The Mirror of Hell and the Hidden Lord of Shadows

"Existence is an error that demands correction.

Truth is not a beacon, but a sword without a sheath.

I have awakened... and I see retribution in the eyes of every traitor.

Let them enter my hell, and let them make of themselves... lessons."

— Mo Tianyin, Lord of the Infernal Mirrors

• • •

The great mirror in the abandoned Ling Bo Palace was the last thing standing after the fires and looting. Its twisted golden frame embraced a dim silver surface that reflected the ruins' shadows mercilessly. Here stood Mo Tianyin. Not as he once was. No tainted blood mark on his forehead. No emblem of the Red Flower. His body was the same, but now it served as a conduit for a force deeper than any human game.

In his left hand, he held the Flintstone of Imprisonment, gifted by Jin Lian before her reading—a stone that glowed faintly from within, like a star trapped in a tomb.

Suddenly, spidery cracks spread across the mirror's surface. Not breaks, but black veins opening like petals, revealing a different world behind.

Not an ancient China. Not a fantasy land. This was something else:

A sky without stars, blood-dried in hue, thick with the scent of iron and death.

A land of bones, hills made of human skeletons wrapped in purple mist that seemed to breathe.

Inverted laws: pain grants power, betrayal builds walls around the soul, weakness makes you prey to the beast inside.

A stuttering time, where moments stretch into years, and years collapse into a single scream.

In the heart of this hellish stage stood Mo Tianyin's shadow—taller, darker, crowned by a halo of bloody fog. He was now the Lord of the Infernal Mirrors. The Judge. The Executioner. The Creator.

• • •

Ling Bo was no longer the powerful fat merchant. The fire that devoured his wealth and the image of his son's body frying in butcher's oil had turned him into a crumbling husk. Alone in the scorched hall, he stared at the mirror, which only reflected twisted shadows. He didn't see Mo Tianyin standing behind him—but he heard his voice, for the first time in its true form:

"Ling Bo.

You are no man. You're a staircase built from others' suffering so you could climb.

Take one last look at what's left of your kingdom...

Then join your staircase in the world you truly belong."

Ling Bo turned slowly, his eyes drowning in terror. "Wh... who are you?!"

Mo Tianyin didn't answer. He raised the flintstone. It ignited with a blinding white light, like a blade slicing the veil between worlds. The mirror swallowed the light and then opened like a gaping maw of endless black.

A hand reached from the void—made of bone wrapped in purple-tinged skin—and seized Ling Bo by the throat.

"No! Let me go! I—" His scream was cut off.

The mirror devoured him. It wasn't a fall—it was an absorption. As if his molecules unraveled and reassembled on the other side.

Inside the mirror world, he found himself standing atop a hill of skulls. He wasn't alone. Monsters with twisted human faces, their arms turned to blades, slithered toward him. The stench of overcooked oil filled the air—the same smell that surrounded his son's corpse the day he died.

"Begin, slave merchant."

Mo Tianyin's voice thundered in that hell, like fate incarnate.

"This is your wish: to be the highest step.

So here are the bones of those you sold—build your staircase.

Climb... or become a step for others."

• • •

Ling Bo was not the first. And he would not be the last.

In the days that followed, several faces of cruelty disappeared from the city:

The commander of the Purge Squad, who used to hang children by their arms as a warning—his elegant coat was found tossed before a shattered mirror in the garbage pits.

The merchantess who imported slaves to fight beasts—her pupils vanished while she stared into a black mirror inside her private gallery.

The corrupt priest who sold "pure blood blessings"—he evaporated inside his shrine before an old mirror etched with sacred verses.

All of them reached the same hell. Each one in a "paradise" custom-built for their crime:

The commander is surrounded by spectral children wielding blades.

The merchantess is thrown into a pit of starving beasts bearing the faces of her victims.

The priest is forced to wear a robe made of cursed golden leaves that burn his skin every time he utters a lie or a sacred truth.

• • •

At Liang Jiuyong's palace, the "Sky Lord" studied the disappearance reports, his dark eyes gleaming with demonic cunning.

"This isn't the Tainted Blood Cell," he said to Mr. Qin. "This… is something else. Deeper. More dangerous."

He brought his finger near a large mirror on his office wall.

"Do you know, Qin, that the oldest legends speak of 'Gatekeepers' between realms?

They were called: the Wardens of the Forgotten Borders."

Qin didn't reply. He had disliked mirrors ever since seeing Mo Tianyin's tremble.

Suddenly, Liang's reflection flickered—for a second, he saw something else behind him:

A tall shadow crowned in blood mist, with two cold gray eyes.

He turned sharply. No one was there.

In the mirror, the shadow smiled—a smile that didn't touch its eyes—and then vanished.

• • •

Mo Tianyin returned to the cracked hut. Not as a shelter, but as a conduit.

The small broken mirror on the table transformed before him into a gate. He didn't cross. He observed.

On the other side, Ling Bo was still trying to build his staircase of skulls. Every time he placed one, it transformed into his burning son's face, and he screamed, stepping back. The monsters crept closer.

Pain unending. Time unchained.

This was the only mercy Mo Tianyin now recognized:

"Let every soul build its own hell."

He raised the flintstone again. The white light filled the hut. The mirror absorbed the scene—not to destroy it, but to store it.

For every new world created by sinners... would become part of his kingdom.

In the silence that followed, he looked at his own reflection in the darkened mirror. The shadow over his shoulders was clearer now.

Was he the Lord of Mirrors? Or were the mirrors beginning to own him?

His voice shook the darkness—not with words, but with a brutal rhythm that echoed in the reader's soul:

"What are you waiting for?

Hell does not sleep in the dead.

It reflects in every living eye that betrayed its humanity.

And I... am the mirror that exposes it."

• • •

In a forgotten corner of the Lower City, Jin Lian passed by a shattered mirror in a ruined shop.

For a moment, her reflection warped—a tall figure with gray eyes beneath a crown of red mist.

She stepped back. Not from fear, but recognition.

The fight against Liang Jiuyong had only been the first push.

The true war... against the monster she helped create, had just begun.

And the hell that awaited her would not be like the others.

It would be a mirror to strip the ghosts of herself bare.