Hell’s Handbook

o could also come up with crazy ideas like this.

Once Tang Ning had walked away, only Su Jin and Ye Yun were left in the room.
Ye Yun peeked her head out to make sure that Tang Ning had left before turning to Su Jin.
“You’re not my cousin!”

“That’s right, I’m not your cousin,” said Su Jin with a nod.
He had felt that Tang Ning and Ye Yun’s parents had been too idealistic right from the beginning.
As long as Ye Yun wasn’t dumb, she would be able to tell that Su Jin wasn’t really her cousin.
And from the looks of it, Ye Yun was actually very intelligent.

“My parents hired you to come here?” Ye Yun lay on her stomach on the bed and used her hands to prop her face up while she stared at Su Jin like there was nothing he could hide from her.

Since she was being so direct, he decided to be honest with her.
“That’s right.
Your cousin was afraid that you might do something silly, so she wanted me to look after you.”

“Sometimes, I can’t believe my folks! If I really wanted to die, they wouldn’t be able to stop me, and neither would you.” She glanced at him and sighed.
“Oh forget it, you can stay here since it makes all of them feel more assured.”

“Seriously though, what’s the real problem here? Are you just going through a rebellious stage? Trying to be a goth? Or… you’ve got dreams of becoming a rockstar?” Now that Su Jin had already decided that he was not going to try to woo Ye Yun, he stopped being so reserved around her and spoke his mind.
As he spoke, he picked up a photo frame on the table.

Ye Yun snatched the photo frame away from him and rolled her eyes at him.
“What do you take me as? A stupid teeny bopper? I’ve got my own reasons.
It’s just… living is too tiring.”

“You’re a rich man’s daughter, so your life couldn’t be more tiring than ordinary folks like me, struggling to make ends meet on a daily basis.
But we’re all still alive and well, so why are you trying so hard to end your life?” Su Jin sighed.
Before becoming a Handbook owner, his life had really been draining.
The only thing that occupied his mind was how to make enough money to support his family and he always ate the plainest and cheapest food he could find.
But even so, ending his life never crossed his mind.

“It’s different.
That’s different.
There are many things about you which nobody else besides yourself would understand, so I’m the only one who would understand why I want to die,” said Ye Yun with an equally heavy sigh.

Su Jin chuckled.
“You’ve got to think carefully before you really decide to die.
We’re not in some online video game where you can just delete that account and start a new one in a new domain.
If you end your life, you’d really be gone forever.”

“Do you think… do you think death is really the end? Could it also be a new beginning for you?” Ye Yun asked Su Jin excitedly.

“Are you sure you’re not just going through some teenage angst phase? Your outlook on life sounds pretty delusionary,” said Su Jin with a laugh.

“Hey! I’m sure you’re some gaming addict, so you’re no better than me! Besides, even if you delete an account in an MMORPG, you don’t have to start a new one in a different server.
If you want to continue to play with the players you used to play with, you can just restart by creating a new character in the same server,” said Ye Yun as she grumbled about Su Jin with a smile.

Su Jin was about to laugh in response when an idea suddenly hit him.
He seemed to have understood something.
He asked Ye Yun, “What… what did you just say? Can you repeat that?”

“About you being a gaming addict?”

“Not that part! The last bit!”

“Just create a new character?”

“That’s it! So that’s what it is! I can’t believe I couldn’t get it for so long.
If that’s how it works, then everything makes sense,” mumbled Su Jin to himself.

Back when they were in Fengxi Town, Liu Yingying said that it was pointless for Chu Yi to leave his number behind and when Su Jin tried Chu Yi’s number after he completed the challenge, Chu Yi’s number turned out to belong to someone else.
Liu Yingying and Jiang Li didn’t leave any contact information behind, and the Demon Lord had also mentioned that he had been very unsure if Su Jin would still be able to come back to look for him and that waiting for Su Jin had been very risky.

Su Jin had been thinking about these things all this time and couldn’t figure it out, but now, everything seemed as clear as day.
If humans could create MMOPRGs, then someone else could have created the world that humans lived in, like an MMORPG universe.
If that was the case, the existence of the Handbook’s world would make more sense now.

And if all those hypotheses held true, then would that mean that the world also had servers like MMORPGs? If Chu Yi, Jiang Li, Liu Yingying and himself belonged to different servers and were only put together in the same place when a challenge began, then every time they completed a challenge, they would return to their original servers and would have no way of contacting one another.

“Is that how it works? Is my guess right?” Su Jin felt his heart palpitate.
He seemed to have understood the truth of the matter, but this truth only made his hair stand on end and was quite difficult to accept even for him.

“Hey, what’s wrong with you?” Ye Yun noticed that Su Jin had gone into a daze, so she waved her hand in front of his face.

He snapped out of his daze immediately and took a deep breath.

Just then, a familiar voice rang in his ears, “You have understood the existence of parallel universes, so you get the Mark of a Leader!” That was a voice that he expected to hear only when he was in his Personal Hell Domain, because that was Blackie’s voice.
At the same time, he felt like one of the pockets in his jacket was very warm.
That was where he had kept his Handbook.

“Sorry, I need to go to the washroom!” Su Jin smiled apologetically at Ye Yun.

“Oh, sure! It’s the third door on your left,” said Ye Yun as she pointed to one of the doors along the corridor.

Su Jin immediately walked out in that direction.
After he had walked out, Ye Yun looked up at the ceiling, then yanked at one of her pillows.
She pulled a black book out from under one of them.2

“Once one is under its control, is there still any meaning in being alive or dying?” Ye Yun sighed.

I have lost all respect for the man now.↩ The plot thickens…again.↩