My ‘Healing’ Game
Chapter 452: All Roads Lead to the Underworld, Though They Differ

Chapter 452: Chapter 452: All Roads Lead to the Underworld, Though They Differ

Standing in the corridor on the third floor of the mall, he gazed at the women’s clothing store’s display window, where the mannequins dressed in colorful outfits all bore the same expression pasted across their faces.

They were looking at Han Fei, and Han Fei was looking back at them, until one of the mannequins couldn’t help but blink.

Goosebumps rose on his neck, and Han Fei had no idea how many ghosts were hiding on the third floor; he steeled himself and approached the women’s clothing store where Huang Li had once lingered.

The display window now featured a new mannequin, clad in clothing similar to Huang Li’s. Upon closer inspection, he found she also bore a resemblance to Huang Li, from the wide-open eyes to the full lips, and the trail of blood flowing down from her lower abdomen.

In a certain instant, Han Fei felt all the mannequins were looking at him, each mannequin seemed to possess its own life. They didn’t harbor any direct malice towards Han Fei; they merely wanted to keep him there, to bend his arms and legs, to fold him into one of them.

Countless gazes from the darkness fixed on Han Fei, at first they only watched, but as darkness spread, heads began to pop out from the shop windows, dressed in brand-new clothes, reaching out their hands towards Han Fei.

The fitting room curtains kept trembling, and Han Fei arrived at the spot where he first encountered the woman in red. The store’s floor was piled with tried-on clothes, yet that customer was still not satisfied, as if what she sought was not a garment she liked, but the skin and body she had lost.

Skin was but a garment for the soul, the mall owner had stolen his wife’s favorite garment, and now his wife had come back to collect her debt.

The mall’s intercom crackled with the sound of static, as if a child was laughing happily. Midnight’s music began to play, the low and oppressive melody enveloped all the moving shadows in the night.

Sharp and pleasant, slow and gentle, it was like a caged oriole singing, only its throat had been stuffed with blades, each verse of the song mixed with blood.

The Master of Shrine’s illusions were getting worse, the sounds from his left and right ears, once distinct, now conjoined, and when real and unreal became indistinguishable, that was when Han Fei thoroughly succumbed.

He could hear his own heart beating in time with the drumbeats in the music, growing more and more frenzied, as if about to burst out of his chest.

That urgent and pressing sensation came from all around, the mall was slowly transforming into a prison and labyrinth, trapping him forever within.

"You will die here too, just like me, just like all of us..."

Giggling echoed within the women’s clothing store, as the full-length mirror reflected a woman gesturing with outerwear, changing red garments one after the other, until she peeled off the last human skin.

A chest impaled by a steel bar retained a black hole, and within the reflection, the hole over the chest perfectly framed Han Fei’s face.

The woman turned slowly, and the reflection of her in all the mirrors looked at Han Fei, her hands held upward. Han Fei felt his neck being choked, the strength far beyond anything he could resist.

Li Daxing was terrifying, yet he was only the weakest one here.

His feet gradually lifted off the ground, a strong sensation of suffocation turning Han Fei’s cheeks purple. He felt that if he didn’t flee now, he might truly die here.

Swinging the Rebirth Saber, using the Master of Shrine’s five broken fingers to grasp at his own neck, as he drew blood from his neck, the intense sensation of suffocation eased slightly.

"Don’t stay long on the third floor."

Giving up on searching for the mall owner’s ex-wife, Han Fei rushed towards the upper levels.

The previously normal elevators had all turned into tongues slick with saliva, hanging down from atop the mall. The ribbons and light chains dangling from the ceiling transformed into strings of black hair, and the lights embedded at the very top were like open eyeballs.

Grotesque, eerie, chilling.

Running madly on his tongue, racing against the God of Death and Fierce Ghosts, Han Fei barely made it to the fourth floor, where he was first met with the sight of an old man.

The other wore the same uniform as him, with a work badge hanging on his chest.

When the old man saw Han Fei come up, he was also surprised, his steps faltering as he staggered toward Han Fei.

Opening his mouth, he seemed ready to say something to Han Fei, but Han Fei only noticed that the old man’s uneven, yellow teeth were covered with a large amount of sawdust.

"You’re here to take over for me, aren’t you? Is it time to switch shifts? I’ve finally waited for you, I thought you’d never care about me again," the old man picked up speed, moving like a giant insect, his limbs flailing swiftly forward, his body severely twisted.

"The one who’s here to replace you is called Li Daxing," Han Fei continued upward, climbing onto the elevator, he also saw the back of the old man’s head.

The back of the old employee’s head was hollowed out, with a large hole remaining, from which moldy and stinky sawdust constantly sprinkled out.

"Wait, wait for me, wait for me!" the old man also climbed onto the elevator, using his hands and feet, his facial expressions growing more and more distorted.

"Is this the corporate culture of the mall? Is everyone this enthusiastic?" Han Fei couldn’t shake off the old man chasing him closely, he now had to be extremely careful; if he slipped by accident, he feared he might never get up again.

The benefit of adding physical strength was revealed at this moment, Han Fei reached the fifth floor before the old man could catch up.

The air was thick with a foul smell, and there was also a faint glow in the darkness, Han Fei shook off the old man and decided to stay on the fifth floor.

The first time he saw Li Daxing, the man was holding something and standing on the fifth floor; Han Fei suspected that what Li Daxing held was his missing colleague.

The smell emanating from the deli was so pungent it could knock someone out; Han Fei looked at the shop with small lanterns hanging and before he got close, he heard the sound of a cleaver chopping on a cutting board, chunks of meat splattering onto a white cloth; the chef seemed to have gone mad.

Gazing from afar, Han Fei who entered the shop turned to look at the kitchen, the chef standing with his back to him was tall and imposing; however, beside his chopping board were laid out nothing but cleavers and axes.

The ingredients the chef used were not taken from the refrigerator; instead, they came from a suitcase next to the kitchen.

After chopping the meat on the cutting board, the chef kicked the suitcase aside, he forcefully opened a cabinet door, which was crammed full of black suitcases.

Pulling out any suitcase at random, it was still stained with dark blood.

Unzipping the suitcase, the chef who stood with his back to Han Fei suddenly stopped his work; the suitcase was empty, nothing inside.

Turning slightly, the chef’s neck stretched out, his head bent backward, a bloody face fixed its gaze on Han Fei: "So... you’ve come here."

Dragging the suitcase with one hand and carrying in the other a cleaver with a thick back for chopping meat, the chef burst out of the kitchen.

"Have you worked yourself into madness?"

Han Fei ran for his life, because the dead in this store were not as simple as just one or two.

After the chef chased Han Fei out of the deli, all his cabinets full of suitcases were moving, as if the "food" inside was ready to come out.

The mall had now become very unfamiliar, Han Fei saw many paths before him, but it seemed each path was a dead end.

"Dragging a suitcase and still able to run this fast? If you catch me today, won’t my nearly thirty points of physical strength have been added in vain?"

Han Fei had no recollection of the cooked food store’s chef; he had never made contact with the person after entering the Memory World, so now he could only speculate based on experience.

In the men’s clothing area on the fourth floor, the elder dressed in the secondhand store’s uniform seemed to be Pei Yang’s master, the old man who had died in the store some time ago, leading to the deduction that the chef must also be someone who died in the mall.

It was unknown if it was because of the shrine, but it seemed all who died in the mall were trapped here forever.

There was more than one cooked food store on the fifth floor, and although other stores didn’t have a mad chef, there were customers sitting in the darkness, all of them with their backs to Han Fei, as if they were waiting for the chef to serve the dishes.

When Han Fei saw Li Daxing on the fifth floor, he too must have become one of these customers.

The sound of running approached, and some of the customers who had been sitting with their backs to Han Fei slowly turned their heads. Their bulging red eyes fixed on Han Fei as the blood-soaked buns in their hands dropped to the floor, their bright red tongues slowly licking their cracked lips.

They had found something tastier to eat.

One by one, the customers stood up. Their clothing varied—some were smartly dressed, others ragged—they came from different places and had different educations, yet when they saw the fresh, running flesh, they eagerly gave chase.

Some pretended to be gentlemen, whispering reproachfully, while their hidden hands were ready with knife and fork.

Others took out ropes and tossed them in front of Han Fei, claiming to want to save him, but greed was written all over their faces.

Each customer pretended in front of others, no one dared to openly suggest sharing Han Fei, but everyone who came to gawk at him harbored such thoughts.

Han Fei also didn’t understand why the Master of Shrine had such crazed illusions; he felt that after many experiences, the Master of Shrine was becoming extreme, uncontrollably leaning towards the abyss.

"I cannot be caught by them!"

With all his might, Han Fei escaped from the encirclement of customers. In such a situation, he couldn’t even think of searching for Li Daxing’s colleague; it was good enough that he could save his own life.

The stench of the cooked food area gradually weakened, and the small lantern hanging at the restaurant’s entrance also became blurry. Han Fei clutched his chest, gasping for air.

High tension, extreme exertion—both his body and mind were under tremendous stress.

Bending over, Han Fei didn’t know where he had hidden himself. His hearing was starting to blur, and Huang Li on the mall’s loudspeaker was no longer singing but emitting painful roars and screams, a sound that hardly resembled that of a human being.

His heart thumped wildly, his veins emerging on the surface of his skin and just as he was reaching his limit, a rustling noise suddenly came from above his head.

A faint glow reflected on the floor before him. Han Fei turned to look behind him—the TV on the shelf had been turned on without him realizing, and a woman with disheveled hair and a bleeding abdomen appeared on the screen, wearing a bright red dress, her mouth emitting an involuntary laughter.

She walked forward step by step on tiptoes, as if dancing.

Her slender hands extended to both sides, slowly reaching the unfinished concrete platform.

People watched the madwoman in astonishment, this beautiful, insane elf.

Her wounded feet stepped into the dust; she gazed at the huge building still under construction and slowly lifted her head.

Her mouth opened as if she was saying something, until she took a wrong step and fell down!

The woman on the TV screen plummeted downwards, but Han Fei heard the sound of wind next to his own ear!

Looking up, that hideous face was right above him, the woman’s features almost torn apart by the biting wind!

Instinctively swinging upwards with his Rebirth Saber, Han Fei struck nothing and looked around anxiously. All the TVs had been turned on, the black and red screens replaying the woman’s falling sequence endlessly.

"It doesn’t seem like she committed suicide?"

The woman’s final state was clearly abnormal; she laughed too terribly, much more frightening than crying.

Moreover, Han Fei saw it very clearly, the woman had accidentally missed her step at the end.

"Her dancing looked like that of a puppet on strings."

Hurrying out of the electronics area, but where next could he flee?

The whole mall was like a devil’s crucible; everything was transforming. Only now did Han Fei truly understand the horror of the world’s metamorphosis.

The Master of Shrine was slowly going mad; hallucinations and memories based in reality were twisting together. If not for the blessing of the Master of Shrine’s mother, if the previous task hadn’t been completed, perhaps the entire Memory World would become like this.

"The task requires me to survive thirty days, but in reality, normal players definitely couldn’t last until the end. I must become the new Master of Shrine before the world degrades to its worst state."

Screams rang out beside his ear, and Han Fei was forced to run toward the top floor; he didn’t dare stop for a second.

The mall had descended into utter chaos; Han Fei looked at the elevator that had reached its limit and silently turned around.

Passageways surrounded him, yet there was no path to escape.

Hungry customers, silently moving suitcases, a crazed chef, and countless monsters beyond Han Fei’s imagination crawled out from the darkness, endless in number.

"I originally thought these things would appear little by little, at least giving me some mental preparation."

Backing away, the shadows crept towards Han Fei like a rising tide.

They were slowly approaching, eager to drag Han Fei with them.

"If everyone falls into the darkness, then who in the world will come to help you?"

Seemingly with no other choice, as he backed away step by step, Han Fei reached a small store on the top floor. To keep the darkness from engulfing him, he climbed onto a table at the store entrance.

At this moment, he stood at the mall’s highest point, the railing under his feet.

Turning around, Han Fei looked down from the seventh floor.

In the center of the first floor of the mall, a crowd of figures, some familiar, some strange, were looking up at him, as if they were waiting for him to jump.