Han Fei lifted up the black box single handedly. Han Fei’s strength shocked Zhuang Ren who knew how heavy the box was. “Since when did you get so strong?”
“How can someone be an actor without some special training?” Han Fei noticed the change to himself too. When he first got the black box from the old man, he could barely lift it with both of his arms. But now he only needed one arm to pick up the box. It was a scary transformation. “When we’re there, you need to listen to my orders, and be patient. Don’t worry, I will not purposely harm you.” Han Fei carried the black box and pushed open Zhuang Ren’s front door. After a long time, this was the first time Zhuang Ren exited his room. The sun showered on both of them. They enjoyed the sunlight but unfortunately the sun was soon blocked off by dark clouds.
Han Fei led Zhuang Ren to Jin Jun’s neighbourhood. As the top paparazzi, Jin Jun didn’t live within the intelligent city not because he couldn’t afford to but he didn’t want to due to the unique nature of his career. Zhuang Ren’s identity was quite sensitive so Han Fei was very cautious on the road. It was not until Jin Jun opened the door and they were all indoors that he could sigh in relief.
“Han Fei, after we left my home, I had the feeling that someone was watching me. That feeling only just disappeared.” Zhuang Ren said anxiously, “But I’m a boring old man, who would be watching me?”
“Just stay here for the day and follow my instructions.” Han Fei had Jin Jun give Zhuang Ren a new gaming account.
“What is this?”
“It’s a game, you can see it as an advanced version of the Ziggurat Game.” Han Fei had Zhuang Ren enter the gaming hub. Han Fei personally checked all the wires and then had Zhuang Ren activate his new account. This was the first time Zhuang Ren tried a fully-immersive game. He followed Han Fei’s instruction to go through every step but at the last moment, the gaming hub’s internal alarm suddenly activated. The gaming hub door opened on its own and Zhuang Ren lying inside frowned with confusion, “What’s wrong?”
“Those with serious heart and brain disease wouldn’t be able to play Perfect Life. The gaming hub will conduct its screening and when such patients attempt to enter the game, it will block them.” Jin Jun came with 3 glasses of juice. Even though he was a paparazzi, he remembered what Han Fei had done for him.
“But I don’t have any of those diseases! My heart and brain are perfectly healthy.” Zhuang Ren was desperate. He was ready to meet his family but something like this had to happen.
“It shouldn’t be a problem with your health then.” Han Fei stood beside the gaming hub and frowned. “When you activated the game, did you notice anything out of place?”
“My connection to the game appears to be strangely weak, there are a few wires which cannot detect my consciousness.” Zhuang Ren sighed helplessly, “What should I do now?”
“You’ve worn the director’s therapy device before, that device might have changed something within your mind.” Han Fei had Zhuang Ren try the system a few more times but they all ended in failure. Perfect Life refused to let Zhuang Ren register an account. This interesting discovery ignited Han Fei’s interest in Zhuang Ren, perhaps Zhuang Ren himself didn't even know how unique he was.
“So I can’t see my family after all?” When Zhuang Ren found out he could see his family, he was so happy, he even joked with Han Fei, but now with this problem in the way, his face collapsed and he aged in mere minutes.
“I have a back-up plan. Wait right here.” Han Fei took out his phone to call LI Xue. He wanted to borrow the latest psychological treatment device from the police. A few weeks ago, Han Fei managed to summon Mingmei to the cryptic world when she was using the psychological treatment device designed by Deep Space Tech. Due punishment was delivered to Ying Yue’s killer. Now he wanted to replicate the same experience, perhaps it might work. After all, the device didn’t need to check the wearer’s personal info before it could be used.
“Sister Li, I have a favor to ask.”
“Haven’t we just talked on the phone this morning? Did you find something new?” Li Xue sounded surprised.
“No, it’s not that. Can you help me secure one of Deep Space Tech’s latest psychological treatment devices? The device that I saw the police used on the psychologically impaired inmates at the detention centre.”
“Why would you need one of those? Are you facing some psychological problem?” Li Xue was concerned but after a few exchanges, she still helped Han Fei make the request. Han Fei was the key person to help them capture Butterfly, nothing could happen to him.
“Li Xue, I have a desperate use for it, do you think I can get it before nightfall?”
“Our leader has personally gone to get one for you, so it should be fine.”
“There’s one more thing that I wish to ask.” Han Fei took out the music box from the black box. “Do the police have personnel with the technical skill to recover the lyrics in this song? I want to know what it is trying to say.” Han Fei switched on the music box and a strange song echoed inside Jin Jun’s house. “This is a song from a music box.”
“I can’t promise anything. The recording sounds too blurry, the computer might not be able to analyze it. How about you bring it to the station in person and we’ll see what we can do?” Han Fei glanced at the time. He had Zhuang Ren stay with Jin Jun while he rushed to the police station. Ever since he woke up from the game that morning, he hadn’t had a moment of rest. When he arrived, Li Xue led Han Fei to the tech department. They uploaded the song from the music box into the system and compared it to the database but to everyone’s surprise, there was no information about this song at all on the internet. “This is impossible, as long as it has been on the internet, there would be a trace of it.” Li Xue and her colleagues were about to attempt something else when the door of the tech department suddenly burst open. Li Xue’s mentor and the officer who was his bodyguard returned to the station with a new treatment device.
“I practically needed to beg to get this. If there’s something wrong with him psychologically… Han Fei? When did you get here?” Li Xue’s mentor put the thing aside. He came to greet Han Fei when he heard the strange song from the music box. A woman and a child sang along to the strange melody. Their voices were mixed together and they were hard to separate.
“Where did you find this?” Li Xue’s mentor listened to it and his face slowly changed.
“I found the song inside a music box, have you heard of it before?” Han Fei silently moved the music box closer to him.
“This is not a song. Please close all the devices in the room now.” The senior said seriously, he seemed to know something. All the devices were closed and in the end, only the creepy song from the music box remained.
“The song was pre recorded and it would play whenever the music box was opened. This is exactly the same as the music box from 14 years ago.” The old man’s presence was completely different from before. He could be quite scary when he was serious.
“14 years ago?”
“On April 4th 14 years ago, a case happened at Xin Lu. One of the residential apartments caught on fire, a music teacher and her child were trapped. When they were rescued, their vitals were almost gone, but something miraculous happened. After some emergency rescue, the heavily injured child woke up from his coma but his mother unfortunately died from the fire.”
“But what does that have to do with a music box?”
“After the boy woke up, he couldn’t stop crying. Initially the doctors thought it was the pain from the burns but after some counseling, they realized it was because of a dream the boy had when he was in the coma. In the dream, his gentle mother morphed into something else, she kept hitting him, scolding him, she even chased him out of the house. In the end, when he was forced to leave his home by his mother who wielded a knife, he woke up from the coma.” The senior officer shared the details from the old case.
“It felt like the mother was trying her best to save her child, the room might represent death. After all, he woke up the minute he left the room.” Han Fei found the story to be quite touching.
“Perhaps.” The man was an atheist, he believed it was the subconscious which was behind everything. “The boy suffered from heavy burns all over his body and he was turned into a monster. He spent a lot of time in the ICU. He kept saying how much he missed his mother, it was quite a sad story.”
“The poor child.” Li Xue sighed but Han Fei noticed something else. At the start, the senior officer called this a case and not an accident.
“Don’t be fooled by what you see.” The senior officer said with an even voice, “After we investigated it further, we found the source of fire. This was not an accident but arson. And the arsonist was the boy. No one knew why he did it, the only one who knew the truth might be his mother but she was already dead.”
“The boy set off the fire? But why would he do that?”
“We found the boy’s father, he was not at all happy to find out his child was still alive. He told us the child was a monster, a harbinger of misfortune. He knew that the boy would grow up to be a killer, but he didn’t expect him to kill so early in his life.” Li Xue’s mentor’s words were quite shocking. “The boy was young but he was very mature. We didn’t spook him but went along with his lies and the world that he had built for himself. But as we interacted further with him, we discovered more and more strange things.” As he listened to the strange music, the senior officer sighed, “The boy said he missed his mother and wanted to find something that she owned. He requested the medical staff to go back to his home to find a music box, he said it was something his mother loved dearly.
“We did find the music box at his home but according to the father, the music box didn’t belong to the mother. She didn’t have anything like that. The medical staff handed the music box to the boy and he hugged it daily, and conversed with the woman’s voice inside the song like his real mother was trapped inside the music box.
“Then something even stranger happened, the young boy completely lost his mind. He would use the most innocent voice to say the creepiest thing, he scared quite a few staff. After the boy got the music box, his wounds suddenly deteriorated and he passed away one night.
“In the succeeding investigation, we compiled all the information and in the end, we could only confirm 2 things.
“While the boy mumbled to himself, one name kept getting featured—Fu Sheng. He wanted to kill Fu Sheng, claiming everything was Fu Sheng’s fault, so why did he have to bear the sin on its behalf? But from what we know, there was no one named Fu Sheng in the boy’s life.
“The other thing is we have tried to analyze every single word in the lyrics from the music box and we believed it was some kind of spell to summon the dead’s soul.”
The senior officer’s words shook Han Fei. He was surprised to hear Fu Sheng’s name mentioned here and he didn’t expect the Unmentionable’s song was also meant for soul-summoning.
‘It feels like others have to go through a lot and suffer great side effects to conduct soul-summoning, is this talent that powerful?’ Han Fei reassessed his talent of Spirit Farer but other than that, he also felt like there was a need to also examine his starting personal talent—Resurrection.
