Hell’s Handbook - Chapter 326
Chapter 326 We’re All You
A smile spread across the woman’s face. She shook her head slightly and said, “I knew you were going to be difficult to fool, but I thought I’d try anyway. As for who I am… see for yourself.”
Su Jin narrowed his eyes slightly. The woman was still sitting on top of the wall and swung her legs, but she was morphing like a shapeshifter and a few seconds later, the person sitting on the wall was none other than… himself.
“You are me!” Su Jin shook his head. His head was a little confused, but he told himself that this wasn’t real. The woman was just using a shapeshifting technique to confuse him.
“I am you.” The Su Jin on the wall was certain and she pointed to someone behind him. “That one too. Who’s he?”
Su Jin turned to see that the man in bandages was standing not too far from him. He held a bloody knife in his hand as well as the dead body of a doctor.
“You…” Su Jin was surprised that the man had been able to kill a doctor.
“Me?” The man in bandages burst out laughing as he brought the knife closer to his face, then cut through the bandages around his head to reveal Su Jin’s face.
“No… how could it be?” Su Jin couldn’t help but take two steps back. His eyes were wide. The face of the man in bandages was exactly the same as his own. That man was another him.
“You aren’t going to acknowledge us? But we are you… without a doubt,” said the Su Jin on the wall loudly.
“No!” yelled Su Jin. “How can you be me? You’re just characters in this Challenge and you’re just trying to keep me inside the hospital.”
“I’m trying to keep you inside the hospital? Don’t forget, I’m the one who gave you the fragments of the key.” The Su Jin in bandages sounded a little displeased, but he had a weird smile on his face.
“That’s right! And if not for me, how would you have known that you could avoid getting injected by the monster doctor by hiding under the blanket?” asked the Su Jin on the wall with a smile.
Su Jin didn’t know how to respond. He had the key, so he didn’t need to talk to these two. He just needed to open the gate to the hospital, get out and everything would be over.
He turned to run and ran past himself in bandages. His bandaged self did not try to stop him at all and continued grinning weirdly at him.
“Haha!” “Heh heh!” The two other Su Jins laughed gleefully as Su Jin ran from them. The mocking in their laughter could be heard clearly.
Su Jin continued running according to the route he could remember and finally got to the gate. He fished out the triangular key and tried to find a place to insert it, but after searching for a long time, he couldn’t find a slot where it could fit.
“Could it be that this key doesn’t work like an ordinary key?” mumbled Su Jin to himself as he continued to search the gate. His failure to find any suitable slot was slowly making him more and more anxious.
“Nope… nope… can’t find it… is there even one… where is it? Where is it?” Su Jin was getting very anxious and his hands couldn’t help but tremble.
“ARGH!” Su Jin finally stopped trying and yelled angrily at the sky. But the moment he looked up, he noticed his two other selves looking at him from afar. Their smiles were getting wider and more annoying.
“I have to kill you… I have to kill both of you, then only can I escape!” Su Jin looked like he was possessed as he pulled a knife out and charged at the other two Su Jins.
“Kill me? How could you possibly do that?” said one of them with a cackle as he puffed his chest out. “Go ahead and stab me! Let’s see if you can kill me!”
Su Jin stabbed it deep into the other Su Jin’s chest and blood immediately sprayed all over Su Jin’s face. The blood was still warm too.
But that Su Jin remained perfectly fine. He shook his head in disappointment and said, “See? I told you, it’s not possible!”
“Oho! How interesting! You can’t kill him, so why don’t you try killing me? Come and stab me! Come and stab me!” The other Su Jin puffed his chest out and seemed to look forward to this.
Su Jin rushed at the other Su Jin and stabbed that Su Jin accurately through the chest, but… this Su Jin didn’t die either and could still grab hold of Su Jin’s hand.
“You can’t kill me! You can’t kill me! As long as you’re still alive, I can’t die, because… I am you!” This Su Jin burst out laughing, his words ringing in Su Jin’s ears like a hypnotic chant as it delivered shocking words to Su Jin’s brain.
Su Jin moved several steps backward and stared at the two Su Jins whom he had just stabbed in the chest. Their smiles were mocking and filled with contempt for him.
Su Jin suddenly fell on his back onto the ground. He could hear the sound of his own heart beating, and less than a second later, he could also hear two other hearts beating in his ear.
Ba-thump! Ba-thump-ba-thump! That was the sound of the hearts of the other two Su Jins. Like they said, as long as Su Jin didn’t die, they wouldn’t die. They were also Su Jin, so if Su Jin was still alive, they would stay alive. If Su Jin died, they would die too.
“So many of your teammates died, so why didn’t you?”
“Su Jin, you’re such a pitiful man! You wanted to protect everyone, but in the end, you can’t even protect yourself!”
“You fear death too, don’t you? That’s not surprising, we’re all afraid to die, because we’re all Su Jin!”
“Why do you bother to work so hard? We’re powerful no matter where we go now, so stop thinking about who you want to revive! Think about how you can make your life better!”
The two Su Jins squatted by his side and kept saying such things into his ear.
But these two voices helped to snap Su Jin out of his confusion. He became even calmer than before as he listened to what these two Su Jins had to say about himself. Since they were himself, he was more interested in what they had to say.
“You can have so much! As long as you want it, you can get it!”
“Stop making life difficult for yourself! You need to live a life of your own!”
“Beautiful women, money, power… you can get any of these at the snap of your fingers!”
“Guarantee your own safety! You have to survive these crises in order to have a future!”
The two Su Jins went on and on like two flies that refused to go away, but the look in Su Jin’s eyes grew calmer and calmer. He finally said, “The two of you are me.”
“Of course!”
“We’re definitely you!”
“The two of you are not me.”
“We’re you!”
“Definitely you!”
Su Jin sat up and crossed his legs. He looked at the two Su Jins, then said to the one in bandages, “You’re me. You’re my greed, you’re my desires.”
The Su Jin in bandages was a little startled and looked shocked before he let out a sigh. The bandages on himself began to fall apart and his flesh slowly disappeared. He was eventually nothing more than a pile of bones on the ground with wisps of green smoke rising from it.
Su Jin turned to the other Su Jin and said, “You’re me too. You’re my frailty, you’re my timidness.”
The other Su Jin was also stunned for a moment. He smiled bitterly, got up and took a step back. A strong gust of wind blew past and he turned into powder, disappearing with the wind.
Su Jin exhaled deeply. He didn’t understand at first, but everything was clear to him now. The two of them hadn’t been lying. They were really him. The man in bandages loved to eat and was always eating when he interacted with Su Jin. Even when he was nothing but bones, he still wanted to eat, and even lost his senses for the sake of getting more food. That was greed.
The other one hid himself under the blanket right from the start in order to run away from impending death. Later, he chose to run away and didn’t have the slightest bit of courage to face the problem. That was timidness.
After thinking about it, he didn’t find it strange anymore. The personification of these two emotions sounded silly, but they were basically two strong feelings that Su Jin had suppressed ever since he became an owner. Inside the ward of the hospital, he had turned into three. One was his greed, one was his fears, and the last one was himself, where his consciousness resided. This last one worked hard to survive, so he was… his will.
Greed was desire, fear was self-defense, the will was the determination to live. These were the basic emotions that made up a human. Su Jin now recalled the face inside the fixture in the other ward. That was himself too.
That’s right, the face that came up from the inside of the fixture had been his own face, but because he was in such danger and the face had only appeared for a short time, he didn’t take note then. But when he recalled what he saw, he clearly remembered that the one lying in that fixture was himself.
“So, you’re not the key to the gate of the hospital. You’re my heart.” Su Jin smiled as he looked down at the triangle in his hand.
Greed was desire, and it came from deep inside one’s heart. That was why the Su Jin in bandages, who represented Su Jin’s desires, was the one who held onto this key.
Su Jin pressed the triangle against his own chest. There was a bright glow as the triangle went into Su Jin’s chest with ease and became one with his body.
He felt a warmth pass through his body and opened his eyes with a start. A glass panel was in front of his eyes and he knew where he was now. He was in one of those fixtures in the ward and was now trapped here.
He struggled to break free. Tubes were stuck into his nose and mouth to provide him oxygen and nutrients. That was how he was able to survive in this machine. Without these, he would have suffocated to death by now.
Su Jin gathered all his strength and kicked the machine. He could feel the machine shake slightly, but after that, the tube providing oxygen retracted.
Without oxygen, Su Jin had to quickly leave this machine, or he would die from asphyxiation. He kept kicking the machine and the cover slowly began to loosen. Su Jin used all his strength to give it one last kick and the cover flew off. Everything then went black.