Hell’s Handbook - Chapter 299

299: Clomo Asylum

In general, once a living creature died, its psyche would disappear very quickly. Tracy from the Dark Council had a way to absorb the psyche of other living things in order to strengthen her own, but to experts in the way the psyche worked like Su Jin and Xu Ran, doing so would actually get her killed.

The psyche seemed fragile, but it was actually extremely resilient. A body with a powerful psyche could even do something that could go beyond the body’s physical limits.

So, by absorbing the psyche of other living things, Tracy was just gathering the energy from their minds to use as her own, but she did not integrate them into her own. As someone with psychokinesis, she possessed relevant skills to control her psyche and hers were quite strong, so everything looked fine for now.

But if one day, Tracy absorbed enough psyches, so much that it exceeded her own, she would discover that she could no longer control the energies she had absorbed previously. Once that happened, she was going to die a terrible death. If her psyche were to be attacked by a hundred or a thousand other psyches, then she was going to suffer a fate worse than death.

Chimimoryo, on the other hand, was different from Tracy. The psyches that Tracy absorbed came from ordinary life forms which did not have very strong psyches in the first place, while Chimimoryo was absorbing the psyches of formidable creatures on the Island of Mistakes. Even just one such psyche was going to be way more powerful than all the psyches that Tracy had absorbed.

But Chimimoryo couldn’t be absorbing these psyches for the sake of gaining strength like Tracy was. Su Jin didn’t think a longbow could possibly have psychokinesis either. So what was it trying to do?

“Is it… trying to evolve itself into a different life form?” Su Jin narrowed his eyes. He felt that Chimimoryo was finding a way to evolve, to go from being a bow to becoming an actual living thing.

Su Jin stopped thinking about Chimimoryo for the moment and kept moving with the five worshippers. But they were moving much slower than before. The worshippers could not predict what sort of other changes the island had gone through, so danger and death could hit them at any time. But Su Jin was already considered lucky to have these five bodyguards by his side. The other owners on the island were terrified and helpless compared to him.

Chu Yi and Wu Chen supported one another as they moved along. Wu Chen picked some herbs, crushed them, then smeared the crushed herbs on Chu Yi’s calf. It helped his wound to recover significantly in a short time.

“Uncle Wu, you… you know Chinese medicine?” Chu Yi scratched his head. He was a martial artist, and because martial artists often got hurt, they knew some herbs that were helpful for recovering from injuries. In fact, many of those who owned medicinal halls supplying such herbs were martial artists themselves. But Chu Yi realized that he didn’t recognize any of the herbs that Wu Chen had picked.

“You don’t know anything! I’m trained in potion making. Did you think you could get ordinary herbs used in Chinese medicine from this island?! Only magical ones exist here, like this grass here. If you eat this one, you will become groggy. And if you eat enough of it, you’d become delirious.” Wu Chen glared impatiently at Chu Yi.

“Potions? That’s… that’s from Harry Potter, isn’t it? You mean that stuff really exists?” Chu Yi’s eyes lit up. As a young man, he loved watching movies and he had definitely watched famous ones like Harry Potter.

“It’s similar, but not related. I’m not trying to brag here, but among all the owners who are familiar with potions, besides Miss Sophia who’s known as the Master of Potions…”

“You’re the only other person who knows?!” Chu Yi finished the sentence for him excitedly.

But Wu Chen rolled his eyes again as he said slowly, “…there is no one else!”

“Wait, what?! Then what about you?” Chu Yi was confused.

“I didn’t say I was familiar with potions! I learned some from a previous Challenge but didn’t complete the course. If you weren’t so severely injured, I wouldn’t have put my skills to the test,” said Wu Chen matter-of-factly.

Chu Yi was flabbergasted and said with a sigh of relief, “I’m glad this stuff isn’t like western medicine, where you could kill someone if you inject them with the wrong thing.”

“Actually… this stuff is even worse. If I’d used the wrong thing, I’d be helping to saw your leg off by now,” said Wu Chen with a laugh.“

“Uncle Wu, promise me something!”

“What?”

“If I get injured again, just… just leave me behind! I won’t blame you for it!”

The two of them looked like they were not taking this Challenge seriously, but that was really just their way of trying to relieve their fears. They had lost their former powers and could die at any moment. The fear they felt now was actually even more acute than when they went through their very first Challenge.

As they hobbled along, they suddenly spotted a hospital. They froze and Chu Yi shuddered. He said to Wu Chen, “Uncle Wu, I’m not so badly injured that I need the hospital. How about we walk around it?”

“I agree,” said Wu Chen immediately as he helped Chu Yi to turn around and walk the other way. But after they turned around, they found themselves facing a number of nurses.

“Gulp!” Chu Yi swallowed a mouthful of saliva. The nurses standing in front of him had curvaceous bodies, but their faces were terrifying. A large mouth grew from the middle of their faces, and their mouths were filled with sharp teeth. They had one beady, black eye on either side of the mouth.

“What the hell? This is the first time I find uniform fetishes terrifying,” cursed Wu Chen. They took a small step backward slowly, hoping they could escape. But once their feet moved backward, the nurses would move a little forward.

“Uncle, let’s… run!” Chu Yi suddenly yelled. Before he could even take the first step, he felt something tighten around his legs and he fell onto the ground. The same thing happened to Wu Chen. Chu Yi saw that Wu Chen’s legs were bound by a bandage and that bandage was wrapping itself higher and higher up the body. Chu Yi was certain the same thing was happening to himself.

Once they were fully wrapped in the bandage, the monster nurses grabbed hold of one end and dragged them into the hospital. As they passed through the entrance of the hospital, the large words “Clomo Asylum” flickered mysteriously above the entrance.

The two of them were wrapped like a pair of dumplings and dragged along like they were tied up in gunnysacks, so they lost consciousness after a short while. By the time they regained consciousness, they felt something moving on their bodies.

Chu Yi was a martial artist after all, so he leaped up like a fish jumping out of the water, then fell from an elevated position, which caused the bandages around him to split open.

He struggled to tear the bandage apart, and once he had done that, he started panting heavily. These bandages were almost airtight and all that movement had left him pretty breathless. By the time he caught his breath again, he was stunned by what he was seeing.

Chu Yi’s eyes widened. Before him were all sorts of monsters, vampires, werewolves, bugs, aliens that resembled ET, gorillas with dog heads – they were all staring straight at him.

“UNGHH!” The other bandaged dumplings started making a lot of noise and Chu Yi remembered that Wu Chen was still all bandaged up. He ignored the stares from the monsters and set Wu Chen free in no time. Once he was free of the bandages, Wu Chen’s expression was just as shocked and terrified as Chu Yi’s.

“Do you think… you could wrap me back in there?” Wu Chen laughed nervously. In Chinese, dragon lairs and tiger dens were considered dangerous places. But this place was probably even more dangerous than those.

Strangely enough, the monsters didn’t seem interested in attacking them at all. Their eyes were glazed over and they looked like they were in a constant daze, as though they were wooden puppets.

“Uncle Wu, don’t you think their clothes look familiar?” A thought hit Chu Yi as he tugged at Wu Chen to make him look at the clothes that these monsters were wearing.

Wu Chen nodded slightly. Of course these clothes were familiar. A clown in the same clothes was the one who had thrown them onto this island.

“Do you think that clown has something to do with them?” asked Chu Yi.

Wu Chen shook his head, since he had no idea. He whispered, “I don’t know, but the most urgent thing at hand is to think of a way to get out of here.”

Chu Yi nodded vigorously in agreement. The two of them quickly ducked and moved away from the monsters, but the monsters didn’t react to their movement at all and just sat where they were without moving.

“Uncle Wu, they look like patients in a psychiatric ward who’ve been administered tranquilizers. I had an uncle who was admitted to a psychiatric hospital and he always looked like that,” Chu Yi said to Wu Chen.

“Never mind that!” said Wu Chen.

Just when the two of them were about to leave the ward, a giant monster suddenly shook violently. He let out an angry roar and swung his arms.

Chu Yi and Wu Chen happened to be within his attacking range, so they quickly dropped to the floor and managed to dodge the monster’s arms. Every other patient within range was sent flying, but after they crashed onto the floor again, they continued to sit there like wooden puppets and didn’t get up to fight back at all.

Wu Chen and Chu Yi were glad that they had reacted fast enough. Just then, the door to the room suddenly opened and three monster nurses walked in. Two of them grabbed hold of one arm each.

The giant monster was furious and struggled in protest, but after the two much smaller nurses caught hold of his arms, he couldn’t break free from their grip at all. The third nurse then injected him with a black liquid.

After injecting him with the black liquid, they did not leave, but started scanning the other patients in the ward. A fox with many tails suddenly flew up in hope of escaping through the open ward door, but a nurse moved faster than the fox and caught him. She proceeded to inject him with that black liquid even as he looked on in horror, and he slowly started behaving like a wooden puppet again.

The three of them then looked toward a stone platform, which was where they had left Wu Chen and Chu Yi. The two of them started getting nervous. If the nurses spotted them, they wouldn’t be able to get away and that black liquid would be injected into their bodies as well.

“Chu Yi, let’s try this out. Eat this!” Wu Chen hissed at Chu Yi.