person, someone who always kept secrets close to the heart.

"My writing and his each have strengths and weaknesses. It's hard to say which is better. But how could someone whose mind is unraveling write with such steady strokes?" Mo Bai said.

"You mean…"

"I've seen plenty of horror movies," Mo Bai continued. "Many are based on true events and are highly realistic. The handwriting of mentally ill patients in those stories is chaotic and barely legible. Even when you can decipher it, the sentences are fragmented and incoherent.

But this writing isn't just neat. It even pays attention to stroke pauses. Handwriting reflects character. This is someone who cares deeply about appearances. No matter the situation, they're impeccably dressed, outwardly polite, and refined in speech and manner."

"That description is so specific that even Xiao Qi can guess who wrote it," Xiao Qi said.

Mo Bai was clearly referring to the magician.

The magician had prepared such a room, locked someone inside, and carved these suggestive words, waiting for the occupant to go mad and gouge out their own eyes.

Perhaps this room had been prepared for the player from the very beginning.

Perhaps the mirrors were even connected to a giant screen on the circus stage, broadcasting a grand escape-room spectacle. If the player escaped, they would pass the trial. If not, then they would be driven mad and tear out their eyes, which would become one of the circus's classic acts.

Unfortunately, Mo Bai had been blind from the very moment she entered the instance. To her, this design was like winking at a blind person. Completely useless.

That's why the magician specifically targeted her eyes and redesigned the stage, putting on that grand performance instead.

"All the instance monsters are rotten to the core!" Xiao Qi fumed after hearing Mo Bai's explanation.

"Don't be angry," Mo Bai said calmly. "The magician always leaves a way out in his tricks. Among instance monsters, he's relatively rational and comparatively less brutal."

"Player, we've already been in this room for half an hour. There's only half an hour left until 10 p.m.," Xiao Qi reminded her.

"Half an hour?" Mo Bai pressed the wound she had cut before entering the room. It was still bleeding, just like when she had first made it. No sign of healing at all.

With her constitution, a wound like this should have stopped bleeding in less than ten minutes. Yet it was still flowing.

"Is time distorted in this room too?" Xiao Qi asked.

"If there's a corridor where one minute equals one hour in the normal world, then naturally there can be a room where one hour equals one minute outside," Mo Bai replied.

"Look at the first line carved on the floor: 'I don't know how many days I've been here. My sense of time is messed up.' That proves time is distorted here as well.

A circus performance wouldn't last too long, two or three hours at most. The audience wouldn't spend one or two months watching someone slowly change.

To perfectly present this show, time in this room must pass slower than outside. One hour here would feel like a week. Only then could someone be driven mad."

"This was designed specifically for you, but it became useless because you're blind. So understanding this scrapped design doesn't really help us, does it?" Xiao Qi said.

Mo Bai shook her head. "Even if this room doesn't work on me, that doesn't mean it's useless. It still works on others."

"No way," Xiao Qi said. "Ding Xun and the others are very strong players. This room couldn't trap them. They could smash the walls with a single punch."

"Then let's test that," Mo Bai said.

She took out a white glove and put on only one.

It was the A-rank card that had accompanied her through several instances: Spatial Blade.

The Spatial Blade had suffered more than 70% damage in the previous instance and was basically scrapped. Fortunately, the energy Liu Congyi had accumulated could repair cards, so it had been restored. Mo Bai could use it for one more instance.

The Spatial Blade cuts space, not matter. It isn't limited by the hardness of materials, only by spatial positioning.

Against a fixed wall like this, a single strike would split it in two.

Mo Bai shaped her hand like a blade and slashed toward the mirrored wall. Immediately afterward, she retreated at top speed, escaping the attack's range and hiding against the non-mirrored wall.

At the same time she withdrew, she flung her cane high into the air, aiming it directly at the spot where the Spatial Blade struck in the mirror.

Neither she nor Xiao Qi heard any sound of shattering glass.

Instead, they heard the sound of two wooden sticks hitting the floor.

"Two? The cane was split in half?" Xiao Qi exclaimed. "The player dodged right after attacking. Did you already anticipate this outcome?"

"Mirrors imply reflection," Mo Bai said. "I suspected these mirrors could rebound player attacks. I used the cane to test it. Looks like I was right."

"But even if the mirror walls reflect attacks, there's still the iron door, isn't there?" Xiao Qi said.

"I didn't open that door. Someone outside did," Mo Bai replied. "What if it can only be opened from the outside? Once it closes, this wall might turn into a mirror too."

"Player, don't close the door!" Xiao Qi quickly warned. "If you trap yourself in here and that wall becomes a mirror, we won't be able to get out."

"I'm not that reckless," Mo Bai said.

She picked up the broken cane and tore fabric from her sleeve to bind the two halves together, making it barely usable.

Then she felt her way out and walked in the opposite direction down the corridor.

She wanted to see whether there were other rooms. Perhaps her teammates were trapped inside them.

The closer one gets to the truth, the more dangerous it becomes.

For safety, she pried another brick from the wall and broke it into dozens of small fragments, stuffing them into a small pouch she took out from thin air.

An A-rank card: Storage Pouch (儲物袋 - Chǔwù Dài).

The internal space wasn't large, and as a storage item, it wasn’t as practical as a backpack.

But items from the Infinite World couldn't normally be brought into instance worlds. After her body recovered, Mo Bai could no longer bring her wheelchair with her.

The Storage Pouch allowed some Infinite World items to be carried into an instance, but only one B-rank card could be stored inside. Otherwise, players would abuse it to carry numerous cards, disrupting the balance of power.

An A-rank card that could only store one B-rank card. It was practically a useless card, so few players would choose to bring it into an instance.

But this time, Mo Bai chose it.

After stepping out, she stood beside the open iron door. Instead of moving forward, she grabbed a handful of brick fragments and scattered them outward like a spray of petals, judging the corridor ahead by the sounds of impact.

She counted and threw nine fragments.

They struck the walls, floor, ceiling, and iron doors. Eight produced sounds, while one did not.

Like a stone sinking into the sea.

Mo Bai identified the direction from which the sound vanished. From the Storage Pouch, she took out a small object and threw it in that direction.

After throwing it, she immediately darted back into the open iron doorway, hiding behind the mirrored wall.

Almost simultaneously, a massive explosion erupted from the corridor. Even the wall she leaned against trembled.

Just as expected, Mo Bai thought calmly.

The Storage Pouch couldn't carry multiple cards, but it could carry Infinite World items.

Inside it, Mo Bai had placed one B-rank card and many small test tubes that contained Sheng Yan's blood.

After Sheng Yan advanced to Intermediate-2, his skill's power didn't increase. The only improvement was the time limit on his blood bombs.

Previously, once his blood left his body for more than five minutes, it lost its explosive ability. After leveling up, it would only lose that ability once the blood lost vitality.

Through repeated experiments, Mo Bai discovered that if stored in vacuum test tubes at 2–8°C, Sheng Yan's blood could last about a week. That was why she had chosen the Storage Pouch.

Before entering the instance, Sheng Yan had drawn several bags of blood, filling 10ml glass tubes. Each teammate received twenty tubes, hidden in their Storage Pouches.

Ice packs were also stored inside to maintain the temperature.

Thus, every teammate carried twenty blood bombs produced by Sheng Yan.

The pouch wasn't as temperature-stable as a refrigerator, and the ice packs would gradually melt, but preservation for three days posed no problem.

Mo Bai reasoned that if her teammates were truly trapped in mirror rooms that could only be opened from outside, then to prevent rescue, instance monsters must be guarding the doors.

When she noticed one brick fragment made no sound, she suspected that it had been caught.

These monsters likely had orders from the magician to lurk in ambush and wouldn't attack her openly.

So she feigned throwing another stone, but instead tossed a test tube containing a blood bomb. The glass was fragile; whether it struck the monster or was caught, it would shatter.

If the target was a moisture-containing organism, contact with Sheng Yan's blood would trigger an immediate explosion.

After throwing the tube, she quickly hid inside the room to avoid the blast.

When the explosion ended, Mo Bai wasn't sure whether the monster that caught the brick was dead. She raised the hand wearing the Spatial Blade and listened carefully.

She heard the iron door crash heavily to the ground from the blast.

Then she heard someone step onto the fallen door and walk out.

The person spat twice and said loudly, "That's a blood bomb! Which teammate saved me? Was it Mo Bai?"

It was Ye Pingjun's voice.

Finally encountering a companion, Mo Bai felt a surge of joy, but she remained cautious.

"What's your favorite number?" she asked.

It was their agreed-upon code.

"My favorite number is π. Pi is the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. A circle, no matter which angle you divide it from, as long as it passes through the center, can be evenly split. That's me, Ye Pingjun."

He gave the correct response.

But Mo Bai still wasn't fully reassured since the magician could read minds. He might have already learned Ye Pingjun's code and sent someone to impersonate him.

So she asked something Ye Pingjun would never normally think about, but would immediately know once asked.

"What is Ding Xun's height squared minus Gu Tiandong's height squared?"

At the same time, she had Xiao Qi keep talking nonstop in her mind to prevent the magician from reading the answer.

Ye Pingjun paused briefly. "That's 180 squared minus 170 squared… wait, no. Ding Xun always insists she's 180.6 and never forgets that 0.6. The answer is 3,716.36."

He answered in under a second.

An ordinary person would need a calculator. Only someone like Ye Pingjun, who loved mathematics enough to clear math-based instances, could respond so quickly.

And only he would remember Ding Xun's extra 0.6 centimeters.

Mo Bai's mental math wasn't that fast, but she had Xiao Qi.

"The answer is correct," Xiao Qi told her.

Only then did Mo Bai ask, "Tell me what else is in the corridor."

"There are four doors," Ye Pingjun replied. "One is where you are. One was blown apart. The door's on the ground, and there's a charred monster underneath. It's completely dead. And there are two more doors standing open."

Two open doors…

Did Gu Tiandong and Ding Xun escape their mirror rooms with their own strength?

No. Mo Bai quickly dismissed the thought.

If they escaped in a normal state, why wouldn't they rescue Ye Pingjun as well?

Something was definitely wrong!