A bizarre and terrifying experience; I messed up the dungeon world.

Zhao Qiang gasped.

"There must be hundreds of them..."

Zhou Lang took two steps forward, holding the oil lamp, and squatted down to examine the nearest doll. It was dressed as a servant, and the material seemed to be some kind of wax; it felt cool and soft to the touch, very similar to the feel of real skin.

A note was attached to the doll's chest, which read: Number 0087, Service Days 14, Good Rating.

He then looked at the next item: "Item No. 0213, Service Days 31, Excellent Rating".

Next to it: "Number 0456, Service days: 7, Evaluation unsatisfactory."

The doll that failed the evaluation had one detail that made it different from the others—its fingers were missing, with only three fingers remaining on its left hand.

Zhou Lang stood up, his expression calm, but he had already pieced together the information in his mind.

"These are not dolls," he said.

Zhao Qiang was taken aback: "What do you mean?"

"They are the players who entered this instance before," Zhou Lang said, "those who didn't make it out alive."

Quiet.

The three people stood amidst hundreds of puppets, and none of them spoke.

A series of very light footsteps came from the darkness in the distance, like some kind of multi-legged creature crawling on a stone slab.

Zhou Lang looked up, and the green light of the oil lamp stretched towards the source of the sound—

There was nothing there.

But the footsteps grew closer.

The footsteps were not coming from the ground.

Zhou Lang reacted quickly, raising the oil lamp upwards.

Something is lying on the ceiling.

To be precise, it was a humanoid creature, but all its joints were bent backwards, its head was turned 180 degrees, and its empty face was facing them. It was wearing a butler's uniform, but not the butler's uniform—this one was a size smaller, and the uniform was covered in black stains.

"The deputy housekeeper?" Zhao Qiang's voice changed.

The thing had a crack at its mouth, making a hissing sound, not speaking, but more like a punctured tire.

Zhou Lang did not back down. He held the oil lamp steady, and the green light enveloped the thing's entire body.

The reaction was immediate—the thing curled up as if it had been scalded, fell from the ceiling, crashed into the pile of dolls, and knocked over a group of them.

It struggled to stand up, but smoke began to rise from the surface of its body where the green light shone.

"Let's go." Zhou Lang didn't linger and pulled the two of them around the pile of puppets, rushing forward.

They ran for about a minute—the underground space was much deeper than it appeared, and stone pillars began to appear on both sides, each engraved with runes just like the ones on the door panels.

The commotion behind them ceased. The ghost, who was at the level of a deputy butler, did not pursue them.

Zhao Qiang, panting and supporting himself on his knees, asked, "Was that thing... suppressed by the light of the oil lamp?"

"The effect of the green oil lamp is to weaken the eeriness within its range," Zhou Lang explained briefly.

Han Yingying didn't ask about the oil lamp; her attention was elsewhere.

"Look," she said, pointing ahead.

At the end of the passage between the stone pillars, a wall appeared, with a mirror embedded in it.

No—calling it a mirror isn't quite right either. It was three meters tall and two meters wide, with a frame made of cast iron. Its surface wasn't glass, but a flowing, silvery liquid. The liquid's surface was unrealistically smooth, reflecting nothing.

The mirror that's written on the notebook—that's it.

The three of them stopped five meters in front of the mirror.

"The notes said that breaking the mirror would cause the manor to collapse," Zhao Qiang recalled. "But it also said not to believe what you see in the mirror."

"The problem is that there's nothing inside it," Han Yingying said.

Zhou Lang didn't reply. He stared at the silver mirror for a few seconds, then did something the other two hadn't expected—he turned off the oil lamp.

"What are you doing!" Zhao Qiang almost jumped up.

Darkness instantly engulfed them.

But it only lasted for less than two seconds.

The mirror surface is now shiny.

The silver liquid began to glow, and a soft white light shone through the mirror, illuminating the entire space. Then, an image appeared within the light—

A manor. The sun shines brightly, the garden is full of roses, and the fountain scatters rainbows in the sunlight. A middle-aged man sits on a bench in the garden reading a book, while a young man in a butler's uniform—a young man with eyes, a nose, and a normal expression—stands beside him, pouring tea for the man.

The manor in the picture and the manor they live in are the same place, but they are completely different worlds.

"Is this... the old manor?" Han Yingying asked.

The scene continues to shift. Darkness falls, the garden withers. Wrinkles appear on the man's face, and the butler's expression hardens. Then, on a rainy night, the man stands at the manor gate, before him kneeling a row of figures—no, not people, but dolls. Faceless dolls dressed as servants.

The butler stood behind the man, holding a pair of scissors—almost identical to the one Zhou Lang held.

The image stopped here.

Then a face appeared in the mirror.

It wasn't part of the painting, but something looking out from the mirror. The face was that of the middle-aged man in the painting, William Greenwood, but much older than in the painting, with ashen skin and cloudy eyes.

He spoke.

"New servants." The voice seeped from the mirror, carrying a dull quality, like speaking through water. "You've come this far, stronger than most."

Zhao Qiang subconsciously took a step back.

"Number 1024 also came here," William said, "but he hesitated at the last step. Hesitation means death. In this manor, there is no difference between second and last place."

"Who are you?" Zhou Lang asked.

“I was the master of this manor. I used to be.” William’s voice was somewhat ethereal. “The butler betrayed me. He sealed me inside a mirror and then experimented on my servants. One by one, until they became the puppets you see here.”

"You want us to release you?" Zhou Lang asked directly.

William was silent for a second.

"Yes. As long as I break the mirror, I can get out of here. I will help you destroy the butler, and then you can leave this instance."

Zhao Qiang looked at Zhou Lang, then at the mirror, his face full of conflict.

Han Yingying didn't speak, but she noticed a detail—when William spoke in the mirror, the space behind him was completely black. There was nothing there; it was unnaturally dark.

"Zhou Lang," she whispered.

Zhou Lang tilted his head slightly, indicating that he was listening.

Han Yingying said in a voice only the two of them could hear, "The notes say not to believe what you see in the mirror."

Zhou Lang hummed in agreement.

He looked at William in the mirror again.

"How do we break the mirror?"

William pointed to the lower right corner of the frame: "There's a groove on the frame. Insert the Butler's Key to break the seal. Once the seal is broken, the mirror is just ordinary glass; it'll shatter easily."

"The Butler's Key?"

"The key in the butler's hand. It always hangs around his neck."

Zhou Lang recalled the image of the butler. Indeed, the creature had a bunch of keys around its neck, which he hadn't noticed before.