My Healing Games

Chapter 822 Us Without Tomorrow

"Protect these thirty children; we absolutely cannot allow any of them to die!"

Han Fei felt like he was desperately trying to grasp something. He clenched his fist, but the other thing still vanished from his world.

He opened his eyes, a tear streak on his cheek, and an indescribable sadness filled his heart, leaving him speechless for a moment.

The smell of disinfectant wafted into Han Fei's nostrils, and he felt intense pain in his body. The pain seemed to radiate from within, as if it were tearing his mind and body apart.

Looking around, Han Fei lay on the hospital bed in the school clinic. It was as if he had returned to reality, and everything felt so real.

"Where is this?"

His memories were fragmented and scattered throughout his mind; it took him a long time to remember his name.

"Han Fei..."

Slowly sitting up from the hospital bed, Han Fei was dressed in very ordinary clothes. In his pocket were a pack of cheap cigarettes and a crumpled class assessment form.

Before Han Fei could continue his investigation, footsteps echoed down the corridor, the crisp sound of high heels clicking against the floor could be heard from a great distance.

The door was pushed open, and a woman with an ordinary face entered the room. After seeing that Han Fei had regained consciousness, she sat down next to him and said, "Teacher Gao Cheng, I don't recommend that you continue to come here for classes. Your physical condition is very poor, and your personality is on the verge of collapse. What you need now is to rest well."

She handed Han Fei a medical report, the words of which were difficult for him to understand.

Name: Gao Cheng.

"Male, 28 years old, head of Class 7."

"Possesses a basic greedy personality, with a breakdown level of 31%, and is suspected of also possessing an unidentified hidden personality."

"Mental pollution index is 39, about to enter the danger zone!"

"He has a congenital personality defect, severe depression, and intermittent mania."

"Recommendation: This teacher is no longer suitable to continue serving as the person in charge. If the condition does not improve significantly within three days, please leave the campus."

A sharp pain shot through Han Fei's brain as he clutched the medical report: "What's going on? What's wrong with this world?"

“It’s hard to accept reality, and you subjectively refuse to accept everything. This is also a self-protective mechanism of the brain. However, I never thought that someone as strong as you would fall victim to mental pollution.” The female school doctor sighed and drew back the curtains of the infirmary: “Twenty-two years have passed since the fall of Xinhu. Your beautiful childhood is destined to become just a memory. It is gone forever, and you will never see it again.”

Every word the female school doctor uttered seemed to hint at something, and Han Fei tried hard to think about it. He looked in the direction the woman was standing and his gaze froze on the city outside the window.

Thick, dark clouds obscured the sky, high walls were erected on the city's outskirts, and the doors and windows of familiar buildings were boarded up. The entire city was lifeless, oppressive, dull, and stagnant.

Seeing Han Fei's distraught state, the female school doctor shook her head slightly, placed a bottle of medicine on the table, and then left.

"Xinhu has fallen? The city outside is Xinhu?" Han Fei sat blankly on the hospital bed, piecing together his memories bit by bit, and it took him a long time to recall some things.

"The maniac and thirty children used the God-Tampering technique to forcibly enter the garden master's shrine memory world. They burned all their memories, but I, who was with them, did not lose my memory."

Han Fei looked out the window again, his heart filled with doubt: "The world of memories in the shrines of the dead gods is mostly the past. The world of memories in the shrines of the still-existing, unspeakable ones—could it be some kind of future they longed for?"

Han Fei put the medicine bottle left by the female school doctor into his pocket, put on his shoes, and walked out of the infirmary.

He is currently in a school, and this area is not boarded up. The campus is not much different from a real school.

"None of these thirty children can die..."

Moving while holding onto the wall, Han Fei recalled the information on the inspection report: "I am the person in charge of Class 7. Where is Class 7?"

Han Fei walked along the corridor, where students were still attending classes in classrooms on both sides, listening attentively to their teachers.

“Each of us has our own personality, which is the crystallization of a person’s life value and the key to your resistance to spiritual pollution.”

"If you want to kill those unknown things, the first thing you must do is to stay true to your principles and never let them sway you!"

"Two-thirds of this city is inhabited by ghosts, and all those buildings boarded up are haunted! We need to clear them out building by building until we can drive them out completely! Some of us may sacrifice ourselves in the process, but I want you to remember that death is not the end. The more afraid you are, the more pain and despair will ensnare you!"

"The most precious thing in this era is hope, and you are hope!"

The teacher was writing furiously on the blackboard, his voice filled with an undisguised sorrow. He seemed to know he was lying, but he had to say it.

"All the sealed-off buildings in New Shanghai City can be roughly divided into five categories. The easiest is the White Building, which may contain the regrets of the dead and ordinary obsessions. The medium-difficulty Red Building hides resentment and items tainted with hatred. Then there is the most difficult Death Building, also known as the Black Building. Entering it means certain death. If you see a pitch-black Death Building, stay away from it!"

"Besides the three types mentioned above, there are two other special types of sealed buildings. One type is the mysterious building that has not yet been fully explored, and no one knows what's inside. The other type is the forbidden building. Don't ask why. Forbidden buildings cannot be discussed, and no one is allowed to approach them!"

"The vast majority of you are orphans, and many of you have contracted various special diseases due to the calamity. The world is very unfair to you. If you want to change this terrible situation, exploring those sealed buildings is an easy way."

"If any of you can clean up a building, you will earn the respect of everyone in this area. Of course, even the simplest white building is too difficult for you. Consider this my best wish for you."

"Besides cleaning up the entire building, we can also get a generous reward for bringing out items tainted with hatred and curses from the sealed building. Those items will be collected and processed into weapons to fight ghosts."

After the teacher finished speaking, he touched his glasses, and the blurry outline of a hanged student appeared on the lens: "According to the school's requirements, in three days, you will go out to explore the building on your own for the first time. I hope you will gain something, and I also hope that there will be no empty seats in our class by then."

The teacher then talked about many other things, which gave Han Fei a general understanding of the garden owner's memory shrine.

This world of memory shrines is unlike any Han Fei has experienced before. The garden's owner is still alive, and his world of memory shrines represents his obsession with the future. If there is no external interference, this ghost city may be what New Shanghai looks like 22 years later.

"get out of class is over!"

The classroom door was pushed open, and the male teacher wearing glasses walked out of the classroom. He was very surprised when he saw Han Fei standing outside the door: "Teacher Gao, what are you doing here?"

"I had some health problems. I suddenly felt very uncomfortable in the corridor just now, so I leaned against the wall to rest for a while." Han Fei was indeed very weak.

"Sigh, I really don't know what you encountered in that haunted building? It actually made your mental pollution index jump from seven to thirty-nine." The male teacher felt sorry for Han Fei, but he had no intention of approaching Han Fei. A mental pollution index of thirty-nine seemed to be a very scary number. "The principal needs to see me. I'll go first."

The young male teacher wearing glasses is named Ma Jing. His work badge shows that he is in charge of Class 3.

However, this was not Han Fei's main concern. In his memory, there was a perverted serial killer in Xinhu whose name was also Ma Jing, and his face was even carved by the Big Ghost on the Ghost Card.

The bell rang for a long time, but not a single student came out to play in the corridor. Everyone stayed in the classroom and dared not go out at will.

Following the corridor, Han Fei arrived at the second floor of the teaching building. After passing an empty, sealed-off classroom, he finally found Class 7, which he was in charge of.

Pushing open the door, the children's faces were both familiar and strange. They seemed to have appeared in my memory, yet it was as if it were all just my illusion.

"One, two... twenty-nine, thirty."

Class 7 had exactly thirty students, no more, no less, just as the system required. But Han Fei's eyes were somewhat complicated: "There are only thirty children in the class. What about the maniacal laughter that will accompany all thirty children into the world of the shrine?"

Just thinking about this problem made Han Fei feel breathless. He opened his mouth and gasped for air, but his chest still felt incredibly tight.

"Teacher, why don't you go and rest first, and we'll study on our own?"

Han Fei had only seen the outlines of the children's blood-red figures; he was still unable to match each student's face with their number. Everything would take time to work out.

"I'm fine." Han Fei picked up the chalk and wrote down the important parts of what Teacher Ma Jing had taught on the blackboard.

From the moment he opened his eyes, he was prepared to do everything in his power to ensure that all thirty children survived.

His mind was foggy and he felt that the more he thought, the faster the mental pollution seemed to spread. He felt as if there was a monster growing inside him, slowly devouring his heart and destroying his personality.

After writing down the last useful piece of information, Han Fei's vision began to blur, and half of the world he saw was swallowed by shadows.

"Teacher, it's time for your medicine." A student walked to the edge of the podium without anyone noticing. He took the bottle of medicine out of Han Fei's pocket, looked at it carefully for a moment, and then poured out a pill that emitted a foul odor.

The medicine bottle was left by the female school doctor. Han Fei wasn't sure if there was anything wrong with the medicine, so he didn't choose to take it. Instead, he told everyone to study on their own first. He planned to try out the things in this world after he had more information.

After Han Fei left the classroom, the student who had been smiling earlier changed his expression. He glanced at Han Fei's blackboard writing and then stood in the center of the podium.

“Can you see the city outside the window? Although I’ve forgotten a lot of things, I still remember some common sense. What I can confirm now is that we don’t belong in this strange place.” The student picked up a notebook with his name on it: “The name written on the notebook is Zhou Qi, but I have no recollection of that name. I only remember a number—the number five.”

Every student in the class has their own name, but they are completely unfamiliar with those names. Instead, they can never forget their individual number codes.

"Summarizing the clues we have, we've arrived in this city where ghosts exist and become students at an orphanage. The teachers here outwardly see us as hope, but in reality, they probably just see us as tools to be discarded at any time." Zhou Qi, number five, erased the self-study notes from the blackboard and wrote the words "Self-Rescue": "What do you guys think?"

“My thoughts might be a bit more pessimistic than yours.” A student who had lost both legs sat in the corner of the classroom: “The students in this school are either orphans or freaks with diseases; they’re all abandoned children. Look out the window again. There are clearly restricted buildings around the school, but there are still many living people gathered here. Why don’t the ghosts bother this place?”

He folded a paper airplane and threw it out the window, but the airplane got wet from the rain before it flew very far and landed on the muddy ground in front of the teaching building.

"I guess we're not even tools, just food offered to ghosts." The male student who lost both legs moved his body and faced the rest of the class: "The teacher said that in three days it will be our first time going out to explore on our own. These three days may be our last."

(End of this chapter)