My ‘Healing’ Game
Chapter 248 Butterfly’s Weakness

Chapter 248: Chapter 248 Butterfly’s Weakness

"Is your father in the wind chime?"

Han Fei had dealt with many freaks, and compared to interacting with normal people, he was better at communicating with the abnormal. He even had his own evaluation system, crafting different approaches depending on the degree of the other party’s aberrations.

"He scattered his ashes in the wind, and whenever the wind chime rings, his soul starts conversing with me."

The man with pallid skin looked at the wind chime, seemingly reminded of something, a trace of regret emerged on his youthful face that seemed too young for his age.

"You seem to love your adoptive father very much?"

"Yes, I come back here whenever I have the time."

"Then why did you still sell his brain to Eternal Life Pharmaceutical?" Han Fei wasn’t very good at small talk, primarily because he didn’t want to beat around the bush and waste time.

The man’s head turned slowly, and he looked at Han Fei. "Who are you?"

"My name is Han Fei. I play your father in ’Mystery Novelist.’" Han Fei looked around to make sure the man wasn’t carrying any knives and that there were no dangerous objects nearby before approaching. "Your father was the most complex person I have ever met, his heart was like a vast ocean, and every time I tried to grasp his emotions and story, I felt as though I could be dragged into the depths of the sea."

"No one can play him," the man stated with conviction.

"Is that so? Even when nine of us actors each portray one of his personalities, we can’t fully recreate him?"

"All nine of you put together can at best deceive those who are unaware, but to reproduce the real him, you’re far from enough." The man’s gaze returned to the wind chime. "That’s not a gap that acting can bridge. Without experiencing it, you’ll never understand."

"Experience? Experience what?" Han Fei was very curious about everything the man said. This somewhat neurotic man was Han Fei’s most crucial breakthrough in understanding Spider.

"I have great respect for my father, and he loved me very much, but sometimes, he wanted to kill me with his own hands," said the man with a smile that contradicted his age. "Does that sound absurd? But that’s the reality."

Han Fei thought of the adoption file he had found in Deep World; the file had been rife with excessive text and included jarringly stark words such as "kill" and "death."

"I have seen him skillfully slaughter livestock with a knife, seen him effortlessly bring down young men far sturdier than him, I have also seen him crying, holding his head shut in a cupboard, and I’ve seen him staring at my neck with a knife and pen at midnight."

"I first realized he wanted to kill me when I barely had a concept of death. I couldn’t understand why he would do that."

"But I don’t blame him. He wanted to kill me, yet the one who ended up protecting me was still him."

"Father had multiple personalities. The one who wanted to kill me was probably just one of them; most of the time, he was normal."

The man spoke as if telling someone else’s story. Living with Spider wasn’t easy, but there was no complaint about Spider in his words, rather a hint of nostalgia.

"Your father wanted to kill you, yet you don’t blame him?" Han Fei sought to penetrate the man’s inner world.

"In your eyes, my father is a writer with schizophrenia, and you find his story extraordinarily mysterious and legendary. But in my eyes, he is the world’s most pitiable person, living a life unable to love, always trapped in self-doubt and betrayal." The man quietly watched the wind chime, as if talking to himself. "You wouldn’t understand."

"Can you tell me about him? I’ve read all his books and really want to know what the real him is like." Han Fei sat down next to the man.

Gazing at the wind chime, the man spoke again, "My father once told me that the bravest decision he made in his life was to adopt me."

"Since the onset of his illness, he completely shut himself off from the outside world, refusing to communicate for fear he’d lose control and other personalities might harm those close to him."

"That’s how he lived his entire life. I don’t know why he changed at the end of his life; maybe he didn’t want to surrender to fate. He wanted to use the last bit of his life to prove something — no matter what happened, he was still himself; even fate couldn’t shake him in the slightest."

Pointing to his heart, the man added, "I wasn’t killed by him; I am full of gratitude toward him, and I still miss him. From that perspective, he already won. He overcame the designs of fate, the personality that wanted to kill me, and that seemingly omnipotent, invisible hand."

"Destiny? An invisible hand?" Through the man’s words, Han Fei slowly formed a suspicion in his heart.

The final battleground between Spider and Butterfly was this adopted orphan. Unable to defeat Spider head-on, Butterfly sought to force Spider to kill his own adopted child, creating a fissure in Spider’s heart!

The word ’death’ in the adoption records was written in Spider’s handwriting, but the state of writing was completely different from Spider’s usual manuscripts. This indirectly suggested that at that time, Spider might have been in an uncontrollable state or perhaps something was manipulating him?

"Did your father say anything else to you? Have you ever heard the word ’Butterfly’ from his lips?"

"Butterfly?"

The wind outside suddenly rang the wind chime, and in that slightly eerie tinkling, the man closed his eyes, his pale face seeming to be in pain.

The loose black clothes hung on him like mourning attire. He didn’t answer Han Fei’s question, instead murmuring odd syllables in his throat and then standing up as if preparing to leave.

"Can’t those two words be mentioned in this building? To be honest with you, I’ve been targeted by Butterfly too. Like your father, I now want to kill Butterfly," Han Fei stopped the man: "I have no other choice, that thing has already crawled out from the depths of nightmares. It’s getting closer and closer to me, and just a few dozen minutes ago, I saw it."

The man instinctively kept his distance from Han Fei, then he shook his head: "Impossible. No one but my father could live after seeing it, nor does anyone have the ability to make it appear."

"I don’t know how things have developed to this point. Initially, I was just acting, but I accidentally assisted the police in solving the Human-body Puzzle case from ten years ago and caught Butterfly’s tail. Later, I got into a feud with it in the school Kaidan case and broke one of its wings. Let me put it this way," Han Fei stared at the man’s face, the horror from the Deep World unabashedly surging in his eyes: "Your father fought with Butterfly for so long without a clear victory. Whereas my companions and I, we’ve beaten Butterfly once."

As Han Fei spoke, his aura was completely different from before, the blood-soaked sensation overwhelming, as if beneath his refined exterior hid an Evil Ghost that had escaped from the depths of Hell.

To the Spider’s adopted son, he seemed not at all like an actor but more like a Butcher who only appeared during the transition between Midnight and Dawn.

The man’s face grew even paler, and after a long pause, he finally stopped walking.

"Since you can see it, it means you’re not far from death. I don’t know how I can help you. My father didn’t tell me anything. He only said to me in his last moments..." The man’s face as pale as death looked at Han Fei: "He said I am Butterfly; he never defeated Butterfly because of me, and he never lost to Butterfly because of me. I still don’t understand the meaning of his words, perhaps the thing that plagued him had once crept into my mind. To kill that thing, he’d have to kill me, and in killing me, he would lose."

Han Fei noted every word the man spoke. When Spider encountered Butterfly, this man was still a child; he was a pawn of Butterfly and the battlefield of Spider.

Although the man didn’t know the brutality of that fight, his words nonetheless provided certain insights to Han Fei.

"Butterfly is most proficient at exploiting human nature. I must avoid similar situations."

From the struggle deep in consciousness to the fights in reality, what Spider faced back then was just like what Han Fei was facing now.

In the Deep World, Han Fei was cursed by the Death Building where Butterfly resided, and in reality, that shadow resembling a person was also gradually closing in.

Butterfly rarely goes all out like this; most people aren’t worth Butterfly’s targeted attacks. In the past decade, probably only Spider, Han Fei, and Huang Ying have received such an honor.

"It seems I’ve misunderstood you somewhat, but I still can’t understand why you sold Spider’s brain to Eternal Life Pharmaceutical?" Han Fei had never heard of such a transaction before; the brain is the most mysterious part of the human body, holding all the secrets of one’s life.

"My father is the smartest man I’ve ever known, clever enough that even when his brain was diseased, he could still coexist with other Personalities and function like a normal person. However, he knew his brain was unique, and he knew I couldn’t preserve his brain, so he went to Eternal Life Pharmaceutical before he died." The man kept his gaze on the wind chime: "Everything was my father’s decision; I simply helped him fulfill his last wish."

As the man walked past Han Fei and out of the room, he mumbled as if to himself: "I hope you can survive, I remember my father mentioning one more thing to me, that creature has no weakness, but the more afraid you are, the more terrifying it becomes."

The man’s words reminded Han Fei of the hint Jin Sheng gave him before, that the more fear you feel in the Death Building, the smaller your chances of survival.

"Don’t worry, I have quite the guts," Han Fei waved it off: "You should take care of yourself too. By the way, I still don’t know how to address you?"

"My name is Wuzui; it’s the name my father gave me. He didn’t let me take his surname; he was worried about passing on his bad luck to me."

Pushing open the door, the man with pale skin disappeared into the corridor.