Hell's Handbook

Chapter 147: An Invitation

As the rolling snow came to a sudden stop, Su Jin felt like his head was about to explode. A metallic taste came from the back of his mouth and he sprayed blood out. Even a Handbook owner found it hard to hold up against the forces of nature. His psychokinesis nearly collapsed under the weight of the snow.

“Split now!” Su Jin yelled with his eyes still as wide open as before. He manipulated his psychokinesis into a conical shape so that the snow slid down on both sides of the cone to avoid the people behind him.

Su Jin’s legs buckled and he fell on his knees because he felt like there were a thousand needles piercing into his head now. He knew that it was because he had been overly ambitious with the amount of psychokinesis he had and he was going to take some time to recuperate this time.

After the falling snow subsided, the first avalanche had passed. But Su Jin was worried that all that shaking earlier would result in a second avalanche, so he yelled at everyone, “Get out of here now! It’s dangerous to stay here!” After yelling, he disappeared as well.

He made sure that his back faced the other people all the time, so he wasn’t worried that someone might remember what he looked like. He had to move to other areas quickly, since he only had the strength to protect one spot from getting hit by the oncoming snow.

Su Jin was not an idiot, so he knew that since he couldn’t possibly save everyone on the mountain, the least he could do was to save the people in one area to the best of his abilities. If he tried saving everybody at once, he might end up not saving anybody at all.

There was still blood dribbling from his lips but that didn’t bother him. His face was pale because he had used his psychokinesis to do something that was too hard for him and he had consumed more than half of his limit. So, he retrieved a leaf from the Tree of Life and chewed on a section of it.

He used his psychokinesis to search beneath the snow and pulled out whoever had been buried by the snow. Half an hour later, he had managed to pull out about seven or eight people.

However, his expression looked even grimmer than before, because he knew that the longer someone was trapped beneath the snow, the lower their chances of survival.

“I’ve already tried my best,” murmured Su Jin to himself as he shook his head helplessly.

Just then, two figures approached him from two different directions. The first one to reach him was Situ Jin. One of his arms was twisted and he was clearly badly injured. His entire body was covered in snow and he looked like he had been buried under the snow earlier too.

“I managed to save a few more than ten, but it’s still not enough.” Situ Jin’s eyes were bloodshot as he gritted his teeth and clenched his fingers together tightly. He was clearly very upset by this result.

Kano Mai was the other person making her way toward Su Jin. She was better off than the other two since she wasn’t injured, but she was also covered entirely in snow. But if Su Jin took a look at himself, he would have noticed that he had the most snow on his body.

“We can still continue to save a few more, there are signs of life in these places!” Su Jin drew a map in his mind with the various spots he had detected, then sent it to the other two via his psychokinesis.

The two immediately ran in two different directions to search for the survivors that Su Jin had detected. Su Jin himself continued to save whoever he could within the vicinity. After about ten minutes, Su Jin managed to dig three people out. Thankfully, they weren’t injured and were just suffering from a slight lack of oxygen.

“Are you alright? If you can, go down the mountain right now!” As Su Jin spoke, he suddenly realized that the person he had just pulled out was none other than Han Mengyao, the woman who had been tailing him and Kano Mai all this time.

“Why are you here?”

Han Mengyao was shivering like crazy. She had thought that since she was a martial artist, she wouldn’t have to fear the cold and didn’t put on too many layers. But after being buried in the snow like that, her body couldn’t take the cold either.

“I…I’m on…a…a…h-h-holid-day…” said Han Mengyao through chattering teeth.

Su Jin tried not to laugh. This girl was still keeping up appearances even in such a situation. But this was not the time to expose her lies or tease her. It was more important to focus his efforts on rescuing whoever he could.

“Leave now, don’t stick around and get in the way.” He wasn’t too worried about her since she was very fit and nimble.

After Su Jin turned and walked away, Han Mengyao made a face because she felt insulted that he thought she might get in the way. She did some stretching and felt much better, so she ran back to where Su Jin was.

“Hey! You…have a way to accurately pinpoint where the survivors are, don’t you?” Han Mengyao was a clever young lady and she quickly realized that Su Jin could locate survivors with an uncanny precision.

Su Jin frowned and felt that he needed to borrow that memory erasing device from Situ Jin later on and use it on Han Mengyao. If everyone from the special police found out that he had superhuman powers, he would be in trouble.

“Could you tell me where these survivors are? I…I want to help with the rescue mission too,” said Han Mengyao.

Su Jin immediately pressed a finger to her forehead and the locations of the nearest survivors appeared in her head. She stared back at him in disbelief.

“You need to be fast in such situations! Don’t just stand here and stare at me!” yelled Su Jin before running off to save more people.

Han Mengyao didn’t get angry after he reprimanded her and ran off to save the people he had told her about immediately. About half an hour later, help had arrived, but there was little more that needed to be done. After all, four people had been pulling people out from the snow all this time, so that resulted in more survivors than if they had waited for help.

Once help arrived, Su Jin and Kano Mai immediately disappeared from the scene. Situ Jin knew about them, but he was an owner as well, so that didn’t matter. What they wanted to avoid was the authorities taking notice of them.

Situ Jin was the head of the Department of Supernatural Affairs, so he stepped forward to show his badge to the authorities. Han Mengyao did the same, and the two of them continued to help with the rescue mission.

Meanwhile, Su Jin and Kano Mai returned to their hotel. They both needed a rest, especially Su Jin. In order to prevent that huge amount of snow from burying the whole tour group, he had taken a terrible hit and his head was still aching very badly.

“Jin, are you alright?” Kano Mai was very worried because he looked like he was in great pain.

He cracked a smile and shook his head. “I’ll be fine. I just went a little too hard on myself earlier and I just need to get some sleep. Don’t wake me up for dinner later.”

Su Jin chose to use sleep to recuperate, since he had found that to be the best way to recover his psychokinesis.

Unfortunately, his head ached so much that he couldn’t fall asleep at all. It was already past midnight but he still couldn’t sleep. He tried punching himself in the head in hope that the pain would go away, but it didn’t help at all.

“This might be of use to you,” a voice suddenly resounded next to Su Jin.

Su Jin’s hair stood on end as he got up with a start and retrieved his Boning Knife. His psychokinesis needed time to recover, so his sensitivity to his surroundings had dulled significantly. Someone had actually made it all the way to his bedside without him knowing. If this person wanted to kill him, he would be dead by now.

“It’s you!” Su Jin was surprised but also relieved. The person standing next to his bed turned out to be Situ Jin. Instead of sleeping, he had chosen to stand here like some creepy vampire. Goodness knows how long he’s been standing here for, thought Su Jin.

Situ Jin threw a bottle of purple liquid at Su Jin and said expressionlessly, “This is something I got from a Challenge involving magic forces. You can see if it helps.”

Su Jin took one glance at it and gulped it down without hesitation. After all, if Situ Jin had meant to kill him, he would have done so long ago.

The purple liquid tasted terrible and Su Jin initially wondered if he had trusted Situ Jin too much. But shortly after that, a refreshing feeling filled his head and the sharp pain he had been suffering from earlier disappeared completely.

“Phew! Thank you!” Su Jin thanked him sincerely.

But Situ Jin still had a foul expression on his face. He asked in a low and serious voice, “Why did you rescue those people?”

“Was it…wrong for me to rescue them?”

“Of course it wasn’t wrong. But why you?”

“What the hell is wrong with your logic? Why not me? I might be a Handbook owner, but I’m human too. Is it wrong for a stronger person to help a weaker person?” Su Jin simply could not understand how this man’s brain worked.

But after that outburst, Situ Jin suddenly smiled and gave him a pleased nod. “It looks like I can conclude my evaluation of you for the time being. You aren’t a threat at the moment and you will not bring harm to society.”

“Wow, thanks?” Su Jin snorted. This evaluation was pointless to begin with. Even if Situ Jin had concluded that he was a dangerous character, what was Situ Jin going to do about that? There was no way Situ Jin could kill him right now.

Such an evaluation only made sense if the stronger one was evaluating the weaker one. A weaker person evaluating a stronger person was nothing more than mere words.

“Don’t get too excited about that now. If you ever do anything that brings harm to my fellow citizens, I will get rid of you, no matter what it will cost me,” said Situ Jin with a solemn expression on his face, as if doing so would scare Su Jin.

“Alright, alright, I get it. I’ll be a good citizen and make sure I don’t bring you or the country trouble. Good enough for you?” said Su Jin flippantly. “By the way, Han Mengyao found out that I have some supernatural powers, so could you lend me that memory erasing device of yours?”

Situ Jin looked even more hostile now. “Han Mengyao is one of my fellow citizens. You do not have the right to change or delete her memories.”

“If you don’t want to lend it to me, just say so! Look, if she and her department decide that they want to do something about me, I’m not going to obediently turn myself in, you hear me? The law allows for me to defend myself too, doesn’t it? So, I won’t be considered hurting them out of malicious intent, right?” said Su Jin with a big grin.

Situ Jin’s lips twitched slightly. If Su Jin was indeed a law abiding citizen despite being a Handbook owner, then should he protect his legal rights too? This was a difficult question for Situ Jin to answer.

Su Jin still had a smile on his face as he said, “By the way, you were saying that you’ve been hunting down rogue Handbook owners who’ve been wreaking havoc, right?”

“That’s right.”

“You’re too weak to do something like that. My opinion of that part hasn’t changed at all. If you end up having to face someone stronger or worse, a veteran, you’re definitely going to lose. If you want to become stronger…you can consider joining my team!” said Su Jin in a calm voice.