Mirror of Truth 3

[Melbourne, Year: 1 January 2020]

"My Alex!" Alex's mother cried out as her eyes snapped open and she sprung from the bed to the kitchen.

Footsteps followed behind her as she turned on the lights and stared at the clean but empty kitchen while tears welled up in her eyes.

"What is it, dear?" Alex's father asked in a hoarse voice, dressed in the shabby pajamas, rubbing his eyes.

"I dreamt he had returned, l-l-like when he was young, he was crying to m-m-e," her voice trembled as the tears flowed from her eyes.

His father stared at her and muttered, "it's too weird."

"What is too weird?"

"Coincidence, maybe. I dreamt of him, too. Like he was in middle school. For some reason, he hugged both of us…" his father trailed off.

Alex's mother counted the dates, then she stared at her husband and said, "It's the seventh. Alex returned."

"Dear, that's just superstition."

"No, my boy came back. He c-came b-back to s-see us," she insisted and started wailing as he embraced his grieving wife's shaking body tightly while she sobbed uncontrollably.

He desperately wanted to believe his son returned too, for a last farewell, but common sense told him otherwise. There is no such thing as ghosts in the world. Alex was gone for good.

***

[Mirror of Truth, Hidden Dimension]

A limestone hallway with high walls, almost 6 meters high, appeared in front of Alex as he hesitantly took a step forward. Mysterious greenish fires started appearing at the top of the smooth stone passage way, supported by nothing, lighting up the endless hallway with no end in sight.

He touched the icy wall, leaving a trail along the dusk as he walked on. A sudden zap of his fingers and he withdrew from the wall, only to notice strange inscriptions carved into the walls and murals drawn.

Alex took another step back to study the entire picture. He had seen something similar before in the Mawangdui site during his archaeological studies. Except there was no ascension drawing of a deceased person. The artist concentrated on depicting the mythical beings.

Two elongated snake-like beings clearly demarcated a division between the Heavens, Earth and the Netherworld in the painting. Top in the heavens was a crow painted in gold flapped its wings against a faint reddish circle on its flanks, a colourful dragon and phoenix on each side.

The ancient Chinese, Koreans and Japanese used to revere a three-legged crow above the dragon, a symbol of power, and the phoenix, but this crow had only two legs.

He noticed the delineation just before Earth that two humans with a snake tail in the mural. Those two were probably Nüwa and Fuxi, the creator gods in the Chinese myths. On the side, Alex could only guess it was Chang-E ascending to the moon, positioned slightly lower than the dragon.

However, there was a faded humanoid figure on the moon itself. Who was it if the one ascending to the moon is Chang-E.

Even if the painting denoted a hierarchy, the artist had positioned moon and the sun on the same level which didn't synch with the Chinese beliefs or even the Japanese ones.

At the bottom were the four figures, but the painting had faded towards the end. However, one had a black serpent entwined around the body. Could that be Kanghui herself?

Alex had an eerie feeling that it probably wasn't a Han tomb, given the design of the mural. He surveyed the area, wondering if it was even an ancient tomb.

The mural suddenly burst into an infernal blaze and melted away, revealing a dark cavernous hall with what looked like a gargantuan revolving map of the constellations. Alex peered inside, not daring to step in. He could still make out the corners of the hall.

Should he enter or not? He felt like a rat trapped in a maze. Alex turned towards the direction he was originally following, only to spot a dead end of a wall which wasn't there earlier.

Great, he thought, a shifting maze.

"Interesting. You broke the barrier," a disembodied voice spoke from within the hall.

If there was anything Alex learnt in his time within the hidden dimension, disembodied voices were an enormous sign of trouble. He stood there, bemoaning his fate to himself.

"Few souls can break this barrier to enter the Hall of the Celestial Eyes," the voice mused, much to his chagrin. "Must be a malfunction."

"Oh don't worry. You aren't in any trouble. The Mirror has many backups. The breakage has to be tagged for maintenance."

"Malfunction? Maintenance?" Alex frowned.

"It's a relic that is used all the time. The courts of hell refuse to upgrade it or trade it in for centuries despite our advice. Busted ass crap."

This entity was describing the Mirror of Truth casually, like a piece of an Apple iPhone or even a MacBook. Then again, nothing surprised Alex anymore in the hidden dimension.

"Damnit, something busted the energy synchroniser for this part. That will take some time to fix," the voice cussed.

"What will happen to me?!" Alex exclaimed.

"Don't worry, time will stop for now, but I can't let you exit out yet. The malfunction can cause damage to your soul if you try to leave."

"LEAVE? I don't even know how if I wanted!"

A shadowy, snake-like figure materialised within the hall and slithered up to Alex. In the dim lights of the ghostly fire, Alex could see a man dressed up in ancient clothing but with an uncovered very long lower torso of a snake.

The man had a face of a kindly old Asian grandfather and he glanced at Alex. Alex grimaced at the prospect of meeting another primeval being.

"Hmm, interesting…," the man said as he rubbed his chin while studying Alex from top to bottom.

Then he stared at Alex's hand and muttered, "Kanghui. Why would Kanghui do such a thing?"

"Huh?" Alex had no idea what the man was on about.

The man pointed at Alex's hand and said, "Kanghui's mark. I recognise it, but Kanghui can hardly tolerate humans, let alone their souls."

"How did you know Kanghui?"

"Simple, that's my sibling. You know… snakes and all that crap," the man pointed to his snake tail. "Fuxi, by the way."

Alex's eyes widened in disbelief. Here he is with the legendary Fuxi, the mythical creator god of humans.

"Were we really created by you and Nüwa?" Alex blurted out.

"Ah hehe, the good old creator god myth. Myths are just myths," Fuxi snickered as he straightened his gown, then beckoned Alex to enter the hall. "Come alongside with me. Don't follow behind… my tail is very long."

Alex hesitantly followed him into the hall and looked down into the dizzying depths of the shimmering cosmos. Where else could he go or do?

His mind started swirling at the endless depth and his knees begun wobbling like jello. He instinctively stuck out his arms to keep himself steady, as though walking a tight rope. Only problem was that there was no tight rope.

"Don't look down." A hand grabbed his shoulders. "You are not used to moving in this type of space. Keep your eyes on me.

Alex looked forward at Fuxi, although from the corner of his eyes, he could see the lower serpentine part of his body slithering in the most disconcerting fashion, which made him uneasy.

"This looks like outer space."

He heard Fuxi chuckling. "The Mirror of Truth doesn't go by physical three dimensional rules. It projects your memories, which can be as wide as a galaxy if you try to map it physically. Sky isn't the limit."

"So, where are you taking me?"

"I am going to check if the Mirror of Truth has a spare dimensional projection unit and then place you in there," Fuxi replied as he stopped in the middle of the hall.

"Can I ask you about Kanghui?"

"Ah… Ask away," Fuxi said, as though unsure.

"Why does she dislike Nüwa so much?" Alex asked, uncertain if he even wanted to know the answer.

Fuxi bit his lips and furrowed his eyebrows. "She? Kanghui has taken a female form now?"

"Huh? Yeah. Pretty woman form. She is a HE?"

Fuxi whistled. "Kanghui is androgynous with a gender can change like fluid at any time. Unique among us three. But to answer your question about the feud with Nüwa…"

The cosmos in the hall changed into a valley. Alex found himself standing on the peak with Fuxi overlooking a large river snaking around the mountains on a clear day.

Alex spotted a gleaming fortress city with a scattering of smaller villages bordering the lush primordial forests, surrounded by the mountains

"Where are we?"

"We are in my memory of more than a 100,000 years ago in ancient China," Fuxi pointed to a large yellowish gushing river nearby. "That's the infamous yellow river."

Alex remembered the old university lectures on the Denisovans and Neanderthals. The early progenitors of the modern day humans were too primitive with the stone tools which would have taken ages to clear such vast tracts of land in the forests, let alone build a fortress city. Didn't the Stone Age end around over five thousand years ago?

"100,000 years ago? That's the Stone Age! There is no way—"

A bright light in the skies caused him to stop mid sentence. Then another appeared. And another. Soon, there were a dozen shimmering objects in the sky approaching the settlements in the air.

"Don't worry, you can't get hurt in my memory."

Fuxi's words offered Alex no reassurance.