My ‘Healing’ Game
Chapter 458: The Truth Speaks for Itself

Chapter 458: Chapter 458: The Truth Speaks for Itself

The metamorphosed boy had returned to normal, sitting on the cold floor, clutching the dismembered doll in his hands.

Han Fei did not dare to approach the boy carelessly, for inside this seemingly ordinary child resided an extremely terrifying monster.

After experiencing so many things, Han Fei had slowly begun to understand what metamorphosis was all about.

Rather than calling it metamorphosis, it was more like the monster had torn off all its disguises and had turned into the image that had made the deepest impression in the Master of Shrine’s memory.

With the sunlight shining on his face, the boy blankly lifted his head, his tender little face streaked with tears, and then he scrambled to the woman’s bedside and burst into tears.

"People in the Memory World should only metamorphose in the dark now; sunlight can make them return to normal," Han Fei’s brows creased slightly. He still remembered the diary left by the original owner of his home’s shrine: "The day I entered the Memory World was December first. After that, the weather will get colder, and the days will get shorter."

Han Fei did not know what kind of dangers he would face in the future, this feeling of normal life disintegrating bit by bit, day by day metamorphosis, was truly unbearable.

Knowing that the Abyss lay ahead, yet unable to stop, he could only be carried forward by all the memories.

"Stop crying, your mom is going to be fine," Han Fei consoled the child before preparing to find the landlords to discuss, hoping the couple could help take care of the boy.

Clutching the package and heading to the staircase, Han Fei was about to descend when he suddenly felt a chill on his finger, the landlord’s ring suddenly giving a premonition of danger.

"Is it upstairs?"

Turning to look at the third floor, Han Fei coincidentally saw a woman in white clothes walking on the stairs as he turned his head.

"A tenant on the third floor?"

Without thinking further, Han Fei followed her, watching as the woman opened a door and entered.

"Hold on! That room..."

Han Fei stopped in the hallway on the third floor; he had clearly seen the woman enter room number thirteen, the room where someone had committed suicide before.

"It’s already daylight, why does this corridor still feel so full of Dark Energy?"

Edging over to the door of room thirteen, Han Fei was surprised to find the door ajar as if deliberately left open for him.

A chill ran down his spine as Han Fei gently pushed the door open; accompanied by a creaking sound, he entered room number thirteen for the second time.

Unlike the last time, he was alone.

"Is anybody here?"

One hand holding the package full of items, the other hand quietly gripping the handle of his knife, every nerve in Han Fei was on edge.

"Crack!"

Suddenly, the sound of a cup dropping came from the kitchen, and a rat ran through the glass shards scattered all over the floor.

"There’s still a living creature in this house?"

Almost as soon as Han Fei’s words fell, the scurrying rat began to convulse as if poisoned, its green-bean-sized eyes oozing blood before it collapsed amongst the glass fragments.

"Can you hear me? I know you’re in this house!" Han Fei began to retreat slowly, feeling as though he had stepped onto something, but he remembered clearly that the entrance to room thirteen was spotless, with nothing on the floor.

Resisting the urge to look down, Han Fei continued backing away, but the room door that had been open was now shut.

The rusty lock was fastened tight, trapping Han Fei inside the room.

"The homeowner committed suicide a few months ago, and nothing has happened in that time, which means she’s probably not the type of ghost that kills indiscriminately."

When encountering something strange, don’t panic; first, analyze the situation. If the other party’s obsession still lingers, then consider how to communicate with them.

If the other party is completely driven by a desire to kill and has gone utterly insane, then it’s even more crucial to calmly think about how to commit suicide to lessen the pain.

With various thoughts flashing through his mind, knowing that he could not open the door, Han Fei took the initiative and moved forward.

"I’ve heard you used to work at the Department Store? If it comes to that, you’re my senior. I’ve encountered a lot of strange things there recently, and I think I’m beginning to understand why you made such an extreme choice... To be honest, I’ve always had the same thought as you. The department store’s boss is a devil dressed in human skin; he’s hypocritical and perverted, and now I’ve been driven to a dead end by him."

Han Fei was trapped inside the room by the ghost of room thirteen, but the words he spoke made it seem as if he had come in on his own accord.

"I have nowhere to run, no one in the world believes what I say, everyone thinks the department store boss is a great philanthropist, only I have seen what lies beneath his mask!" Han Fei said as he spread open the package in his hand: "That devil’s hands are stained with blood, he has committed countless crimes, and every one of these old items represents a wronged soul."

A blood-stained red sweater fell to the ground, wrapped with some photos and a paper airplane folded from a love letter.

The rest of the items were of less concern, but as soon as that paper airplane touched the living room floor, the temperature in the entire room began to plummet.

"Could it be that this paper airplane belongs to you?" asked Han Fei, trembling as he picked up the paper airplane off the ground, cradling it in his palm.

In fact, as soon as Han Fei had seen the paper airplane in the basement, he decided to bring it with him because it looked almost identical to the one the woman on the third floor had thrown downstairs, just made of a different material.

At that time, Han Fei felt the paper airplane was related to the woman on the third floor, so as soon as he entered the apartment building, he kept walking around with that package.

Most unexpected encounters are likely the result of one side’s careful planning.

The bathroom door was pushed open, and the piles of toilet paper tumbled out.

A moment later, a charred hand grasped the doorframe, as if the ghost of room thirteen was about to appear.

Holding the paper airplane, Han Fei approached slowly; before the true owner of room thirteen could emerge, he grabbed the arm that had been scorched by a great fire.

"I seemed to have seen you in an illusion last night; I wondered why such an item would be in the store’s basement. Then I suddenly remembered you’ve been watching me; I’ve received the paper airplane you threw down."

Touching the deep secrets of the soul...

Unintentionally using his own power, Han Fei sensed pain, hatred, and intense regret from the charred hands.

"I truly regret it, but it’s too late now. I’m already on the department store boss’s radar, and he sees me as his next prey. Knowing that my days are numbered, I want to help you in these final days," Han Fei’s words really meant, don’t be too quick to kill me, I’m practically already a "corpse", keeping me alive might still be useful to you.

The same meaning, expressed in a different way, plus a little acting, becomes extremely compelling. That’s the art of language.

In the end, the ghost of Room 13 did not leave the bathroom. The hand, severely burnt by the fire, took the paper airplane from Han Fei’s palm, then crumpled it forcefully into a ball.

The fierce ghost’s charred skin began to peel off in chunks, slowly mixing with the cursed love letter, the words of affection gradually replaced by black stains.

Those words filled with love, now just looking at them makes one feel disgusted.

"Is it that love letter that caused you such tremendous pain? Who wrote that letter? After I leave today, I’ll do everything I can to bring him here!" Han Fei made a promise, but for him to keep his word, his own safety has to be secured first.

The sun slowly rose, but the temperature in Room 13 kept dropping. Accompanied by a piercing scream, Han Fei was pushed away forcefully by that hand.

Countless scraps of paper were stirred in the wind inside the bathroom, vaguely revealing a woman continuously shrieking.

Her neck hung from the window frame, and her burnt hands hysterically tore at the scraps filling the floor, while the rising sun gradually illuminated her increasingly indistinct face.

As she vanished for the last time, a paper airplane folded from a love letter flew out of the pile of scraps in the bathroom.

The temperature began to stabilize, Han Fei looked at the blood-stained paper airplane in front of him, and carefully unfolded it.

The sentences on the love letter that once spoke of love had been smeared away, leaving behind only a row of ferocious words written with a finger.

"The truth is a monster; it has a mouth that cannot speak. Every time the philanthropist leaves home, he locks it inside the house, imprisoning it with his conscience."

Continuing to read, there were a few crooked, large characters on the back of the love letter—Can you piece it together for me?

"Piece together what?"

Looking up, Han Fei realized there seemed to be a pair of eyes watching him from between the gaps in that pile of scraps.

"Are you asking me to piece together a complete pattern from these flower-patterned papers scattered around the room?"

Despite having experienced the Human-body Puzzle case, Han Fei himself was not adept at puzzle-solving: "It would be good if Wei Youfu were here, he really liked puzzles when he was alive."

Thinking of his neighbor from the Deep World, Han Fei took a deep breath. He never thought he’d one day feel homesick, and even more surprisingly, that it wasn’t for the rental in the real world, but for the most terrifying haunted house in Happiness Residential Community.

"I think they’ve completely healed me. Once I leave the Memory World alive, I’ll see if I can bring this ’puzzle’ out with me, as a local specialty for Wei Youfu."

Despite feeling sleepy, Han Fei sat on the bathroom floor and started to look at the scraps one by one.

He might not play with puzzles much, but his memory and insight ability were far above normal. To those strange symbols that looked the same to most people, he could see the anomalies at a glance.

A few minutes in, as Han Fei was becoming immersed, there suddenly came footsteps from the hallway.

The landlord couple rushed to the entrance of Room 13, and when they saw Han Fei seriously piecing the puzzle together inside the bathroom, they turned pale with fright.

Perhaps the scene was too horrifying; the couple dared to enter the house only with a mop and a broom in hand.

"Has this kid’s mind gone mad due to too much pressure? I told you not to keep pressing them to pay the rent, to spare others where you can, and now look, the person has gone crazy, right?"

"Shut up." The landlady entered the living room with a mop, followed closely by her husband.

"Could he be possessed by that woman who hung herself? Coming into this room early in the morning to fiddle with pieces of paper? Is he still laughing?"

"Shut up, will you! You’re so noisy!" The landlady quickened her steps, and Han Fei also saw them.

"Big sister? Uncle? What brings you here?" Han Fei dusted himself off and got up from the ground.

"What are you doing in this room? Who let you in? Did you make a copy of the key secretly?"

"You may not believe it, but when I came back from work, I saw a woman with burnt hands standing at the door of the boy’s home on the second floor, looking very pitiful. But she was very kind and told me that the boy’s mother was imprisoned in the bedroom, hoping that I would save her." Han Fei said very sincerely, with no trace of lying on his face.

"And then?"

"So, I went to check on the boy’s mother, and sure enough, she was really imprisoned in the bedroom, covered in tubes! I was so scared at that moment, I immediately called for emergency assistance." Han Fei recounted with such vivid emotion that it made the landlord couple feel as if they were there.

"You were really scared at that time?" The couple looked at Han Fei, somewhat puzzled.

"After rescuing the boy’s mother, as soon as I came out, I saw that girl heading upstairs, so I followed her to thank her."

"So you chased her directly into Room 13?" The landlords were slightly swayed; they seemed to have encountered some supernatural events before.

"That’s right, the girl was very pitiful, and her death seems to have other reasons; I suspect it’s related to these scraps of paper in the bathroom." Han Fei showed symbols on different pieces of paper: "Putting these together, you can roughly make out the shape of a well, and there seems to be some writing next to it. Once I piece all the scraps together, I should be able to reconstruct it."

The landlord couple wanted to say more, but the ambulance had arrived by then, and the little boy downstairs was still crying, so they hurried down again.

"Being a landlord is not easy, especially when you have a bunch of tenants like me."

With the landlords out of the way, Han Fei focused entirely on piecing together the puzzle; he wanted to figure out the message the Fierce Ghost was trying to convey in the shortest time possible.

Puzzles are always the hardest at the beginning and get easier as you progress. Over forty minutes later, Han Fei had covered the floor of the room with the shredded pieces of paper, and he had made an extremely important discovery.

All the scraps of paper put together formed a well, and it was surrounded by very special funeral customs.

Han Fei didn’t know much about these things, but just a short while ago, Huang Ying had told him something in the real world.

An old historian had suddenly died while playing "Perfect Life," and his greatest discovery was that all NPCs in the game followed a set of burial customs completely different from those in the real world, suggesting that there was once a deity governing death in the game.

Forcing himself to remember all the odd symbols, Han Fei’s puzzle was nearing its end.

He couldn’t understand the symbols, but he could roughly make out the meanings of some of the drawings.

"It seems that if you throw certain things into the well, you can reap good fortune and blessings. Later, someone built a shrine for the well, and some people began to try pushing the most important ’things,’ such as friends and relatives, into the well."