Mirror Mirror on the Wall (1)

Shen Minyao continued to ignore Li Fei'er for the rest of the week. She never bothered to glance the girl's way to know that Li Fei'er was staring at her. However, the young woman also never dared to seek after her ever since Li Fei'er witnessed how Shen Minyao beat up Xu Shenshen. It wasn't like she was afraid of the fox woman because she also knew that if Shen Minyao didn't stand up for herself that day, no one would. 

Li Fei'er heard the murmurs and gossips about Shen Minyao and Xu Shenshen, while the two were inside the locked ladies' room. Their classmates had claimed that Xu Shenshen had finally found her match, only for it to be the newly 'awakened' Shen Minyao. 

Shen Minyao even spoke in an old-fashioned way. Her eyes revealed some mockery and disdain for other people, which Li Fei'er hadn't failed to notice. It was as if Shen Minyao was looking down on others with contempt and superiority. 

Others say that Shen Minyao had grown a backbone and turned over a new leaf ever since she returned, but Li Fei'er thought that any people subjected to high pressure would eventually change over time. She knew that what Shen Minyao did to Xu Shenshen was wrong, but she wished she was in the position to defend Shen Minyao and claimed that what she did was right. 

Still, Li Fei'er felt that she was drawn towards Shen Minyao. It was as if her need to be by Shen Minyao's side was clouding her mind. Was it because she had never met someone outside their family with the spiritual ability to see both demons and ghosts like her? She wondered. 

Shen Minyao looked normal on the surface, acting like a good student and listening well to their teacher's lecture; while their other classmates were struggling not to doze off, including her. However, Li Fei'er sometimes saw Shen Minyao stop walking in the hallway all of a sudden, while the smaller demons ran for their lives upon seeing her. 

Li Fei'er had never met any human being feared by demons in the past, so she wondered how strong Shen Minyao was to be able to instill fear into demons like this. When she mentioned it to her father, he only said that it only meant that Shen Minyao's spiritual aptitude was so strong that demons acknowledged her strength. As such, she might be a witch in the making or a powerful exorcist that had the ability to drive demons into servitude. 

Li Fei'er didn't think that Shen Minyao was a witch; neither was she an exorcist—given how she wasn't able to kill the wraith on her own and had to rely on Li Fei'er and the grim reaper's help. Just remembering that night when she met the two was enough for Li Fei'er's blood to boil in excitement. 

After being a shaman apprentice for years, she was certain that even she couldn't defeat the powerful wraith on her own. If Shen Minyao hadn't helped her place the talismans around the wraith and with the grim reaper deflecting its mental attack, Li Fei'er knew that she would have been dead that night… if it wasn't for those two. 

From Shen Minyao's last words towards Li Fei'er, it was clear that she was giving the girl a warning to stay away. If it was because of their schoolmates that might go after her for bullying Xu Shenshen or because of the demons that she might attract in the future, Li Fei'er didn't know. 

"Classmate Shen!" Li Fei'er rushed towards Shen Minyao and gasped for breath upon reaching her. She rested both hands on her knees as she heaved for breath. 

It was already late in the afternoon, and the sun was about to set. The ray of light hit the side of Shen Minyao's cold face, giving her a more menacing look. She was about to go and check the laboratory because the disturbance she sensed there was growing at an abnormal pace. She could swear that the demon she sensed there last week was still weak. 

"You don't know how to take a warning seriously, are you?" She told Li Fei'er who grinned at her in return. 

"I know where you are going, and I want to help." She was a shaman after all, and she knew well of the dangers that the creatures at the laboratory pose towards their schoolmates. Whatever it was, they needed to stop it from feeding on the humans. 

"It's dangerous. You have to go back," Shen Minyao told her as she continued walking up the stairs to get where the laboratory was. 

"I'm not that weak!" Li Fei'er complained, "I'm a shaman now. If I don't face dangers like whatever it is, I would never be strong enough to protect my loved ones." 

'Protect your loved ones?' The fox woman repeated the words in her head. She was unbelievably strong in her past life, so why did she fail to protect her human ward and even ended up getting killed by a human? Did that mean she wasn't strong enough? 

Little Jiu was strong enough to protect herself from any human and lower demons as she had trained the girl herself, but it still wasn't enough to keep Little Jiu alive. 

"What on earth….?" 

As they stood outside the laboratories, Li Fei'er was shocked to see so many ghosts inside the room. She had never seen so many ghosts at the same place. They could go inside, but once they realized what attracted them, they weren't able to step out of the room no matter how hard they tried. Surely, something was stopping them from leaving the place. 

"What's going on?" She asked Shen Minyao who was staring past the ghosts and at the large mirror hanging at the corner of the room. 

"The entity inside the mirror is keeping them inside," the fox woman explained, her eyes narrowing towards the cursed item.