ATAPOW Chapter 264
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Chapter 264: The Bronze Mirror in The Basement
Night fell. In a daze, Ji Bai found himself back in the rundown apartment building, sleeping on the first floor bed.
The door to his room creaked ajar. A hunched old man stood in the corridor, staring at him through the narrow gap.
The gap between them closed, yet he lay paralyzed — unable to shift his eyes or move a muscle, like he had been glued to the mattress.
While Ji Bai was struggling to break free, the apparition was already standing at the bedside. His face, aged and mottled with sickly blotches, showed no emotion as his lifeless eyes observed the figure on the bed.
‘Do you need something?’ Though he was unable to speak, the elder understood his unspoken question.
He lingered for a moment, then silently pointed at the floor. Casting a knowing look, he faded away.
Jolted from the dream, Ji Bai bolted upright.
The crescent moon hung high, casting its pale glow over the outskirts of Silk Shuttle City. The aged building lay cloaked in darkness like a behemoth in deep slumber, the whispering wind around serving as its breath.
Behind it, specks of moonlight scattered across the lonely tombstones. Years of exposure had severely taken their toll, leaving the inscriptions faded and almost illegible.
He found himself lying on the grass not far from the aged structure.
‘Back…again?’
Ji Bai remembered that he was supposed to be sleeping at a small inn in the Northern District, with plans to figure out his next steps come morning.
He was no sleepwalker — so who brought him here? Or had his fixation on the building’s unresolved mysteries led him to wander here in a daze?
The old man’s cryptic sign lingered in his mind; he couldn’t shake the feeling that something far more sinister was at play.
After all, that building housed beings that defied human understanding. Was one of them trying to give him some sort of hint?
‘The demon has been captured, the residents long gone — so why are those souls still lingering?’
Despite their age, the tombstones were remarkably free of dust. Someone must have been tending to them with meticulous care every few days — likely Bohlmann, as part of his routine maintenance.
Judging by the evidence, Ji Bai deduced that the elderly innkeeper was most likely the true culprit behind the family’s tragedy, usurping the apartment building as his own after their demise.
It was a jarring contradiction, for a murderer to not only bury his victims but tended to their graves with such devotion… It was as if he had no idea he was the villain of this story.
Seeking some explanation, the knight looked closer, only to find that the inscriptions on the headstones offered no answers. They were barely legible, having been eroded by the passage of time. It was with great effort that he managed to decipher the name of a soul resting beneath there.
“Nolan Baeth.” Judging by the placement of the tomb and its lack of any knightly insignia, he figured that name probably belonged to the old knight’s son.
The other two were likely those of the man’s wife and father.
Oddly enough, even after circling the entire property, he could not find the patriarch’s headstone anywhere.
“Could the old knight still be alive?” The thought briefly surfaced, before he shut it down.
As a first-tier species, humans rarely lived beyond a hundred years. According to records, the residence had been registered under the family head’s name for nearly a lifetime. If he were still alive to this day, he would be an ancient fiend well into his triple digits.
‘So, where’s his grave? Could he have fallen in battle?’
With only a few clues to go on, Ji Bai felt his deductions reach a dead end. He decided to infiltrate the apartment building and investigate.
With guards stationed at both the side and main entrances, it would be no easy task for him to slip in unnoticed.
As he turned the corner, he encountered a pleasant surprise.
One of the windows had been left ajar.
He stared at the fluttering curtains, lost in thought.
The entire premises had already been sealed off — so how could such an oversight occur? Were the sentries simply careless, or did someone deliberately tamper with its lock?
Recalling that he woke up near the graves out back, he could not help but feel someone had left it with him in mind.
Stepping through the frame, Ji Bai realized he was in the first-floor washroom. Aside from the first stall by the entrance, the rest were latched shut, as though someone was standing silently behind each door.
He quietly peered through the entrance. The corridor was silent; the guards outside had merely surveyed and cordoned off the residence, without dispatching anyone to patrol its interior, saving him a great deal of trouble.
He wondered why the entity residing in this building had manifested itself in his dream — Was there some unfinished business it needed him to settle?
The old man had pointed toward the ground. Could there be something hidden beneath this place?
Longsword in hand, Ji Bai began pacing back and forth along the corridor, probing the stone floor for any hollow spots.
It did not take long for him to realize this would not work. The residence was simply too vast — if he tested every tile individually, he would still be at it by morning.
With his hand resting on the hilt of his sword, he fell into deep contemplation, his gaze fixed on the darkness before him. “If summoning me here was your intention, please tell me what to do next. I cannot help you with just a vague direction.”
His words proved effective. As if answering his call, a gust of wind swept through the vast building, pushing open the door at the far right end of the passageway.
‘Could that be their way of giving me a hint? If I’m not mistaken, that was Bohlmann’s room, wasn’t it?’
The layout and structure were identical to other units on the first floor, differing only by an extra set of table, chair, and sofa. It was clear that its occupant had maintained the space with great care and thoroughness — not a speck of dust could be found in any corner, and both furniture and linens were spotlessly clean.
Noticing that the iron bed was positioned differently from those in the other chambers, Ji Bai paused in thought. After clearing the surrounding furniture to make some space, he pushed the bed aside and tapped the floor tiles with his sword. Sure enough, a hollow sound resonated from beneath.
He carefully lifted the loose slab. It gave way with little resistance, suggesting it had been moved many times before.
Yet rather than descending immediately, he pressed himself flat against the floor and listened intently at the opening. If something dangerous lurked below, dropping in without warning would leave him with little room to react.
Once certain there was no sound, he leapt down.
Upon landing, he quickly took stock of his surroundings. The room was cramped, a cellar seemingly used for storing junk. The walls were built from dark and roughly hewn stone, yet each piece had been fitted with surprising precision to form a solidly built enclosure. Someone had clearly put in a great deal of thought into the choice of materials and manner of construction, yet all that effort felt wasted on a space so utterly insignificant.
The layout was devoid of beauty, appearing more like a fortress built to keep something out.
Despite his eyes having adjusted to the darkness, the furniture was still little more than dark outlines to him. Lighting a half-burned candle on the wooden table, he watched as its faint glow gradually brought the cold, dim interior into view.
There was little worth exploring. It was just a single, open chamber.
A large chest, a table1, and a large wardrobe – these made up the entirety of the room’s content.
The box was secured with an old, badly rusted lock that was more ornamental than functional at this point. A single, effortless swing of his sword sliced it clean off.
It held nothing but a stack of yellowed papers, which he spread across the table. Most were blank, bearing nothing but the discoloration of age, with a few sheets completely drenched in black ink.
Ji Bai counted them: thirteen sheets in total. Four were completely darkened, while the remaining nine were untouched.
‘Why bother locking all of this up? Judging by the age of the lock, it had likely been put there by the building’s original owner. What was he trying to convey here?’
Thirteen — a number steeped in mystique. Coincidentally, the Holy Temple housed the same count of Sacred Martial Families, but connecting the two based on that alone seemed too far-fetched. They likely had nothing to do with each other.
The candlelight flickered, wavering between light and shadow. A fleeting figure suddenly appeared in the basement, gesturing enigmatically towards the wardrobe.
‘Does it want me to open that?’
“Creak…” The rusted hinges turned, letting out a harsh, grating sound.
The moment the door opened, a white sheet of paper lodged behind it came loose and drifted to the floor.
It bore only seven marks — six black points arranged in a circle, surrounding a single bright red dot at the center.
“What could that mean?” Ji Bai murmured.
He had a hunch this was not some random doodle.
After folding the paper and tucking it into his pocket, he turned his attention to the only object in the wardrobe: an oval bronze mirror, tall enough to reflect his torso.
An eerie feeling crept through him, like ink bleeding through water.
Its tarnished surface should have reflected its image — but it did not.
Instead, a little girl gazed back at him from within — silver-haired, wearing a black-and-white pinafore.
Her gaze subtly shifted, as her blank face began to twist into a bizarre look that mirrored his expression perfectly.
He raised a hand towards his cheek, his fingers meeting his cold metallic helmet instead of skin. In response, the figure mimicked his gesture, touching her own face as its feature shifted ever so slightly.
‘Something’s wrong with this mirror.’
Just as Ji Bai was about to move the suspicious object, the feeble candlelight flickered once and was swallowed by the darkness.
There was no draft in the cellar. Something had snuffed out the flame on purpose.
“Clatter, clatter…” A scraping sound rose from the mirror. It was grating and unnerving, as though whatever lurked within was trying to claw its way out.
The silver-haired girl’s mouth split into a jagged, sinister grin. In the impenetrable darkness, that bone-chilling sight burned with an unsettling clarity.
“Bam! Bam! Bam!” She hurled herself against the surface again and again. Her scalp split open, the skin on her face peeled away in layers — until half her face was laid bare, exposing pale bone beneath. Yet, her smile only grew more twisted, as her hollow sockets locked onto the man outside.
Ji Bai was looking back at her, though what expression lay beneath his iron helmet was anyone’s guess.
Making no move to stop it or flee, he simply watched in silence as the monster revealed its true form and squeezed its way out of the object, inch by inch.
Seeing its prey remain motionless, it grew increasingly excited, believing him to be petrified by horror.
Finally, the ghastly, skeletal fiend hauled itself free from the mirror.
What greeted it was a fist clad in black armor.
With a thunderous crack, its head was wrenched clean from its body.