The mirror reflected a blood-red world, a room packed with monsters stitched together from victims' mutilated flesh and fresh blood.
Although the bloody scene wasn't present in reality, the monsters were real, and Han Fei had already felt the horror and oppression.
The air grew increasingly thick with the smell of blood; the warm water was rinsing his body, yet Han Fei felt as if he were bathing in blood.
In the living room, the comforting memories that belonged to the victims had vanished, and their pleasant pasts were gradually replaced by the child's nightmares.
Little figures scurried through dark forests, all inevitably dragged into pitch-black cabins.
The monster in the mirror grew larger, and the human face at its heart became clearer.
It was the face of a young girl, who did not appear old, with an expression devoid of any complexity, as clean as a blank sheet of paper.
"Is she the eighth victim, the unrecorded number eight?"
Han Fei deeply engraved the girl's face into his mind, as it was one of the most crucial clues for solving the case.
The mist in the bathroom thickened, and the horrific monster in the mirror slowly emerged.
Once it was completely assembled, it might become a full entity, just like the one Han Fei had encountered while doing the television-watching task before.
Witnessing the victims being disassembled and watching them recombine into even more terrifying monsters, Han Fei's Mental Threshold was raised beyond the limits of an ordinary person.
His body shook uncontrollably, but even in such a situation, Han Fei did not forget Wei Youfu's request.
Standing alone in the bathroom, the monster began to appear outside the mirror, and the corpses assembled in the mist were right behind him.
"How should I help her?"
The eighth victim was like a princess sleeping within the monster's body, only to emerge with the creature after the other seven victims were dismantled.
In another sense, this spotless, beautiful girl was actually the same as the ugliest, most terrifying monster; they seemed to be one and the same.
Wei Youfu had only asked Han Fei to help the girl, but he hadn't told him exactly how to do it.
As the monster's assembly neared completion, the girl's face was slowly covered by flesh and blood; she was about to be completely enveloped by the victims' bodies.
Seeing the girl slowly disappear and the monster become whole, Han Fei felt he could not go on like this, he had to do something.
Turning around, Han Fei faced the flesh and blood monster that nearly filled the entire bathroom in the mist, making a mad decision.
His hands plunged into the gaps of flesh, enduring the disgusting, sticky feeling, Han Fei pried open the limbs that covered the girl's face; he wanted to pull the girl out from the monster's body!
He was rescuing someone, yet his hands were drenched in blood, others' as well as his own.
Sharp bone fragments cut his arms, pain and fear wracked every nerve, but Han Fei dared not stop; more and more flesh gathered towards the girl's face, and he desperately scraped it aside to help the child.
He had never seen so much blood nor had such a terrifying experience, forcing himself not to think about anything superfluous, fearing that any hesitation would cause him to collapse.
Pieces of flesh were scooped away, and his entire body was soaked in blood, yet his movements became more fluid, his speed quickening.
Gradually, Han Fei carved the girl's head and shoulders out of the blood-flesh monster.
Tiny blood vessels snapped as Han Fei's mind went blank; he mechanically repeated the same action until the electronic clock outside made a noise.
Four o'clock in the morning, dawn had arrived, and although it was still pitch black outside, the speed at which the flesh healed visibly slowed down. The girl, resembling a sleeping beauty, fluttered her eyelashes slightly as if trying to open her eyes.
Han Fei immediately quickened his pace, his feet stepping on flesh and blood, his body drenched in fresh blood. Gradually, he finally dug out one of the girl's arms.
The mist had long been replaced by a bloody haze. When Han Fei grabbed that hand, ready to pull the girl from the ugly flesh, the sleeping girl slowly opened her eyes.
Han Fei had never seen such eyes before. The girl in front of him seemed to have no memory or emotion, her clear, bottomless eyes just like those of a newborn baby.
"I'm here to save you."
In the hellish world covered in flesh, Han Fei looked into the girl's eyes, holding her arm.
He didn't know if the girl could understand him, he just wanted to pull the child out of the Monster's body.
The girl looked blankly at Han Fei, looking at everything around her. She understood nothing. Her eyes held no self, simply reflecting the world plainly.
The speed of the flesh reassembling itself slowed down, but after Han Fei dug out the girl's other arm, he stopped.
The girl's torso was pierced by strands of black lines, completely intertwined with the Monster's flesh, and they simply could not be separated by brute force.
"Do you know what those black lines in your body are?" As soon as Han Fei touched the lines, his brain felt dizzy, and a surge of malice and despair washed directly into his mind.
The girl couldn't understand Han Fei. She seemed to have gotten used to being trapped in the flesh, as if this was her normal world.
"What's your name? Do you remember who turned you into this?"
Han Fei didn't know how to remove the black lines, so he changed tactics, trying to glean as much useful information as possible from the girl.
Even if he couldn't help them, catching the culprit would still be avenging all the victims.
The girl within the Monster's body still didn't reply. She looked left and right, then her gaze was drawn to the TV in the living room.
Little figures who tried to escape were brought back to the cabin. They cried in silence, and the whole forest was quiet.
The dark screen, the dark night, the dark house, the girl watched all this. It seemed she remembered something, uttering broken sounds like a very short song.
"Daddy held mommy's head, saying he'd make me new clothes from mommy's hair."
"Good children will be rewarded, bad children will be sent to the dining hall."
"You should smile, you should cry, you should be quiet, listening to daddy's teachings."
"Brothers and sisters were sent far away, and the numbers of little brothers and sisters dwindled."
"I dressed in the new clothes daddy made. He said I was still missing a pair of wings."
After the girl finished her last sentence, the eerie images on the television screen shifted, and countless fireflies flew out from the dark forest, their frail bodies bringing light.
The Monster made entirely of flesh in the bathroom began to dissolve, and the girl's body was also dragged back into the flesh by the black lines.
Han Fei desperately tried to stop it, but still could not change anything.
"The death time of the eighth victim was four in the morning. She died at dawn." Han Fei memorized the girl's final short song. He turned to the TV again: "The forest, the black house, the little brothers and sisters, the new clothes, the wings..."
All the key information converged. Han Fei now held a multitude of clues that even the police did not possess.
"Player number 0000, please note! The novice task of taking a bath has been completed! Free Skill Point plus one, and received the task reward—The Landlord's Diary."
The cold voice in his mind interrupted Han Fei's thoughts. By the time he came back to himself, the oppressive feeling in the bathroom had diminished a lot.