My ‘Healing’ Game
Chapter 616: Number Four

Chapter 616: Chapter 616: Number Four

Li Huang had clawed her way through the entertainment industry, having seen all kinds of people and all manner of disgusting things. She had hidden all her vulnerability deep within herself and armored herself with thick layers of protection.

She thought she would become tougher and tougher, but to her surprise, in this pitch-black abandoned hospital, there was a languid, sexy, and evil soul that could so easily shatter all her defenses.

Gazing at Han Fei’s profile, memories of rumors related to Han Fei surfaced in Li Huang’s mind.

Only after meeting him in person did she realize that those rumors had not been exaggerated, but rather they were understated.

There were no surveillance cameras installed on the third and fourth underground floors; these areas were outside of the script. If the audience wanted to see what was happening, they could only rely on the miniature camera Han Fei had affixed to himself. But just when the oil paintings started to have problems, Han Fei reached out and took down the last camera.

Just how terrifying an actor can become without the supervision of an audience is a question only a very few "lucky ones" know the answer to.

Red paint slid down from the ceiling, and under the nourishment of fresh blood, all the paintings came to life. The deformed children in them poked their heads out, looking towards the Plastic Surgery Hospital engulfed in darkness.

This hellish scene made Li Huang scream; she was almost suffocating. In her view, no one could face such fear directly.

But whenever she was on the verge of collapse, her gaze would always move back to Han Fei, who, even in such circumstances, still stood steadfast in the darkness.

"Does he not feel fear at all?"

Holding a prop corpse, Han Fei stopped in the center of the corridor. Every Shrine task tore his consciousness apart and then reassembled it, honing his will as sharp as a blade’s edge.

In reality, hatred was greatly limited; even a Butterfly could only continuously undermine and manipulate a person through psychological suggestion. Someone with a will as strong as Han Fei’s was what a Butterfly feared the most.

Because they would never waver easily, their hearts forever loyal to themselves.

At this moment, although Han Fei was covered in red paint and immersed in illusions, his consciousness remained very clear.

The young man who was once hunted by the twisted Outsider could now, with various powers, kill and severely injure Hatred.

The blow Kuangxiao wielded not only extinguished the Black Fire on his fingers but also shattered the fear of Hatred in Han Fei’s heart.

"Butterflies never kill with their own hands, what about you?"

Han Fei stared straight at the other end of the corridor, where, from the thick darkness, a tall and thin man emerged.

He was silent and wore the clothes of a Painter, his right hand carrying a small bucket filled with "red paint."

This wasn’t the first time Han Fei had encountered the Painter. In fact, the Hatred in the Plastic Surgery Hospital had always been looking for people related to the Butterfly, trying to figure out what exactly had happened in the Death Building.

As the most mysterious Hatred in the Plastic Surgery Hospital, the Painter knew a lot, and he was also very aware of what made the Death Building Area special because that area was once someone’s growing place.

"You’ve missed the only chance you had," Han Fei said unceremoniously. Before Xu Qin became Hatred, the three Hatreds of the Plastic Surgery Hospital could have easily crushed the Death Building, but now the situation was reversed.

The faceless woman was about to have her soul scattered, and the kindly intention of the little white shoes was controlled by Han Fei. Excluding the Mirror God, the Death Building Area had already harbored two embodiments of hatred, and the Plastic Surgery Hospital no longer had the ability to destroy the Death Building.

In the corridor filled with oil paintings, Han Fei and the Painter stood on either side, neither in a rush to make a move.

Han Fei watched every move of the Painter, who was also quietly sizing up Han Fei, seemingly trying to ascertain something.

After a long time, the Painter lifted his left hand and tore off the sleeve of his right arm.

On the ghastly white arm, there was a wound that had been gouged out, resembling the number "4".

This wound had never healed, and the black blood oozing from it would constantly drip into the small bucket he held in his right hand.

"Is the red paint the Painter uses actually his own blood?"

Remembering the cursed text he had seen before, Han Fei gazed at the number 4 wound on the Painter’s right arm, "What exactly is your relationship with Orphan Number Four? If you two are friends, then perhaps we shouldn’t be fighting each other, because the person he most admired and aspired to be was me."

Han Fei had already planned his moves before quitting the game; he intended to find an opportunity to negotiate with the Hatred in the Plastic Surgery Hospital at the Neutral Place, the Department Store, so he did his best to avoid any unnecessary conflict.

The Painter heard Han Fei’s words, but his expression remained unchanged, as if he had long since shed all human emotions, blending all of himself into his paintings.

The black blood flowing out of the number 4 wound and dripping into the bucket gave off a distinctive rotting smell—the kind of scent that might emanate from various emotions after they die and decompose.

The children in the oil paintings dared not approach the Painter, as if the usually kind and gentle father had suddenly gone mad with drunkenness, wielding a cleaver at random.

The faceless children hid all around as the Painter dipped his left hand into the small bucket and, after stirring, used it to draw a window on the ground.

On the other side of the window was a pitch-black city, with skyscrapers everywhere, each building concealing something incredibly terrifying.

Han Fei had seen this painting once before when he saved Chou Ba. The oil painting seemed to connect with another world; anyone falling into it would never return.

The silent Painter completed the painting, then pressed his single hand against the window he drew and pushed forcefully inward.

Something unimaginable happened—the painted window was pushed open!

A cold breeze blew from the window that had appeared from the painting, the temperature plummeted, and various screams along with the monster’s roars seemed to ring in one’s ears—the window concealed a nightmare.

Having done this, the Painter, whose eyes were already numb to everything, looked towards Han Fei and raised his left hand covered in the "red pigment".

In the Plastic Surgery Hospital’s basement fourth floor, all the oil-painted windows on the walls had been opened, and the faceless children playing outside, one by one, climbed over the windowsills and ran out.

They had lost themselves, chasing after false joys, like a horde of zombies trapped in a paradise.

There were too many oil paintings in the basement of the Plastic Surgery Hospital; the Painter probably had not even kept a precise count of how many there were.

The Painter was once powerless to change the children’s fates, only able to paint them thirty-one windows. Now, he still couldn’t change anything; having returned to this abandoned place, he could only repetitively paint the same scenes outside the windows. But no matter how beautiful the view outside was, the children looking out could never come back.

"Han Fei!" Li Huang called out loudly from behind, her throat almost rupturing from the effort.

Countless faceless children surrounded Han Fei, tugging at his body, trying to drag him towards the window the painter had depicted.

Looking at the faces of the children, Han Fei heard hysterical laughter emanating from the depths of his mind upon making contact with them.

This laughter was deeply pathological, laced with madness but, upon closer listening, one could also sense an indescribable sadness within.

A child with a healing-type personality had become a madman who could only engage in crazed laughter, and as an adult, he had even lost the capability to smile.

"Is this the most successful personality? Or the greatest failure?"

Under the influence of the laughter and the children, Han Fei step by step neared the black window.

The children who had lost themselves hoped Han Fei would become one of them, the laughter growing louder, Han Fei getting ever closer to that window.

Three meters, two meters...

Han Fei’s steps finally halted mere centimeters from the window, standing opposite the painter as if they were people from two different worlds.

"If you had encountered me just one night earlier, my will might not have been strong enough to fend off these things, and they would have pushed me into the window, locking me in darkness."

The Shrine Inheritance Task was the cruelest test of will, where Han Fei’s consciousness and body were torn apart within Fu Sheng’s shrine; he was on the brink of soul scattering when he successfully returned and was eventually pieced together again by ten shreds of hatred and love.

Broken and then reformed, the resilience of his will had far surpassed most people’s imaginations.

"No matter what I’ve gone through in the past, at least I’m still alive. Since I am alive, I will change things. On the road to death, I will lever fate. Just like how I changed others’ futures in the Shrine Memory World, I will change everything that comes after."

Eyes bloodshot, blue veins visibly throbbing on Han Fei’s face, he engaged in his final confrontation with the painter.

It seemed the painter couldn’t kill someone directly in reality, but his eerie ability could directly affect those able to see him. At this moment, Han Fei was under immense pressure, but that it was just pressure.

With the Black Box and having been through so much in the Deep World, Han Fei was probably the person least likely to submit.

No one could drive him mad with just illusions; he had already experienced the most thorough, most depraved form of madness.

The standoff across the window lasted a long time, until the building began to shake and the sound of alarms from outside became clearer.

Neither party yielded, and slowly, from the opened window on the floor, the voice of a child muttering to himself could be heard.

Upon hearing that voice, the painter’s numb gaze shifted slightly, and he closed the window on the floor.

The black painting, along with its dried bloodstains, gradually faded away.

The painter walked past the window, not stopping near Han Fei, but went straight towards the depths of the corridor.

He seemed unable to see Han Fei and Li Huang, pushing open the door of the room at the very end of the corridor.

The sight was shocking; the room was surprisingly vast, bathed in dark red, every brick etched with the smiling face of a child.

Their innocent, naive smiles contrasted starkly with the blood-red room, transforming what should have been cute visages into something horrifying.

"Is this the real Red Room? The children led here by Xia Yilan, did they complete their final transactions here?"

All medical equipment had been cleared from the room, leaving only an empty space with a red chair in the center.

This chair was positioned in the middle of the room, directly facing a black painting on the wall.

The painting was of a window that made it seem as if someone had once sat on the chair, forever staring at the window depicted on the wall.

As soon as Han Fei entered the room, the painter closed the door behind him.

Carrying a small bucket filled with his own blood, the painter came to the edge of the wall, staring blankly at the window.

Unlike other painted windows, this one seemed to be a work completed many years ago, its surface showing slight cracks.

After a quiet contemplation, the painter suddenly lifted the bucket with both hands, splashing an entire bucket of the "red paint" over the black window!

The black window was stained red, blood pearls slipping down, resembling a rain of blood within the room, the air filled with a mist of red.

As Han Fei wondered why the painter was doing this, he suddenly heard a knocking sound from the window.

Surprised, he looked at the black window portrait and saw that with the dropping of the blood pearls, a child’s silhouette appeared within the painting, wearing a hospital gown marked with the number "4."

"I didn’t know how to see him, so I could only draw myself inside that window he painted..."

Han Fei abruptly remembered the Curse Spell left by orphan number four: "Is the child inside this painting the number four kid?"

The knocking grew louder, and Han Fei stepped forward quickly, hearing the words spoken by number four behind the window.

"They have always been looking for such children, born in tragedy, raised in despair, losing everything under the mockery of fate. I am such a child, and so are they."

"These doctors never thought of healing us. The perfect personality was just a scam; the hospital was not a place of salvation, and that paradise prepared for the children did not bring happiness."

"I actually envy that person. Strangely enough, me, possessed with a self-destructive personality, would envy someone with a healing personality?"

"But there’s something even more bizarre. I, who wanted to destroy everything, ended up only killing myself; yet he, who had a healing personality, ended up killing all the children from his batch, except for himself."

"It’s said that after that bloody night, he was the only one left in the paradise. It was from that point on that the place became specifically for dealing with the hospital’s failures."