The Tale Never Ends

The end of the corridor was a particularly dark corner, hindering us from seeing who it was or what had been broken. Without even any signal from me this time, Na San charged again into the darkness with me screaming urgently, “Careful!” But Na San kept his pace as if he had not heard me.

Fearing for his safety, I ordered my wolves to go with him. Then I grabbed Edelweiss’s hand and we chased after him. The corridor was not a long one; it only looked long because of the shadows when it was but only a few paces to the stop.

We reached the end to find the large glass pane smashed to bits and the night winds were pouring in like a dam being broken. The eerie silence was broken by the mad howling of the winds and the snapping of our clothes. We looked out and saw Zheng Shuang sipping nervously on his cigarette on below a nearby corner. I shouted at him, “Hey! Did you break this glass pane?” The sudden cry jolted him and he jumped. Then he instinctively looked up and saw me. “For Heaven’s sake, Shiyan! Is that you?! You sent such a fright through me! What glass pane?!” He screamed as softly as possible and I pointed at the broken glass frame I was looking out from. Zheng Shuang shook his arm, saying, “No! I don’t know about that!” “Did you not hear the glass break just now?” “No! Nothing!” He screamed hoarsely, still trying to keep his voice low.

Back upstairs, we stared at each other as I withdrew from the hole in the glass. “Strange…” I muttered, yet a split second later, three steely clangs screamed through the air, catching us off-guard and I raised my sword, hoping vainly to deflect something but there was nothing!

As I lowered my sword-hand, I scanned the area where the three clangs of steel had come from. Somewhere along the wall behind us. “Careful, Young Lordling,” a worried Na San urged but my hand shot up to signal for silence without turning my head. Then I saw it. Three deep gashes on the wall lining parallel to each other on the wall. Something had stabbed through the wall and left these marks.

Na San and Edelweiss formed up beside me. They stared blankly at the gashes when they saw what I was studying, utterly perplexed. “The sounds just now… were these?” Edelweiss whispered and I nodded and she asked again, “Were these here when we passed by here just now?” And I shook my head grimly before say, “Surely these three marks would have stood out and we would have noticed it just now if they’re here when we came by just now?” Edelweiss agreed with a wordless nod and she asked, “But these holes… what could have caused them…” I looked around us, thinking. I could only think of one possibility behind all these bizarreness, even though how far-fetched it sounded even to myself. “If my speculations are right,” I uttered, “The kicked-open door, the broken glass pane, and these three gashes are all the handiwork of Big Sister and the others.” I raised my sword and I drove it through the wall just beside the three marks.

I unplugged my sword from the wall and there was the fourth gash, looking completely identical to its three siblings just beside, leaving Na San and Edelweiss exclaiming “Ah?!” together. They stared at me, their eyes wide and oblivious, and I explained, “The door must have been kicked open by Lin Feng, the glass pane by Chongxi and the three holes here left by Big Sister with her Qinglan’s Edge.”

Edelweiss went speechless for several beats before she finally uttered, “Wait… but Big Sister… they are…” She fell silent abruptly, finally realized that Big Sister and the others were also on the second floor. Or should I say, the other second floor? Na San scratched his head, still failing to get his head around what happened. “But Young Lordling, Lady Qinglan and the others are not here. Are you saying that this is all a prank they’re playing on us? They are invisible to us now?”

For the love of Heavens, Na San, There was only so much I could do to keep myself from screaming out loud, For a Shaman, you’re mightily moronic! I shook my head wearily, sighing hard and I clarified, “No, they’re not. They’re not playing a prank. They are in trouble.” Na San let loose a long “Ah?!” again as I bit my lip. “You felt it too just now,” I said, “Somebody is here, but we can’t see him or her.” Na San nodded then a look of dawning comprehension broke out on his face right after a second. “So you mean, you mean the presence that we’ve felt… they’re Lady Qinglan?! Is, is this even possible?!” Na San’s voice sounded even hoarser as it quivered even more with the fear. But its pitch was so much of an assault on my senses that I had to wave him before I could faint.

“Do you watch horror flicks, Na San?” I whispered. He shook his head, squeamishly replying, “No, Young Lordling, I’m already a walking horror flick myself. Moreover, His Highness has never allowed me such entertainment.” Finding myself unable to respond to that, I could only manage a weak smile as I tried vainly to look away. Edelweiss’s eyes met mine and she shook her head too as an answer to my question. “You’ve seen it before,” I muttered seriously, “Silent Hill.”

As soon as I had finished saying the name, Edelweiss jumped as if a bolt of lightning had coursed through her and she convulsed violently for a bit!

It was when Edelweiss had just arrived in Wu Zhong. We were together one night, watching movies while we were lazing on my bed after a little chat. As usual to all lovebirds, horror movies are always the go-to selection when it comes to watching movies with your sweetheart and the lights all off. Edelweiss might retain little of her ferocity as a former outlaw, but she was just like any other lasses when it came to watching horror movies and that had been our usual after-dinner activity every night.

So, there was this night when we watched Silent Hill. Edelweiss endured the entire movie being cocooned in the blankets, even though she failed to understand the story. After the film, she asked me, “How did the man and woman fail to see each other, when they’re actually standing on the same spot?” (It was the part when the male and female protagonists were actually sitting on the couch at home, yet they could not see each other.)

I explained to her with a smile at that time. “They call these two worlds the Real World and the Fog World on the Internet. The man was in the Real World while his wife was in the Fog World. Both worlds represent two different facets of the same plane of existence and despite their many similarities, they are fundamentally different.” Edelweiss gave me the same bewildered look, signifying that she understood not a word I said. “Put it this way,” I tried another way of explanation, saying, “It’s like a mirror. The real world outside the mirror and the world inside it. They may look identical but they are two different domains. The woman was stuck inside the ‘Mirror World’, that was why she couldn’t see her husband, since they’re both stuck in two different places.”

Edelweiss finally understood the plot of the movie following my lengthy explanation. But it also prevented her from sleeping that night.

Back to the present, the notion of being personally in a situation that she dreaded shocked her so greatly that she felt into silence. She looked positively horrified, with the ghosts of the horrors from the Silent Hill movie, just as vivid as yesterday, returning like a monster rearing its head from a placid loch to haunt her. I pounded a fist into the wall and cursed, “I should have thought of this earlier. Two rows of buttons… Two buttons for every same floor… So this is where we are and where are the others now. The Real World and the Fog World, as real as life itself.”

It took Na San several minutes to struggle to take in what I said. His eyes blinked dubiously as he uttered a question, “But how could the door be kicked open if Lady Qinglan and the others are fighting there?” Before I could answer, an impatient Edelweiss used the mirror theory to explain, saying, “Try kicking a door open in front of the mirror. Surely the door inside the mirror would also be opened then?”

Na San looked as if he was stunned for several seconds more before his eyes shot wide, showing that he finally got there too. “But, but Lady Qinglan and the others…” he stammered and I cut him right off, “We can only pray that they realize this as soon as possible. I have never once wished so badly that Chongxi is not in his usual self now!” “But what can we do?” Na San croaked. “We’ll have to keep moving up. We’ll go to them once we’ve finished this side.” “I’m sure Big Sister is fine,” Edelweiss agreed, saying, “She’s stronger than we are. So let’s push on so that we can rejoin them quickly!”

With nothing else on the second floor, we went back to the elevator and hit the “3” button on the left.

The elevator doors skated open on their rails, revealing the same darkened offices, corridors, glass-paned partitions and everything identical to the second floor. We barely stepped out of the elevator when we heard its motor whirring to life. It headed downstairs and my brows furrowed curiously. Someone is coming up, I realized. It stopped for several moments on the second floor before the motor began working again and the number at the LED display overhead showed “3”.

Edelweiss and Na San noticed my apprehension and they readied their weapons and I raised my sword, poised to strike!

A minute passed silently as we waited. Nothing happened. The elevator doors did not open. The elevator did not reach this side! Edelweiss and I shared a quick look and she understood my look, driving her dagger into the wall and leaving a deep gash.

Just as quickly, on the wall where Edelweiss had left the hole, six smaller holes appeared right below the gash Edelweiss made, each of them looking altogether different.