My ‘Healing’ Game
Chapter 439 Seventeenth Level

Chapter 439: Chapter 439 Seventeenth Level

"I feel like I’ve heard that voice somewhere before, like it’s been echoing in my ears all along. Who is speaking those words?"

Darkness engulfed the underground warehouse like a tide, surrounding everything in pitch black, swallowing all light.

My heart pounded violently, cold sweat soaking my back. Han Fei had no idea what was hidden in the darkness; he used all his strength trying to break through the barrier above, but the board didn’t budge an inch.

There was no way up, and no one would come to his rescue.

All he could do was search for a possible escape in this underground warehouse.

"Why struggle so fiercely to live? Wouldn’t it be nice to stay? Your gritted teeth and pitiful soul really make me sad."

Han Fei was certain the voice was coming from inside the warehouse; he suppressed his unease and walked down the escalator.

"The rate at which my mood is dropping is getting faster. If this continues, in at most ten minutes, my mood will fall below twenty, and by then, I’ll probably encounter something that I currently have no way of confronting."

No longer hesitating, Han Fei quickly moved through the containers, guided by the memories in his mind.

He was a very decisive person, sprinting wholeheartedly in the direction he was committed to, even if it meant dying on the way, he would never regret it.

"Bang!"

As Han Fei advanced, a secondhand tablet fell from a shelf, its screen glowing with a faint cold light.

"Isn’t this where I just arranged those secondhand goods?"

The tablet was barely used and almost new; it was Han Fei who had just placed it on the shelf.

At this moment, the cold light from the tablet’s screen became the only source of illumination in the underground warehouse, involuntarily capturing Han Fei’s gaze.

Someone in the darkness touched the tablet, and a video started playing. It showed a boy tied to a chair, enduring a beating and abuse, his body covered in wounds.

He seemed to be shouting something from his mouth, a pity that there was no sound in the video.

Han Fei dimly felt he recognized the video, but he couldn’t remember where he had seen it before. All he felt now was that the boy in the video looked more and more like himself when he was younger.

"Can pain be healed? If it truly can, how would you heal such a broken world?"

Every shelf filled with secondhand electronic goods was malfunctioning, all screens showing similar videos. Different children were locked in chairs, nameless, only identified by different numbers, ranging from 0001 to 9999.

The videos were silent, all the children screaming noiselessly, going through various kinds of training and inhumane "treatments," until they could no longer bear it and died in those cramped, cold rooms.

After each child’s death, their facial features would change and disintegrate, just as their personalities did.

The silent torment, the unrelenting treatments, and at the end, the facial features of all the dead children turned out just like the first child’s.

He could easily mimic a range of expressions, simulate various personalities, but the one thing he couldn’t do was show a genuine smile.

Once all the children on the screens had the same face, the dark, cold compartments opened to reveal an even darker room, as if they were a series of black boxes that could never be escaped from.

The child sat numbly on the chair, having been taken to another black room, where in that new room, the somewhat grown child acquired a brand new number—0000.

"Is this the meaning of your life? Stay here, you might as well stay here."

Han Fei’s heartstrings were plucked, and the shocking scene rooted him to the spot.

As he was drawn to the faces of the children, many memories that didn’t belong to him bubbled up in his mind.

The day-to-day interactions with his mother, various childhood memories of family, beauty and happiness bloomed like a flower on the cliffs of Abyss, bringing the four seasons to this world of despair.

But soon, his mother was diagnosed with a terminal illness, his father fled alone, and all the pressure fell on him.

Sickness, work, money—these messy things made up the semblance of life.

Memories that didn’t belong to Han Fei were forcibly fusing with his own, and he seemed to understand a lot about Han Fei; the memories didn’t touch the deep parts of the mind, they only wanted Han Fei to become him.

The mother was critically ill and money couldn’t be raised, his job was a scam, high-interest debts were owed, and most importantly, his hands were stained with blood—he had killed someone.

The weight of that memory felt as if he were instantly dragged into the deep sea, the immense pressure nearly bursting every blood vessel and nerve.

"Everyone around me always told me that good people would be rewarded. I gave money to beggars, fed stray cats and dogs, helped bullied delivery people. I firmly believed in fairness and justice, always considering others in everything I do, but why does it end up like this for me?"

His mind grew increasingly muddled, and Han Fei walked step by step deeper into the storage, his hand seemingly touching something.

Lifting the darkness, in the deepest part of the storage, Han Fei saw a Shrine.

This pure black Shrine looked similar to the one placed in the Secondhand Store, but it conveyed a completely different feeling.

The doors of the Shrine were likewise nailed shut, but there was something written on that door.

"Selling your soul and principles is not shameful, what’s shameful is not selling them for a good price. Now, you have a chance to start over in front of you. Open the Shrine, and you will obtain all the answers and an opportunity to be reborn."

It was like a system’s notification, yet it seemed to be some other voice, but under the guidance of that voice, Han Fei picked up a hammer that had fallen beside the Shrine.

It seemed that only by smashing the nailed shut door of the Shrine would all nightmares dissipate, all truths emerge.

Han Fei’s memory had fused with those that didn’t belong to him, and at this moment, he was under the influence of another kind of power, utterly dominated by anger, resentment, unwillingness, and pain.

Raising the hammer, Han Fei’s eyes were full of blood silk, enduring pressure unimaginable to ordinary people, he forcefully smashed the hammer down.

A dull sound rang out, bones broke, and fresh blood seeped from one of Han Fei’s little fingers.

Piercing pain brought back his brief clarity of mind; dropping the hammer, Han Fei covered the Shrine with the fallen black cloth, leaving no gaps.

"Is this your choice?" Multiple voices echoed in the underground storage, male, female, old, young, all present.

Their voices overlapped, as if at that moment they stood right behind Han Fei.

"You will regret this..."

The lights in the underground warehouse flickered a few times before coming back on.

As the light dispelled the darkness, Han Fei’s brain was filled with the system’s emotionless, icy prompt.

"Attention Player 0000! You have completed the Shrine Random Task of organizing the warehouse!"

"Not all souls in this world have a price, and you have made your choice!"

"Master of Shrine’s inner regrets have been amended by fifteen percent! You’ve received a large experience reward!"

"You have completed a Shrine Random Task and earned one opportunity to open the Item Bar. You may choose an item to bring into the Master of Shrine’s Memory World."

"Attention Player 0000! You have successfully leveled up to level seventeen! Add one Free Attribute Point!"

Sitting on the ground, leaning against the storage rack, Han Fei was still reeling from shock.

After the lights came back on, his mood value quickly recovered from nineteen to twenty-five.

"The task required me to arrange the warehouse before dawn... No, the random task of organizing the warehouse didn’t specify any requirements; it just reminded me to arrange the shelves before sunrise, asking me to price all souls clearly."

Han Fei now understood that pricing all souls included his own as well. If he had made a different choice just now, he might have ended up as one of the secondhand items on the shelves.

"The regret amendment has increased by another five percent, it seems the Master of Shrine faced a similar choice. However, he must have not resisted the temptation and chose to smash the Shrine’s door."

Han Fei looked up, his gaze settling on the Shrine tightly covered with black cloth, his heart still racing with fear.

"The real Shrine is hidden at the very back of the secondhand store, impossible to find unless you’re an employee here."

Rising from the ground, Han Fei, clutching his numb pinky finger, thought, "It’s painful, but it’s a good sign, indicating I might just ’break’ all ten fingers here."

After a thorough inspection of the Shrine, Han Fei discovered something strange: "This black cloth can completely cover the Shrine, but I remember, before I lifted the black cloth, a part of the Shrine was already exposed! Someone must have lifted the black cloth before I came in!"

Only three people had access to the warehouse: Huang Li, Pei Yang, and the shop Boss who Han Fei hadn’t met yet.

"Which of the three is more likely to be suspected?"

Han Fei didn’t waste time on this question, and instead added his level-up’s Free Attribute Point to Physical Strength.

His arms grew sturdier, and vitality surged through his veins as Han Fei’s physical fitness improved once again.

Now, not yet level twenty, his Physical Strength had reached twenty-eight points, almost breaking thirty.

"Every ten points in Physical Strength is a threshold; once I reach thirty points in Physical Strength, I may activate some Physical Strength-related abilities."

Walking towards the elevator, Han Fei’s mindset had completely changed from before.

After making his choice, he would walk a different path from the former Master of Shrine, no longer manipulated by the Shrine.

"Leveling up is easy in the Master of Shrine’s Memory World, where all tasks are equivalent to F-level difficulty. I must seize this opportunity!"

Easily pushing aside the partition, Han Fei, looking feeble, searched for Huang Li’s figure in the store, but he couldn’t find her after a long search.

"Where is she?"

Coming to the counter, Han Fei first found a first-aid kit and bandaged his finger with medicine and bandages, before looking at the computer inside the counter.

The inventory of goods had not been completed, yet Huang Li had left the secondhand store.

"Her cup of water is still hot; she must have just left."

Han Fei’s mood values were slowly recovering. As long as he didn’t leave the mall at night, the mood numbers would not drop again—at least that was the case from his experiment the day before.

"It’s almost one in the morning now, the mall is not safe, should I go look for her?"

Walking to the store entrance, Han Fei froze as soon as he stepped out of the door; he saw two men with their arms in casts sitting by the door of the secondhand supermarket.

These two must have been sitting by the store entrance for a long time. They wore identically styled black suits, and the fat one had both hands in casts, with a faint tiger tattoo barely visible on his chest. He was so fat that he couldn’t button up his suit.

The other man had scars on his face, giving off a very fierce look, but with his wrist dislocated and a bandage hanging around his neck, his fierceness was tinged with a hint of misery.

Scar-faced Man was holding a cigarette with the two fingers that he could still move, probably because the mall prohibited smoking, he didn’t dare to light it up.

They sat on an old newspaper, with a large bag of sunflower seed shells in front of them—they were probably too bored waiting, so they kept cracking sunflower seeds.

A ding-dong sound rang out, the store door opened, and when the two men saw Han Fei come out, they leaned on each other, struggling to stand up.

"You took that twenty thousand, we can’t explain it to our brothers; you must return the money today," Scar-faced Man’s voice was cold and icy, as his snake-like eyes fixated on Han Fei, looking incredibly vicious.

Loan sharks being crippled by the borrower—how could they operate or continue with debt collection if word got out?

"And what if I don’t pay?" Han Fei looked around, searching for Huang Li’s figure.

"Then we will follow you everywhere, no matter where you go. We will follow until you pay up!" The fat man also said viciously.

"Free bodyguards? Alright, then keep following me." Han Fei glanced upstairs; it was pitch dark deep inside the mall, with neither the two security guards nor Huang Li in sight.

"You..." Scar-faced Man, grinding his teeth, said, "We will also keep watching your store entrance, scaring away all your customers."

"It’s not my store anyway, doesn’t matter to me. But you guys should be careful, the customers who enter this store in the late night aren’t necessarily all alive." Han Fei walked up to the fatty, lifting his hands, making him step back twice in fright.

"Don’t be nervous, I just think it’s so cold, and you guys are still wearing suits, must be tough." Han Fei tried to help the fat man button his suit, but gave up after a few attempts: "Did you two see a female store clerk come out just now?"

"Saw her, she seemed to have gone up to the third floor." The fat man replied subconsciously. After finishing his words, he got a fierce glare from Scar-faced Man, immediately realizing his mistake, and quickly retorted: "Humph, don’t know."

"The third floor sells women’s clothing, and things often go missing there." Han Fei hadn’t finished speaking when he heard a loud bang, as if something had been thrown down from a high place.

"That sound appeared last night, too! After those two security guards went to check it out, they started acting abnormally." Looking into the dark interior of the mall, Han Fei waved to the two thugs: "I need to go to the third floor, you two coming with me?"