My Healing Games

Chapter 367 Finding the Soul of Childhood (4000 words)

The bedroom door that Leisheng had been unable to open opened by itself when he was in mortal danger.

The man who walked out of the door was his father, the father who had become a monster.

The man seemed terrified of being seen by Leisheng in his current state; he kept hiding until the hand covered in the Death Curse was about to touch his child, at which point he let go of all his worries.

Even if it means being hated and feared by his own children, he will still take action.

The only thing that kept him rational was a hint of pain in his eyes. He felt utterly useless, unable even to create a beautiful expectation for his child.

But to his surprise, even in his current state, Laisheng still recognized him at a glance. There was no fear in the child's words; it seemed that no matter what he looked like, he was still the father in the child's eyes.

With his lips sewn shut by the Death Curse, the man tried desperately to open his mouth, but doing so only caused the Death Curse on his face to spread outwards.

Unable to speak, it was as if an invisible wall separated him from his child, which both of them had tried their best to break down, but to no avail.

"You really came back, Mom didn't lie to me! She also said that if I didn't go to sleep, I wouldn't see you..." The little boy's eyes reddened as he spoke. Only in front of his father could he not pretend to be strong. In that instant, all the grievances and longing burst forth, and the little guy burst into tears. For a child, this inner world was still too terrifying.

Laisheng wanted to get close to his father, but his father, who had become a monster, dared not touch him. His body, covered in death curses, emerged from the bedroom like a huge shadow, emanating black mist.

The red-clad monster had no idea that a soul hunter was hiding in the bedroom. What it didn't expect was that, despite being a soul hunter, the other soul hunter was not only not capturing souls, but was actually hindering it.

The black-lettered eyes rolled in confusion, and then a fist filled with death intent slammed heavily into its face!

His entire face was sunken inward, flesh and blood mixed with the death curse, deeply embedded in his skull.

Laisheng's father was like a sturdy tree, his roots spreading throughout room 4064. Whenever he moved, the shadows in the entire room changed with him.

The lights inside flickered, and when the light disappeared, the man appeared behind the red-clad monster. He grabbed the monster's head with his five fingers, lifted it high, and then slammed it heavily onto the ground.

Grabbing the red-clad monster's wrist, the man twisted and crushed its arm, dragging the monster into the house.

The man was filled with murderous intent. The words on his body, radiating deathly aura, pierced his skin like needles, seemingly a warning to the pursuer of the dead.

Pain and torment could not change the man in the slightest. A black curse kept emerging in one of his eyes, while the other reflected the image of Raesheng.

The little boy remained standing there, unaware that his small self was his father's only light in the deeper world.

The door closed, and the sounds of tearing and smashing echoed in the hallway, like a tattered sack full of things being torn apart piece by piece.

A few minutes later, when the funeral music started playing again on the sixth floor, the man returned to room 4064.

Enraged, manic, and radiating an intense aura of death, this monster also possessed a faint trace of tenderness in his left eye.

His mouth was sewn shut, and his ears were plugged with a death curse. He couldn't communicate with his child, nor could he hear his child's words clearly, but he could still sense Leisen's feelings at that moment.

Blood seeped from his lips as the man tried desperately to open his mouth, stretching out thin black lines inscribed with curses. He seemed to want to call out the child's name again, but he couldn't even do that.

The lights inside dimmed, and the man seemed to become the shadow, swallowing up the light wherever he was.

The father and son meet in the dead building, and the ghost summoning the soul sees the child he cannot bear to part with.

Laisheng reached out his hand to the man. He was already very strong, but he was still just a child.

Seeing Laisheng's pitiful state, even Han Fei, an outsider, wanted to hug him, let alone Laisheng's biological parents.

The man raised his hand slightly, but when Laisheng approached, he lowered his hand and took a step back.

He didn't want his child to see him looking so ugly; if possible, he would rather the boy retain the impression he had of himself before.

"Sigh." The bedroom door was slowly pushed open, and a woman whose body was completely covered stood in the doorway. She looked at the father and son in the living room with a gentle yet sad gaze: "Laisheng, don't go any further."

The boy ignored his mother's words and insisted on going forward.

"Laisheng! Stop!" The woman's voice became stern, but she didn't dare to approach Laisheng.

Looking at the woman's hands tucked into her long sleeves, Han Fei seemed to understand something. He walked to Lai Sheng's side and gently stopped him: "I think it would be better if you told the child the truth, even if tonight was just a dream for him."

Laisheng started crying and making a fuss. In front of his parents, he finally behaved like an ordinary child.

The woman in the bedroom and the man who had turned into a monster both looked at Han Fei. They stared at Han Fei for a long time before the mother finally spoke: "I know where your lost soul is hidden. I can give it to you, but I hope you can do us a favor."

"What's the deal?"

"Take Laisheng away."

Upon hearing his mother say this, Laisheng's little face showed an expression of disbelief. His beloved mother had actually said such a thing!
Standing in the center of the living room, his small body wiped away tears. He looked so helpless and pitiful.

“Laisheng, Mom lied to you.” She looked at Laisheng, who was crying incessantly, her face full of pain: “Dad left your world a long time ago. I always thought I could take good care of you. I vowed to give you double the love and make you the happiest child. Your memories are still here. But you forgot what happened later. I fell ill, and you stayed by my bedside, but in the end, I still left.”

"I……"

"Without your parents, we really can't let you go. As a result, that obsession was exploited, which is why you are here. All the soul-summoning rituals were prepared for you."

As the woman spoke, she lifted her sleeve, and the Death Curse spread across her arm like an indelible mold: "We thought that if we turned into monsters, we would have a chance to see you again, but when you arrived, we realized that its true purpose was you."

"Does it refer to the building manager? They even exploit children, are they even human?" Han Fei desperately wanted the couple to help him, and he had already begun laying the groundwork.

“It’s not human, it’s not even an animal, it’s a real devil, it represents the ultimate evil.” The woman was also turning into a monster, but she was not worried about herself at all, her eyes were only on Laisheng: “Our deaths are not accidents, all the coincidences are his means of killing us, and all of this is to drag Laisheng into the Death Tower.”

"You knew that doing this would hurt Laisheng, yet you still chose to summon his soul for your own one-sided longing?" Han Fei asked tentatively.

The woman smiled bitterly: "The child's father became a mindless monster, and my memories were tampered with. I used to think this place was reality and that I was still alive. It wasn't until the soul-summoning ritual was successful, until I personally summoned my child's soul to this filthy and terrifying world, that the memories that the administrators had altered in my mind were restored."

His fingers were clenched tightly together, turning white: "It did this on purpose. It wanted me to realize clearly that I was the murderer who killed my own child."

Leaning against the door frame, the woman had lost all her strength. Just thinking about it filled her with despair—to kill the person she loved and missed most with her own hands, and to endure the pain and torment.

"The manager of the Dead Building utterly despises the good in humanity. It relentlessly manipulates human nature and tortures the living, seemingly to prove the fragility of humanity. This is actually exposing its own weakness, because it has never received love or help from anyone." Han Fei knew some of the things Butterfly had done, and such a thing needed no sympathy or understanding.

Since it doesn't believe in the good in human nature, let's just show it the worst side of human nature and let it die in the most tragic way.

While Han Fei was talking to the woman, the boy struggled incessantly. He couldn't understand why his parents were in so much pain on what should have been a day for the family of three to reunite.

Seeing the death curse appear on his mother's face, Laisheng panicked. He begged Han Fei to let go, begged his parents not to leave, and begged all the adults present, but his pleas were destined to be in vain.

"Why are you doing this? Didn't you say that adults don't lie to children? I'm not afraid of you turning into monsters, and I'm not afraid of myself turning into a monster, as long as we're together."

Even if it's a nightmare, as long as everyone is there, he'd rather keep doing it.

The summoned souls forget that they are spirits and still follow some past memories and habits; at this time, they are at their purest.

"Laisheng, although your mom and dad can no longer hug you, we will always be with you. We will become the wind, the rain, a pine tree on a tree, or a bird that occasionally flies by in the sky. We will always be with you."

"You lied to me! You lied to me again!"

"There are only three hours left until 4:44. Laisheng, you should go. It's already our good fortune to see you on this last day." The woman didn't waste any more time and gestured for Han Fei to let go.

The moment Han Fei let go, the boy rushed towards his mother. He ran so fast that it seemed as if if he hesitated even a moment, his mother would vanish like a bubble.

The little body ran towards its mother, but it couldn't shorten the distance between them.

As the boy passed the mirror next to the sofa, the father, who had been silent all along, took out the color photo behind the portrait of his son. He looked at his child and tore the photo to shreds with his own hands.

Paper scraps fell everywhere, and a large shadow emerged from the mirror in the middle of the living room, completely changing the appearance of room 4064.

Mold and dust covered all the furniture, the ceiling was cracked inch by inch, a sinister atmosphere permeated the air, paper money was scattered all over the floor, and burning candles were everywhere in the room.

This is what room 4064 originally looked like.

After the dissipating shadows covered the room, they surged toward Rasen.

As the candles used to guide the soul were extinguished one by one, Laisheng's consciousness gradually became blurred.

A moment later, the shadows dissipated, and a boy lay on the sofa, gently enveloped by the yin energy, fast asleep.

“There’s no time. Get it out of here as soon as possible.” A death curse began to appear on the woman’s neck, but she didn’t care. Her eyes were fixed on the child on the sofa. “If you can’t leave before 4:44 tonight, you may never be able to leave.”

Before losing his own soul, Han Fei's eyes couldn't see the Soul Chaser at all, but just now he and Lai Sheng could clearly see the appearance of the Soul Chaser, which means that Lai Sheng, like him, was on the verge of death, with one foot already in the coffin.

"Will the manager return at 4:44?" Han Fei knew very well the significance of this time; perhaps he would see the butterfly's true form tonight.

“Yes, you all need to find a way to leave before it returns. Once it comes back, all of our eyes will be its eyes, our ears its ears, and our love for Raise will be the knife that kills it.” The woman’s face continued to darken.

“We didn’t dare to leave before because without our protection, Laisheng would definitely die in this building. It took advantage of this to reunite our family.”

"But we are fortunate to have met you in the Dead Building. I will return your soul to you, and I hope you can also fulfill your promise to us and take Laisheng back."

"I really like what you said: now it's time for us to entrust our lives to Laisheng."

"Leaving him is our last act of love."

After the woman finished speaking, she slowly walked to the sofa and gently kissed the boy's cheek before her face was completely covered by the Death Curse.

"Dad and Mom didn't lie to you, we really love you."

The death curse crawled across her lips, and the woman could no longer suppress it. The death curse, now completely out of control, completely obscured her face.

Blood seeping from her skin stained her clothes. With her last shred of sanity, the woman said, "The remnant soul of yours, which possesses a great deal of childhood memories, entered Laisheng's consciousness. We didn't have time to stop it. Actually, the Laisheng just now wasn't simply him; he also possessed parts of your personality."

"My remnant soul has entered Laisheng's consciousness?" Han Fei was still waiting to get his remnant soul back, but he didn't expect the woman to say such a thing.

"The missing part of your soul contains your memories from different periods. They should have been attracted into the consciousness of other people. I don't know if this was planned by the administrators or because your soul is special." The woman's voice was intermittent, and her body was gradually transforming into a Soul Chaser.

"To find all the remnant souls, you need to find matching living people and then take them away with you." The woman's head slowly drooped, and the veins on her skin became unusually prominent. When she raised her face again, her delicate features were covered with dense death curses.

Before Han Fei could speak, the woman had already lost her mind, and her sharp five fingers stabbed towards Han Fei's heart.

Just as Han Fei was about to be stabbed, the shadows in the room protected him.

The father, whose only eye remained conscious, stood in front of Han Fei, embracing his wife, who had also become a Soul Chaser, and remained silent.

(End of this chapter)