My ‘Healing’ Game
Chapter 140: Longing Turns Into a Curse

Chapter 140: Chapter 140: Longing Turns Into a Curse

Bodies were strung together by telephone wires, huddling and merging just to protect the Curse Item at the very center.

Having devoured his brother, Li Huo completely lost control, no longer distinguishing who was before his eyes. His ten fingers bore black mist that seemingly could scorch a soul.

He attacked indiscriminately, and as the corpses in the pit were shattered, the damage that the black mist inflicted upon the consciousness was evenly dispersed across all the ghosts and monsters in the hotel by the Curse Item.

As Li Huo drew the Curse Item’s attention, Han Fei closed his eyes and focused on controlling the Blood-colored Paperman.

Memories in his mind gradually turned red as the Blood-colored Paperman’s past horrors began to affect Han Fei. If he had not died so many times in Manager tasks, he might have already broken down.

Dozens of deaths had repeatedly forged his will; Han Fei clenched his teeth, ignored all the illusions arising in his mind, and forcibly made the Blood-colored Paperman crawl bit by bit deeper into the pile of corpses.

With Li Huo raging in attack at the front, and the Blood-colored Paperman infiltrating from the back, the Curse Item buried deep underground exposed its greatest weakness—that it could not easily move.

After smashing through the bodies one by one, the Blood-colored Paperman made it into the interior of the corpse pile.

At the heart of the pile was an old man, withered and shriveled, his body bound in blood-red telephone wires, and his cloudy old eyes filled with pain and regret.

"Not the Curse Item? It’s a person?"

By then Han Fei could not afford to hesitate any longer, if he delayed further, Yinglong would surely be dead.

With no choice but to act, Han Fei gave the Blood-colored Paperman one final command to attack the entangled telephone wires on the old man’s body.

The scent of blood emerged in the room, and the Paperman’s face bore a terrifying smile as it plunged its hands directly into the old man’s chest.

Contrary to Han Fei’s instructions, the Blood-colored Paperman seemed drawn to something, silently laughing as its hands, like knives, carved a large hole in the old man’s chest.

Then its body, soaked in blood, dove right into the old man’s chest cavity.

In that instant, all the ghosts and monsters in the room paused for a moment.

Shortly after, the Blood-colored Paperman pulled a still-beating heart out from the old man’s chest, all telephone wires had pierced into the heart—this heart was the source of all the telephone wires in the hotel!

The movements of the controlled ghosts and monsters began to slow, the Blood-colored Paperman excitedly trying to swallow the heart, though Han Fei struggled greatly to prevent it.

From the battered heart, there was a faint cry of an old lady, seemingly the Curse Item Han Fei was searching for.

"Li Huo! That’s enough! Stop fighting! That’s one of our own! Li Zai! Quickly, take your brother away!"

Han Fei shouted. That Li Huo was such a fool, he was even preparing to have a go at the Blood-colored Paperman.

Balancing control of the Paperman while trying to restrain Li Huo, Han Fei realized how easy it was to get accidentally killed by these Fierce Ghosts if he wasn’t careful.

Under Han Fei’s incessant urging, Li Huo’s body gradually began to change, his hands emitting black mist that spread outwards, and when the mist dissipated, the tall, thin ghost appeared.

Only when Li Zai appeared did Han Fei finally breathe a sigh of relief. He focussed his attention on trying to get the Paperman to bring over the heart.

But unexpectedly, any movement of the heart caused all the cursed ghosts in the hotel to feel pain, as if they were all connected as one.

"Yinglong’s condition is pretty bad, he can’t withstand much more," said Han Fei, not wanting to lose this employee. He jumped into the Corpse Pit, holding Cry’s hand.

"The way to solve the Curse is to destroy the Curse Item, but since it can share the damage, even if we want to kill it, it will surely try to take others down with it." Just as Han Fei was frowning with worry, the severely withered old man slowly twisted his neck to look at Han Fei.

"Don’t kill her; it’s all my fault. I can help her atone."

The old man’s voice was intermittent, as if he was also on the verge of Soul Scattering, now merely experiencing a fleeting resurgence.

"You help her atone?"

"I am the innkeeper, and in this heart dwells the wife who accompanied me for over forty years," the old man said with an almost pleading tone. "We used to run an inn together, but after I fell ill, she took care of it on her own."

"Where is she?"

"I have no idea. One night when I woke up, I found myself not in the hospital, but on this street. I was terrified until I found the inn again." The old man crawled on the ground, wanting to get closer to the heart. "There was nobody in the inn at the time, so I just ran it here, waiting for her to return, but she never did, until one night I received a phone call from her..."

"How could she possibly call you?"

Han Fei had understood by now that the old man had run an inn before he died in the hospital.

When he woke up again, he had entered the Deep World. However, the old man’s case was special; he retained his memories of his wife and the inn after entering the Deep World.

"When I received her call, I was so thrilled—I was truly afraid I would never hear her voice again. I told her I wanted to see her, but she said it wasn’t time yet, asked me to wait a bit longer." A hint of tenderness appeared in the old man’s cloudy eyes. "I waited for her as she said, but I was also afraid that one day she would really come... In truth, being able to talk to her on the phone every day was enough for me."

"We talk about our past, and there’s always so much to say."

"She’s still as bad-tempered as before, always nagging. Sometimes I want to hang up the phone, but the next day I would still be waiting by it."

"With her accompanying me every day, I’m not so scared anymore."

"However, as more and more guests started coming into the inn, she suddenly told me she was scared because she felt changed. She heard too many things of despair, horror, things beyond imagination."

"Her voice was agonized; I knew she was in pain, so I wanted to comfort her, but she kept refusing to see me."

"Until, a long time later, one night she called to tell me she was preparing to leave, and maybe she wouldn’t even be able to make a phone call anymore."

"Can you imagine my pain? I couldn’t understand. I told her I had left everything behind now, just hoping to see her once."

"That day she agreed. She asked me to hold the phone and go into the basement of the inn."

"Walking in the basement filled with various cables, I was still talking to her, asking where she was. But she told me to turn around and look..."

The wrinkles on the old man’s face creased tighter, and his eyes grew dim.

"When I turned around, I realized the phone line had been cut a long time ago, and the voice wasn’t coming from the phone at all, but from inside my own heart."

"I’ve been dialing my home phone every day, but never got through; I’ve been talking to my own yearning."

"When a person’s obsession reaches a certain extent, some sort of change occurs. My yearning turned into a Curse, clinging to the phone in the inn."

"My yearning got out of control. There was no more kindness in my heart. I knew there was no hope in this world, just like how my wife never answered my calls."

Tears streamed down the old man’s face as he spoke, and he began to cry like a child.

Han Fei didn’t know how long the old man had been trapped here, and perhaps there were many other Residual Souls like him in the Deep World.

"Old man, to tell you the truth, I don’t know if there’s any hope in this world either," Han Fei said as he squatted atop a pile of corpses, quietly watching the old man. "But if this world truly has no hope, then I’ll become your hope."

He signaled the Paperman to place the heart back into the old man’s chest. "I return your yearning and goodwill to you; now give me back my friend."

The old man, who had been prepared for his Soul Scattering, heard Han Fei’s words and his expression turned complex.

The heart, interlinked with all the phone lines, throbbed in his chest. The old man clutched at his chest and retracted all the phone lines that passed through the bodies, each line still carrying the voices of the deceased.

"Brother!"

Yinghuo ran to Yinglong’s side. The nearly dissipated Yinglong touched Yinghuo’s face, then crawled toward Han Fei, gratitude shining in his remaining One-eyed look, the likes of which he’d never shown before.

"You don’t need to thank me," Han Fei said, using the secret to touch the depth of the soul, helping Yinglong to his feet. "Family members don’t need to thank each other."