My Healing Games

Chapter 440 Level 17

"I feel like I've heard that voice somewhere before. It seems to keep ringing in my ears. Who said that?"

Darkness engulfed the underground warehouse like a tidal wave, plunging everything into complete darkness, swallowing up all light.

His heart pounded, and cold sweat soaked his back. Han Fei had no idea what was lurking in the darkness. He tried with all his might to crash into the barrier, but it wouldn't budge.

He couldn't go up, and no one would come to his rescue.

All he could do was search for possible ways to escape in this underground warehouse.

"Why do you have to live so desperately? Wouldn't it be better to stay? Your resentful soul is truly pathetic."

Han Fei was certain the sound was coming from inside the warehouse. He suppressed his unease and stepped down the escalator.

"My mood is dropping faster. If this continues, it will drop below 20 in ten minutes at most. At that point, I might see something that I can't fight right now."

Without further hesitation, Han Fei quickly walked through the shipping container, following the memory in his mind.

He is a very decisive person. Once he sets his sights on a certain direction, he will sprint towards it with all his might. Even if he dies on the way, he will never regret it.

"Oh!"

As Han Fei advanced, a second-hand tablet computer fell off the shelf, its screen emitting a faint, cold light.

"Aren't these the old items I just sorted through?"

That tablet computer hadn't been used much; it was practically brand new. Han Fei had just personally placed it on the shelf.

At this moment, the cold light emitted by the tablet screen became the only light in the underground warehouse, and Han Fei's gaze was involuntarily drawn to it.

In the darkness, someone touched the tablet, and a video started playing. The video showed a boy tied to a chair, being beaten and abused, his body covered in bruises.

He was vaguely shouting something, but unfortunately the video had no sound.

Han Fei vaguely felt that the video looked familiar, but he couldn't remember where he had seen it before. He just felt that the boy in the video looked more and more like him when he was a child.

"Can pain be cured? If it really can, then how do you heal this broken world?"

The entire shelf filled with secondhand electronic goods malfunctioned, with all the screens playing similar videos. Different children were locked in seats, none of them named, only with different numbers, from 0001 to 9999.

The video has no sound; all the children are screaming silently as they undergo various forms of training and inhuman "treatment" until they can no longer endure it and die in that cramped, cold little room.

After each child dies, their facial features change, gradually blurring and disintegrating, just like their individual personalities.

The silent torment and the continuous treatment eventually led to all the children who died having facial features that looked exactly like the first child.

He can easily make all sorts of expressions and simulate all sorts of personalities according to instructions, but he will never show a real smile.

After all the children on the screens have turned into the same face, the dark and gloomy cubicle is opened, revealing an even darker room outside, like one black box after another from which there is no way out.

The child sat blankly in the chair. He was taken to another dark room. In that new room, the child, who seemed to have grown up a bit, was given a brand new number—0000.

"Is this the meaning of your life? Stay here, you might as well stay here."

Han Fei's heartstrings were plucked; the shocking scene left him frozen in place.

As he was drawn to the faces of those children, many memories that did not belong to him surfaced in his mind.

The daily companionship with his mother, the various childhood memories of family, the beauty and happiness bloomed like a flower on the cliff of an abyss, bringing the seasons to this world of only despair.

But soon, his mother was diagnosed with a terminal illness, and his father fled alone, leaving all the pressure on him.

Illness, work, money—all sorts of miscellaneous things make up the shape of life.

Memories that don't belong to Han Fei are forcibly merging with Han Fei's memories. This memory seems to know many things about Han Fei. It doesn't touch anything deep in Han Fei's mind; it just wants Han Fei to become it.

His mother was critically ill, he couldn't raise money, he was cheated at work, he owed high-interest loans, and most importantly, his hands were stained with blood—he had killed someone.

That memory was heavy, like being instantly dragged into the deep sea, the immense pressure almost bursting every blood vessel and nerve.

“Everyone around me told me that good people will be rewarded. I gave money to beggars, fed stray cats and dogs, and helped bullied delivery drivers. I firmly believed in fairness and justice and always considered others in everything I did. So why did I end up like this?”

His mind grew increasingly muddled, and Han Fei walked step by step deeper into the warehouse, his hand seemingly touching something.

Pushing aside the darkness, in the deepest part of the warehouse, Han Fei saw a shrine.

This pure black shrine is similar in appearance to the one displayed in the secondhand shop, but it gives off a completely different feeling.

The door to the shrine was also nailed shut, but there was something written on it.

"It is not shameful to sell your soul and principles; what is shameful is not selling them for a good price. Now you have a chance to start over. Open the shrine, and you will receive all the answers and a chance for a new life."

It sounded like a system notification, or maybe it was something else. Anyway, guided by the sound, Han Fei picked up a tool hammer that had fallen next to the shrine.

It seems that as long as the nailed door to the shrine is smashed open, all nightmares will vanish and all the truths will emerge.

Han Fei's memories had merged with those that did not belong to him. At this moment, he was influenced by another force and was completely consumed by anger, resentment, unwillingness, and pain.

Raising the tool hammer, Han Fei's eyes were bloodshot. He was under unimaginable pressure as he slammed the tool hammer down.

A dull thud sounded, bones broke, and blood seeped from Han Fei's little finger.

The excruciating pain brought him back to his senses for a brief moment. He dropped the hammer and covered the shrine with the fallen black cloth again, leaving no gaps.

"Is this your choice?" Several voices rang out from the underground warehouse, including men, women, young and old.

Their voices overlapped, as if they were standing right behind Han Fei at that moment.

"You'll regret this..."

The lights in the underground warehouse flickered a few times and then came back on.

As the light dispelled the darkness, Han Fei also heard the system's cold, emotionless notification in his mind.

"Attention player number 0000! You have completed the Shrine random quest 'Organize the Warehouse'!"

Not every soul in this world has a price; you have made your choice!

"The shrine owner's regret has been alleviated by 15%! A large amount of experience has been gained!"

"You have completed a random shrine quest and have been given a chance to open your inventory. You can choose one item to bring into the shrine owner's memory world."

"Attention player number 0000! You have successfully leveled up to level 17! One free attribute point added!"

Sitting on the ground with his back against the shipping container, Han Fei was still in shock.

After the lights came on, his mood score quickly recovered from nineteen to twenty-five.

"The task requirement is for me to organize the warehouse before dawn... No, the random task of organizing the warehouse doesn't seem to have a specific task requirement. It just reminds me to organize the shelves before dawn so that I can put a price tag on all the souls."

Han Fei now realized that the so-called price tag for all souls included his own. If he had made a different choice, he might have become a piece of old merchandise on the shelf.

"The regret compensation has increased by another five percent. It seems that the shrine owner also made a similar choice, but he probably couldn't resist the temptation and chose to smash open the shrine door."

Han Fei raised his head and looked at the shrine that was completely covered by a black cloth, still feeling lingering fear.

"The real shrine is hidden at the very back of the secondhand warehouse; you can't find it unless you work here."

Getting up from the ground, Han Fei clutched his numb little finger: "It hurts a lot, but it's a good omen, indicating that I might lose all ten of my fingers here."

After carefully inspecting the shrine, Han Fei noticed another strange thing: "This black cloth can completely cover the shrine, but I remember that before I lifted the cloth, part of the shrine was already exposed! Someone lifted the cloth before I came in!"

Only three people were allowed to enter the warehouse: Huang Li, Pei Yang, and the shop owner whom Han Fei had not yet met.

"Which of the three is the most suspicious?"

Han Fei didn't waste time on this issue; he first added the free attribute points he gained from leveling up to his stamina.

His arms became stronger, and vitality surged through his veins, further enhancing Han Fei's physical abilities.

He's not even level 20 yet, but his stamina has already reached 28 points, and he's about to break 30.

"Every ten points of stamina is a threshold. Once I have thirty points of stamina, I might be able to activate some abilities related to stamina."

As Han Fei walked toward the freight elevator, his mindset was completely different from before.

After making his choice, he will embark on a different path from the former owner of the shrine and will no longer be at the mercy of the shrine.

"Leveling up is easier in the shrine master's memory world. All the missions here are equivalent to F-level missions. I must make the most of this opportunity!"

With a weak expression, Han Fei pushed aside the partition and searched the store for Huang Li, but he couldn't find her after searching for a long time.

"What about people?"

Upon arriving at the counter, Han Fei first found the first-aid kit, used medicine and bandages to bandage his finger, and then looked at the computer in the counter.

Before the inventory of incoming goods was fully tallied, Huang Li left the secondhand store.

"The water in her cup was still hot, so she must have just left."

Han Fei's mood is slowly recovering. As long as he doesn't leave the mall at night, his mood won't drop any further, at least based on his test the day before.

"It's almost 1 a.m., and the mall isn't safe. Should we go look for her?"

As Han Fei approached the store, he froze as soon as he stepped out. He saw two men with casts on their arms sitting by the door of the secondhand supermarket.

These two men must have been sitting at the store entrance for a long time. They were both wearing the same style of black suit. The fat man had both hands wrapped in plaster, and a tiger tattoo could be vaguely seen on his chest. Because he was too fat, he couldn't button up his suit at all.

The other man had a scar on his face, making him look very fierce. However, his wrist was dislocated, and a bandage was hanging around his neck, giving him a look of both ferocity and misery.

At this moment, Scarface was holding a cigarette between his two remaining movable fingers, but he didn't dare to light it, probably because smoking was prohibited in the mall.

The two sat on an old newspaper, with a large bag of sunflower seed shells in front of them. They were probably bored while waiting, so they kept eating sunflower seeds.

The door opened with a ding-dong sound, and the two saw Han Fei come out. They leaned on each other and struggled to stand up.

"You took that 20,000, and we can't explain it to the brothers. You have to pay it back today." Scarface's voice was cold and sinister, and his snake-like eyes were fixed on Han Fei with extreme ferocity.

A loan shark was beaten to a pulp by a borrower. How can he face the world after that? How can he continue to collect debts?

"What if I don't return it?" Han Fei looked around, searching for Huang Li's figure.

"Then we'll follow you wherever you go, until you pay us back!" the fat man said viciously.

"Free bodyguards? Okay, then you can come with me." Han Fei glanced upstairs; the depths of the mall were pitch black, and neither the two security guards nor Huang Li were there.

“You…” Scarface gritted his teeth: “We will continue to stand guard in front of your store and scare away all your customers.”

"Anyway, it's not my shop, so it doesn't matter. But you guys should be careful, not all customers who come into this shop late at night are alive." Han Fei walked up to the fat man, raised his hands, and the fat man took two steps back in fright.

"Don't be nervous. I just think it's quite admirable that you two are wearing suits in such cold weather." Han Fei tried to help the fat man button his suit, but gave up after a few tries: "Did you two see a female shop assistant come out just now?"

"I saw her, she seems to have gone to the third floor." The fat man answered subconsciously. After he finished speaking, he was glared at fiercely by the scarred man, and then he suddenly realized his mistake and immediately changed his words: "Hmph, I don't know."

"The third floor sells women's clothing, and it seems like things often get lost there." Before Han Fei could finish speaking, there was a loud bang, as if something had been thrown down from a height.

"That sound happened last night too! After those two security guards went to check it out, they started acting strangely." Looking at the dark interior of the mall, Han Fei waved to the two thugs: "I'm going to the third floor, want to come with me?"

Thank you to Chu Gui, the alliance leader!

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(End of this chapter)