My Healing Games

Chapter 449 Was his girlfriend also just a figment of his imagination?

Bus No. 32 is an ordinary bus with no special features.

This route has been accident-free for nearly ten years and was even selected by the bus company last month as a model route with the highest passenger satisfaction.

But this ordinary bus became somewhat different tonight.

It emerged from the darkness, its body enveloped in thick darkness, as if shrouded in a dense fog.

"The vehicle is starting, please sit tight and hold on, next stop, next stop, next stop..."

The car radio kept blaring, but apart from Han Fei, no one in the car noticed anything unusual; everyone acted as usual.

"If any strange people get on at the next stop, we'll get off immediately, understand?"

"Why?" Li Hu asked, puzzled. Seeing Han Fei's low voice, he unconsciously lowered his own as well: "This is the last bus. If we get off halfway, we'll be stuck in the middle of nowhere. How are we going to get back?"

"There's always a way back." The radio kept ringing in Han Fei's right ear. This car seemed to have no end, and it was possible that its next stop would be death.

There were hardly any cars on the highway late at night, except for the No. 32 bus. The driver was used to this situation and started to speed up in order to get off work and go home as soon as possible.

"These stops are usually not crowded. Is anyone getting off at the next stop? If not, I'm not stopping!" the driver shouted without turning his head.

No one answered, but the driver then said, "Grandma, speak louder, I can't hear what you're saying!"

Upon hearing the driver's words, Li Long curiously glanced at the back of the car and saw an old woman sitting in the corner of the last row, holding a bundle that seemed to contain a sleeping baby.

Was she in the car before?

Li Long had no recollection of it; he figured he was probably too tired to notice.

Shaking his head, Li Long turned away, preparing to close his eyes and rest, but just then the driver spoke again.

"You're all going down too? Why are you all going to Shahe Hospital? You all look so pale, could it be food poisoning?"

The bus was completely silent. Li Long and Li Hu exchanged a glance, neither of them knowing who the driver was talking to.

Li Hu nudged Han Fei lightly and whispered, "Is this driver crazy? There are so many people in the car. It's just the few of us..."

He looked to the side as he spoke, but the rest of his sentence stuck in his throat, and he didn't dare to say it.

The bus was filled with people; some were playing on their phones, some were resting, and others were quietly looking out the window.

These people appeared perfectly normal, except that their faces were pale and their skin had a moldy appearance with some remaining patches.

"When did they come up?" Li Hu was a little confused. He subconsciously asked his brother, but when he turned his head, he found that Li Long's face was ashen.

Whether it was due to the lighting or Li Long's extreme exhaustion, Li Long's face was deathly pale, like a corpse just wheeled out of the morgue.

Grabbing Han Fei's shoulder, Li Hu shook him repeatedly, trying to tell Han Fei about his brother's unusual behavior, but he soon discovered something even more abnormal.

Han Fei's left hand was gripping his left eye, as if he were about to gouge his eyeball out.

"Holy crap! What's wrong with you guys?"

The bus sped up and got colder inside, but the driver didn't realize the problem and kept muttering to himself, "Is the air conditioning broken?"

In the harmonious and refreshing atmosphere, the second platform finally appeared in the distance.

On the edge of the darkness, the outline of a hospital could be vaguely seen. This private hospital was built next to the Shahe River and originally seemed to be a sanatorium for the wealthy, but it was later converted into a private hospital for various reasons.

"Let's get off! Let's get off!" Li Hu urged before the bus even reached the stop, gently touching Li Long's shoulder with his arm in a cast: "Brother, don't scare me!"

"Are you sick?" Li Long looked puzzled. "Am I trying to scare you, or are you trying to scare me? Keep your voice down. Can't you see everyone is sleeping? Mind your professionalism."

“Brother…” Li Hu looked at his brother’s face. If it weren’t for the cast on his wrist, he would have grabbed Li Long’s hand and made him touch his face: “It looks like black mist is flowing down your face.”

"Bullshit, you better behave yourself."

Seeing that Li Long wasn't listening to him, Li Hu continued to shake Han Fei's shoulder: "Brother, let's get out of the car. This car does seem to have some problems."

"My mood is dropping faster, there's bound to be something special on the train at the next stop." Han Fei covered his bloodshot left eye and stared intently at the train window.

Using the car's interior lights, he saw a strange young man reflected in the car window.

The young man's head, arms, chest, and abdomen were all wrapped in bandages. He was extremely weak, and blood was constantly staining the bandages red.

"Was this the original owner of the shrine? How did he leave the West District under those circumstances?"

The man's face, reflected in the car window, no longer showed any trace of innocence or kindness. His once-intact eyes were now filled with pain and hatred, and his teeth were almost all shattered. It was hard to imagine what kind of force was supporting him and allowing him to keep living.

It could be a mother still waiting for surgery, or it could be hatred towards the father.

A sharp pain shot through his bloodshot left eye. As the No. 32 bus arrived at the Shahe Hospital stop, the battered young man inside the bus window collapsed.

Then Han Fei saw something even stranger. His left eye looked into the distance and saw a young woman in a nurse's uniform jump off the top floor of Shahe Hospital. Her body hit the exterior wall of the building, and blood flowed all over her body.

She eventually fell onto the huge signboard at the entrance of Shahe Hospital, her blood staining her nurse's uniform.

The car radio kept playing, and the woman who had fallen seemed to hear it. Her completely twisted and deformed bones slowly stood up, supporting her broken body, and she walked towards the bus station outside Shahe Hospital. She seemed determined to escape Shahe Hospital no matter what.

With each step the nurse took, she left a bloody footprint on the ground. Han Fei witnessed all of this with her left eye as she drew closer to the station.

The woman appeared on the platform the instant the No. 32 bus came to a complete stop.

"Get ready to get off!" Han Fei stood up from his seat, and at that moment the front and rear doors of the bus opened simultaneously.

"Is something strange really going to come up?" Li Hu was already easily frightened, and upon hearing Han Fei's voice, he immediately pulled his brother to his feet.

The two brothers were injured and unable to move easily. As they left their seats, the nurse who had fallen from the building and whose left eye was covered in blood climbed into the car.

Li Hu held his breath, and Han Fei clenched his hands nervously, but the woman who appeared in the car the next moment was completely different from the woman who had fallen from the building that Han Fei had seen with his left eye.

She was dressed in clean and tidy clothes and carrying a bag containing a nurse's uniform.

The woman looked a year or two younger than Han Fei. Her clothes weren't particularly fashionable, but they made people feel comfortable.

The light shone on the young woman, and she saw Han Fei sitting by the back door.

For some reason, the woman smiled at Han Fei.

She wasn't particularly beautiful, nor did she have a special temperament, but she made Han Fei feel very comfortable, especially when she smiled, like a forsythia blooming at the end of a winter night.

After inserting the coin, the woman, carrying a bag containing nurse uniforms, walked up to Han Fei and asked, "Is this place taken?"

In the shrine's owner's memory world, this was the first time Han Fei had heard such a moving voice; every word was like a song.

Shaking his head, Han Fei subconsciously glanced at Li Long and Li Hu, who seemed unsure of what to do.

Wasn't it said that something really scary would get on the bus?
"Then I'll sit next to you." The woman didn't stand on ceremony and sat down directly with her bag in hand.

Han Fei secretly observed the other person and discovered that he could not see the girl at all with his left eye, only with his right eye.

The bus started moving again, and the temperature inside seemed to rise significantly, with the interior lights becoming brighter.

Sitting quietly in his seat, Han Fei felt that this woman was hiding some secrets, but he had too little information to speculate.

"How did you hurt your leg?" The woman looked at Han Fei's still bleeding calf. "Bandaging it like this will hardly stop the bleeding and will cause further trauma to the wound!"

The woman knelt down and placed the bag she was carrying on the seat. She took out clean bandages and some medical supplies from the bag and carefully treated the wounds on Han Fei's legs and arms.

Han Fei silently watched the woman, offering no resistance and observing her intently.

In order to survive in the Deep World, he learned all kinds of first aid knowledge. He found that many of the nurses' procedures were not standard and could only be considered barely passable.

"Alright, it shouldn't get worse now." The young woman looked at her bandaged wound with satisfaction, retied the bag, and sat down in the chair.

The vehicle continued to move forward, and the lights gradually dimmed. As the temperature inside the car dropped again, Han Fei suddenly felt a touch on his left shoulder.

The woman leaned against him, gently nuzzling him.

Frowning, Han Fei quietly gripped the knife handle in his pocket, but at that moment the woman secretly handed him her phone. The screen displayed a message: "Do you need me to call the police for you? Those two behind you don't look like good people. Are you being held hostage?"
The two were sitting close together, and Li Long and Li Hu, who were sitting behind them, could not see the light emanating from the phone screen.

The woman seemed to have misunderstood something, but Han Fei didn't explain. He was more curious about who the woman was and what she represented in the shrine's master's memories. Why did the nurse who fell from the building become like this after getting into the car?

Looking closely at the woman, Han Fei was surprised to find that the head nurse looked a little like the shrine owner's mother.

"Can you tell me your name?"

"Lin Lu".

The nurse's fingers flew across the phone screen as she typed out another line: "If you can't talk, just blink. Blinking a few times means you agree to call the police."

Han Fei didn't look at the text on his phone screen again. After the woman answered with her name, the system notification sounded in Han Fei's mind again.

"Attention player number 0000! You have triggered the shrine random quest - Wish Three."

“Wish 3 - Love (Random Quest from the Shrine): I have never experienced the feeling of being loved, and there is not a single minute in my memory worth remembering.”

"Mission requirements: Kill the forest deer at the right time, in the right place, and by the right means."

Even as the system finished explaining the task requirements, Han Fei's eyes were still fixed on Lin Lu's face.

"Kill?"

Han Fei shifted his gaze and looked out the car window.

The cold glass reflected a man covered in wounds and blood, barely clinging to life.

He collapsed alone in his seat, and none of the passengers dared to approach him, let alone come to his aid.

"The scene I saw with my left eye was too cruel!"

Han Fei gently pushed Lin Lu away and took out his phone: "Thank you for your kindness, but you seem to have misunderstood something. I accidentally bumped myself, and the two people sitting in the back are my friends."

Lin Lu simply didn't believe Han Fei's words. It would be hard for any normal person to believe that such a serious injury could have been caused by his own actions.
She frantically winked and gestured at Han Fei, constantly giving him hints.

"Get off the train as soon as you get off, and don't meddle in other people's business." Only after saying this did Han Fei suddenly realize that his landlord seemed to have said something similar to him yesterday.

Lin Lu seemed to understand something and stopped talking to Han Fei.

After the No. 32 bus reached the upper reaches of the Shahe River, Lin Lu nudged Han Fei, secretly slipped a note into Han Fei's pocket, and then got off the bus.

The stop where she got off the bus happened to be the Third People's Hospital.

After Lin Lu left, the temperature inside the bus dropped again, and all the passengers remained silent and lifeless, emitting a foul stench.

Reaching into his pocket, Han Fei looked at the contact number on the slip of paper. His right eye saw an unfamiliar number, while his left eye saw his own.

"Before Lin Lu appeared, it seemed like the vehicle would never reach the next stop, which meant that the shrine owner felt he was about to die and that he didn't think he could make it to the next stop."

"The No. 32 bus was full of silent, dead bodies. They were the counterparts to the passengers who were afraid of getting into trouble. Human indifference can be as chilling as ice."

"Finally, there was the continuously decreasing temperature inside the car, which should be the body temperature of the shrine's owner. He was already teetering on the edge of life and death; for him, this was a car heading towards death."

"All the turning points came after Lin Lu got on the bus. The temperature returned to normal, and the light stopped distorting. But did Lin Lu really exist?"

"The woman who jumped to her death at Shahe Hospital stood up step by step, got into the car, and became Lin Lu."

"Perhaps Lin Lu was just the shrine owner's own fantasy. After witnessing the nurse jump to her death, his strong will to survive prompted his brain to fabricate a little bit of beauty."

(End of this chapter)