My Healing Games

Chapter 953 The Fourth Layer of Nightmare: Aliens
“There isn’t even a single light inside this unfinished building, and the stairs don’t have handrails. One wrong step and you could lose your life.” Bai Xian followed closely behind Han Fei. He had already found it difficult to enter the second level of the nightmare, and he was starting to panic as he faced the fourth level: “The scariest thing about nightmares is that you never know what dangers you will encounter, or how or when the ghosts will appear.”

"There's no need to panic. Observe your surroundings more. Every obsession has a cause. Find the root of the problem and treat it accordingly." Han Fei and Bai Xian entered the unfinished building on the left. The building was filled with all kinds of construction waste, and some steel bars were directly exposed on the concrete blocks. If someone accidentally fell, their body might be directly pierced by the front end of the steel bar.

Slowly moving forward, Han Fei wandered around the first floor for a while before suddenly stopping: "What is this?"

On the open ground outside the left-hand window on the first floor, Han Fei saw a telescope that had been almost completely smashed to pieces.

Looking up, Han Fei estimated the height of the unfinished building: "The telescope must have fallen from a great height, which is why it's in this state. Why would its owner bring a telescope to this unfinished building? What can be seen here?"

In a pit very close to the telescope, there was a pair of worn-out children's shoes, but strangely, the heels were worn differently.

After putting the two items away, Han Fei gestured for Bai Xian to follow behind him.

"Come on, let's go upstairs."

The unfinished building has only seven floors, which is not tall, but because the stairs have no handrails and some parts are severely damaged, it is not easy to get to the top floor.

As Han Fei cautiously made his way to the second floor, he noticed that the surroundings seemed to have darkened and the atmosphere was somewhat eerie.

As time goes on, this nightmare seems to be getting more and more terrifying.

"There are children's shoe prints on the ground. They seem to be hiding on this floor." Han Fei's passive talent for hide-and-seek was triggered, and he followed the shoe prints in a certain direction.

"It was pitch black inside the building, how did you find the shoe print?" Bai Xian stared at it carefully for a long time before noticing it.

"You probably haven't learned the 21 things that the police need to pay attention to when entering a crime scene."

"Brother, not every actor learns these things!" Bai Xian noticed that Han Fei had a terrifying intuition for crime that was almost a natural talent.

After moving aside the scrapped metal pipe, Han Fei pulled the waterproof plastic sheet aside, and three short figures shrieked and huddled together.

"Don't be afraid, we're not bad people." Han Fei stared at the three children in front of him. They were carrying schoolbags, all quite young, with delicate and lovely features, fair and tender-looking. They must be little princesses and princes at home.

"It's dangerous inside this unfinished building. What are you three kids doing here?" Bai Xian breathed a slight sigh of relief when he realized they were three children.

“We…we’re looking for aliens.” One of the children, dressed in white, spoke timidly. Before he could finish, another child, dressed in red, added, “The aliens are hiding in this building. If we don’t find them soon, they will destroy the Earth.”

"Aliens?" Bai Xian didn't think that aliens would appear in his nightmare. He felt that the three children were just playing some kind of game, and he had been just as naive when he was a child.

"Have you ever seen an alien? What does it look like?" Unlike Bai Xian, Han Fei seemed very interested. He squatted down in front of the three children, his eyes fixed on their faces.

"The alien's head is this big, his body is higher on one side than the other, his walking posture is different from ours, his speech is not fluent, and his reactions are relatively slow. This is because the alien has just arrived on Earth, and he needs a learning process. We can't drive him away, so he will become stronger and stronger." The child in white looked extremely serious, as if he had really seen an alien.

"So, you're hiding in this building to catch aliens?" Han Fei roughly guessed that this was some child's nightmare, but he couldn't be sure which child it was.

"Yes, we must find it!" the three children said in unison.

"What do you plan to do after finding it?" Han Fei's eyes narrowed slightly. "Kill it?"

Not only the three children, but even Bai Xian fell silent.

"Why are you all silent? The aliens are going to destroy Earth. What's your plan to stop them?" Han Fei looked at the three cute-looking children, but his smile was somewhat sinister. He took out the broken telescope from his pocket: "Whose is this?"

When the three children saw the telescope, their expressions changed to varying degrees; they were a little flustered and a little scared. Finally, the oldest and tallest child in the red shirt stepped forward and said, "It's mine. It accidentally fell down earlier."

“You’re lying,” Han Fei said without hesitation. “I’ll ask you one more time, whose telescope is this?”

“Nightmares tend to get worse over time. Why don’t we hurry up and go find aliens? I’m not sure if aliens actually exist, but this nightmare is clearly related to them.” The three children didn’t say anything more, but Bai Xian stepped in to smooth things over: “Where was the last time you saw aliens?”

"On the seventh-floor rooftop, aliens are calling for their companions; they want to attack Earth." The child in white was somewhat frightened. After he finished speaking, the building visibly shook, and the structure seemed to begin to tilt slightly. "If we don't find him soon, he'll take us to other planets!"

"A timed mission?" Bai Xian recalled the middle-aged woman's hint in the third layer of the nightmare that the meal would be ready in ten minutes. This nightmare seemed even more cruel. If the aliens were not found within the specified time, the unfinished building would collapse, burying everyone alive.

Death, in the eyes of children, may mean going to another planet and never seeing their parents and friends again.

With the three children leading the way, it took Han Fei and his group more than ten minutes to reach the seventh floor.

A six-square-meter rooftop extends from the left side of the unfinished building. There are no obstructions or railings on three sides, and the rooftop is almost suspended in mid-air.

"The aliens used to call for their companions from there." The child in the red shirt pointed to the rooftop, but dared not approach it himself.

Han Fei stepped over the obstructions and tried to place his left foot on the platform. The ground was not very solid and felt that it could only barely support the weight of two adults.

Looking around, the rooftop extends into an unfinished building. Standing on it feels like standing in the dark. This is the closest place to the night sky in my nightmare, but unfortunately there are no stars, only thick darkness.

Adjusting his body, Han Fei was about to step forward with his other leg when he suddenly heard very faint footsteps. He immediately turned around and found that the three children who had been hiding behind him had taken a few steps forward.

"You three...you're not planning to push me off, are you?" Han Fei said in a joking tone, but it was a terrifying statement.

The three children shook their heads repeatedly, and Bai Xian took the opportunity to stand between the children and Han Fei.

Moving around on the rooftop, Han Fei made a new discovery on a steel bar at the edge of the rooftop: a telescope's strap was hanging from it.

"The strap is hanging here, but the telescope has fallen to the ground floor. Has the owner of the telescope ever been to this dangerous platform?" Standing on the seventh-floor platform and looking down, there is no protection around. With just a slight push, one would fall directly to the ground. "The children said that aliens called for their companions here. This alien is very likely the owner of the telescope, or perhaps the 'alien' has already been killed by these children!"

The unfinished building suddenly shook again, startling Han Fei. He immediately turned back: "Let's go, let's check out another building."

"But we haven't finished searching this building yet. The aliens might be hiding somewhere," the boy in red whispered. His eyes were different from those of normal children; they lacked that innocent look.

"When I went upstairs, I scanned the place roughly. There were only a few of us alive in the building," Han Fei said calmly. The children didn't know that the person standing in front of them was the number one hide-and-seek player in Happiness Community, the system's recognized king of the kids. No child under ten years old could match him.

Han Fei and Bai Xian kept their distance from the three children the whole way. When they reached the third floor, they suddenly heard a scream coming from the building on their right. It seemed that one of the players from the game "Inevitable Truth" was injured.

"Stay calm, there's no need to rush. Let's investigate at our own pace." Han Fei pulled Bai Xian along, and it took them another ten minutes or so to get back to the construction site entrance.

The two unfinished buildings seemed to sway in the night wind, at risk of collapsing at any moment. This nightmare wasn't too bad, though; if the unfinished buildings collapsed, the players would have nowhere to hide.

Arriving at the unfinished building on the right, Han Fei saw two players from the Inevitable Truth faction carrying an injured player out of the building, followed by three children.

"I heard screams. Were you attacked?" Bai Xian still hoped that everyone could unite. He found that all three players from the Inevitable Truth faction were injured. One had a cut on his arm with a splinter stuck in it; another had a nail piercing his foot; the most seriously injured player seemed to have fallen from a height and injured his spine, losing sensation in his lower body.

"You two are completely unharmed?" The internet addict was quite surprised: "There are hidden dangers everywhere in this unfinished building. There are no lights at all. Haven't you gone in yet?"

"We've already come down from the seventh floor." Bai Xian saw the miserable state of the three players of Inevitable Truth and found it strange. He had followed Han Fei and hadn't encountered any danger at all; he had just been careful and watched where he was going.

“My eyes are used to the darkness, so I avoided all the traps on the road that could have harmed us.” Han Fei stared at the internet addict’s left hand, who was carrying a tattered backpack: “How about we exchange some clues?”

"Okay." The internet addict put his backpack on the ground and picked up a sharp knife. "We met these three kids in the building. They said there were aliens hiding in the construction site, and we could only leave if we found them, otherwise they would destroy the earth. Then they gave me this knife, saying that I could use it to kill the aliens. But we searched the entire unfinished building and didn't see any aliens, so I suspect that the aliens might be in your building?"

Han Fei shook his head and picked up his schoolbag from the ground.

Next to the mud-covered schoolbag was a broken, cheap plastic water bottle. The textbooks inside the schoolbag were also badly damaged, as if they had been torn during a fight.

The owner of the schoolbag is young, and his homework is neat and tidy, showing he is a very conscientious person. However, his learning ability is very poor; he can get half of the questions wrong out of ten.

After putting the exercise book away, Han Fei took out the broken plastic bottle: "His family must not be very well-off. He uses the cheapest plastic cups on the market, has very few stationery items, and his schoolbag has been patched."

Unzipping the bag, Han Fei found two small bottles of medicine in a hidden compartment. Since the packaging was torn off, he didn't know what kind of medicine it was, but he was certain of one thing: the owner of the bag had a medical condition and needed to carry his medicine with him at all times.

Opening the textbook, Han Fei saw the name of the schoolbag's owner—Li Xing.

"Who among you is named Li Xing?" Han Fei asked, looking at the six children.

"They should be from your side. I've asked all three kids in this building on the right, and none of them are named Li Xing." The internet addict pointed to the three kids behind Bai Xian.

"Which of you three is named Li Xing?" Han Fei's voice was similar to usual, but even Bai Xian felt a chill when he heard it.

“If none of you admit it, then there’s a seventh child on this construction site. His schoolbag is covered in mud, and his textbooks are torn. His disappearance must be related to you,” Han Fei said, enunciating each word clearly.

“My name is Li Xing.” The boy in red stepped forward again. He was the oldest, and while the other children were nervous, he acted the most normally.

"Really?" Han Fei took out his textbook from his schoolbag and asked a few questions at random. The boy in red answered them all. This child was very smart and quick-witted. But through a few simple questions, Han Fei could tell that the boy in red was not Li Xing at all: "There are a lot of calculation steps in the exercise book, and you got five out of the last ten questions wrong, but you could give the correct answer without much hesitation. If Li Xing was as smart as you, he probably wouldn't be bullied."

Han Fei grabbed the boy in red by the clothes and lifted him up with one hand.

"Calm down! These children are the key to finding aliens!" One of the players from Inevitable Truth tried to stop Han Fei: "If we don't find aliens, the unfinished building will collapse, and none of us will survive."

"Do you really think there are aliens on this construction site?" Han Fei grabbed the child in red by the neck. "I've heard the children describe aliens. That alien was deformed, with uneven shoulders, a limp, slow reactions, and a bit stupid. Aren't these characteristics similar to Li Xing, the real owner of the schoolbag? Let's make a bolder guess: Li Xing has some kind of illness that caused his physical disability and low IQ, so the kids around him think he's not normal and make fun of him as an 'alien'."

Han Fei placed the children's shoes with different wear levels next to the schoolbag: "The owner of the children's shoes does not use his legs evenly, and seems to be more accustomed to using his left leg. If the children's shoes and the binoculars both belong to Li Xing, then everything can be explained."

His eyes turned cold and terrifying: "Li Xing was the 'alien' who was forced onto the seventh-floor rooftop. These six kids killed Li Xing just for fun. I can already picture it: the deformed Li Xing was taken into the unfinished building on the right and bullied. Li Xing tried to escape but was caught. Then they forced Li Xing onto the seventh-floor rooftop, watching the 'alien' trembling as he 'called for his companions,' and finally Li Xing fell from the seventh floor. The 'alien' they spoke of returned to his 'planet.'"

Han Fei's grip tightened, and the child in red could barely breathe: "I sensed something was wrong as soon as we entered the unfinished building on the left. Many of the traps inside were deliberately set up. These children aren't innocent; they've always wanted to kill us."

Bai Xian, who had intended to persuade Han Fei to calm down, stopped in his tracks. He had thought the building was safe, but it turned out that Han Fei had discovered all the traps in advance.

"The evil alien these kids are talking about is an innocent victim. They're using the most lame excuses to absolve themselves of their crimes." Han Fei's eyes were fixed on the little boy in red. "Bad people don't discriminate by age."

The seven-story building was shaking more and more violently, and the ground was also trembling slightly. The situation was extremely critical.

"Then how can we find Li Xing?" The internet addict looked at the pit on the left side of the construction site: "Your classmate was found in the pit. Did these kids bury Li Xing in the pit?"

The three players of the Inevitable Truth and Bai Xian ran towards the pit together. They dug down desperately, but only dug out blood-stained children's clothes.

"To clear the Nightmare mode, you need to find aliens, but the malicious nickname 'alien' was given to Li Xing by the children. So the real aliens come from these six children, and the real evil should be hidden in their hearts." Han Fei took the sharp knife and stabbed it into the heart of the child in red without hesitation.

The knife tip pierced the skin, but no blood flowed from the wound. Inside the rotting, mutated chest cavity of the child in red, part of another child's body was hidden.

(End of this chapter)