My ‘Healing’ Game
Chapter 457: Crazy Speculation

Chapter 457: Chapter 457: Crazy Speculation

"Thank you for saving me just now. I’ll bring you food every day after work."

Han Fei’s knife was meant for Butcher, and as sunlight poured into the alley, he tucked the handle away, then reached into his chest pocket.

The homeless man recoiled in fear, his face filled with terror.

A moment later, Han Fei took out five hundred yuan. "It’s getting cold, buy a thick blanket to cover yourself, or find a place to stay if it’s too hard out here."

The homeless man didn’t dare to take the money from Han Fei; he dragged his wooden box and walked to the other side of the alley.

"A homeless man who refuses charity? What did he do before he became homeless?" Han Fei noticed the man’s dog. Even though the man was disheveled and in tattered clothing, he still played with the limping dog every day. It seemed that only the dog treated him as an equal, while the relatively clean dog represented his last shred of dignity.

"The safest course of action now would be to silence him, to prevent the investigation from following the homeless man’s trail back to me. But if I did that, what would be the difference between me and Butcher?"

Turning around to enter the alley, Han Fei walked up to the apartment building where he rented.

The Nurse had died; he was ready to check on the man’s home.

As he was about to go upstairs, a paper airplane stained with black smudges happened to land beside his shoe.

Looking up, he saw a window halfway open on the third floor, with a woman standing by it.

With an expressionless face, she looked at Han Fei. Her hands resting on the window sill appeared to have been burned by a great fire, charred black.

"Hello."

Han Fei raised his hand to greet her; after all, they were already somewhat acquainted. But in the blink of an eye, the woman had disappeared.

"It’s like she wasn’t looking at me, but at the store uniform I’m wearing."

Bending down, he picked up the paper airplane that had landed next to his shoe; it was marked with strange symbols that nobody could understand.

"Are these words? What is she trying to communicate to me?"

In the apartment he rented, a person long deceased greeted him daily. Most tenants would probably choose to move out, but Han Fei wanted to pay a visit and have a sit-down conversation.

"I seem to have seen her in an illusion yesterday..."

Upon entering the apartment building, Han Fei first went to his own home to retrieve the toy the Nurse’s child had lost. He placed it with the old lady’s parcels, then rushed to the Nurse’s doorstep.

Seven Finger and Eight Finger were loners, part of the Butcher gang. The Nurse, however, a fellow gang member, had a wife and child, which puzzled Han Fei. Could it be that the Nurse enjoyed playing house?

Knocking on the door, it took a while before a child’s voice came from inside: "Who are you looking for?"

"I’m your downstairs neighbor; we’ve met before." Han Fei slowed his speech, "Little buddy, your toy fell on the ground the other day; I picked it up for you."

"You’ve come to return the toy?"

"Yeah, I saw you seemed to really like those toys."

The lock rattled, and the door to the rental house swung open from the inside, releasing an unpleasant, strange odor.

The Nurse’s child struggled to grip the door, staring eagerly at the package in Han Fei’s hands.

"Are you alone at home?"

"Dad’s at work and hasn’t come back yet; mom’s sleeping in the bedroom." The boy was not wary of Han Fei, who, unapologetically, entered the house as if it were his own.

Once Han Fei was in the living room, the boy became a bit flustered, scratching his head, unsure of the situation and whether to close the door.

"Here you go, these toys are quite expensive." Han Fei took out the figurines from the package, instantly capturing the boy’s attention.

While the boy played with the toys, Han Fei surveyed the surroundings.

The rental house had only the most basic, worn-out furniture. Since entering, Han Fei noticed that everything in the room had an odd smell, as if the whole house was slowly rotting.

"Buddy, how long has it been since you last saw your mom?"

"A very, very long time..." The boy was still fixated on the figurine’s head, with the one representing his father being his favorite.

"Don’t you want to see your mom?"

"Dad won’t let me in; he’ll hit me." The boy’s head was down, his small hands gradually applying force, slowly working the figurine’s head loose.

"It’s okay, your dad isn’t back yet." Han Fei stood up and walked towards the bedroom, but as his hand touched the doorknob, he noticed in the corner of his eye a picture frame upside down on the TV.

Picking up the frame to set it right, he saw the photo only had the woman and child; the Nurse was nowhere to be found.

"Why isn’t your dad in any of the photos in your house?"

"He..." The boy fell silent, holding his breath while he continued to pry the figurine’s head off.

Seeing that the boy did not respond, Han Fei didn’t press further. He tried to turn the bedroom doorknob, only to find it locked.

"The keys are with my dad; mom won’t open the door without his permission," the boy’s voice seemed a bit different.

"Your mom loves you so much; how could she bear not to see you for weeks? I’m suspicious that your dad might have done something bad to your mom." Han Fei smiled gently. "Can I try to open the door with a bit more force?"

"Alright, but a locked door can’t be opened without the key."

"Since you agree, I’ll give it a try," Han Fei kicked at the door lock!

A loud noise shattered the early morning calm; curses came from downstairs, but Han Fei didn’t care at all.

Enduring the pungent odor, he looked into the bedroom. A woman, her body pierced with various IV tubes, lay on the bed, surrounded by foul-smelling medicines. Her eyes were almost cried blind, and her ears and mouth were all sealed.

If not for her body twitching slightly from pain, Han Fei might have thought the woman had been dead for some time.

"Is Six Fingers experimenting on this woman?" Han Fei immediately took out his cell phone to dial for an ambulance. He dared not touch the IV tubes carelessly, afraid of accidentally worsening the woman’s injuries.

While Han Fei was carefully preparing to communicate with the woman, the boy appeared at the bedroom door, not knowing when he had arrived. In his hands, he held a toy that represented his father, dragging the figure’s leg with his left hand and clutching its head with the right.

"Dad said he’s treating Mom. If she’s not cured, the disease on her body will infect us and make us suffer," the boy earnestly repeated what Six Fingers taught him, his expression growing more bizarre.

"Did your father ever tell you exactly what disease your mother has?" Han Fei’s left eye began to change, and suddenly he recalled something. The boy in front of him was a classmate of the child killed by his own father—the one who witnessed his father murder his mother. That’s why the doll representing the mother had its head snapped off in that child’s hands.

Now, the boy was holding the same type of toy, and as soon as he got it, he started furiously pulling at the head representing his father, as if he wanted to kill his dad in that manner.

A very naive notion, but also truly terrifying.

"Dad said there’s another person hidden inside Mom, and this is the only way he can draw out that bad person," the boy stepped towards Han Fei. "Dad only became my dad recently. Every time he enters this world, he becomes my father. He said he’s been watching me for a whole ten years, he knows everything about me, he considers me his child, but... I’ve only seen him for a few weeks."

The more the boy spoke, the more deranged his tone became, his childish face opening and closing his mouth.

"Dad knows everything about my family. He said my real dad is dead. Since he’s dead, how can he still cling to the living’s heart and not leave? So he’s going to cure Mom. He said both Mom and I belong only to him, and can only belong to him," the boy was almost upon Han Fei. He walked around his mother’s sickbed, seemingly not at all surprised by the scene in the bedroom.

Han Fei hadn’t expected this situation and calmly analyzed the boy’s words.

From the seemingly incoherent words, a lot of information was revealed.

The boy’s biological father was not Six Fingers, but someone else. His mother, unable to forget the man, raised the boy alone while still loving her husband.

Then Six Fingers appeared. For them, the Shrine Memory World was like players playing "Perfect Life." Six Fingers did everything in his power to make the boy’s mother forget the boy’s biological father.

Unfortunately, he spent ten years and still hadn’t killed the "person" in the woman’s heart.

Looking at the woman pierced with IV tubes, Han Fei could imagine the torture she had undergone, which gave him a certain shock.

Combining this with the lawless actions of Seven Fingers and Eight Fingers in West City District, a flash crossed Han Fei’s mind!

"Ten Fingers entering the Shrine Memory World is just like players entering the unrestricted game ’Perfect Life.’ They can do whatever they want, even torture someone to death in memory thousands of times without consequence."

"If the Shrine Memory World is centered around a shrine and based on the deepest obsessions of the Unspeakable, could the ’Perfect Life’ game also have been built on the foundation of a certain shrine?"

"To support such a colossal game, to divide it into the Shallow and Deep worlds, an ordinary shrine certainly couldn’t do it, but what about the Black Box?"

This somewhat crazy speculation instantly occupied Han Fei’s mind, until his clothes were suddenly pulled, bringing him back to his senses.

"Uncle, what are you thinking about?"

Han Fei’s thoughts were interrupted, and he looked straight ahead.

"Dad didn’t come home on time today, and he didn’t feed me and mom our medicine on time." The little boy, holding a doll whose head had been twisted off, had a creepy smile on his face that no child should be capable of, "Uncle, would you like to become my new dad?"

Taking a step back, Han Fei saw that the boy in his left eye had mutated; half of his head kept spurting out flesh and blood, soon about to engulf both him and Han Fei.

Without hesitation, Han Fei immediately grabbed the boy’s arm, protecting the boy as he crashed toward the bedroom window.

The Butcher must have had deeper reasons to choose to become this child’s father, perhaps because the boy was terribly afraid after the mutation, or maybe the boy knew some secrets. Regardless of the reason, Han Fei didn’t want to stand by and watch the boy mutate before his eyes.

He wanted to pull the boy out of the flesh and blood and leave the room with the child, but the bedroom window was nailed shut with wooden boards, making it impossible to break through.

"Bang!"

With all his might, Han Fei felt his bones were about to fall apart.

"You come be my dad! Mom still needs someone to take care of her! Please, please stay!"

Ignoring the boy, Han Fei continued to strike, until another toy given to him by another child fell out of his pocket and onto the floor.

The already cracked toy shattered with the impact.

Han Fei didn’t have time to feel sorry for the toy. He bent down to pick it up, but another hand was quicker than his.

"How come you have this toy too?"

From the broken toy, a drenched child vaguely scampered out, blocking the mutated monster.

Seizing the opportunity, Han Fei finally managed to remove two wooden boards, and sunlight fell upon the two children.

The drenched child disappeared, and the mutated boy also began to slowly return to normal.

Standing beside the window, Han Fei felt a lingering fright; he realized he had severely underestimated the dangerous nature of the world’s mutation.

"As time goes by, people in this world will become more and more insane, and the monster inside everyone might be released."

That thirty-day survival challenge was a certain death mission, and perhaps also a wish that could never be fulfilled.

"This child, after mutating, was ten times more ferocious than Li Long and Li Hu combined. The Butcher must have chosen this child after meticulous selection. I need to maintain a good relationship with this child, so when the world fully mutates, I too will have an extra layer of protection."