My Healing Games

Chapter 439 The Sound from the Depths of the Warehouse

"Even if your heart stops beating, you can live here, live here forever..."

Han Fei suddenly opened his eyes and sat up in bed, his clothes already soaked with cold sweat.

"I actually fell asleep so easily? And in the shrine master's memory world?"

Upon opening the attribute panel, Han Fei discovered that his mood score had returned to sixty, meaning he could now go out normally.

"Sleeping seems to only restore my mood to about 60% at most. I don't think I've experienced any joy in this world of memories yet." Rubbing his slightly groggy head, Han Fei changed into some dry clothes. "How long have I been asleep? My memories feel a bit blurry. Could I have forgotten something?"

He drew back the curtains; the sky outside was already dark. Han Fei slept straight through until nightfall.

"Maybe they're just too tired."

After washing up, Han Fei went into the kitchen and cooked the last bit of rice into porridge.

"If I can survive tonight, I'll buy more supplies to store at home after dawn, and I'll also visit the shrine's owner's mother. Perhaps I can discover some secrets from her."

Around 9 p.m., Han Fei changed into his work clothes and went to the door.

To avoid walking alone after midnight, he chose to start work early. People as dedicated to their jobs as him are rare these days.

As Han Fei opened the door and left his home, a system notification rang in his mind.

"Attention Player 0000! Your current hunger level is 20, your physical condition is good, your current mental state is slightly depressed, and your mood value is 60. Do you want to go out?"

"Yes."

The system's prompt brought Han Fei back to his senses. He realized that he was in the shrine's master's memory world and needed to be on high alert.

"The system gives me a notification every time I go out. It feels like the system has become much more human-like in the shrine's owner's memory world, and it talks more... Wait a minute, is the notification in my mind really the system's voice?"

Han Fei stood at the door. He felt that he couldn't rely on the system notifications to stay awake. It was only the second day. If he got used to the notifications, and one day they suddenly disappeared or gave him some other notifications, he might get lost.

"This must be the most difficult task I've ever done."

Leaving the rented room, Han Fei listened to the various sounds around him: TV commercials, couples arguing over trivial matters, and children being scolded.

These voices felt very familiar to Han Fei, as if he had lived there for a long time.

"Am I being assimilated by the shrine's master's memories? I've never died once, so why am I suddenly having this feeling? Is it because I'm falling asleep? But if I don't sleep, my mood will slowly decrease, and my body will also be affected. In the end, it's still a dead end."

As Han Fei slowly walked to the entrance of the stairwell, he glanced at the third floor. All sounds disappeared between the second and third floors, and the area above the third floor seemed to belong to another world.

His feet began to move unconsciously as Han Fei walked up to the third floor. When he stopped at the door of room number thirteen, his mood score began to drop again.

"Never mind, I'd better go to work first."

As Han Fei ran out of the apartment building, he gasped for breath, not understanding why he was afraid.

Turning his head to look up, he saw that a window on the third floor was not closed properly. Two hands were gripping the windowsill, and half of a face was visible from behind the window, with two dark eyes staring intently at Han Fei.

A crumpled piece of paper was thrown out through the crack in the window, and the half-face with its mouth open seemed to want to say something to Han Fei.

After hesitating for a moment, Han Fei picked up the crumpled paper from the ground and unfolded it.

There were black symbols drawn on the crumpled paper, as if something had been smashed. Turning the paper over, there were several twisted and crooked words on it—"You will die too."

Is this a curse? Or a warning?

Han Fei stuffed the crumpled paper into his pocket, then, without looking back, quickly ran towards the edge of the residential area.

Upon arriving at the first alley, the homeless man didn't run out from the corner this time. He grinned foolishly when he saw Han Fei and said to him, "Good man, have a safe night."

"I hope you have a safe night too." Han Fei replied casually without thinking much about it. But when the homeless man heard this, he looked like he had seen a ghost. The smile on his face vanished, and he dragged his small wooden box into the corner.

"Did I say something wrong? Or did he just see something?"

Han Fei didn't overlook this detail, but he questioned the homeless man for a long time without getting anything out of him, and even scared the lame dog into barking wildly.

"Your dog is quite fierce." Han Fei remembered that the dog had never barked when he came here before.

Without wasting any more time, Han Fei entered the second alley. Few lights were on in the houses on both sides, making it seem unusually deserted.

"Two alleys, a small park, and then a stone bridge..." Han Fei had already memorized the route. He had intended to avoid the small park as he had done last time, but he was surprised to find that the little boy from room number seven was sitting alone on the swing in the park.

A blue schoolbag, mud-stained clothes, a little boy gripping a swing, as if he were talking to someone next to him, but he was clearly all alone.

"Hey!" Han Fei called out to the child from outside the park, "It's getting dark, hurry home! Don't stay outside alone!"

The little boy heard Han Fei's voice and seemed very afraid that Han Fei would see his friend. He whispered a few words to someone behind him and then hurriedly ran towards Han Fei with his big schoolbag on his back.

Sweat still clung to his face, and his clothes were covered in mud, as if he had gone off to play near the shallows.

"Uncle, please don't tell my dad, please."

"What time is it? Why are you still outside?" Ever since Han Fei learned that the boy was a child with ten fingers, he had started to pay special attention to him.

“My dad needed to get my mom treated, so he kicked me out. He told me to play outside and come home after 10 o’clock.”

"Then you shouldn't go to those dangerous places!" Han Fei wiped the mud off the boy's face. "What illness does your mother have? I don't think I've ever seen her before."

“My mother hasn’t left the house for several years. She’s always lying in her bedroom, not saying a word, always wrapped in a blanket and sleeping, as if she can never wake up.”

"Don't you usually communicate with your mother much?"

"Dad always locks the bedroom door before he goes to work, and you can only see Mom when he comes back." The boy's words shocked Han Fei, and he now suspected that the boy's mother might have already died.

"No matter what, you can't run around. You have to be careful. Only if you live well can you protect the people you want to protect." Han Fei knew he had spoken a bit harshly. After telling the boy to go back, he glanced at the small park again. The swing was still swaying back and forth, as if inviting him to sit on it and play.

"This world feels increasingly abnormal."

Bypassing the small park, Han Fei walked a long way to the stone bridge. Looking at the sand river flowing quietly in the dark night, he couldn't help but feel an urge to jump in.

"Go to work, go to work, don't think too much!"

After running across the stone bridge, Han Fei arrived at Exit C of the mall. He glanced at his attribute panel and saw that his mood score had dropped from sixty to fifty-five.

Upon entering the mall, Han Fei was greeted by Li Daxing, the male security guard from the previous night.

"Hey, you're still alive?"

"If you're going to die working in that dead people's shop, you'll be the first one to die."

After exchanging polite greetings, the two went about their own business.

Han Fei entered the secondhand store, where Huang Li was talking to a young employee. The gist of the conversation was that the employee hadn't finished his work, forcing them to work overtime.

Perhaps because Han Fei had come in, Huang Li wanted to save face for the young employee, so she deliberately lowered her voice.

"What's going on?" Han Fei always felt that arguing wouldn't solve anything, especially in a world like this.

"A large batch of new goods arrived at the warehouse, and the boss asked that they be sorted out by tomorrow morning. But this kid is lazy and hasn't done anything all day!" Huang Li was very angry: "I've already stayed up for two nights, and I was hoping to get a good night's sleep tonight. Looks like I'll have to stay up late again!"

"Sister Huang, we've had so many customers today, I haven't had a moment's rest either." The young man said, feeling wronged. "I'll go tidy up now, I won't let you two do any extra work."

"I'll go with you, it'll be good for us to get familiar with the warehouse." Han Fei took the initiative to stand with the young man. He was very enthusiastic about his work, and many bosses liked employees like him when they were alive.

"This is the only way." Huang Li checked the accounts at the counter, while Han Fei followed the young man into the underground warehouse via the freight elevator inside the secondhand store.

This underground warehouse is right next to the underground supermarket warehouse in the shopping mall, separated only by a wall.

"Hey, new guy." The young man was much more relaxed in front of Han Fei, probably because the two of them looked quite young: "Why did you come here to work the night shift? I'm not trying to scare you, but you have to be careful when you're on night duty. This place isn't very clean."

After the young man went down the freight elevator to the underground, he whispered to Han Fei, "The old man who was in charge of training me in this store passed away a while ago. He died in the store. It was really scary."

"I can't help it, I'm short of money." Han Fei smiled shyly.

"The night shift pay is indeed higher, almost twice that of our day shift, but not everyone can do the night shift." The young man shook his head and took out his phone: "Let's add each other as friends, my name is Pei Yang."

"What you're saying is making me uneasy. Could you elaborate so I can be mentally prepared?" Han Fei also took out his phone, adding friends while trying to get information out of them.

"The boss forbids me from mentioning it, so he probably doesn't even understand what's going on himself. Anyway, remember this: don't sleep in the middle of the night, and don't stay inside the shop. It's best to sit at the shop entrance. If anything unusual happens in the shop, run away immediately." Pei Yang was genuinely reminding Han Fei.

"Can't sleep? But when I got back last night, Sister Huang had just woken up. She was sleeping soundly."

"Have you noticed..." Pei Yang suddenly stopped, then said very carefully, "Huang Li has been acting particularly strange lately?"

"What do you mean?"

“The old shop assistant who trained me was also acting very strangely before he passed away. His personality, emotions, and tone of voice sometimes seemed like a completely different person.” Pei Yang’s fingers unconsciously clenched, and the sweat on his palms showed that he was a little nervous and scared. “Enough talk, let’s get to work.”

Pei Yang kept his word and didn't mention it at all. He kept his head down and worked, rarely even communicating with Han Fei.

They sorted and placed the newly delivered secondhand goods. After working for about forty minutes, Pei Yang secretly ran away, claiming that he was about to miss the last bus.

Huang Li was furious when she found out about this and insisted on calling Pei Yang, but Han Fei stopped her.

After learning how to keep accounts and memorizing the classification standards for various secondhand goods, Han Fei told Huang Li to go and rest first, and that he could do the rest of the work by himself.

A person's energy is limited. Huang Li was minding the shop last night and was busy there during the day, so she is in very poor mental condition now.

“You’re almost a thousand times better than that kid. The boss must have done a lot of good deeds in his past life to have met such a good person like you.” Huang Li was indeed very tired, and her haggardness was obvious to the naked eye: “I’ll leave the goods on the ground to you. If you can’t finish sorting them, it’s okay. I’ll talk to the boss tomorrow.”

"There shouldn't be any problems before dawn."

Han Fei had just agreed when the system's voice rang in his ears: "Player No. 0000, please note! You have successfully triggered the shrine's random quest—Organizing the warehouse!"

"Organize the storeroom (random quest at the shrine): You must organize the storeroom before dawn and put a price tag on all the souls."

Han Fei hadn't expected that this would trigger a random quest from the shrine. He had thought that organizing the storeroom would be a small matter, but now he dared not be careless in the slightest.

"Does the storeroom also conceal the regrets of the shrine's owner?"

Ignoring the oriole, Han Fei took the ledger and inventory list and went underground. As he entered the underground warehouse alone, his mood score began to slowly decline again.

"It seems that whenever a ghost appears, my mood score drops, and the rate of decline seems to be related to the ghost's strength." Han Fei walked around the warehouse, opening one old goods box and package after another, and began to price the old goods according to the store's standards.

About an hour later, Han Fei's mood score dropped from fifty to forty-two. At this moment, he felt that his surroundings were very quiet, and there were no footsteps or voices of people talking in the shopping mall above his head. It seemed that he was the only person left in the whole world.

"I got the 'Good Person' title, and my mood is dropping much slower now. If I hadn't gotten that title in the first place, would I even have been able to get through the second night?"

Han Fei arranged the secondhand goods one by one, put price tags on them, and placed them on the warehouse shelves.

He moved quickly, but even so, he couldn't finish displaying so many old items in a short time. When his mood dropped to the thirties, Han Fei decided to leave the warehouse first.

He stepped back, but as he turned around, the lights in the warehouse suddenly went out.

As darkness fell, Han Fei took a deep breath.

He could hear his heart pounding in his chest, and his mood score began to plummet.

Trying to get his eyes used to the darkness, Han Fei memorized the location of all the shelves and returned in the dark, encountering nothing along the way.

But when he climbed up the freight elevator, he found that the barrier at the entrance had been covered and he couldn't open it no matter what he did!

"Even if your heart stops beating, you can live here, live here forever..."

He vaguely heard a voice, as if it came from his mind or from the depths of the warehouse. It seemed to be calling to Han Fei, hoping that he would come over.

Thank you, Zheng Shenqi, for being the leader!
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(End of this chapter)