Chapter 309: Invasion of the Brain Cell 17

The shower curtain was hung around the bathtub on an oval-shaped rail . The bottom was light blue in color and had darker floral pattern . Feng Bujue normally did not use this thing, but based on his exceptionally memory and his observation skills, he noticed something different about it .

“The color and shape of the pattern are different,” Feng Bujue mumbled and pulled open the curtain to inspect it . He examined for a long time, but still, he could not work out what it represented . Even though he knew it was different from his memory, regarding its hidden message, Feng Bujue was baffled .

“Could it be the angle of observation is wrong?” Feng Bujue murmured, but his hands had not stopped moving . He turned the curtain around and around, folding it inside different shapes, but it was no use . “Wait… observation angle!”

Suddenly, a light bulb lit up above his head . He took out the flashlight from his pocket and switched it on . Then he walked to the door and turned off the light in the bathroom .

“When I arrived, the light was already on . Normally, no one would walk to turn off the lights,” Feng Bujue said as he shone the flashlight at the curtain . “So… I have missed this . “

At that moment, on the light blue curtain, the pattern turned into an obvious green, and some white lines started to appear . So, the clue had always been before him, but he could not ‘see’ it . The message on the curtain could only be seen under certain conditions . When the white light of the bathroom was on, the clues would not be soon . But the yellow light from the flashlight successfully lit up the letters with green body and white trim .

“M… D… D… M… I… I… R…” Feng Bujue found many letters on the curtain . He thought they would form a word, but he realized that was not the case because most of the letters were repeated, and there was no logic to its arrangement . After he checked the entire curtain, he scratched his chin, “Hmm… There are seven letters in total, A, D, I, K, M, O, R . They appear in different frequencies and sequences . What is…”

He took several steps back and studied the curtain .

“Could it be related to XY axis? Or is it a 3d image? Or… Oh!”

Then he saw the solution . He took out the notebook and pen and wrote down the letters on the curtain in a more rigid format . Several minutes later, the puzzle was solved .

“So, one only needs to arrange it and then eliminate the rest through match-pairing…” Feng Bujue looked down on the difficulty of this puzzle, and he got the correct answer easily . It did not take long for him to solve it . All the Ds, As, and Ks had been removed, and the remaining letters… if he ignored their horizontal position, lining them up according to the X axis, with them spaced one coordinate across from each other, they formed a word—mirror .

“So, all that just for me to turn to the mirror…” He returned to the sink, placed his flashlight at the side, and focused on the mirror . But he stood for one minute, and nothing happened . “I stared at the mirror like this earlier, and I didn’t see any hint or trigger any event . But now that I’ve solved the puzzle, how come… Hmm, could it be that?”

He seemed to have an idea again . He took up the notebook and looked at the letters that he had wiped away .

“The letters that I’ve lost are D, A, and K… If I add that with the letter that appeared the most, R, then…” Feng Bujue chuckled . “Hah… So, that is what it meant . “

The next second, he switched off the flashlight . Other people would have hesitated before they did this . After all, they were inside a cramped space alone, and there was an evil spirit outside the door . One needed courage to allow himself to be swallowed by darkness in this situation . But Feng Bujue felt no pressure . He switched off the flashlight once the thought came into his mind . It was just standing before the mirror in the dark . What danger could there be? At most, an extremely scary image would appear, combined with a hair-raising sound effect, and then what? Could that scare people to death?’

“What could it be?” Feng Bujue said before the mirror . Even though it was dark all around him, he kept his eyes glued to the mirror . Five seconds later, something did happen .

An eerie blue glow appeared on the mirror, and a human face floated up . This face looked like Feng Bujue, but it was not a reflection because when Brother Jue saw this face, he turned his neck and made several ghastly facial expressions, but they were not reflected by the face in the mirror . The face looked into Feng Bujue’s eyes through the mirror and revealed a faint smile . One would be spooked seeing this, but Feng Bujue only studied his ‘reflection’ quietly, waiting for the next change to come . This continued for ten seconds until the ‘Feng Bujue’ in the mirror showed a smile and started to speak . “My name is Feng Bujue . “

Even his voice was identical to Brother Jue’s…

“I am a novelist who obsesses over bizarre and terrible things . ” Whenever he finished a sentence, he had to pause . “I live in a house alone . I write grotesque stories every day . The sunset from here is nothing but a sea of blood in hell . I can clearly see the dead who moan in pain inside it . The ditch in front of my house changes color every day . Like a river in hell, its color is a horrible rainbow—blood red, pus green, yellow like bile . The noise of the factories echoes from the bottom of the earth, and the stench, it smells like the vomit of a giant beast .

“I wonder, perhaps I am not in the human world but in hell . Am I insane?”

After the ‘Feng Bujue’ stuttered over all of this, the face returned to silence . He looked at Feng Bujue as if waiting for an answer .

“Hahaha hahahaha…” Feng Bujue started to laugh, and then he mimicked the voice and tone and started to sing in a poem . “Fall, fall, the darkness of hell is infinite . Fire attack, water attack, half dead, people come and fall down… They died just like the way I imagined; they died for real!”

When he heard this song, the face in the mirror was flustered .

“What? You want me to continue?” Feng Bujue sang some more . “Fall, fall, come fall down to the bottom of hell . Sea of blood, mountain of needles, can’t you hear the groans of the dead?”

“Enough . ” The face in the mirror stopped him .

Feng Bujue scoffed . He calmly said, “I read Lullabies from Hell when I was nine . At the time, I was young, and I was disturbed for three days . But I have already forgotten that memory . The impression of fear is still there though . It is not a bad strategy that you have used to elicit that sense of fear . Unfortunately…”

He shook his head with sadness . “The current me, under your guidance, can only remember the scenario and words from the comic clearly, but the fear has already disappeared . “

After hearing that, the face in the mirror started to change . He turned into the image of a bald, beardless middle-aged European man with a long brow . The strangest thing about this face was that his skin was a greenish white, like it had been soaked for too long in formalin .

“Alright, I’ve heard enough . ” The face’s voice changed, too . “You have passed the second test . “

“Second?” Feng Bujue asked . “So, the letters on the curtain were the first test?”

“Yes,” the man replied . “Of the three tests, ‘intelligence’, ‘courage’, and ‘benevolence’, you have…”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa… wait . ” Feng Bujue cut him off . “I haven’t finished my questions . Don’t go running off with the setting just yet . You at least have to answer my first question—can I turn the light back on?”

“Hmm… Yes,” the face in the mirror replied .

Feng Bujue sought his way to the door and switched on the light . Then he returned to the mirror to ask, “Okay, who are you? Zordon?”

“Huh?” The face was confused . “Who is Zordon?”

“The alien Zordon,” Feng Bujue said matter-of-factly, “The commander of the Power Rangers, the face in the glass tube . “

Despite Feng Bujue’s explanation, the face was still baffled .

“Er… I have no idea who you’re talking abo…” the face stuttered .

“Then forget it . ” Feng Bujue cut him off impolitely again . “It’s fine if you have not seen it . The theme song is incredibly catchy . You won’t get it out of your mind that easily . “

“Er… I am the boss’ assistant, the magic mirror . ” The magic mirror did not know how to face Feng Bujue, so he tried to lead the topic back .

“Oh, so your actual body is the face inside the mirror and not the mirror itself,” Feng Bujue concluded .

“I suppose you can say that…”

“Say… what is your relationship with Cang Jing Ren[1]?”

“Who is this Cang Jing Ren?”

“You can read my memory, but you don’t know the Power Rangers and Cang Jing Ren?” Feng Bujue asked suddenly . All that nonsense was actually a probe .

“I can only see limited pieces of your memory and not all of your memory,” the magic mirror answered .

“Oh, okay . ” Feng Bujue got the answer he wanted and calmed down a lot . He said with a smile, “Now, you can continue telling me about the third trial . “

[1] One of the three main characters from a Taiwanese puppet show .