Hell’s Handbook - Chapter 325

Chapter 325 Just Started, Not Ended Yet

Time slowly ticked by and Su Jin continued to sleep. His eyes only opened when the nurse came with lunch. He opened the box and was glad that the food was normal. There were a few buns and a glass of milk.

He polished off everything without hesitation because he needed as much energy as he could get. Even if the hospital gave him frogs and rats, he would finish it without a second thought.

After that, he got up and walked out of the ward. A nurse immediately approached him with a robot-like smile on her face.

“I’m having a bit of a headache, so I’m looking for the doctor,” said Su Jin to the nurse as he pretended to look unwell.

“Wait here, I’ll call one for you,” said the nurse with a smile.

“Thanks!” Su Jin looked at her gratefully and turned around as if to return to his room while the nurse left to get the doctor. But of course, Su Jin wasn’t going back to his room. He turned and said to another nurse, “Miss, I accidentally pushed my food to the floor because my head hurt just now, could you bring another portion of food over?”

“Sure, give me a few minutes!” Another nurse left the corridor.

Su Jin didn’t have a lot of time because the two nurses would be back soon, but there was still one more nurse making her rounds. He called out to the last nurse, “Miss, could you come over for a while?”

The nurse immediately approached him and asked, “Sir, what’s the matter?”

“Oh, I dropped something and it went under the bed, but I can’t seem to find it… could you help me to look for it?” asked Su Jin with a frustrated but also embarrassed look on his face.

The nurse agreed and walked into the ward with Su Jin. Su Jin pointed at his bed and said, “I think it rolled in that direction. Thank you!”

“Sure, let me help you find it.” The nurse bent down to look under the bed as a murderous look flashed in Su Jin’s eyes. He pulled a knife out and approached the nurse. He didn’t know if the nurse’s vital points were the same as an ordinary human’s, so he could only try to stab her in the heart.

Pfft! Su Jin no longer had his superhuman strength, but he had been well trained to be a killer. The knife was stabbed accurately into the nurse’s heart. She convulsed violently for a while, then collapsed motionlessly onto the floor.

He breathed a sigh of relief, then quickly gathered the blankets of the three beds to tie them together in a special way. He lit one end of the blanket, and once it reached a certain point, the flames would spread to the rest of the room and anything flammable would catch fire.

After that, he dashed out of the ward and ran toward the outside of the building. He had memorized the entire map of the hospital the night before and he could visualize the buildings in his head.

Based on the map in his head, he quickly made his way out of the wards. But he was shocked when he stepped out of the building. While he was inside, he could see that it was sunny outside. But now… all he saw was darkness. Night had fallen. Or rather, the night never ended.

Su Jin took a deep breath as he started analyzing the situation and came to a conclusion quickly. It wasn’t that night had fallen, but that it had never ended. It hadn’t struck him before because he had been fooled by the two times he slept.

Humans needed to draw reference from other things in order to have a sense of time. If the things they were referencing changed or were removed, one’s sense of time would be greatly affected.

Some people were able to calculate time with other methods, such as silently counting the seconds or using their pulse rate as a guide. But those who did not think of such methods would have a gross miscalculation of time.

Su Jin’s two periods of sleep occurred once when he first started the Challenge and was injected with tranquilizer, then again when he was knocked out. These two occurrences had been involuntary, and they had made his consciousness think that the night had passed while he was unconscious. And the fact that the hospital provided a day meal after he woke up further solidified this misconception.

“But… why don’t they want me to know if it’s day or night?” Su Jin was puzzled. Was it really necessary for the monsters to do that? Regardless of the time, the hospital was fully within their control.

While he was thinking about these things, the fire in the wards was blazing as his entire ward caught fire. Meanwhile, he heard shouting coming from another building. He recognized that voice as the man with bandages. It seemed like he had noticed something amiss and was fighting back now.

There was no time to think so much about this. Regardless of the time, he had to get out of here. He turned and started running toward the main entrance according to the map in his memory.

The blood red moon in the sky helped to light the way, but the hospital didn’t only have just a few people working inside the buildings. Su Jin was eventually discovered and several nurses with human upper bodies and spidery lower bodies started shouting as they ran toward Su Jin.

Su Jin cursed inwardly and turned to run down a narrow passageway. These narrow paths worked to his advantage when it came to these giant monsters.

The monster nurses weren’t agile enough, so even though Su Jin was in danger, he could still maintain a good distance between himself and the monsters behind. After taking a detour, he got back on his original route, except that he had already shaken off all the monster nurses.

He ran as fast as he could, but he was slowly getting more and more tired. Without any added strength, his body was so much weaker than he remembered. But he didn’t have the time to complain. Getting out of here alive was of utmost importance.

According to what he remembered, he just needed to make two more turns and he would see the main entrance to the hospital, so he persevered despite his exhaustion. But after he made it round the first bend, he stopped in his tracks as a skinny person appeared in front of him.

“You’re alright?!” The one blocking his way was the woman who was in the bed on his right in the ward. It turned out that the monsters hadn’t captured her, which meant that the person who knocked him out was probably her.

“Don’t go in that direction, there are monster doctors guarding that side!” she called out to him.

Su Jin frowned and cursed under his breath. The monster doctors seemed to know what he was planning and were guarding the main entrance. Meanwhile, the woman came closer to him and pulled at his arm. “Come with me! I know another side road that can lead to the outside of the hospital!”

“I’ll count on you to lead the way then.” Su Jin had no choice but to follow the woman.

She led the way without hesitation and turned out to be extremely familiar with the hospital like Su Jin was. They made seven or eight turns and successfully avoided all the monsters to come to a high wall.

“The wall around the hospital is only about three meters high, so we should be able to climb over it,” said the woman as she pointed at the wall. Like she said, the wall was only about three meters high. One just needed to start running from a sufficient distance and you would make it.

The woman ran toward the wall, made a leap and got to the top of the wall. She then reached out to Su Jin and said, “Hurry up! We can get out in no time!”

But Su Jin shook his head and looked at her perplexedly as he asked, “Why did you knock me out last night?”

“My mind was in a mess and I was afraid that you were going to stop me from escaping, so I… I didn’t have a choice, I’m sorry!” she apologized to him.

“You’ve been hiding in the hospital for the past 20 odd hours and nobody discovered you?” he continued to ask.

She nodded, then got a little anxious as she said, “Hurry up! If the monsters catch up, you can forget about leaving this place!”

But Su Jin merely scoffed and tapped his nose as he said, “You knocked me out last night and it’s night time again, so you should have left the ward for more than 20 hours by now. I don’t know how long I’ve been sleeping for, but I’m sure it’s not more than 20 hours.”

“What are you talking about? I knocked you out last night and it’s night again, so of course you’ve slept for more than 20 hours. You can’t feel it because of the meds. They’ve injected you with meds, so you are able to sleep longer than you usually do,” she explained.

He shook his head again and said, “I say it’s impossible because of the way my body is. If I sleep for more than eight hours, my eyes would be very swollen when I wake up, but I don’t feel like that now, so I think… I didn’t sleep for more than 20 hours, but more like just one or two hours. So it makes sense that it’s still night time.”

The woman frowned and did not say anything, while Su Jin went on, “But you readily admitted that you’ve been hiding for more than 20 hours. I was unconscious, so I couldn’t keep track of time well. But what about you? You’ve been awake all this time. Even if you don’t have anything to take reference from and you can’t calculate time accurately, the difference between two hours and 20 hours is way too great.

“And when I think about it now, you were hiding under the blanket all the time in the ward and didn’t eat anything at all, so you should be very weak. But based on your movement just now, you don’t look anything like someone who hasn’t eaten or moved much in days. I was very close to the exit when you suddenly appeared to tell me that monster doctors were guarding the area, which makes me even more suspicious. You… were trying to foil my plans!” said Su Jin as he stared straight at the woman. He asked in a low voice, “Who in the world are you? Or… what are you?”