Hell's Handbook

Chapter 160: Too Simple

Chu Yi was excited that he had found a way to help his father to take a good rest. He hid the medicine and his father ended up dying from a heart attack because he did not get his medicine in time.

As a young child, Chu Yi didn’t know what had gone wrong. His father’s death only hit him when he saw his mother’s face covered in tears and realized that his father was never waking up from this nap.

Fear gripped his immature heart. And because he blamed himself and he also wanted to protect himself from further blame, he inadvertently started hypnotizing himself about what had happened. He successfully blocked out this part of his memory, forgetting how his father had really died and believing that an accident had caused the death of his father when he was a still a child. This became so ingrained in him that after he became a Handbook owner, he started trying to investigate the truth behind this supposed accident.

And now, the truth was right before his very eyes. The cold, hard truth that was enough to make him suffer a mental breakdown.

Chu Yi wailed miserably as he fell to his knees. His entire body was convulsing and his teeth were tightly clenched. Su Jin and Kano Mai immediately tensed up because Chu Yi looked like he was having difficulty coping with this challenge.

Su Jin understood the modus operandi of this female voice. She would use her hallucinatory powers to recreate the scene of that person’s most painful memory and use that memory to agitate the person, leading them to the answer that she wanted. Once an owner went through a nervous breakdown, they would not be far from death.

That’s what happened to Han Yiqing just now. Even though he knew what the correct answer was, he was so agonized by the hallucinations that he was willing to die than to face the actual answer.

In other words, these owners had chosen death, and the female voice hadn’t really killed them so to speak. But while Su Jin could detach himself from Han Yiqing’s choices, he refused to allow anything untoward to happen to Chu Yi.

Woong! A silver light shot out from Su Jin’s eyes and he formed a needle-like object with it, then stabbed it into Chu Yi’s mind.

Chu Yi yelped in pain, but he also became more aware of what was really happening.

“How dare you!” shrieked the female voice. A rope flew toward Su Jin. Su Jin had broken the rules, so she was going to kill them all now.

Su Jin narrowed his eyes and retrieved his Boning Knife from his Handbook. He drew a horizontal line in the air with it and sliced right through the rope that was coming for him. He put the knife back and retrieved the Demon Lord’s Longbow.

“I didn’t want to become enemies with you, but I’m going to protect this friend of mine, no matter the cost.” Su Jin pulled the bowstring back and an arrow of sparkles appeared.

The female voice could sense how powerful the longbow and its arrow were, but she could not allow anybody to make trouble for her here like this either, so she sent more ropes flying toward Su Jin.

At this point, Kano Mai made her move. She stretched her palms out toward the floor and a dull yellow glow shot out from them. All the ropes suddenly became very slow moving because they were all affected by her sloth Spirit Power. Anything could be affected by her power, living or non-living.

“I repeat myself. I just want to protect him. If you insist on attacking me like this, I will have no choice but to fight back,” shouted Su Jin angrily. He was willing to fight this time because they were actually inside the woman’s body. In the previous two rounds, his opponent could run or hide from his attacks, so attacking them like this might not work.

She was very indignant, but after remaining silent for some time, she said, “Humph, since you helped my daughter to let go of her hatred, I’ll give you a chance. But if you dare to do anything to ruin my game, I’ll make sure you die a terrible death.”

“Thank you!” Su Jin quietly breathed a sigh of relief. He wasn’t really that confident of defeating this female voice. The Demon Lord’s Longbow seemed able to destroy absolutely anything, but he wasn’t sure if it was effective against this particular creature. Thankfully, she seemed to be a little afraid of his weapon.

Out of the four who were undergoing the challenge at the same time, Situ Jin was the first one to open his eyes. He sneered and said, “That’s not true. My loyalty to the country stems from deep within my heart. I sincerely believe that the country will protect the weak!”

Nobody knew what question Situ Jin was asked, but it was obvious that it had something to do with his loyalty to his nation. His expression was relaxed and his words were firm as he spoke without hesitation.

“You’ve passed the round!” The female voice had been unable to break Situ Jin in the end. From what Su Jin observed, this female voice targeted the deep seated fears of the owners. So, there was nothing she could do about the owners who were either able to fend off her hallucinations with Spirit Power like Su Jin did, or those who were calmer and unafraid of her game in the first place, like Situ Jin.

A short while later, another owner opened his eyes and screamed as tears streamed down his face, “No! You’re wrong! You’re WRONG!”

A rope immediately tightened itself around him, sending one end into his mouth and down into his chest area. A few seconds later, the rope end came back out with a heart and the owner slumped to the floor, dead.

Su Jin sighed sadly. In the past, he thought that as long as one had Spirit Power, one would be able to get through Handbook Challenges easily. But now, he realized that veterans merely had a higher chance of surviving the Challenges. The Handbook could choose to prevent the owners from using their Spirit Power, and there were even Challenges where having Spirit Power wasn’t of any use at all.

They were allowed to use their powers and weapons freely in this Challenge, but this Challenge did not involve any sort of fighting. Having power and weapons could not guarantee a win and the ghosts they were up against seemed invincible. Su Jin could only pray that Chu Yi would be able to get through this all by himself.

Ten minutes later, Chu Yi finally opened his eyes after struggling with his emotions. He nodded with a depressed look on his face. “You’re right. My negligence and misunderstanding of the situation caused the death of my father.”

“Humph, you’ve passed this round.” The female voice was very displeased. If Su Jin hadn’t intervened, she would probably have been able to get Chu Yi’s heart.

Su Jin and Kano Mai breathed a big sigh of relief. Their hearts ached for him when they heard what he had said to the female voice, but there was nothing they could do to help him. He had to find it in himself to stay strong.

They walked over and Su Jin patted his shoulders, but he didn’t know what else he could do for the younger man.

A few minutes later, the last owner suddenly opened his eyes and spat out some blood. If one looked closely, one would notice that this blood came from his tongue.

“That’s not true! You’re twisting the concept! I don’t agree!” yelled the owner with gritted teeth.

“You’ve passed too,” said the female voice.

“I didn’t expect someone else to be able to hold up against these hallucinations.” Situ Jin was quite surprised. He had experienced for himself how powerful this female voice’s hallucinations were.

“Are you alright?” Su Jin asked the other owner worriedly as he helped him to stand properly.

The owner nodded and smiled sadly as he said, “Thankfully, I was mentally prepared right from the start, so I bit my tongue really hard and managed to get through this round because the pain brought me back to reality. That was…really frightening.”

The results weren’t too bad at all. Eight of them had made it to the third round, and only Han Yiqing and the other owner had died. That was enough for the surviving owners to feel relieved.

“Alright, all of you can proceed to the last game now,” snapped the female voice nastily, as if she was still very unhappy about what Su Jin had done to interrupt her game.

In the next moment, two doors appeared on one of the bloodied walls. A little girl and a little boy stood in front of one door each.

The owners recognized these two children. These were the same children from the very first round.

The female voice resounded once more, “The game is very simple. My two children are guarding the two doors. One of them only speaks the truth and the other only tells lies. All of you are only allowed to ask one question to choose the door to life. Of course, the other door is the door to death. If you choose the door to life, you will get out of this place. But if you choose the other…I don’t think I need to explain further. You have 30 minutes to make your choice!”

Su Jin and Situ Jin stared blankly at the doors for some time. A short while later, Xiang Nan regained consciousness. Su Jin explained the situation to him and Xiang Nan had no idea what to do either.

Kano Mai remarked, “This is too difficult. We can only ask one question? How are we supposed to choose a door based on that?”

Su Jin, however, furrowed his brows. He looked puzzledly at the two children, then walked to one of them and asked, “If I asked him, which one is the door to life, how would he answer me?”

The child he asked pointed to the door behind her, and Su Jin nodded. Kano Mai was confused and was rather shocked by Su Jin’s actions. “You asked a question just like that?”

.

“Actually, if you give it some thought, this is not a very difficult question and it’s quite a classic logic problem. Mr. Su’s question is the only way to get the correct answer. Regardless of which child he asks, he will always get the wrong answer,” Xiang Nan explained to Kano Mai in a weak voice.

“If Mr. Su asked the child who only speaks the truth, then the answer of the other child would be the door to death. If he asked the child who only tells lies, then even though the honest child would point to the door to life, the dishonest child would claim that the honest child would point to the door to death. Either way, we just need to choose the other door that the children did not choose.”

Xiang Nan’s explanation was a little wordy, but Kano Mai managed to get it. Chu Yi and the other owner were still confused.

After getting the answer from the child, Su Jin looked at the door that ought to be the door to life, based on the child’s answer, but walked toward the other door instead and opened it.

“Wait, what?” Besides Xiang Nan, everyone else immediately exclaimed, unable to understand why Su Jin had chosen the other door instead.

Su Jin stopped walking and said, “Well, I was rather puzzled, actually. This question might be really difficult to those who’ve never heard it before, yet it’s way too simple to those who know how to solve such questions. Using such a game to end the Challenge doesn’t seem to make sense, because it’s nowhere as difficult as the previous three rounds.”

“I was also very puzzled by the fact that you did not actually tell us clearly that your game had ended and which game we were going to next. The ones in charge of the previous rounds both did that, but you didn’t. Initially, I thought you were still unhappy over how I intervened just now. But after thinking about it carefully, doing this actually pointed us to the correct answer. Am I right to say that?”