CH 409

‘Why would the CEO of a top company frequent a plastic surgery hospital that often? The director needs constant touch up too?’

The disappeared hospital not only provided plastic surgery services, but due to Immortal Pharma’s sponsor, the scale of their services and research surprised Han Fei. From brain treatment to bone swap, the hospital claimed that they could even provide temporary immortality, extending a person’s lifespan for a limited period of time. The hospital had a jaw dropping number of high end clients, earning Immortal Pharma a lot of money. However, this money-printing press was shut down overnight and all the info on it was wiped off the internet. Based on the limited clues, Han Fei realized that the plastic surgery hospital was closed by Immortal Pharma itself but no one knew the reason why.

‘The hospital was shut down 1 decade ago, the same year when the human jigsaw case happened.’ Much information floated on the internet but other than Han Fei, no one seemed to care about this hospital now.

Taking out his phone, Han Fei called Li Xue, hoping she could help him look for cases related to plastic surgery and to investigate the plastic surgery hospital once run by Immortal Pharma. Li Xue was immediately tensed when Han Fei shared his thoughts. The locations that Han Fei mentioned would always feature some kind of murder cases. Li Xue immediately contacted her superior and hung up the phone. Han Fei was quite proud that the law enforcement took his words so seriously.

He busied himself until midnight. After Han Fei checked the door and windows, he crawled into the gaming hub. ‘I need to focus to see who is standing behind me.’ The biggest allure of Perfect Life was it would never make the players feel bored. Even though Han Fei had defeated Butterfly, he didn’t dare to put his guard down.

Putting on the gaming helmet, blood slowly covered his line of sight, his consciousness appeared in that blood red city. He tried his best to turn around to look behind him but at that moment, a bloody hand fell on his shoulder. His eyes flew open and Han Fei saw the ceiling. His pupils narrowed from fear. ‘It has gotten closer!’ The bloody person was almost sticking to his back. Han Fei tried to turn around but he saw nothing.

‘The process of logging in should be equal to the process of the consciousness slipping into the cryptic world. The city would turn red and then from red, turn black… It feels like there is a blood red sea between the real world and the cryptic world. The real world and the gaming world are on both ends of the sea. The cryptic world and the surface world are like mirror images of each other.

‘Unmentionables can see when my consciousness descends into the game, so does that mean the bloody person is another Unmentionable? But why would it target me? I haven’t done anything to someone like that, I don’t think. Or was it related to the altar Big Sin destroyed?’ As Han Fei pondered, he shivered involuntarily, “Why is it so cold tonight?”

Then he noticed something was different about his gaming session. He felt quite clearly there was something wrong with his body, but he couldn’t pinpoint what. He pulled up his menu and Han Fei sucked in a cold breath. Initially, his menu looked similar to normal players but as he used more instances of Spirit Farer, bloody cracks started to appear on his menu. However, this time, when Han Fei opened his character menu, he noticed the window had turned faded black and even his Id was glowing with an inauspicious black light.

‘What is going on?’ He scrolled down and noticed his afterlife karma had risen from 86 to 92. This proved that using all of his film salary to help the victims’ families was useful. The change to the afterlife karma was still normal but the change to reputation gave Han Fei a real shock. ‘When I exited the game last time, my reputation was only 46, how did it rise to 71 so fast?’

Han Fei had no idea what his neighbours had done in his name, but seeing the rise to his reputation, Han Fei started to panic. As he scrolled down further, Han Fei found the reason for the change to his menu. At the tab for player status, other than the original two continuous curses, Taboo and Malicious Fiend, there was a new curse that was dark as night,

“Blood Debt: Altars contain the memory of Unmentionable and the fearful respect of all the Lingering Spirit, your pet, Big Sin has ruined figurines inside multiple altars, leaving behind a huge blood debt!

“The player’s charm decreases by 5. When you appear in the territory protected by the ruined altars, you’ll be eliminated by the eyes behind the altar! Blood debt can only be paid in blood! The shadow behind the altars has been fully angered by you. It has awakened from slumber to search for the people responsible for ruining its altars!”

Han Fei pressed on his lips. ‘Ruining 1 altar will increase 10 reputation. Does this mean Big Sin has ruined 2 altars belonging to the same Unmentionable from the same area? It has been hounding after the same Unmentionable?’

The player’s negative status tab would only show the 10 most dangerous negative status. If this continued, Han Fei had a feeling that his tab would be filled in a few days. “As the only Pure Hatred from the plastic surgery hospital, I am not that afraid of Unmentionable.” Han Fei tried his best to calm down. He hoped that his neighbours had tied everything they had done to the hospital.

‘No, I have to go remind Bai Sinian that the Unmentionable has already started looking for them.’ Han Fei logged into the Death Chat Group and started to communicate with the Ziggurat tenants who left. Han Fei was told that Bai Sinian and Big Sin had separated from the group, they were also looking for them. Han Fei told Bai Sinian to look after Big Sin but he had a feeling Big Sin led Bai Sinian into tragedy instead.

‘Big Sin wouldn’t have started a feast, would it?’ Han Fei only needed to destroy 5 altars to achieve the necessary reputation. Now he was worried that Big Sin would eat any altar that it came across. ‘O well, worrying is not going to solve anything. After my Life Points return to normal, I should go and find Big Sin personally.’

Big Sin was the harbinger of tragedy, it was viewed by the system to be the source of tragedies. If Han Fei let it be, there was bound to be big problems. However, compared to Big Sin, Han Fei was more concerned about Bai Sinian. The guard was afraid of ghost stories even though he was a ghost, could he survive being around Big Sin?

Han Fei was about to put his phone away when a Ziggurat tenant posted at Ancestral Hall Street sent a message. The red message appeared on screen and the content made Han Fei’s heart skip a beat.

Based on what the tenant said, Lingering Spirits bound with life threads started to infiltrate deep into Ziggurat. They didn’t have conflict with anyone and even voluntarily avoided Ancestral Hall Street. They charged blindly towards the deepest part of Ziggurat like someone was pushing them to do so. The tenant had no idea how many monsters were sent into Ziggurat in this manner. One thing was certain, the Ziggurat area was no longer as safe as before.

‘Is the plastic surgery hospital sending people over to test out Ziggurat’s bottom line? Once they find out Butterfly is really dead, then they will come over to take over its inheritance.’ Han Fei only had 1 Life Point. A common small Lingering Spirit could kill him. It felt like he was sent back to the start of the game. He was highly stressed. Before he could go offline, he needed to pay attention to every corner around him.

‘I’ll leave my reputation with my neighbours but I’ll have to figure out how to increase afterlife karma on my own. After using all of my salary from Thriller Writer to help the victims’ family, I’m still 8 points away from the goal.’ Han Fei decided to place his focus on raising his afterlife karma for now. He needed to do every good deeds he could to help his neighbours complete their last wishes. ‘I need to upgrade my altar as soon as possible or else when the plastic surgery hospital finds out about the real situation at Ziggurat, I won’t be able to survive their onslaught with just 1 Life Point.’

Han Fei didn’t want to be a burden to others. After staying for 3 hours at Yi Ming Private Academy, with Drake and Zhang Guanxing’s help, Han Fei completed a Grade G Mission he had left for himself before. For now, Grade G Missions would only give Han Fei 1 skill point and negligible EXP. He left a few simple missions behind so that he could reach the requirement needed to quit the game easier. After the exit button lit up, Han Fei found out more about his neighbours’ movement. After ensuring everyone was safe, he logged off in the room next to Jin Sheng’s infirmary.

Han Fei removed the gaming helmet and climbed out from the hub. It was only 3 am. This was the first time he had exited the game so early. “Ever since I bought the hub, I haven’t had a good night sleep in a long time.”

Even though it was late at night, Han Fei didn’t feel sleepy at all. He had gotten used to the night, he felt comforted by the enveloping darkness. Closing all the lights, Han Fei hugged his comforter and studied the murder pictures on the wall. ‘I’ve helped so many people without realizing it. At first, I only did this because I needed to survive.’ Han Fei opened his phone and noticed he had more than a handful of unread mails. Most of them came from the victims’ families, thanking Han Fei for his aid.

‘Some people have to try their best even just to survive. They might not be in the cryptic world, but life is not that easy for them either.’ The loss of a loved one was like a needle pierced through the heart. The heart pained whenever the thought came up. The Butterfly was the originator of sin but they had to bear the pain.

In the past, Han Fei hadn’t really gotten to know them so he couldn’t empathize with them, but after hearing the story of so many victims, his ideals had changed. A patient who needed to be healed now did his best to heal others. He drafted the replies to each victim’s family carefully. But to not disturb them, he set to send out the replies in the morning. After writing the last reply, Han Fei still didn’t feel sleepy. He tapped on his phone and then something came to him and he clicked open his phone’s photo album.

Han Fei who was lying in bed immediately sprung up. His eyes were fixed to the screen and his trembling finger scrolled down the screen. There were 4 new pictures in the album. They were all of him playing games. The door and windows were all locked and he was in the room alone, so who had been taking pictures with his phone?

The pictures were all taken at night when Han Fei was in game, the specific time couldn’t be told. After comparing all the pictures, Han Fei noticed something strange, all the pictures had a shadow at the top part of the picture. It was not that obvious for the first 3 pictures but the 4th picture was taken after he had bought the gaming hub. The shadow looked like a crooked person. He was right above the gaming hub, as if trying to crawl into it.

‘The person who took the picture wishes to record the presence of the shadow, they want to warn me using this method? But the person was right inside this room, they didn’t harm me but left behind these pictures. If they wanted to remind me, why didn’t they just tell me in person? Or they couldn’t be around when I’m awake?’ Seeing the pictures, Han Fei had a guess, ‘Could it be the mad laughter… who took these pictures?’

Han Fei had encountered this before but because he was too caught up in the battle with the Butterfly, he didn’t have the time to ponder on this further. But now he decided to delve deeper into this, for the safety of his present and future.

Certain memories were too painful and blurry for the past Han Fei to face, but he was different now, he was ready to face the truth.

‘First I need to set up surveillance inside the house to see how my phone manages to take pictures when I’m in the game.’

Before the sun came up, Han Fei already ordered all the equipment. Then he hurried towards the plant living compound. After 1 month, the shooting for Thriller Writer, this extremely rare national thriller horror movie was almost done. The whole movie was done with the police watching. There was a case that happened during shooting and the shooting process was harrowing.

There were already many people talking about this movie before it was even released.

Han Fei had to take a break in the middle of the shoot but after he returned, he was the first actor to complete all of his parts.

After killing all the subpersonas, when the real Spider walked out from the room, the absurd world and real world meshed in Spider’s eyes but the world Spider saw was still different from the real world. The man stood at the axis of two worlds and extricated himself from the nightmare. Any actor would have trouble reconstructing this complicated scene but Han Fei did it perfectly.

Everyone saw the real Spider on him. A man who killed 8 versions of himself, a man who loved the world but was forgotten by the world.

Undeniably, the movie ended perfectly with Han Fei’s solo scene.