My ‘Healing’ Game
Chapter 743: Today is Also Full of Misfortune

Chapter 743: Chapter 743: Today is Also Full of Misfortune

Water droplets slid down the mirror. Shen Luo stared at the smart home assistant reflected in it, his mind unable to wrap around the fact that he hadn’t issued any command for it to suddenly appear at the bathroom door.

He steadied himself on the sink and turned around. The face of the smart home assistant, so eerily similar to a human’s, made him extremely uncomfortable.

Seizing the electric toothbrush, an impulse surged through Shen Luo’s body. He wanted to jab the toothbrush into the smart home assistant’s eye socket, to fiercely pierce its facade!

As this violent thought emerged, it seemed as though the invisible butterflies in his brain were secreting something, continuously stimulating and enticing him to carry out his thoughts immediately.

"Don’t come any closer!"

Shen Luo had never imagined that he would one day be frightened by the smart home assistant he purchased. He yelled loudly at it, but it was no use. The smart home assistant seemed out of control, blocking the bathroom door and staring at Shen Luo, laughing incessantly.

"Get away! Don’t come near me!"

The more Shen Luo yelled, the more agitated he became. He felt the butterflies in his mind flapping their wings incessantly, filling his head with the sound of their fluttering.

"Get out!"

With his self-control at its lowest, Shen Luo suddenly lunged at the smart home assistant. He was like a wild beast driven into a corner, knocking down the smart home assistant and clutching the electric toothbrush, repeatedly stabbing its tip into the smart home assistant’s face!

When he regained a bit of his sanity, the smart home assistant’s face had already become tattered, covered in holes, and very frightening.

"No, I didn’t mean to, it’s you who malfunctioned!"

Shen Luo quickly scrambled up from the smart home assistant and retreated repeatedly.

His body hit the sofa, and Shen Luo fell to the floor, his gaze inadvertently catching sight of the bathroom mirror again.

In the mirror, his own expression was panicked. The man sitting slumped on the ground had a pale complexion but his expression was incredibly eerie.

His face began to change bit by bit—the skin on his nose and mouth started to peel apart to the sides. The Shen Luo in the mirror’s features twisted, his face skin gradually transforming into a giant fleshy butterfly.

"Ah!"

The overly terrifying scene made Shen Luo somewhat afraid. He grabbed the remote from the sofa and hurled it directly at the mirror!

Fragments flew everywhere. The sharp shards, however, seemed to transform into transparent butterflies in Shen Luo’s eyes, swarming toward him!

Screaming sharply, Shen Luo hugged his head. His body began to tremble.

Yet a more terrifying event was unfolding.

The smart home assistant, whose face was covered in holes and knocked down to the floor, slowly crawled up. It lifted its grotesquely damaged face and walked toward Shen Luo!

"You are just a tool—why would a tool have its own thoughts?"

Enduring the pain in his body and mind, Shen Luo staggered toward the room’s door. He supported himself against the wall, shouting loudly for help, his voice heartbreakingly panicked.

The only good news for him now was that the smart home assistant was not walking fast, always just a bit behind in catching up to him.

Opening the password-protected door, Shen Luo escaped from his home, which felt like "hell." He frantically begged for help from his neighbors.

Seconds later, hearing Shen Luo’s shouts, the neighbors came out of their houses, approaching him very cautiously.

"Little Shen, did someone break into your home?"

"Quick, call 120; he seems to be having an episode!"

The neighbors gathered around to help, eager but mystified by Shen Luo’s disjointed words. Shen Luo, his nerves slightly relaxed, pointed at his home’s door: "There are ghosts! There are ghosts all over my house, and my smart home assistant wants to kill me!"

One particularly brave young man walked toward Shen Luo’s home with a golf club. He did not see the ghosts or butterflies Shen Luo mentioned, only the shattered mirror, toppled furniture, and the smart home assistant with a face full of holes, collapsed on the floor.

After coming out of Shen Luo’s house, the young man’s expression was odd: "Shen Luo, are you sure you saw ghosts? Did you... forget to take your medication today?"

"Really! I’m not lying to you! Everything I said is true!"

"Don’t worry, I’ve called for support from Deep Space Technology. They’ll be here soon. If there really were an incident of a smart home assistant harming someone, that would be big news," a middle-aged neighbor said, holding his phone.

A few minutes later, Deep Space Technology’s maintenance staff and the community security guards arrived, both entering Shen Luo’s home.

The maintenance staff opened up the slightly deformed head of the smart home assistant and took out a small box equipped with a recording function.

"This is our protection recorder for the smart home assistant. It normally doesn’t activate, only turning on automatically if the smart home assistant experiences an attack," explained the maintenance worker as he placed the small box into his portable device. After a successful upload, a video began to play on a virtual screen.

The perspective was from the smart home assistant’s point of view. The Shen Luo in the video had transformed into someone else entirely—savage, insane, holding the electric toothbrush, straddling the smart home assistant, repeatedly stabbing its face!

Even the serial killers in movies probably wouldn’t go that far.

Seeing such footage, the surrounding neighbors instinctively moved away from Shen Luo, no one wanting to be too close to such a dangerous individual.

"Listen to me, I was forced to defend myself! This smart butler went rogue—it didn’t follow my commands; it acted on its own!" Shen Luo loudly argued, but the latter half of the video seemed to deliberately contradict him.

The smart butler had always been very obedient. It was Shen Luo who was mad. He was irrational and agitated, issuing completely contradictory commands to the smart butler and screaming at himself in the mirror. If this doesn’t qualify as madness, then one third of the people in mental hospitals probably should be released.

"Respected employer, have you recently experienced any significant shock?" the maintenance worker asked after checking the smart butler and replacing its face. "Our suggestion is that you should take a good rest or make time for some physiotherapy to adjust your mental state."

The maintenance worker from Deep Space Technology spoke very euphemistically.

"I am not sick!"

"We know you are not sick, it’s just that you’ve been under a lot of stress lately." The maintenance worker reactivated the smart butler and, after testing all the data, prepared to leave: "Please treat the smart butler well."

The neighbors now looked at Shen Luo differently than before, and the most enthusiastic among them began to advise him to see a psychiatrist.

Half an hour later, the crowd had dispersed, and Shen Luo returned to his home, but he still dared not close the door, nor did he dare to activate his smart butler.

"The me recorded by the smart butler and the me in my memory are completely different. Could I really be sick?"

He turned on his computer, preparing to schedule an appointment with a psychiatrist for remote therapy.

After searching on the relevant platform for a long time, suddenly a doctor proactively contacted Shen Luo. No need for an appointment or to pay a deposit in advance, the doctor seemed very sincere.

Already feeling that he wasn’t really ill, Shen Luo decisively chose this doctor. He turned on all the cameras and entered the virtual therapy room of that doctor.

The bright light shone on his face, and Shen Luo was somewhat uncomfortable. He squinted his eyes and looked around, finding that this doctor’s treatment room was very special.

Half bright, half dim, the treatment room did not display various certificates and qualifications; besides two chairs, there was just a blank space.

"Hello, doctor. My name is Shen Luo, and here is my identity card."

"You can call me Doctor Bai," the doctor, sitting on the dim side of the room, looked very young. "Your mental state is very unstable right now. It seems you’ve recently encountered some very unusual things, completely different from your previous living environment."

"That’s one way to put it," Shen Luo calmed down a bit. "I’m a seasoned financial trader; usually, the job pressure is immense, so I thought of playing a game to relax. But instead of relaxing, the stress increased!"

"A game? An immersive horror game?"

"No, it’s a healing type of game; you might have heard of it. It’s called ’Perfect Life.’" Shen Luo told the doctor about his experiences without hiding anything. Having no friends in real life, he could only confide in the doctor.

"You might be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder after experiencing an extremely severe psychological shock. Your habitual psychological model has been forcibly distorted into a twisted pattern."

"Distorted?"

"Your experiences in the game are highly inconsistent with everyday life, which your subconscious model couldn’t adapt to, so your inherent subconscious became distorted," Doctor Bai smiled as he looked at Shen Luo. "For example, if you see a door close by itself in real life, you might think it’s the wind, but in the game, you would think a ghost appeared, and you are facing a threat of death! At that moment, your subconscious and conscious mind start to conflict, leading to stress disorder and complete chaos in your mind."

"But..." Shen Luo struggled to understand, "Why do I feel like a butterfly flew into my brain? I don’t know how it got there, and now I really want to open my skull to see."

"Butterfly?" Doctor Bai scrutinized Shen Luo, "How did you get that wound on your arm?"

"Are you talking about this butterfly-shaped wound?" Shen Luo lifted his arm. "I don’t know, I can’t remember, I only remember a maniacal laugh."

"Mr. Shen, your condition is quite peculiar, I suggest you visit my clinic in person. My clinic is in Xinhu North Suburb, and it’s called Pure White Heart," Doctor Bai sent an email to Shen Luo. "The email contains things you need to bring and proofs, looking forward to meeting you."

The doctor ended the connection, and Shen Luo was kicked out of the virtual clinic. He opened the email and found that the doctor wanted to see his game records and first-person game videos.

"Does he not believe what I said?" Shen Luo clicked on the screen, just refreshing it, and suddenly noticed countless new private messages in his background. As the last player saved by Huang Ying, Shen Luo also made a presence for himself in front of national players. The most circulated image online was that of Huang Ying, holding a Slaughter Saber, climbing out of the Abyss, countless Giant Ghosts roaring in fury, with the night collapsing behind him, while Shen Luo lay unconscious on his back.

"I, Shen Luo, am a prominent figure in the financial circle, and now my image is completely ruined."

He casually opened some private messages. Most players were curious about what was hidden beneath the Abyss, and some guilds wanted to recruit Shen Luo, believing that any player who dared to enter the passage was a true fierce player and top-level expert.

"This is ridiculous, I don’t even know what I actually went through." Shen Luo was about to close the webpage when he suddenly spotted a very strange private message, filled with butterfly patterns at first glance.

After rubbing his eyes, Shen Luo was certain what he saw was not an illusion. He clicked on the private message to read it, containing just one line—"Master, have you returned home?"

"How creepy! Are they sick?"

Looking at the bunch of butterfly patterns, Shen Luo felt nauseous: "Why would they draw so many butterflies?"

After reflecting for a moment, Shen Luo typed "butterfly" in the private message search bar to conduct a precise search.

Unseen, unfound, a shock once found—he discovered that there were hundreds of private messages relating to butterflies in his background, either containing butterfly patterns or the word butterfly.

These private messages came from all over the country. Most were relatively normal, but some seemed like they were sent by madmen, replete with blood and slaughter, and some had used animal limbs to form words.

"Why do I feel like I’ve attracted the attention of all the country’s weirdos? They’re not actually going to come for me, are they?"

Frightened, Shen Luo quickly closed his private messages and set all his personal information to private, but it seemed a bit late.

Suddenly, someone knocked on the living room door, and a hoarse voice came from outside.

"Hello, your delivery has arrived."