My Healing Games

Chapter 869 I'm Here
"Attention player number 0000: You have discovered the Exploration Personality, a special personality that originated from a patient in a mental hospital and was stripped away by hatred."

A system notification sounded, and the head in the black box disappeared into Han Fei's hands, seemingly merging into his will. However, correspondingly, the fear he endured also increased.

"Can these personalities, stripped away by hatred, be swallowed up by the abyss of greed?"

Han Fei pondered this possibility seriously, while the doctor, whose body was being burned by the black flames, glared angrily. He never expected Han Fei to utter words that sounded almost like hatred.

"What am I even thinking about? It seems I've really been influenced by Gao Cheng's greedy personality; I want to devour everything."

After the second doctor turned to ashes, the mental ghost realm began to show problems. The outside of the building was originally pitch black, and the opening torn open by the deputy captain of the logistics squadron could not be seen at all. But now the faint light shone in again, and the speed at which the illusion changed seemed to slow down a little.

“Besides me, there are others who are sabotaging the black box containing the personality. The director really underestimated the investigation bureau this time.”

As soon as Han Fei stepped out of the elevator, the voice of Number Two echoed deep within his mind again: "Leave this floor as soon as possible and run up! Follow the child's cries and don't stop no matter what you encounter."

"Run upstairs? Upstairs?"

The ground beneath Han Fei's feet suddenly trembled, the neatly arranged floor tiles began to deform, and something seemed to be crawling out from the dark cracks.

The plaster was peeling off, and the words on it were crammed together, like wrinkles on an old man's face. Even more terrifying was the strong smell of decay emanating from the wall.

A faint cough sounded, and half a pale face appeared around the corner. He was quietly following Han Fei, like a shadow, an ever-present ghost.

"Different fears have intertwined, and it seems that many members of the Bureau of Investigation have already been affected."

Unable to find the stairs, Han Fei could only speed up his escape, but he couldn't shake off the perverted stalker behind him. Mental exhaustion and fear tormented him constantly.

"Where's the sound of a child crying?"

Han Fei was worrying when he suddenly noticed that the pattern on the wall was different from before.

Han Fei, whose memory far surpasses that of ordinary people, clearly remembers that when he first entered the building, the walls were covered with gruesome scenes of patients undergoing surgery. But now, scenes that take place outside the hospital are starting to appear on the walls, such as two young people shopping together, a family on a picnic in the countryside, a boy jumping into a swimming pool and having his legs entangled by a water snake, and a pastor praying for a little girl.

"Were the fears of the investigation team members also painted on the walls? Did their fears become one with the entire building?"

The images on the wall were shocking; many looked perfectly normal at first glance, but upon closer inspection, extremely creepy things could be found.

After walking a dozen meters, Han Fei slowed down. On the wall in front of him was a painting of a middle-aged woman.

It's so lifelike that you might mistake it for a real person standing next to you if you don't look closely.

The middle-aged woman was dressed in very ordinary casual clothes, with a smile on her face. She seemed to be telling a story to her child, and there was a sentence written on the book in her hand: "Mom is hiding there."

Following the direction of the woman's other finger, Han Fei noticed a ventilation opening in the ceiling of the corridor diagonally opposite the portrait.

"Go up? Does that mean I have to go into the ventilation ducts?"

The portrait of the middle-aged woman on the wall made Han Fei feel very uncomfortable, but he had no other choice. His fear intensified due to hesitation, and he stopped and struggled to climb into the ventilation duct.

The narrow pipe is just right for a child, but for an adult like Han Fei, climbing in can easily cause them to get stuck and unable to turn back.

"Don't be afraid! Only by facing fear can you survive!"

Han Fei had figured out the tricks of the mental demon realm, but for most people, even if they understood, they would still feel fear. If they asked themselves honestly, many people would still feel panic and want to escape even if they knew they were having a nightmare.

This spiritual realm takes advantage of this; the more you try to escape, the more relentlessly it will pursue you, and those feared things will gradually become reality until they actually kill you.

As he crawled forward, a series of noises gradually emerged in the quiet pipe, seemingly coming from behind Han Fei.

"Did someone follow me into the pipes? Was it the stalker? Or the middle-aged woman depicted on the wall?"

Regardless of which one came along, it was terrible news for Han Fei.

He has no way out now, he can only speed up.

The passage grew narrower and narrower, and there was no hope in sight. Han Fei quickly climbed to the point where the two pipes intersected. He looked to his left and instantly felt a chill run down his spine.

Two people were lying face down in the passageways on the left and right sides. Their arms were pressed tightly against their bodies, their faces were bloodless, their eyes were bulging, and their mouths were opening and closing as if they were chewing something!
Upon seeing Han Fei, the two men moved like snakes, wriggling rapidly through the narrow passage towards him.

"Her looks are truly a form of mental pollution!"

Han Fei desperately pushed forward, but before he had climbed far, he saw the end of the passage. It seemed to be a dead end, and the only way to survive was to retreat.

Forward? Or retreat?
The two snake-like monsters were about to catch up, but Han Fei gritted his teeth and chose to continue forward: "The entire passage was pitch black, with only a little light at the end, as if it were deliberately designed to make it clear that there was no way forward."

The thumping sounds from the pipe behind him echoed continuously, like death knells. Han Fei used all his strength to climb to the end of the pipe.

With the help of the faint light, Han Fei discovered that the pipe had turned a corner and started to bend upwards. This was not a dead end, but a way out.

"Climb up!"

He didn't know how long he had been climbing when Han Fei's head suddenly bumped into something. He looked up and saw strands of black hair falling in front of his eyes.

Inside the vertical pipe, the corpse of a middle-aged woman hung upside down. She was dressed in casual clothes and her body was covered with colorful tape used by children for crafts, making her look very frightening.

"Whose inner fear is this?"

The ventilation duct exit was right next to the corpse. After Han Fei untied the ropes binding the middle-aged woman, he escaped successfully.

Emerging from the ventilation duct, Han Fei felt as if his bones were about to fall apart, but before he could catch his breath, he saw a new pattern on the wall.

A man in his early sixties, with a burly build and an honest, simple appearance, stared at Han Fei with a smile. In his left hand, he carried a pink backpack that was not zipped up, revealing a storybook—his father had hidden it there.

The man pointed to a room with his right hand, from which a strange smell wafted.

Pushing open the door beside him, Han Fei was greeted by rows of enormous soy sauce jars. Before he could do anything, he found himself inside the room, and the door he had just pushed open had turned into a painting on the wall.

"How did it turn into a painting?"

The world of the mentally ill is absurd and bizarre; everything seems illogical, yet everything can be traced back to the patients' pasts. The hospital director, by exploiting the delusions of all the patients, created this twisted mental hellscape.

"Do I need to find the middle-aged man's corpse among these sauce vats?" All the sauce vats looked the same and were indistinguishable. After deliberating for a long time, Han Fei opened the sauce vat furthest from him.

"Put it in and marinate it with the leftover sauce from yesterday. Do you remember that taste?"

"These kids are so naughty! We don't want them to play underground, but they still insist on coming in!"

"I lied to them and said there was a man-eating monster hiding in the basement, and the kids were terrified, hahaha!"

"Stop laughing, how can you call us monsters?"

Suddenly, the voices of a man and a woman talking appeared in the room. It was as if the vat of soy sauce was soaking up foul memories. As the voices rang out, thick, black blood gushed out of the vat and soon covered the room.

"The blood is still rising! Is it going to flood the entire room?"

Han Fei immediately realized the danger. The doors and windows on the walls had all turned into children's drawings, and this completely sealed room had no exit! To avoid being drowned in blood, he had to find the man's body as soon as possible.

"Without any hints, is it all just a matter of luck?"

After quickly scanning all the soy sauce jars, Han Fei opened the lid of the soy sauce jar next to him.

"Why is there sour meat in the world? Why is it covered in brown hair? This child has been left out for too long, could it have turned into a zombie? Could it be here to take revenge on us?"

"Don't think nonsense. If bad people were always punished, we would have died a thousand times over."

"But he looks different from the other children."

"Since you're unwilling, then let's keep it and treat it as our child."

New memories were mixed with bloodstains, and the blood had already reached Han Fei's feet. The more vats of soy sauce that were opened, the faster the blood would gush out.

Unable to find any clues, Han Fei gritted his teeth and prepared to open the lids of all the soy sauce jars in the room one by one: "I refuse to believe that my luck is that bad!"

The strong smell inside the room could drive a person crazy. The more sauce jars Han Fei opened, the more complete the conversation he heard. This room full of sauce jars belonged to a pair of perverted killers who targeted children. But one day, they found a deformed child covered in long brown hair outside their home.

The couple took the child home and kept it as a pet.

The deformed child is ugly and frightening in appearance, but his mind is not wrong. He gradually learns many things, such as that if he wants to survive, he must first learn to hide his true thoughts and his true self, and use the person that others imagine to satisfy them.

The number of soy sauce jars in the secret room increased, and the deformed child grew older. Later, the couple had their own child, and their attention shifted almost entirely to the newborn. This displeased the deformed monster, so he, who had always been treated as a pet, turned into a monster again.

"Oh!"

After smashing open the seventh soy sauce vat, Han Fei, whose clothes were soaked in blood, finally found the man's corpse. His entire skeleton had been broken and he had been forced into the soy sauce vat.

Han Fei struggled to pull the body out. Below the soy sauce vat was a dark passage, and a bunch of keys were still hanging on the middle-aged man's body.

"The key should be useful."

After taking the key from the corpse, Han Fei jumped into the passage under the soy sauce vat and crawled all the way. Just when he was about to suffocate, he finally saw the exit.

The cries of a baby rang in Han Fei's ears, and he also heard a child singing a lullaby. He crawled out of the passage, fell heavily, and found himself back in the main building of the hospital, with a damaged ventilation duct above him.

"A nightmare layered upon layer, whose fear is this?"

Han Fei looked in the direction from which the sound came, and saw a huge, terrifying figure slowly disappearing at the corner of the corridor. It seemed that the figure was the one singing to the baby.

"I will follow the cries of children."

Even though the shadow was terrifying, Han Fei did not back down. He grabbed the key he had taken from the man's corpse and ran towards the corner of the corridor.

After turning the corner, Han Fei saw another painting on the wall: a child in a tattered coat, grinning foolishly and pointing behind Han Fei. The book in his hand read, "I am here."

Turning his head, Han Fei saw the words "Dean's Office" written on the door of the room behind him.

"The Dean's office? Could it be that the fear I just experienced wasn't from the investigation team members? Or was it the Dean's childhood fear?"

(End of this chapter)