I buried the gods in the restricted area.

"Mr. Jiang Mian?"

"Mr. Jiang Mian?"

"Mr. Jiang Mian!"

The voices around him grew louder as they approached, from tentative whispers to urgent calls, finally pulling Jiang Mian back from some deep thoughts.

He snapped out of his daze, and the first thing he saw was Jiang Rou's hand gently waving in front of him. Following her fingers down, he saw Jiang Rou looking up, her brows slightly furrowed, her eyes full of anxiety.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"I should be the one asking you what's wrong..."

Seeing that his gaze had finally refocused, Jiang Rou breathed a slight sigh of relief, but her expression became even more tense. "You suddenly walked to the lakeside just now, and you didn't respond no matter how I called you. I thought, I thought..."

"You thought I was possessed?" Jiang Mian replied with a smile.

"I thought I was possessed..."

Jiang Rou muttered to herself, if even Mr. Jiang Mian could be affected by the rules of Mirror Lake, then she might as well just close her eyes and wait to die.

Seeing her terrified expression, Jiang Mian was taken aback for a moment, then smiled apologetically: "I was just wondering if my conclusion was correct, and whether this haunted house would really dare to design such a dangerous way to pass through."

Jiang Rou was taken aback, and subconsciously glanced back. Seeing that Zhang Yang and the others were not approaching because of their fear of Mirror Lake, she hurriedly lowered her voice and asked, "Mr. Jiang Mian, have you really figured out a way to pass the level?"

I guess so.

Jiang Mian didn't keep them in suspense; he raised his finger and pointed downwards.

The mirror-like lake water clearly reflected the figures of the two people.

"Just jump."

"what?"

Jiang Rou stared blankly, repeating incredulously, "Jump down?"

"right."

Jiang Mian was clearly not joking. She said seriously, "Remember? We only got part of the rules from the black mirror. There was another part that it didn't tell us."

"I remember," Jiang Rou nodded.

"Then you should also remember that we still had two 'participation prizes' left, which is why Black Mirror said it could give me three more questions, three of any questions it could answer within its authority... Don't you think that's strange?"

"Is that strange?"

"Of course it's strange."

Jiang Mian said with a smile, "It's like shopping in a supermarket. When we pay for our purchases, the supermarket sometimes can't make change for a few cents, so they'll use a few candies instead."

"But this analogy is actually not quite right, because the value of 'being able to answer any question within the three permissions' is obviously far more than just a few cents, but tens of dollars, or even more."

Jiang Rou seemed to understand but not quite, then, as if suddenly realizing something, she widened her eyes and said, "You don't mean to say that the black mirror has already revealed all the rules it knows, do you?"

At first, she thought that the reason why the black mirror offered to give three more questions was because it was afraid of Mr. Jiang Mian's identity and wanted to please him, or to get rid of him as soon as possible. She had never considered the issue from the perspective of "giving change".

Thinking about it carefully, if the black mirror really wanted to please or get rid of Mr. Jiang Mian, it should have revealed all the rules, but it only revealed a part of them.

Doesn't this mean that the black mirror only knows this part of the rules?

Thinking of this, Jiang Rou's mind immediately clicked, and before Jiang Mian could answer, she continued, "So you mean that the other part of the rules regarding Mirror Lake is actually in the hands of the Green Mirror?"

Jiang Mian nodded.

"But the rules they give are clearly contradictory..."

Even though she understood Jiang Mian's meaning, Jiang Rou still couldn't figure it out. "Could one of them be lying?"

"As I've said before, even conflicting rules can coexist."

Jiang Mian sat down on the spot, picked up a pebble, and tossed it into the air as he said, "The black mirror says that you can't break a mirror, and if you absolutely have to break it, you must put it back together as soon as possible; but the green mirror says that you must break any mirror you can see in front of you."

"This haunted house is called Mirror Lake. It seems that all the danger comes from the mirrors, especially the lake that is like a mirror. So we avoided it from the beginning, treating it as the most dangerous forbidden area, and also avoided those mirrors."

"The video then showed us that there were four different types of mirrors in the area, so our attention was naturally drawn to them, causing us to subconsciously overlook something we had noticed from the beginning..."

As he spoke, he flicked his wrist.

The pebble flew through the air and fell into the water.

thump.

The ripples spread out in circles, then gradually subsided.

The lake remained as smooth as a mirror, clearly reflecting the faces of the two people.

"There is actually a fifth mirror in this place."

He said softly, "It's always been beneath our feet."

Jiang Rou was stunned, as if she were a wooden chicken.

So that's how it is... The mirror that can be broken and restored at any time refers to Mirror Lake itself, doesn't it?

She stood there stunned for a long time, then murmured, "If that's the case, then the remaining two contradictory rules also make sense..."

"The saying 'You can't face away from a mirror for too long, but you have to face away from a mirror' probably refers to the way you dive. If you dive into the water with your back to the surface, you won't be facing away from the mirror..."

"And the need to be wary of mirror images is easy to understand. They do want to kill us, but in crucial moments, we can trust them... After jumping into the lake, our mirror images disappear, which means we become the mirror images... Will the original mirror images stay here and take our place in being killed?"

Although her voice was very soft, Jiang Mian still heard Jiang Rou's murmur clearly and chuckled, "Although it's a little different from what I understand, that's roughly the idea. As long as we jump into the lake now and find some underwater exit, we can probably pass the level smoothly, but..."

At this point, a hint of doubt appeared on his face. "No matter what, jumping into the lake to pass the level is novel, but it's also far too dangerous. After all, some people can't swim... Could there be a diver hiding in the water?"

Seeing his serious expression, Jiang Rou couldn't help but smile wryly.

Who would have thought that Mr. Jiang Mian, who could have easily ignored the rules of the restricted area, would be the first to deduce the correct solution for surviving in Mirror Lake?

Who could have imagined that Mirror Lake, which everyone considered a source of danger and avoided at all costs, was actually the true gateway to life?

Perhaps the reason Mirror Lake forces everyone to play games with the blue mirrors that only appear on the lakeshore is to hint at this point on some level...

She was about to speak when she suddenly remembered something, and her expression changed slightly—

Since the rules of the black mirror and the green mirror must be combined to point to the path of survival in Mirror Lake itself, doesn't that mean... that acting solely based on the rules of one of them is actually an extremely dangerous thing?

Jiang Rou suddenly turned around.

...That must be it.

This is a restricted area, a restricted area filled with malice towards life.

If combining the two sets of rules is the only way to survive, then separating them...

That would definitely be a dead end.