Chapter Nineteen – It’s Still a Child

The ripples of light did not originate from the sky but sprang from the earth itself.

The entire city resembled an inverted sea of stars; every window, every glass curtain wall became a probing eye, each reflecting the same blurred and distorted shadow.

Yet, beneath the gaze of countless eyes, the silent room was enveloped in pure darkness.

He sat quietly at the heart of the darkness, eyes closed, like a solitary island severed from the turbulent waves of light outside.

He did not look at the eerie spectacle of the city beyond the window, nor did he allow his mind to wander there.

All his attention was fixed beneath his eyelids, on the battlefield known as the retina.

That familiar reflection—the "Teacher" who appeared in the fire scene mirror—floated quietly at the center of his vision, wearing a faint, elusive smile, staring back at him.

This time, he did not try to dispel it, nor did he shift his mental focus.

He chose to face it head-on.

"I am Shen Mo."

In his mind, with the clearest and most composed voice, he silently intoned the first anchoring phrase.

As the words fell, a vivid image began to form: a pair of hands wearing blue sterile gloves precisely grasping a scalpel, its blade scraping across a cold metal tray with a crisp sound.

Those were his own hands, on the autopsy table at the city forensic center.

"I am not at the fire scene."

The second anchoring phrase sounded.

The mental image shifted.

A tall whiteboard densely covered with logical deduction formulas and molecular structures, the ink still wet.

A black marker pen lay casually in its groove, having rolled half a circle.

This was his laboratory—the battlefield where he deduced the energy model of the stele's residual echoes.

"I have not been forgotten."

The third phrase.

The scene softened.

The old study room of his childhood home, filled with the scent of aged paper and mahogany.

Sunlight filtered through the blinds, casting mottled shadows on the massive wooden bookshelves.

He was still a child, standing on tiptoe, trying to reach the highest shelf for an astronomy atlas.

Again and again.

The scalpel-wielding hand at the autopsy table, the formulas on the lab whiteboard, the wooden bookshelf in his childhood study.

Each image was a cornerstone of what made him "Shen Mo," a fortress of self built brick by brick through time and experience.

He finally understood completely: the battlefield against that entity was not in any corner of the outside world, nor in any mirror, but in the authority to define the concept of "I."

Whoever defines "I" wins this war.

The next morning, as dawn broke, the city returned to its usual clamor.

The glass curtain walls seemed to have dreamt a bizarre, fantastical dream.

But Shen Mo did not share that illusion.

He spent the entire day thoroughly transforming his residence.

All mirrors were removed, wrapped in thick cloth, and piled into the storage room.

Television screens, computer monitors, even stainless steel kettles and smooth door handles were all covered with matte black sound-absorbing materials.

The windows were sealed shut with heavy blackout curtains, leaving no gaps.

The entire home became a vast black box, rejecting all light and images.

An absolute cognitive safety zone.

He instituted a new routine and communication protocol.

Each day, he only communicated with Su Wanying through voice calls as necessary, strictly forbidding any form of video calls or photo transmissions.

He also imposed a nearly obsessive requirement: all daily supplies and information must be written by Su Wanying on a piece of paper and left at the door.

Moreover, each note had to begin with a "memory key" known only to the two of them.

"You once said copper can conduct thoughts," he read one evening as he pulled the first note from under the door, recognizing the familiar handwriting.

It was a joke he had made long ago to Su Wanying while analyzing a metal-related case.

Seeing those words, he felt reassured enough to read the rest of the message.

This was verification, filtration—a firewall ensuring the absolute purity of the information source.

In the darkness, he fumbled for a pen and wrote in his notebook a new rule: "Those who do not see me remain untainted; those who know me bear witness."

A few days later, Lin Xiaoya visited again.

This time, she did not cry; her face was pale, her gaze hollow, as if all strength had been drained.

She brought a sketch, its edges curling slightly.

"This is my brother... the last drawing he made before he committed suicide," her voice trembled. "He said... he said the person in this picture would walk the rest of the way for you."

Shen Mo took the drawing.

The texture was coarse, charcoal marks heavy.

In the sketch, a tall figure stood before towering flames—the silhouette unmistakably himself.

Yet, within the shadow of that figure, another distinctly different outline was faintly discernible—broad-shouldered, slightly stooped, carrying the air of an old-fashioned scholar.

Two backs eerily overlapped and fused before the firelight, as if the hidden shadow was about to completely devour the other.

It perfectly matched the "Teacher" phantom he had seen in the mirror.

He did not react with anger or fear, nor did he burn the drawing as Lin Xiaoya had expected.

He simply laid the paper flat on his only worktable and turned on a small ultraviolet lamp.

Under the faint purple light, a miracle occurred.

Beneath the rough fibers of the paper, faint, wave-like fluorescent patterns slowly emerged.

They resonated with the "memory field" fluctuations he had observed in the stele's residual echoes, sharing the same root and source.

"It is using her hand to continue drawing me," Shen Mo's voice was cold as iron, devoid of emotion.

That entity—the source of contamination—not only existed in mirror reflections but could influence reality through the minds of those it tainted, even... create.

This discovery chilled him to the bone. The depth of the contamination far exceeded his expectations.

He immediately set about designing a new experiment, which he called the "Cognitive Stripping Experiment."

Through encrypted voice messages, he asked Su Wanying, without revealing any of his current situation, to call three police officers who had worked closely with him, requesting they describe "Detective Shen Mo’s typical behavioral traits" in a few keywords.

He needed an external, objective image of "Shen Mo."

Su Wanying was efficient beyond measure.

A few hours later, a list arrived via the "memory key" note.

The list detailed the officers’ impressions of him: tightly knit logical chains, fast speech, habitually tapping the desk with knuckles, eyes unfocused during analysis, slightly right-leaning handwriting...

Shen Mo sat in the darkness, comparing this "me as seen by others" list with his recent behavior patterns, item by item.

He became the most exacting auditor, scrutinizing every thought, every unconscious gesture.

Soon, he found three fatal deviations.

First, recently, when thinking, he unconsciously paused at the edges of doorframes in various rooms, as if hesitating whether to open an invisible door.

Second, the tail tone of his speech would inadvertently dip slightly, carrying a sigh-like quality.

Third, and most haunting of all, when writing his own name in his notebook, the final stroke of the character for "Shen" began uncontrollably flicking upward.

That was not his penmanship—he had never had such a habit.

The conclusion was clear and brutal: the contamination had penetrated his subconscious and behavioral patterns, silently rewriting the fundamental contours of the person known as "Shen Mo," like a virus altering code.

Late at night, in utter stillness.

Shen Mo sat once more on the solitary chair and slowly closed his eyes.

This time, he constructed no defensive memories.

He simply waited.

As expected, the "reflection on the retina" emerged clearly.

It remained the "Teacher" image, the smile at the corner of its mouth even wider than before, brimming with smug certainty, as if about to speak.

Shen Mo did not flinch but met that gaze head-on, and from the depths of his consciousness, with unprecedented calm and clarity, he declared:

"You can imitate my actions, replicate my memories, even alter my habits. But there is one thing you will never achieve. You cannot experience my thoughts, cannot feel my confusion, cannot reproduce the mistakes I made in pursuit of the truth."

His intent was like a surgical blade, piercing precisely to his adversary’s core.

"You are not me—because you do not make mistakes."

The moment his words fell, the pupil of the reflection suddenly contracted; the triumphant smile froze on its face, as if instantly petrified.

In the next instant, a faint yet unmistakably clear creaking sound rang abruptly by Shen Mo’s left ear.

The sound was like a heavy wooden door long sealed, being pushed open just a sliver from the outside.

He sat motionless, muscles taut as wire.

He did not seek the source of the sound but slowly reached for the voice recorder on the table, pressing the record button.

Facing the empty darkness, he whispered in a volume only he could hear:

"What it fears is not light... but ‘being unacknowledged.’"

No sooner had the words fallen than outside the window—the city’s glass curtain walls that once seemed like a myriad of giant watchful eyes—all the ripples of light quietly receded at once, restoring the deep silence of night.

It was as if those millions of eyes, weary from his triumph, had simultaneously shut.

The room returned to absolute stillness, save for the faint red glow blinking silently on the recorder.

Amid this brief tranquility, the specially configured encrypted phone on the table—one theoretically reachable only by Su Wanying—suddenly emitted a rapid, monotonous buzzing.

It was the city bureau’s standardized ringtone signaling the highest level of emergency.

Silence was broken.