My Healing Games

Chapter 664 The Key to Unlocking Memories
"Going home?" Xiao Jia looked at the increasingly eerie and terrifying stairwell, and he simply couldn't believe that Han Fei could say such a thing.

“Didn’t I tell you and Li Guo’er before? I have a special sense of familiarity with Building No. 1, as if I used to live here for a long time. When we came here during the day, we had that feeling, but it wasn’t strong. Overall, the building was still very unfamiliar to me, but it’s different now.” Han Fei spoke very quickly, and by the time he finished speaking, he had already run to the second floor.

"After being pulled into the world seen by ghosts by Xiaoyou's mother, I realized that what I was really familiar with was not the Happiness Apartment Building No. 1 during the day, but Apartment No. 1 at night. It seems that I used to live with ghosts."

Holding the knife upwards, Han Fei was filled with inner conflict. Like ordinary people, he feared death and could feel terror. But amidst his fear, he also felt a touch of warmth and beauty.

His best memories seem to have happened here, and his worst memories seem to have happened here as well.

While Han Fei and Xiao Jia were talking, the blood-stained phone lit up with a cold light, and Xiao You used her mother's phone to call her landlord.

Why did you hurt me! Why!

As soon as the call was connected, Xiao You began to lose control, and all her grievances and fears turned into questioning.

After experiencing such a horrific event, a mental breakdown is inevitable, but time is of the essence, and we can't waste this precious opportunity. So Han Fei took the phone directly from Xiao You and asked into the phone, "What happened in the room you rented to Xiao You? How did that hanged ghost appear?"

"This has nothing to do with me!" The landlord was definitely in the know. Before Han Fei could even ask for details, he had already started to shift the blame.

When did it appear?

“I’m a victim too! I bought this house from a friend at a low price, but who knew my friend would swindle me. A previous tenant in this house committed suicide, and the body was only discovered after it started to decompose. I heard from the neighbors that when the police broke down the door, the tenant’s body was hanging deformed, with the head and torso half detached and the neck stretched out long.” The landlord’s voice was full of terror.

"Why did you rent out this haunted house?!" Xiao You was trembling, whether from anger or fear, it was hard to tell.

“I had no choice. I didn’t intend to rent out that house at first; I just wanted to sell it at a low price as soon as possible. But who knew that while the house was empty, I would have nightmares every night, dreaming that there was a man hanging at the head of the bed, his neck was stretched out, and his spine was exposed!” The landlord himself was also very scared: “I asked many people to exorcise the ghost, but it didn’t work. Later, a stranger with a pure black profile picture added me and said that he had a way to help me.”

"The profile picture is a stranger with a pure black profile picture?" Han Fei immediately thought of the taxi driver. The driver killed nine passengers to hold a resurrection ceremony for his child because he was bewitched by the stranger with the black profile picture. It was also that person who taught the driver the procedure for the ceremony.

"Yes, that person told me to rent out the room. He said that as long as nine different living people have lived in the haunted house, the evil energy of the house will be washed away by the yang energy, and the ghost will leave with the last tenant and stop bothering me." The landlord has also been suffering from inner turmoil and has been very afraid.

"You just do what he tells you to do? Do you know that this will kill other people?" Xiao Jia shouted. He didn't know if others had been killed, but he himself had been implicated and his life was now uncertain.

"I had no choice! I didn't want to die either!" The landlord didn't know that Han Fei and the others were trapped in the ghost apartment building. He thought that his secret had been exposed and he would be punished, so he cooperated with the landlord.

"Do you know why that hanged man committed suicide? What was his obsession before he died?" Han Fei remembered what the Joker had told him. It was because he helped the Joker resolve his inner conflict that the Joker agreed to make a deal with him.

Han Fei's idea is simple: he wants to figure out the hanged ghost's obsession and see if he can destroy the core of its resentment by "companionship".

"It seems that person was bullied since childhood, and later took the blame at work. In a moment of despair, he chose the most extreme way. My friend checked the apartment when he took possession of it, and he left many hateful and hostile words about the world in various places. His eyes were full of hatred, and in the end, he felt that everything was against him." The landlord felt that Han Fei seemed very professional, so he quickly told him what he knew, after all, he didn't want to be bothered by that hanged ghost anymore.

"Then what he hates most is the person who made him take the blame. Why don't you try to lure his boss into the apartment building? Or you could get him to sleep with you and then go to his boss at night?" Han Fei's proposed solution was too advanced for ordinary people, and the landlord hadn't quite grasped it and didn't know how to answer.

The sound of hurried footsteps came from upstairs, like several irrational people running wildly inside the building, creating a sense of oppression.

The information provided by the landlord alone was not enough to deal with the hanged ghost, so Han Fei quickly asked again, "Think carefully! When the tenant died, was there anything special left in the room, or was there anything unusual that happened?"

The boy's corpse became a vengeful spirit because of the resurrection ritual. Now that the black-faced figure is contacting the landlord, Han Fei has reason to suspect that the hanged ghost may also be related to the black-faced figure.

“Hmm…” Just as Han Fei was about to lose his patience, the landlord finally remembered something: “Usually, people hang themselves by standing on a chair or something, but that person stood on a black jar. I heard from a friend that the jar contained his old school uniform, as well as pencils, erasers, briefcases, staplers, and empty coffee cups, etc.”

"The jar? You just said he was bullied when he was a child. Is the stuff in the jar related to that bullying? Was it the owner of those items who led him step by step to his death, becoming the stepping stone for him to hang himself?" Han Fei reacted quickly: "Did you throw that jar away?"

“My friend said he threw the jar away, but I keep having nightmares about it; it seems to still be in the room.” The landlord himself was also distressed: “But I’ve searched the house for a long time and haven’t found it.”

"How is your relationship with your friends?" Han Fei suddenly asked.

“He owed me a lot of money, and when he couldn’t pay it back, he mortgaged his house to me. To be honest, we had a good relationship before I lent him the money, but maybe because he kept pressing me for it, our relationship gradually cooled down.” The landlord sounded a little surprised: “You don’t suspect my friend is deliberately trying to harm me, do you?”

"Do you always dream of a hanged ghost at the head of your bed?"

"I always hear the sound first; it slowly walks into the bedroom from outside."

"The hanged ghost always appears outside the bedroom." Han Fei then looked at Xiao You: "Don't you often hear footsteps too? In which room of the rented house did that sound first come from?"

"It looks like the restroom," Xiao You said with certainty after a moment's thought.

“The ghost of the hanged man is still haunting us. The landlord’s friend probably lied. He probably didn’t throw the jar away; he hid it in the bathroom.” Han Fei made his decision: “I’ll try to stall him for a while. You guys find a chance to go back to that bathroom on the seventh floor and check.”

As the three were talking, they encountered footsteps, and the hanged ghost, whose body had undergone a drastic change, appeared on the fourth floor.

A thin layer of black mist, like invisible tentacles, swirled around the body. The hanged ghost's head was brutally impaled on its spine, and its body swelled to twice its original size. All the wounds from Han Fei's previous slashing had healed.

"Recovered so quickly?"

Holding his knife, Han Fei stood in front, staring at the hanged ghost moving in the stairwell.

It lay in the middle of the stairwell like a giant worm, its slender legs like dried meat, its toes raised to support most of its body.

Two skin-and-bones hands grew out from the sides of its ribs, their fingernails covered with shreds of school uniforms, gripping the stair railing and blocking the passageway.

"It looks terrifying. I didn't know there really are things that can instill fear in people just by looking at them." Xiao Jia's legs went weak, and he instinctively wanted to run away, but he also knew that the stairwell door was locked and going downstairs would be a dead end.

"The jar that the hanged ghost was standing on is very important. I will try to get you a chance later." Han Fei didn't like gambling with his life, but fate was often beyond his control. In order to seize that sliver of opportunity, he had to try desperately.

"Just the two of us?"

"And Xiao You's mother!" Before Han Fei could say anything more, the resentful monster rushed over, crawling on the stair railing, its body almost directly crashing into Han Fei.

In order to prevent Xiao Jia and Xiao You from getting hurt, Han Fei did not dodge backward, but instead rushed forward.

The fact that a living person dares to draw their sword against a vengeful ghost shows a courage that surpasses that of many other game participants.

"After the hanged ghost turned into a monster, it blocked the corridor, and no one could leave. I had to lead it into the room next door so that Xiao Jia and the others could pass through smoothly."

Suppressing his inner fear, Han Fei swung his sword and severed the hanged ghost's head once more. A normal person would surely die from such a blow, but the hanged ghost was completely unaffected. Its arms, shrouded in black mist, reached out to grab Han Fei's neck.

By dodging, Han Fei discovered that he was extremely skilled in close-quarters combat and had an astonishingly fast reaction speed.

"The stairwell is too cramped; I can't keep hiding forever. I need to attack!"

Holding on tightly, before Han Fei could strike a second time, he suddenly felt a tightness around his neck, followed by a strong feeling of suffocation. It was as if something was binding his neck, and a force lifted him up.

Han Fei looked down and saw the head of the hanged ghost lying on the steps. The strange man opened his mouth wide, and a thin black mist came out of his mouth and connected with the severed neck, condensing into a black rope that tightly strangled Han Fei's neck.

Without any further manipulation, Han Fei was already suspended by the black mist ropes, his feet leaving the ground.

To the hanged ghost, Han Fei's desperate struggle was like a fish that had taken the bait; all resistance was futile.

His face turned purple, and Han Fei's neck was constricted and deformed. He tried to slash at the black mist on his neck, but his hands were grabbed by the hanged ghost, who wanted to watch Han Fei be hanged to death.

In the critical moment, a sickly cat jumped out of the backpack behind Xiao Jia and pounced on the head of the hanged ghost. The nine black stripes on its body briefly blocked the black mist, but it also paid a heavy price.

The cat's wounds instantly ruptured, and a large amount of black blood gushed from its small body.

"Han Fei!" Xiao Jia finally realized what was happening. He hurriedly took out a mirror from his backpack, shouted Han Fei's name to bolster his courage, and rushed towards the hanged ghost with the mirror in his hand.

The mirror with the boy's birth date and time written on it is indeed effective against ordinary ghosts, but it is not so effective against resentment; it only restrains some of the black mist.

Ugly Cat and Xiao Jia created an opportunity for Han Fei. He seized the moment when the hanged ghost was distracted and rammed his knife into the hanged ghost's body.

Living people cannot touch ghosts, but Han Fei seems to be an exception. When he tried to push the hanged ghost into the room on the fourth floor, his hands seemed to be connected to the soul. In that instant, he felt that his hands not only touched the hanged ghost, but also sensed the other's memories and resentful heart.

The hanged ghost never expected that a living person could touch him. His sealed memories were pushed back, and his soul fell backward with Han Fei at the door of a room on the fourth floor.

"Get to the seventh floor quickly! We'll dig three feet into the ground to find that jar!"

"Okay!" Xiao Jia knew they couldn't completely kill the hanged ghost right now, so he grabbed Xiao You and ran upstairs as fast as he could.

Han Fei also wanted to leave, but his arms were still being held by the hanged ghost.

"Every wrong has its perpetrator, and every debt its debtor! I can help you bring your enemy here!" Han Fei said earnestly, his voice seemingly possessing some kind of special power, but that power was useless against the hanged ghost, since its head was still outside the door.

With a meow, Han Fei witnessed a terrifying scene: the head of the hanged ghost had been flung away from the blood-soaked black cat. It seemed to be held up by a black thread, hanging in mid-air with its eyes wide open and filled with whites!
"No! It seems afraid to come in!"

Han Fei's back was completely unprotected, and the severed head could have easily rushed in and torn Han Fei's unsuspecting body apart, but the other party did not do so.

"I bet I was right, there are other ghosts in this room!"

Han Fei didn't want to think about what would happen in the future, nor was he capable of thinking about it; his first priority was to get out of his current predicament.

The hanged ghost grabbed Han Fei, and Han Fei also grabbed the ghost with both hands, as if they were going to die together.

As the human and the ghost tormented each other, a strange change appeared on the television screen in the living room.

The black and white static flickered, and a wooden house appeared on the blurry television screen. Inside the house was a lonely little girl in red, playing with a jigsaw puzzle of living human bodies. She tried again and again to put the people together, but no matter what she did, she could not put the corpses together as a whole.

The bloody and terrifying scene was incredibly shocking. It felt as if Han Fei's mind was being pricked by needles, and a small loophole appeared in the black curtain that sealed his memories.

"Human body puzzle?"

Just as Han Fei had this thought, the girl in red sitting among the pile of corpses seemed to sense something. She slowly turned her head and looked at where Han Fei was from the wooden house with the television set.

A blurry little girl rises from a pile of corpses, wearing clothes that are constantly dripping blood, and walks step by step toward the television screen, as if she is about to walk right out of the screen!
"That child looks so familiar!"

The static from the television grew increasingly jarring, and the little girl in red quickened her pace. One moment she was in the cabin, and the next she was very close to the screen. A second later, a girl's ferocious and crazed face was pressed directly against the television screen!
Her bloodshot and desperate eyes stared intently at Han Fei, as if she were about to devour him whole.

(End of this chapter)