The excruciating pain made it almost impossible for Gao Tian to breathe.

His arm had snapped from the sudden impact.

Empowered by the Blood Shroud, flesh grew wildly from Gao Tian’s severed limb, quickly forming the beginnings of a new arm.

But any thought of using the Mirror World to get back to the third floor was now shattered.

Xia Ta saw how fast Gao Tian was recovering and knew he had a special Supernatural Artifact, so it wasn’t a major concern.

Clenching a glass container in their teeth, Xia Ta used their one remaining left arm to pull a black card from their coat and pointed it upward.

"Don’t save this black card any longer.

"Return to the third floor. Immediately."

As the black card’s teleportation effect activated, Xia Ta’s entire body melted into a black hole and was swiftly teleported away, vanishing without a trace.

Jiang Yang and Lan Chu followed suit, pulling out their own black cards and teleporting off the fifth floor.

By now, Gao Tian’s arm had mostly regenerated. Hearing the distant sound of a hammer striking grow closer and closer, he drew the gray card Yu Sheng had given him, preparing to activate it.

Gao Tian willed it to activate, but the gray card in his hand didn’t stir.

?

Gao Tian froze for a second before trying to activate the gray card again.

It wasn’t as if he’d never used a black card. Back at the Pagoda Primary School stop in the Inner World, the black card had activated smoothly—a single thought had been enough to teleport him away. ’Why is this gray card so unresponsive?’

’No way...’

’Why won’t this gray card activate?’

Just as he was reeling with shock and suspicion, small, blood-red words began to slowly materialize on the gray card:

"No life-threatening danger to user detected.

"This card will only activate automatically when the user is confirmed to be in a situation of certain death.

"Scheduled activation: A fatal calamity will occur in three months, at which time this card will activate. To prevent wasteful use, it cannot be activated in advance."

Reading these words, Gao Tian felt a lifetime’s worth of curses welling up in his throat.

’What the hell is this thing?’

’Three months from now. That’s even later than the fatal trial Yu Sheng predicted.’

’By then, I’ll have been dead for weeks! What good would this gray card do me then?’

’The black cards from the fourth floor could be used at will, but this gray card from the fifth floor has to decide for itself whether the user is going to die.’

Gao Tian couldn’t understand. How was his current predicament not a life-or-death situation? Why wasn’t the gray card activating?

’The Ghost Card is no use. Most ghosts camp the bodies. If I die on the fifth floor, I’ll just be killed over and over again after reviving.’

Beside him, Zhao Zhenjia had drawn his black card, ready to flee. But out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Gao Tian’s predicament. He lowered the card and turned his head.

No words were needed. Zhao Zhenjia knew the card in Gao Tian’s hand had failed at the worst possible moment.

There was no time for questions.

Without a word, he fumbled inside his coat for a moment before pulling out a small mirror and handing it to Gao Tian.

From the darkness ahead, the sound of hammering grew louder. A massive silhouette was pressing in on the corridor, seeming to move slowly as it squirmed its way toward them.

The small mirror was barely larger than his palm. Superstition from Zhao Zhenjia’s hometown held that mirrors could reveal unclean things, so he always carried one.

Normally, it would be a struggle to even fit an arm through it. Zhao Zhenjia hadn’t wanted to resort to using it, but with no other options left, this was his last resort.

For Gao Tian, it was like a drowning man grasping at a lifeline.

According to the Mirror Ghost’s rules, pulling another person or ghost into a mirror required an entrance at least one-third the target’s size. But if the Mirror Ghost’s own host body was entering, the standard was much lower—as long as the mirror wasn’t shattered into dust.

’Thank you.’

There was no time for thanks. Gao Tian shot Zhao Zhenjia a grateful look and activated the Mirror Ghost’s power, diving into the palm-sized opening.

In an instant, he fell into a boundless darkness, a long, white path beneath his feet. Gao Tian had entered the Mirror World. He was safe.

The first thing he did was return to the surface of the mirror to make sure Zhao Zhenjia had gotten away safely.

Outside the mirror, the most horrifying thing imaginable happened.

Getting the mirror for him had delayed Zhao Zhenjia by about three seconds.

And in those three seconds, the colossal creature at the end of the hall—the source of the booming hammer blows—finally revealed its true form.

It was a gigantic, black, mountain-sized silhouette in the shape of a hand. Its five fingers crawled like mountain ranges. With every movement, the lifting and dropping of each digit sent a terrifyingly loud noise echoing down the hall, like a sledgehammer smashing against the floor and walls.

The wrist connected to the massive black hand was as thick and long as a giant black python, stretching down from the sixth-floor staircase in the next landing. It was impossible to imagine what kind of creature could possess such a monstrous, terrifying hand.

But that was far from the most insane part.

The massive black hand slowly propped itself up. Its palm was studded with countless blood-red eyeballs, scattered like stars. Each one spun madly, until their tiny black pupils abruptly froze, all focusing on the figure before them: Zhao Zhenjia.

Zhao Zhenjia, at one-point-nine meters tall, looked like a tiny toy before the upright black hand.

’What in the world is that thing?’

Feeling its gaze upon him, Zhao Zhenjia seemed to fall under a spell. The motion of raising his black card slowed to a halt. As if not in control of his own body, he turned to face the demonic palm behind him.

He stared at the monster, which was several times his own size. In his eyes, countless galaxies seemed to expand, leap, and be destroyed. The sheer volume of information flooding Zhao Zhenjia’s mind was far more than a mortal brain could ever hope to process.

’Snap out of it! Go! Use the black card!’

The demonic palm moved. As if plucking an ant, it gently pinched the dazed Zhao Zhenjia, then slammed him against the floor, instantly pulverizing his lower body into a bloody paste.

Now, only half of Zhao Zhenjia’s body remained.

His eyes remained wide, staring obsessively at the giant palm’s "graceful" form, as if he were witnessing the truth of the universe, the very essence of the world.

’Old Zhao... is dead?’

In that instant, as Gao Tian watched the utterly absurd scene from within the mirror, an even more absurd idea stumbled into his mind.

’At first, I couldn’t pull Old Zhao into the mirror because his body was too big; the opening wasn’t one-third of his size.’

’Now, with the demonic palm’s ’help,’ Old Zhao has been ’slimmed down’ by half. He’s about the right size now... could I pull him into the mirror?’

He had no time to think—only to risk it all. Right in front of that malevolent deity, he activated the Mirror Ghost’s power. A pair of bloody hands shot out, forcibly grabbed Zhao Zhenjia’s mangled remains, and yanked them into the mirror.

The giant palm was caught completely off guard. Who would have thought that a ghost was hiding in that tiny mirror, snatching half of Old Zhao right from under its nose.

It couldn’t out-speed the Mirror Ghost. By the time the giant palm reacted, it came crashing down, smashing the small mirror to smithereens. The entire corridor trembled violently.

’Whatever. The man only had half a body left. What could happen even if he was pulled into a mirror?’

The giant palm squirmed onward, the countless eyes upon it spinning madly as it advanced into the depths of the fifth floor.

Along its path, every door remained tightly shut, as if the residents of the fifth floor dared not provoke this malevolent deity from the sixth.

...

「In the Mirror World.」

"Old Zhao, are you okay?!"

Gao Tian regretted the words the moment they left his mouth. The man was fucking cut in half, and here he was asking if he was okay.

’What kind of stupid question was that?’

Blood gushed from Zhao Zhenjia’s bisected torso, and his pupils were already starting to dilate. Cold sweat dripped down Gao Tian’s forehead.

’Just three seconds. Those three seconds Zhao Zhenjia spent getting me the mirror cost him his chance to use the black card.’

’Think, think, think.’

’A person can survive for about thirty seconds after being cut in half at the waist.’

’The black tie hasn’t activated, which means no one around me has died yet. There’s still a chance.’

’Calm down. Let me think. What other Supernatural Artifacts do I have?’

’The Ghost Card? No, the Ghost Card won’t work. I can’t use it on someone else.’

And then, an idea struck him.