Chapter 30: Urban Legends

"Big brother, we're twenty-eight, almost thirty. Can we stop with the middle-schooler act? While it’s true that men remain boys until they die, that’s just something people say for laughs online."

Lu Li chuckled, not believing a word of it. It wasn't that he didn't believe in the existence of the supernatural—after all, he had encountered it himself. It was just that he knew this guy too well. They had known each other for over a decade, from the age of fifteen until now, at twenty-eight.

It was like being from a family of eight generations of dirt-poor farmers and living an ordinary life for twenty-something years, only for your dad to call you one day while you were on the toilet at work, scrolling through your phone and joking with strangers about buying streetlamps and rope to hang your boss, and tell you, "I haven't told you for all these years, but you're actually a super-rich second-generation heir. Even if you spent a million a day from the Stone Age until the 22nd century, you still wouldn't run out of money."

Wasn't that just absurd?

Yet, the next moment, Lu Li keenly realized that perhaps it wasn't so absurd. Not because of the "rich heir" analogy, but because the world had been changed again! Because Miss Huai Xu had descended, the world had been altered, just like back when Miss Bai and Miss Luo were around.

*Hiss...* Lu Li suddenly felt a twinge of regret. Why did he forget to gather those three brothers when the world was inverted before? At the thought of those three bearded brothers acting all pretentious, Lu Li shuddered. Forget it, the image was too grotesque to contemplate; he’d have nightmares.

"It’s real," Pan Shuai said, his expression more serious than ever.

Lu Li froze. It seemed the world really had changed. Now, he needed to get a handle on the situation. While Miss Huai Xu wasn't appearing, he at least needed to figure out her objective. He recalled the description of Miss Huai Xu’s personality on the dating app: *[Erratic and unpredictable, making it impossible to tell what she is thinking, but in reality, she is a meticulous, calm, and composed individual with a very strong sense of purpose.]*

"So, the reason you’ve come to find me is because of that beauty blogger I went on a blind date with yesterday, right?" Lu Li crossed his legs, frowning slightly. "It seems the way she died caught your attention?"

Pan Shuai felt a bit strange. Why wasn't Old Lu afraid? But thinking of Old Lu’s personality, he didn't dwell on it. Old Lu was the quiet type who liked to observe and rarely showed his inner emotions. In other words, even if he were scared to death, it wouldn't be apparent on the surface.

"Yes, she’s dead. The time of death is estimated to be between 12:30 and 1:30 this morning." Pan Shuai clicked his tongue, turned, and said to Luo Hao, "Ri Tian, bring out the photos."

Luo Hao’s eye twitched. "Is that really necessary? Besides, aren't we forbidden by regulations from showing this stuff to ordinary citizens?"

"Old Lu is involved, and he might be the next target. Letting him understand the severity is for the best."

Seeing Pan Shuai insist, Luo Hao didn't argue. He silently took a few photos out of his briefcase and handed them over.

Pan Shuai took the photos and passed them to Lu Li. "Old Lu, you look first, and I’ll explain after. But prepare yourself."

Lu Li curled his lip and took the photos. He thought to himself, *What a joke.* He had already seen what the world looked like when it was about to end; he hadn't even reacted when the streets were full of mummified corpses covered in peonies. This?

He took the photos and glanced at them, his pupils constricting. Although he wasn't scared, he was a little startled. The woman in the photo, who had once possessed distinct and regular features, was now shattered into pieces. The key was that it was all on one face. How to put it... it was like a collage. Imagine taking a selfie or a headshot, tearing it into seven or eight pieces, and then randomly sticking them back together—that was the feeling of the face in the photo.

Furthermore, the corners of her mouth had been sliced open to her ears, the flesh peeled back and teeth exposed, like a clown wearing a healthy, toothy grin. However, her upper and lower lips had been stitched together with black steel wire. This eerie smile, combined with the grotesque, spliced face and the look of terror beneath the sliced-open eyelids, formed a deeply unsettling and demonic image.

Suppressing his physical discomfort, Lu Li flipped to the next photo. It was a wide-angle shot of the living room. There was a mirror that took up the entire wall. The woman was splayed out, nailed to the wall opposite the mirror, with blinding, scarlet blood staining the white wall behind her as it dripped down.

"Based on the blood flow, the forensics team says she was still alive when she was nailed to the wall. Which means..." Pan Shuai paused, unable to stop himself from lighting another cigarette. "When her features were being spliced, when her mouth and eyelids were being cut, when her lips were being stitched... she was still alive. She died from blood loss."

Lu Li: "..."

"That feels a bit excessive." He truly felt it was too much. Like with Xing Tian, the transmigrator from before, he felt a bit of pity looking at this. Of course, he still disliked this woman, but at most, he would have taken her to court or exposed her online to let netizens shame her into social death. That was his limit. After all, while what she did to him was disgusting, it wasn't a crime punishable by death.

"The one who killed her isn't human either," Pan Shuai flicked the ash into the tray. "Keep looking."

Skeptical, Lu Li flipped to the next photo. It showed a half-peeled apple and a fruit knife. Lu Li looked up. "This is?"

"A curse, or rather, an urban legend," Luo Hao replied. "It’s the urban legend about peeling an apple." He pushed up his glasses with his chubby hand. "Handsome is the expert on this."

"Handsome" was Hao Liang’s nickname, just like his own was "Ri Tian."

Hao Liang pulled out his laptop and explained to Lu Li as he flipped through pages. "Legend has it that before the clock strikes twelve at midnight, you take an apple, sit in front of a mirror, and carefully peel the skin with a knife. But you must be careful not to let the skin break, or something bad will happen. If the skin is peeled completely without breaking, and you finish exactly at midnight, then when you look in the mirror, the face of your future lover will appear."

"Standard feudal superstition, completely devoid of scientific basis," Lu Li commented calmly, then asked, "So, the question is, what happens if the time doesn't match? What if the skin breaks? And what exactly is this 'bad thing' that happens?"

"Let's answer them one by one," Pan Shuai said, stubbing out his cigarette. "If the time doesn't match, naturally, nothing happens. If it does match, you do see a face, but it isn't your future lover; it's the face of your secret crush. If you don't have a secret crush, the person is constructed based on your subconscious preferences. If you fail to peel it correctly but the time matches, you see something bad. Some say they see ghosts, others say a serial killer. If you break the mirror at that moment, nothing happens. But if you don't, whatever you see in the mirror becomes reality a minute later."

Lu Li was thoughtful. "So, it means some people can survive?"

"Yes. That woman was just unlucky. Mostly because..." Pan Shuai stopped and snapped his fingers.

Luo Hao pulled another stack of photos from his briefcase and handed them to Lu Li. "I don't know what happened, but this woman provoked dozens of urban legends all at once..."

Lu Li took the photos and felt a bit dizzy. Candles in front of a bathroom mirror, water in a bathtub, bloody footprints under the bed, bloody handprints on the window... There were dozens of photos, each representing a different urban legend.

"This person is truly miserable," Lu Li curled his lip and asked, "So? What does this have to do with me?"

"It has everything to do with you," Pan Shuai said with a grave expression. "According to past experience, urban legends are contagious. In other words, after one person experiences it, the urban legend passes to the last person they encountered. Of course, this assumes the person triggered the legend and failed it. If they didn't trigger it, it wouldn't pass on. If they succeeded, it wouldn't pass to the next person either."

Lu Li felt this made no sense. "She left with a woman; that girl was probably her assistant or something. Even if it passed, it should have passed to her, not me."

"That is the problem," Pan Shuai explained. "After you two met yesterday afternoon, they were together until about eleven at night, and they lived in apartments across from each other. That girl also died, also in the early hours, but about two hours later than the beauty blogger. Only one urban legend was found at her scene. But the beauty blogger's scene had dozens."

Lu Li sighed. "So, she didn't even survive the first urban legend and didn't wait for the others to find her? And now these urban legends are literally waiting in line, and I’m next in the queue?"

Pan Shuai looked grim. "You could say that."

Lu Li: "..."

Dozens of urban legends! Isn't that just ridiculous?