"I never thought that even the hammer would be a beautiful illusion concocted by the Master of the Shrine, which means that on his first night entering the underground storeroom, he fell right into the trap of the Secondhand Store Boss and opened the Shrine."
Han Fei remembered what happened last night; he had almost opened the Shrine himself. At the critical moment, he picked up the hammer lying nearby and broke one of his own little fingers to snap back to reality.
"How much in this Memory World is still his illusion? If I want to mend my regrets, do I need to use these things?"
Even now, Han Fei still didn’t quite understand the task issued by the system. Deep down, he didn’t want to kill Lin Lu. It was like now, knowing the hammer was fake, he still didn’t want to let go of it easily.
"Open it, you don’t have much time left. Inside the Shrine lies everything you need. By opening it, you can become the person you’ve always wanted to be; you can possess all your desires."
The voice in his right ear came again, and Han Fei looked up at the Shrine covered with a black cloth.
Underneath the black cloth, the contours of human faces emerged, the lights in the underground storeroom began to flicker. Each time the lights went out, the faces under the cloth changed.
At times they were old people, at times a young woman, and at times a child.
Han Fei’s words angered the "Divine Spirit" inside the Shrine. As the lights continued to flash, the black cloth merged with the surrounding darkness, ballooning out like a beast emerging from underground.
"I wonder what will happen if I use the beautiful illusions created by the Master of the Shrine to smash against the deepest pain in his memory."
Raising the hammer, Han Fei prepared to swing it down, and in that instant, he truly contemplated shattering the Shrine.
This world was too painful; destroying everything might also be a form of release.
As the hammer was about to hit the ever-expanding black cloth, the sound of something falling through the floors echoed inside the Secondhand Store.
The sound of the heavy object hitting the ground seemed to trigger some memory of the Master of the Shrine; the storeroom lights stopped flickering, and the Shrine covered with the black cloth returned to its normal state.
"Did the woman trying on clothes appear again?"
Tucking the hammer into his pocket, Han Fei grabbed the items off the shelf, ready to leave, but as he climbed up the escalator, he suddenly found that the hammer slanting in his pocket was gone.
Looking back, the hammer was still in its original spot.
It was leaning against the Shrine, offering a second, different choice to everyone beguiled by the Shrine.
"Can’t take it out of the underground storeroom?" Han Fei was slightly disappointed, but he quickly adjusted his attitude.
After arranging the missing items on the shelves, he took the strong flashlight from the store and stepped out of the Secondhand Store.
Pei Yang had said that the Security Guard hadn’t come to work, and Han Fei was the only person in the entire Secondhand Store.
He turned on the flashlight and headed towards the source of the falling sound, and hadn’t gone far when he noticed his mood meter dropped by one point.
Feeling a bit uneasy, Han Fei suppressed his curiosity and decisively planned to head back to the store.
But just as he was about to do so, he heard Li Daxing’s greeting in his left ear and the sound of teeth gnawing on flesh in his right ear.
Looking in the direction of the sounds, the Security Guard whom Pei Yang said hadn’t come to work today stood at the corner of the fifth floor by the deli’s entrance, holding something in his arms, pale as a ghost.
The distance to the fifth floor was far—if one considered the way down. Whether or not it was close, depended on which way to go down.
"Standing alone on the fifth floor? And the lights aren’t on? What is he doing?"
The beam of the high-powered flashlight pierced through the darkness, and Han Fei finally saw the other person. But the flashlight, freshly loaded with new batteries, began to malfunction at this moment, its light slowly fading.
Before his morale could plummet further, Han Fei immediately retreated, sprinting at full speed. However, after running for over a dozen seconds, the stores on both sides were still the same ones as before.
Utilizing the last of his flashlight’s glow shining toward the fifth floor, Li Daxing had already disappeared in front of the cooked food store.
Han Fei swung the flashlight back and forth, searching for Li Daxing’s figure in the vast shopping mall.
Soon his left eye caught sight of him again. The security guard Li Daxing, dragging something heavy, stood at the elevator entrance on the third floor. Upon realizing Han Fei was watching him, a pale smile spread across his face, his mouth agape, all teeth stained red, remnants of bone fragments still clinging to them.
Li Daxing was waving at Han Fei, running towards this place. At this critical moment, Han Fei’s flashlight went out.
The surroundings plunged into complete darkness; nothing could be seen.
"Attention to player number 0000! You have triggered a Shrine Random Task—Illusion."
"Illusion (Shrine Random Task): People see various kinds of illusions before they die. If you are killed by those illusions, you may truly die."
"Task requirement: Overcome the illusion, get used to the illusion."
Having seen the task information, Han Fei was a bit stunned, but he quickly came to his senses. The Master of Shrine must have gone mad by now, the intense stimuli crippling him, various illusions tearing apart his erstwhile humanity, gradually turning him into a Monster.
If Han Fei didn’t want to be controlled by the illusions, to end up like the Master of Shrine, then he had to try to master the illusions!
Tonight was the most critical night. Whether he could safely make it through would determine if he could remain sane.
"There’s no time limit to this task, which means if I don’t overcome the illusions, all illusions might become real, and the Master of Shrine’s Memory World could morph into something even more terrifying and horrifying."
Han Fei didn’t know how the world appeared to the mentally ill compared to that of the sane, but he knew the world through the Master of Shrine’s eyes must be different from his own.
This was only the fourth day since he had entered the Memory World; if everything started to spiral out of control, he had no confidence in making it through the following days.
At all costs, he had to get used to it; he had to complete this Shrine task.
"The more one fears and dreads something, the more the brain amplifies that emotion."
Han Fei made one last attempt to run towards the Secondhand Store, and upon confirming that he couldn’t escape, he completely gave up the option of fleeing.
Letting his eyes adjust to the dark, Han Fei put one hand into his pocket and began to walk towards the spot where Li Daxing had just been.
"You’re the first one to jump out, and you’re also the weakest in this mall. Whether you are my illusion or not, I have the confidence to take you down."
After only taking a couple of steps, Han Fei felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned around to look, but there was no one around.
"Is it you? Is it you...?"
A voice, carrying a chill, suddenly rose in Han Fei’s ear. When he turned around again, he found Li Daxing standing right in front of him.
This security guard had a deathly pale face, not a trace of color, his head half-bowed, his eyes mostly white.
Han Fei stayed put, remembering clearly that the other had just been on the third floor.
"Daxing, weren’t you off work tonight?" Concealing the knife hilt in his sleeve, Han Fei glanced at the other’s neck.
"Work, work..." Li Daxing slowly raised his head, the whites of his eyes spreading bit by bit, his head trembling slightly, hands slowly lifting: "I remember now, I’m at work, but my colleague is missing. I’ve been looking for him, but I can’t find him anywhere. Look, look..."
As Li Daxing spoke, he grabbed his coat, his fingernails digging fiercely into his flesh, then tore off the skin along with his belly: "Look, he’s gone!"