My ‘Healing’ Game
Chapter 438: The Sound from the Depths of the Warehouse

Chapter 438: Chapter 438: The Sound from the Depths of the Warehouse

"Even if your heart stops beating, you can still live here, forever and ever..."

Han Fei suddenly opened his eyes and sat up from the bed, his clothes soaked with cold sweat.

"Did I really fall asleep so easily? And in the Master of Shrine’s Memory World?"

He opened the Attribute Panel and found that his mood value had recovered to sixty, which was enough to go out normally.

"It seems that sleeping can only restore the mood value up to sixty. I haven’t felt truly happy in this Memory World yet." Rubbing his slightly groggy head, Han Fei changed into dry clothes: "How long have I slept? My memory seems a bit blurred; have I forgotten something?"

He pulled open the curtains, and it was already dark outside. Han Fei had slept right through to the evening.

"Maybe I was just too tired."

After washing up, Han Fei went into the kitchen and cooked the last bit of rice into porridge.

"If I can survive tonight and make it till dawn, I need to buy more supplies to store at home and also check on the mother of the Master of Shrine. Maybe I can uncover some secrets from her."

By around nine in the evening, Han Fei put on his work clothes and walked to the door.

To avoid walking at night after midnight, he chose to go to work early, a rare display of dedication these days.

When he opened the door, Han Fei heard a system prompt in his mind as he stepped out.

"Player 0000, please note! Your current hunger level is twenty, physical condition is good, and your current spirit is slightly low with a mood value of sixty. Do you choose to go out?"

"Yes."

The system’s prompt completely woke Han Fei. This was within the Master of Shrine’s Memory World; he needed to remain highly alert.

"The system always prompts before I leave. It seems the system has become more humanized in the Master of Shrine’s Memory World. It talks more... Wait, is the voice in my mind really the system’s voice?"

Han Fei stood at the door, realizing he couldn’t rely on the system’s voice to stay awake. It was only the second day. If he became used to the prompt and someday it suddenly disappeared or communicated something else, he might get lost.

"This must be the most difficult task I’ve undertaken."

As he left the rental unit, Han Fei listened to various sounds around him — TV commercials, a couple arguing over trivial matters, and the scolding of children.

These sounds felt incredibly familiar to Han Fei, as if he had lived here for a long time.

"Am I being assimilated by the Master of Shrine’s memories? I haven’t died even once, so why do I suddenly feel this way? Is it because of sleeping? But if I don’t sleep, the mood value will slowly decrease, and my body will be affected, leading to a dead end either way."

Slowly walking to the stairwell, Han Fei glanced towards the third floor. All sounds seemed to disappear between the second and third floors, and anything above the third floor seemed to belong to another world.

His steps unconsciously began to move, and step by step, Han Fei walked up to the third floor. When he stopped in front of room thirteen, his mood value started to drop again.

"Forget it, I should just go to work."

Running out of the apartment building, Han Fei gasped for air. He didn’t understand why he was afraid.

Turning his head up, he saw a window on the third floor left slightly open, with two hands clinging onto the windowsill and half a face peeking out, two pitch-black eyes staring dead at Han Fei.

A wad of paper was thrown from the gap in the window, and the half-face opened its mouth as if it wanted to say something to Han Fei.

After hesitating for a moment, Han Fei picked up the wad of paper from the ground and unfolded it.

Inside the wad, there was a drawing of a black symbol, resembling something shattered. Turning the paper over, he found a few twisted and crooked words—"You will also die."

"Is this a curse, or a warning?"

Han Fei stuffed the paper into his pocket without looking back and ran quickly toward the exit of the residential area.

When he reached the first alley, the homeless man, who usually ran out from the corner, simply stood there, grinned sheepishly at Han Fei, and said—Good people stay safe tonight.

"May you also be safe tonight," Han Fei replied thoughtlessly, but upon hearing this, the homeless man’s expression froze as if he had seen a ghost, and he quickly retreated into the corner with his small wooden box.

"Did I say something wrong? Or did he just see something a moment ago?"

Han Fei didn’t overlook this detail, but despite questioning the homeless man extensively, he couldn’t extract anything substantial, and instead frightened a lame dog into barking chaotically.

"This dog of yours is quite fierce," Han Fei recalled that the dog had never barked during his previous visits.

Not wanting to waste more time, Han Fei entered the second alley, where few of the houses had lights on, making it eerily quiet.

"Two alleys, a small park, then a stone bridge..." Han Fei had already memorized the route and initially planned to avoid the small park like last time. However, to his surprise, he saw the boy from house number seven sitting alone on the park swing.

With a blue backpack and his clothes muddy, the little boy clutched the swing as if he was confiding in someone next to him, though clearly, he was alone.

"Hey!" Han Fei stood outside the small park and shouted to the boy, "It’s getting dark. Hurry home! Don’t stay out by yourself!"

Upon hearing Han Fei’s voice, the boy seemed afraid that Han Fei would see his friend, whispered a few words behind him, then, clutching his large backpack, hurriedly ran toward Han Fei.

His face was covered in sweat, his clothes were full of mud, seeming as if he had played alone near the shallows.

"Uncle, please don’t tell my dad, I beg you."

"What time is it now? Why are you still outside?" Since learning that the boy was a ten-finger child, Han Fei had started paying special attention to him.

"My dad went to treat my mom’s illness, then he drove me out. He told me to play outside until after ten before coming home."

"Then you shouldn’t go to those dangerous places!" Han Fei helped the boy wipe the mud from his face, "What illness does your mom have? I don’t think I’ve ever seen her."

"Mom hasn’t left the house in several years; she always lies in bed, won’t talk, and is constantly wrapped in her blanket sleeping, as if she can never wake up."

"Don’t you usually talk much with your mom?"

"Dad always locks the bedroom door before going to work, and only when he comes back can I see mom." The boy’s words shocked Han Fei; he now strongly suspected that the boy’s mom might have been dead for some time.

"No matter what, you can’t just run around. You must be careful. You only can protect the people you want to protect by staying alive." Han Fei knew he had spoken harshly, so after sending the boy back, he looked again toward the park. The swing kept swaying back and forth as if inviting him to take a seat and play.

"This world feels increasingly abnormal."

Avoiding the small park, Han Fei walked a long distance to the stone bridge. Looking at Shahe, which flowed quietly through the night, he always felt an unconscious urge to jump down.

"Work, work, stop thinking so much!"

After crossing the stone bridge, Han Fei successfully reached the C entrance of the shopping mall. He glanced at his Attribute Panel; his mood value had dropped from sixty to fifty-five.

Entering the mall, Han Fei immediately saw the male security guard from last night—Li Daxing.

"Wow, you’re still alive, eh?"

"You work in that dead-end store; you’ll be the first to die if anyone does."

After politely greeting each other, they each went about their own business.

Han Fei entered the secondhand store where Huang Li and a young employee were talking. The gist was that the employee hadn’t finished his work, causing everyone to work overtime.

Possibly because Han Fei came in, Huang Li lowered her voice a bit to save face for the young employee.

"What happened?" Han Fei has always felt that arguing solves nothing, especially in this kind of world.

"The storeroom just received a huge shipment of goods, and the boss demanded it be sorted by tomorrow morning. This kid slacked off, not touching it all day long!" Huang Li was very upset, "I’ve already pulled two all-nighters, and I was hoping to get a decent sleep tonight, but it looks like I’ll have to stay and do overtime!"

"Sister Huang Li, we really had a lot of customers today, I wasn’t just sitting around." The young man sounded aggrieved, "I’ll go sort it out now so neither of you have to overwork."

"I’ll help you out; it’s a good opportunity to familiarize myself with the storeroom." Han Fei took initiative to stand by the young man. His work ethic was high, and many bosses formerly favored employees like him.

"We’ll have to do that." While Huang Li checked the accounts at the counter, Han Fei followed the young man through the secondhand store’s internal freight elevator down to the basement storeroom.

The basement storeroom was right next to the supermarket warehouse in the mall, separated only by a wall.

"Hey, newbie." The young man was much more relaxed in front of Han Fei, probably because they were about the same age. "How did you end up working the night shift here? Not to scare you, but you really need to be careful at night, this place isn’t clean."

It was only after following the freight elevator down that the young man whispered to Han Fei, "The old man who trained me here died a while back, right in this store, and it was really creepy."

"Can’t help it, I need the money," Han Fei said with a shy smile.

"The night shift does pay almost twice as much as the day shift, but not everyone can handle it," the young man shook his head, taking out his phone, "Let’s add each other as friends; I’m Pei Yang."

"What you said is giving me goosebumps. Can you be more specific so I can be prepared?" Han Fei also took out his phone and began to ask questions while adding the new contact.

"The boss doesn’t allow us to talk about it, and I guess he doesn’t fully understand what’s going on either. Just remember, don’t sleep in the latter part of the night and don’t stay in your room, it’s best to sit at the storefront. If anything unusual happens in the store, run immediately," Pei Yang genuinely warned Han Fei.

"Not allowed to sleep? But when I came back last night, Sister Huang Li had just woken up, and she seemed to have slept soundly?"

"Have you noticed..." Pei Yang suddenly paused and then very carefully said, "Has Huang Li been acting really odd lately?"

"What do you mean?"

"The old clerk who trained me was acting abnormally before he died—his personality, emotions, tone of voice, sometimes it was like he became a different person." Pei Yang’s fingers unconsciously clenched, and the sweat in his palms showed that he was now somewhat nervous and scared, "Let’s not talk anymore, just work, let’s work."

When Pei Yang said he would not mention it, he really didn’t say another word; he just kept his head down and worked, barely even interacting with Han Fei.

After sorting and placing the newly delivered secondhand goods for about forty minutes, Pei Yang made the excuse that he was going to miss the last bus and sneaked away.

Huang Li was especially angry when she found out, insisting on calling Pei Yang, but Han Fei stopped her.

After learning how to keep the accounts and memorizing the classification standards for various secondhand goods, Han Fei told Huang Li to rest first; he could handle the rest of the work himself.

A person’s energy is limited, and Huang Li had been watching the store last night and was busy in the store all day; her mental state was really poor now.

"You are almost a thousand times better than that boy. The boss really must have accumulated a lot of merit and done good deeds in his past life to have met such a good person like you." Huang Li was indeed exhausted, as one could visibly discern her weariness, "The goods downstairs, I’ll leave to you. It’s also fine if you can’t finish organizing them; I’ll tell the boss tomorrow."

"It should be fine before dawn," Han Fei replied.

Just as Han Fei had agreed, the system’s voice came in his ears: "Player number 0000, please be aware! You have successfully triggered the Shrine Random Task—Organize the Warehouse!"

"Organize the Warehouse (Shrine Random Task): You must organize the warehouse and clearly price all the souls before dawn."

Han Fei hadn’t expected that this would also trigger a Shrine Random Task; he initially thought organizing the warehouse was a minor matter, but now he didn’t dare to be careless.

"Does the warehouse also hide the Master of Shrine’s regrets?"

Ignoring Huang Li, Han Fei took the ledger and the inventory list and headed downstairs. When he entered the underground warehouse alone, his mood attribute actually began to slowly decline.

"It seems that whenever a ghost appears, my mood attribute drops. The rate of decline seems related to the ghost’s strength." Han Fei moved around the warehouse, opening various old goods boxes and parcels, and began pricing the old goods according to the store’s standards.

About an hour later, Han Fei’s mood value had dropped from fifty to forty-two. At this time, he felt the surroundings were extremely quiet; there were no footsteps or people talking in the shopping mall above, as if he was the only person left in the whole world.

"I’ve earned the ’Good Person’ title, and the speed of my mood value decline has slowed down a lot. If I hadn’t obtained that title at the beginning, would I even have been able to survive the second night?"

Han Fei arranged each of the old goods and attached price tags, placing them on the shelves of the warehouse.

He moved quickly, but even so, he couldn’t finish arranging so many old goods in a short time. When his mood value dropped to the thirties, Han Fei decided to leave the warehouse first.

He backed away, but as he turned around, the lights in the warehouse suddenly went out.

Darkness fell, and Han Fei inhaled a cool breath softly.

He could hear his own heart pounding rapidly in his chest, and his mood value began to drop quickly.

Trying to let his eyes adjust to the darkness, Han Fei remembered the placement of all the shelves; he groped his way back, not bumping into anything along his path.

But, as he climbed up the freight elevator, he found that the hatch had been covered someone, and he couldn’t open it at all!

"Even if your heart stops beating, you can still live here, live here forever..."

A faint voice reached his ears, sounding as if it came from his own mind, yet also as if it echoed from deep within the warehouse, seemingly calling Han Fei, urging him to come over.