Era of Magic and Martial Arts

The sensation of suffocation surged from the mirror like a polar chill, enveloping the space with an invisible sense of oppression, clutching Zhang Liyou’s throat mercilessly.

Her lungs felt like they were filled with mercury, every futile gasp eliciting a tearing pain in her chest cavity.

The average person would instinctively shrink back and flee from such drowning-like fear—just like Zhang Liyou used to.

But at this moment, she seemed enchanted, swimming against the current, embracing the fear with abandon.

Her eyes bulged like copper bells; if it weren’t for the concern that Luo Ji might open his eyes at any moment, she would have eagerly pressed her face against the mirror to scrutinize closely.

It was as if the gallery within the mirror had an irresistible allure for her.

This abnormal courage was like a spark bursting forth from despair, guiding her future direction.

"Could this mirror be my chance?" Zhang Liyou pondered as if touched by inspiration.

She stared, her soul seemingly drawn into the gallery within the mirror.

The first to engulf her vision was a horrifying giant painting.

Countless pale bones rose from the ground, stabbing toward the sky like an inverted storm.

Each of these bones was as massive as a mountain, with sinister spikes covering their gnarled joints; they entwined and piled on each other, forming a white forest of reversed tiangang.

The most horrifying was the frenzied will contained within these bones—they did not resemble inanimate objects, but some living, ravenous monster, hysterically fantasizing about piercing the heavens.

Like an avalanche, like a tsunami, unstoppable, the entire picture exuded an indestructible metallic harshness.

When her gaze was dragged into the second painting, the whole world seemed to plummet into a vacuum.

It was an abyss of unfathomable depths, where absolute deathly silence solidified, freezing even time.

No sound of wind, no breathing, only a blackness that devoured everything.

And filling this pitch-black abyss... whether it was a shadow so enormous it surpassed comprehension, or a multitude of distorted shadows overlapping.

They or it writhed clawingly in the abyss, their outlines sometimes merging, sometimes splitting, as if about to crawl out in the next second, dragging the world outside the painting into the abyss’s stomach.

Her sight tore into the third painting—a pair of giant black eyes were overlooking everything from above the sky.

Those eyes were like collapsing cosmic black holes, their edges twisting and swallowing all light.

And in the abyss-like pupils, countless scarlet hook jades spun with eerie rhythm.

Each hook jade reflected tens of thousands of contradictory scenes:

Shattered ruins, steel cities of civilization order;

Distorted howling monsters, joyous laughing human forms;

Boundless mountains of corpses, serene peaceful countryside...

These scenes constantly recombined in a kaleidoscope-like cycle, blossoming with a dizzying, enchanting beauty.

The moment Zhang Liyou’s gaze touched those eyes, she felt the world spin, as if her entire soul was about to be sucked in.

She hurriedly averted her gaze, only to discover that the gallery before her was endlessly extending—the frames proliferated like cancer cells, densely crowding her field of view.

The deeper she went, the more distorted and deformed the frames became, eventually melting into a chaotic mass of colors, becoming impossible to discern.

Zhang Liyou resisted the splitting pain in her head, her bloodshot eyes struggling to make out two paintings before her consciousness collapsed:

In the left frame, thick blood rain was pouring down from the shattered sky.

Every droplet of blood split into countless tiny blood spikes mid-air, piercing and dyeing the entire world red.

In the right frame, a terrifying giant mouth was opening wide, slowly grinding a blue planet into its throat.

On the planet’s surface, civilization’s lights scurried like ants, while the corner of the giant mouth had a near-humanlike delighted smile.

Zhang Liyou felt her consciousness shatter.

Compared to the terrifying frames displayed in the mirror gallery, what Feng Yuhuai, what scientist, what [Mask], their bizarre exhibitions all seemed trivial.

It was like the difference between world-famous paintings and a toddler’s doodles.

Zhang Liyou fuzzily felt that her future threshold for horror and the bizarre had been elevated to near infinity.

Ordinary monsters would no longer move her in the slightest.

Crack—

A sudden crisp sound jolted Zhang Liyou awake, her pupils shrinking to pins as she saw a crack appearing on the mirror’s surface, tiny shards of glass falling away.

"Is the mirror about to shatter?!!"

Zhang Liyou quickly glanced one last time into the mirror, her gaze skimming over the paintings she’d just seen.

At the bottom of the frames were the names of those paintings.

She looked at them in turn:

The first one was inscribed with [Iron Throne] in large characters, the strokes standing like white bones;

The second was [Shadow of the Curtain], the writing like writhing shadows;

The third, [Reincarnation Deceit Eye], with lettering reflecting a strange light;

The fourth, [Blood of...], the latter half obscured;

The fifth, [Gods of...], the final characters already shattered.

As she desperately tried to discern them, the entire gallery suddenly twisted and deformed—as if a giant invisible hand had gripped the scroll, all the frames simultaneously exploded into vibrant whirlpools of paint.

Those chaotic color blocks frantically churned in the mirror, gradually sketching a bone-chilling outline—a human face taking shape.

The lines of the features were sometimes clear, sometimes fuzzy, like an artist repeatedly revising a draft.

Above this unfinished face, a line of text slowly appeared.

Only a single character emerged—[Fate...]!

In an instant, all writings dissipated like smoke, and that vaguely outlined human face vanished as well.

The eerie gallery within the mirror seemed never to have existed, leaving only an empty mirror covered in web-like cracks, each fracture silently spreading.

Zhang Liyou stared dumbfounded at the shattered mirror surface.

She couldn’t comprehend all she’d witnessed—the gallery’s truth, the paintings’ meanings, the origin of that unfinished face—all seemed as if viewed through frosted glass.

Yet Zhang Liyou couldn’t help but feel that some metamorphosis had occurred within her.

This wasn’t a growth in strength, but a more fundamental, subtler change.

Like a drop of ink falling into a clear spring, although it quickly disperses without a trace, the nature of the water is forever altered.

As if she had unwittingly touched some indescribable greatness, just a sliver, yet it transformed her entire...

Indeed, it was that final word the face’s outline bore—[Fate]!

A groundless realization dawned in Zhang Liyou’s heart:

"I can’t quite explain it, but I feel my [Fate] has changed, like an insignificant minion in a game, swept aside by a dragon, transforming into a hero who could one day slay dragons?!!"

Zhang Liyou struggled to describe this feeling, but she indeed felt a strong surge of exhilaration and joy:

"The most important thing is, aside from a bit of a headache and eye strain, it seems like I haven’t paid any price?"