My Healing Games

Chapter 963 The Ghost Hunt
The possessed child refuses to communicate, and the middle-aged father also has unspeakable secrets; there are serious problems with this old house in the countryside.

"Let me show you around first. I've marked all the places where ghosts and monsters appear." Yao Qiang chased Han Fei out of the third floor and closed the door covered with talismans again. "It's 10:30 pm now. At midnight, my son will be possessed by a ghost and go crazy. You'd better find the harmful ghost before midnight."

"The mission time is one and a half hours." Han Fei nodded slightly: "That's plenty of time."

“I’ll take you around to see the surrounding area first. Ghosts have appeared in several nearby areas before!” Yao Qiang walked to the second floor of the old house and knocked on the closed bedroom door a few times: “Wife, I’m going out with the exorcist for a while. Call me if you need anything.”

A woman's slightly high-pitched voice came from inside the bedroom: "I know, be careful."

Back on the first floor of the old house, Yao Qiang first pointed to the television in the living room. The television looked quite old, with several seals affixed to it.

"The ghost first appeared on TV. It was hiding in a harmless cartoon and kept luring my son closer to it! It wanted to take my child away and steal his soul!"

Yao Qiang was agitated, as if the television set were an extremely terrifying thing.

Then Yao Qiang crawled over to the sofa and took out a sealed peach wood box from under the sofa.

He chanted incantations, carefully lifted the talisman on the box, and placed the peach wood box in front of the players: "This is the ghost's favorite place!"

The inside of the box was smeared with black dog blood, and inside the box was a broken cell phone.

“When we were in school in the city, the teachers would sometimes assign tasks that might require a cell phone, so I bought one for my child. But I never imagined that a ghost was hiding inside! I saw the ghostly figure in the phone with my own eyes; it wanted to take my child's place!”

The players were surprised to find a broken phone in the peach wood box, and they speculated that the ghost in the nightmare could attack people using various signals and devices.

After closing the box, Yao Qiang chanted incantations and carefully affixed each talisman before daring to stand up, as if the cell phone were truly an ominous object.

"Come on, I'll take you outside to see more. There are ghosts around here too!" Yao Qiang led the players out of the old house, and they left the garden and came to the village outside.

Compared to Ping An Street, this nightmare was significantly larger and exuded a more eerie atmosphere.

"Ghosts are good at manipulating people's hearts and attacking their weaknesses. Several exorcists I've hired before have fallen victim to them. You must be careful." Yao Qiang seemed to have actually had many ghost encounters, and he was very certain of the existence of ghosts.

"Watch out for that building on your left," Yao Qiang said, looking at his neighbor's house to the left. "There's a very strange old lady living in that old house. She loves keeping cats, but her cats are all abnormal; they turn into other things at night!"

"What can a cat turn into?" some players wondered. One player, whose username was "Donate the Homeroom Teacher to the Disaster Area," bluntly asked, "Will it turn into a catgirl?"

"I don't know what you're talking about, but if you saw it with your own eyes, you probably wouldn't be so relaxed." Yao Qiang continued walking. At the end of the road were a bookstore and a supermarket. From the outside, they were ordinary buildings, but Yao Qiang acted as if facing a formidable enemy: "You need to pay special attention to these two buildings. They seem to be built on a cemetery, and there are unclean things inside! Once, I was buying study materials for my child at the bookstore, and I accidentally discovered that blood was seeping from the bookshelves. Underneath the ordinary books were some books that could kill! Really! Arms that reek of corpses would stick out from the books, and laughing heads!"

A ball rolled down a slope and came to a stop right in front of Yao Qiang. His already pale face stiffened when he saw the ball: "Did I say too much? Why did the village's ghost child appear ahead of schedule?"

"And what is a ghost child?"

"Those are a bunch of walking corpses, controlled by some kind of force. Once they catch you, they'll drag you into an old grave!" The village Yao Qiang described was fraught with danger, with ghosts possibly lurking in every house, which terrified the players.

“You should also be careful of the wasteland outside the village. I heard that there are wolves with human faces hiding there. They will carry children into dry wells and feed them to the monsters in the wells.”

"The streetlights in the north of the village are broken, there are will-o'-the-wisps there, and the atmosphere is very eerie. The old people there all have freckles from the dead, and their bodies smell particularly bad!"

"And there's the pond to the west. The pond is so murky you can't see the bottom, but at night you can see shadows that look like people underwater."

Yao Qiang recounted all sorts of terrifying tales, growing increasingly frightened among the players. Han Fei, however, found it odd, as Yao Qiang spoke as if deliberately scaring a child. Parents, to keep their children from wandering off, would tell them there were wolves in the mountains and they would be eaten if they went there; perhaps because it was said so often, the falsehood gradually came to be believed.

Most novice players don't have Han Fei's mental fortitude; they're already terrified just by hearing Yao Qiang describe those scenarios.

They banded together for mutual support and began forming teams in private, preparing to act together as a group.

Yao Qiang didn't seem to be deliberately scaring the players; it was clear that he genuinely wanted to exorcise the evil spirit and help his son return to normal.

This person may have all sorts of problems, but one thing is certain: he cares deeply about his child.

The seventh level of the nightmare was huge. Yao Qiang had only led the players a small portion of it when his phone rang again. After answering the call, he ran to a corner by himself and quietly left.

“The person who called him is called Qian, and she should be a woman. Their relationship may not be simple.” A female player who was nearly fifty years old walked up to Han Fei and said, “My name is Shi Hua, a retired middle school teacher, level 21. My talent is called proctor, which allows me to hear and see details that are not easily noticed by ordinary people.”

"Hello, Teacher Shi." This was Han Fei's first time meeting this player, and he was always cautious about sudden acts of kindness: "You look very young. Did you retire so early?"

"Yes, after my daughter's accident, I was unable to teach anymore. I didn't know how to face the children, so I was 'forced' to retire." Shihua has a certain temperament, strict yet gentle, dignified yet not aloof.

"Feel sorry."

“It’s okay, it happened a long time ago, I’ve almost forgotten about it.” Shihua didn’t care: “I also placed all my hopes on my daughter, so I have a special feeling after entering this nightmare.”

She hesitated for a long time before speaking: "Perhaps the ghost isn't outside, but inside the house."

Before Shi Hua could say anything more, the three members of the Inevitable Truth suddenly came over and interrupted her: "Han Fei, how should we divide into groups next? Yao Qiang said his child will go crazy at midnight. We only have about an hour left now. This nightmare is quite large, so we probably need to split up."

“Ghosts aren’t necessarily real ghosts, and people aren’t necessarily real people. All the ghost stories we’ve heard were told by Yao Qiang. But what if Yao Qiang is the ghost?” Han Fei looked at the players who had already been divided into groups: “My suggestion is that the three of you stay here with the other players and keep an eye on Yao Qiang. I’ll take care of the exploration outside.”

"How could you possibly deal with so many ghosts by yourself?" Braised Pork said this without any malice. Everyone was facing a life-or-death crisis, and every decision had to be made with great care.

"Alright, then I'll get straight to the point." Han Fei looked at the three players: "You guys are too weak. Before Yao Yuan had his episode, the old house was at least safe. I'm assigning you this way to protect you."

"We're all players. Even if you're a bit higher level than us and have some special talent, do you really think you can take on thirty of us by yourself?" Braised Pork thought Han Fei was being a bit arrogant. After all, Truth and Happiness Community were both top-ten guilds, and everyone was a top player. There would definitely be a gap, but it shouldn't be that big.

"One against thirty? You're underestimating me by saying that." Han Fei didn't argue further. He looked at Shi Hua and said, "Teacher Shi, I agree with you. We'll need you to keep an eye on the old house. If it's convenient, you should try to get close to Yao Yuan's mother. I feel like she's also involved in something."

“Okay.” Shi Hua didn’t stay in the village and returned the way she came, while Han Fei broke away from the player and began to act alone.

Walking down the dimly lit street, Han Fei gently knocked on the door of Yao Qiang's neighbor's house.

The wooden door was unlocked. After Han Fei knocked a few times, the door slowly opened, and a white cat poked its head out.

"They're quite cute." Han Fei picked up the white cat, which didn't resist at all, seeming very affectionate. "I heard you can transform into other things?"

Upon entering the house, Han Fei discovered that the garden was filled with all sorts of vegetables, and cats were even fighting among the fruits and vegetables.

"Is anyone here?"

The coughing sound came from inside the house, and the fighting cats immediately ran towards the small house, obediently squatting outside the door, as if waiting for Han Fei to come in and take them in with him.

"It feels like a cat-themed farmhouse inn, much cozier than Yao Qiang's old house."

Pushing open the door of the cabin, silver cat fur floated in the air. Han Fei began to vaguely sense that something was wrong. There was a lingering smell of decay in the cabin, and the coughing sound became increasingly high-pitched, not like something a human could make. It sounded more like something else was imitating a human cough!
"There's so much fur in this house, is it a Ragdoll cat?"

Walking on the old wooden floor, Han Fei pushed open one sliding door after another, exploring deeper into the house, where the stench of decay grew stronger and stronger.

As he pushed open the last wooden door, the sharp cough turned into a piercing meow, and a wrinkled face covered in cat hair appeared before Han Fei.

Looking into those cat-like, aged eyes, Han Fei did not make a move. A slightly tilted scale appeared in his left eye.

"I'm sorry to bother you."

A withered arm emerged from beneath the loose white clothes, its fingernails unusually sharp, as it reached out to grab Han Fei's neck.

By dodging to the side, five deep dig marks were left on the door frame behind Han Fei!

If Han Fei hadn't dodged, his neck would probably be broken.

With his hands protectively placed in front of him, Han Fei focused intently. Attacking him from the depths of the house was an elderly woman with white hair. Her body was covered in cat fur, and strange markings appeared on her face and body, making her look extremely terrifying.

However, it seems that she doesn't have much time left to live, as she coughs violently every time she goes out.

"How did you become like this?" Han Fei originally thought Yao Qiang was lying, but he didn't expect there really was a "ghost" in the house.

The old woman lay on the ground, supporting her body with her limbs. Her soul seemed to have transformed into that of a cat, her eyes filled with hatred and an intense desire to attack.

Just as a new conflict was about to erupt, a soft meow rang out, the wardrobe door opened, and a white cat dressed in a funeral shroud stepped out.

It jumped between Han Fei and the old lady. The mutated old lady calmed down after seeing the white cat, lay down on the ground, and nudged the white cat's body with her head.

The scene before us seemed to be reversed; the old lady seemed to have become the cat, and the cat seemed to have become the old lady.

"You two swapped souls?" This was the first time Han Fei had encountered something like this. He raised his hands to indicate that he meant no harm.

The white cat dressed in funeral clothes nodded after hearing Han Fei's words. Its eyes were incredibly bright, unlike those of a cat at all. They contained all sorts of human emotions!

"Such a thing is true?" Han Fei sat down in front of the white cat. "Are you about to die, but your cat didn't want you to leave, so it swapped souls with you? It entered your body and died in your place, and you live in its body for the cats that accompany you?"

The white cat nodded again, her eyes filled with tenderness, looking at every living being as if they were her own child. Even as a ghost, such a person would not harm others.

Through continuous communication with the white cat, Han Fei roughly figured out some things.

“Yao Qiang did not lie. A supernatural event did happen at his neighbor’s house, but he concealed important information: the ‘ghost’ in his neighbor’s house never intended to harm his child.”

“There may be ghosts in other places too, but those ghosts are probably not the reason why his child is possessed.”

(End of this chapter)