Hell's Handbook

Chapter 173: Familiar Face

The Key to Immortality was like synthetic drugs to this world, and most people hated it with a vengeance. But longevity was a temptation that some people couldn’t resist. There would always be people who would stoop to anything in order to gain long life.

Su Jin followed the group to where the Key to Immortality was kept. This building seemed to be for government use. It was a very tall building, and its glass walls shone brightly in the sun.

The group of seven seemed very familiar with this place. Immediately after they entered the building, they went down an area that was within the security guards’ blind spot. One of them had a machine the size of his palm that made any camera he came near enough to turn the other way, so they passed through without being captured on camera at all. In that way, even those watching the cameras did not discover them either.

“They’re really well-prepared for this!” thought Su Jin. After all, it was going to be hard to enter and move around in a heavily guarded building like this one.

Compared to how the seven men were sneaking about carefully, Su Jin looked like he was walking with ease. In reality, Su Jin could move at a speed faster than the camera could catch, so unless someone slowed the footage down by nearly a hundred times, they wouldn’t notice him at all.

“Boss, is the Key to Immortality really here?” asked one of them. They seemed rather nervous, since what they were doing was going against what the rest of the world wanted.

The man leading the way had a nasty look in his eye. He nodded and said, “I’m sure it’s here. I’ve already read through all the information and the only place where Sunshine City could keep it would be here.”

Everyone’s eyes lit up when they heard what their leader said. Su Jin, on the other hand, found that these men were progressing way too slowly. He used his psychokinesis to take control of their minds and found out where the Key was from the leader’s mind.

“Wow, this guy’s really vicious.” Su Jin also discovered that the leader was prepared to kill everyone else with him after they got the Key.

Most of the world saw the Key to Immortality as a poison and evil substance, but it was indeed able to prolong a person’s life. Those who consumed it before had lived a very long life before they turned into zombies.

Compared to just living for a few decades, there were some who did not mind living for a few more decades. After that, dying and turning into a mutant did not make much of a difference to them, so the Key to Immortality was still a very valuable substance even during this time, and there were people who were willing to pay a high price for it.

The batch in Sunshine City probably only had slightly over ten portions, and if everyone in the group took one each, there would only be half or less left to sell. If the leader killed the other six, then he could make more money. The leader did not plan to share the spoils with the other six at all.

Su Jin wasn’t interested in their plans and overtook them immediately. He already knew where the batch was and just had to get to it before they did.

After the seven of them were released from Su Jin’s control, they did not notice a thing. They just felt like they had gone into a daze for a couple of seconds.

Su Jin followed the information he had gleaned from the leader’s mind and quickly arrived at a giant safe room. This was literally a safe that was the size of a room. He knocked on the walls of the room to find that it was made entirely from pure copper and was around 20 centimeters thick.

He raised an eyebrow with some admiration. This safe room did not use any fancy materials or technology and relied on other methods to protect the things inside.

He placed a hand on the wall and spread his psychokinesis throughout the room so that the inside of the door to the room became clear to him. There was an intricately designed mechanism in the door. One needed to scan their fingerprint, then follow the instructions on the screen to go through more than ten steps to open the door. There was no password required.

But if any of the steps went wrong, the door would not open and the alarm would be activated. Trying to open this door without the correct instructions would be almost impossible.

Of course, this wasn’t difficult for Su Jin at all. He used his psychokinesis to take the mechanism apart and crushed it completely so it wouldn’t work at all.

Without the mechanism, he could just push the door open. The pure copper door weighed at least a ton, so he felt that even if the seven men made it here, pushing this door open might prove too difficult for them.

Immediately after he opened the door, he was disappointed. The room was empty except for a glass stand that was only a meter high. There was an indention in the glass which was of the same shape as the Key to Immortality that Su Jin had received before. This was probably where the Key had been placed previously.

“Did someone else take it away?” Su Jin frowned. Just then, he heard the sound of footsteps. A group of armed guards was making their way to this room.

“I’ve been discovered?” Su Jin was rather surprised. He hadn’t set off any alarms, yet someone had detected him.

After thinking about it more carefully, Su Jin slapped his head when he realized what must have happened. There was a problem with the mechanism that he had disassembled. It was supposed to set off the alarm only if someone had not followed the ten odd steps to unlock the door, but in reality, the alarm would probably go off as long as someone tried to open the door.

Su Jin thought that was a really clever idea. Then again, it made sense to do something like that. This safe room was guarding the very important Key to Immortality after all. If someone wanted to conduct any checks or move the Key, the staff would know beforehand and nothing would happen even if they opened the door and the police were called. But if someone who hadn’t made any prior arrangements were to try and open the door, the alarm would be set off and the guards would know that they had an intruder.

He was about to turn and leave when he saw beams of purple light appear inside the safe room. He realized that these copper walls were not just a simple defense mechanism but it was also used to conduct a powerful electrical current.

Su Jin had a very strong physical body, but he still couldn’t stroll past the electrical current just like that. He was still human, and he was still going to die if the voltage was high enough.

Before long, he heard sounds of gunfire from outside the room. He wasn’t surprised by the commotion. The group of seven had probably arrived and happened to run into the guards, so they would naturally start fighting each other.

The fight didn’t last long, based on what he could hear. The seven of them had probably all been killed. The footsteps came closer and closer to the room. One of them now stood outside the room, and a group of heavily armed guards were standing behind him.

“I can’t believe someone could actually get in here. What a surprise,” said the man at the doorway, a Caucasian man with a long scar on his face, his muscular upper body clothed in only a wifebeater.

“Oh my, I didn’t expect to be trapped here either.” Su Jin merely smiled. Being trapped here didn’t pose much of a threat, now that other humans were here. He could use his psychokinesis to take control of them and get them to let him out.

Just when Su Jin was about to use his psychokinesis on them, the muscular man suddenly exclaimed, “Oh my god! It’s… it’s you!”

The muscular man was so excited that if not for the electrical currents running through the room, he might actually run right in.

Su Jin looked at him and narrowed his eyes, “You know who I am?”

“Of course! You’re like my god! Ten years ago, you were the one who gave me that drug that saved all of us! Have you forgotten?” said the man excitedly.

Now that he mentioned it, Su Jin remembered. At the end of the Challenge, he had given the vaccine to a man in the Safe Zone. When he thought about it, this man did look like the man from that time.

“So it’s you. It’s been ten years, huh,” murmured Su Jin to himself. A very short time had passed in the real world, but an entire decade had passed in this one.

“Sir, my name is Andrew de Roo, but you can just call me Andrew. How should I address you?” Andrew still looked so delighted to see Su Jin.

“I’m Su Jin! Could I ask if you can switch off this wall of electricity?” asked Su Jin.

Andrew was about to nod when one of the guards next to him whispered something into his ear. Andrew’s expression faltered for a moment, then he bowed to Su Jin and said apologetically, “I’m sorry Mr. Su, but… I don’t have the rights to let you out of the room. I’m afraid we have to go through a meeting and confirm that you’re not dangerous before we can do anything. I’m really sorry about that. But don’t worry, I’ll persuade the rest.”

Su Jin wasn’t worried. He nodded and said, “Sure. But please hurry.”

“I’ll see to it now!” Andrew nodded, then turned and left.

If Su Jin really wanted to just leave this place, he could have taken control of their minds and gotten them to do his bidding. But he felt that since his aim was the Key to Immortality and the people here actually remembered him, he figured that he could make use of that and it might make his mission easier.

After Andrew left, he arranged for a meeting via video call. The human world was now split into five major cities, of which Sunshine City was the biggest. The leaders of the five cities were now gathered in the same meeting.

“Mr. de Roo, you’ve called for all five of us to meet using your special privilege. Did something disastrous happen?” asked an old and wise-looking gentleman.

Andrew nodded. He said, “As all of you know, our world was once living in terror and everything changed ten years ago, when a man came down from the sky like a god and landed within our last Safe Zone. If he hadn’t given us that drug that saved our civilization from further destruction, there would be no more humans left.”

“Yes, that’s right. But what has that got to do with this emergency meeting?” asked another person.

Andrew took a deep breath and said, “That man, that godlike man… is back!”