Hell's Handbook

Chapter 43: Eating Into Him

Su Jin arrived at his sister’s school and met up with Lu Ying almost immediately. Lu Ying was in her forties and looked like a very strict sort of teacher.

“I didn’t expect you to arrive so quickly. I’ll write you a note, you can just show this to the female dormitory warden and she’ll let you in,” said Lu Ying as she quickly filled out a visitor form for Su Jin.

“It’s not appropriate for a grown man like me to just walk in like that, no?” Su Jin was a little hesitant. He had visited the female dormitory himself when he was a student and knew very well what sort of dangers lurked in that place. He had been pretty traumatized back then.

“It’s fine. We don’t have a lot of students living on campus, so you’ll be fine as long as you don’t walk into the wrong place.” Lu Ying went back to marking her students’ homework.

Su Jin thanked her, then headed for the female dorms with the note he had gotten from Lu Ying. When he got to the dormitory, he realized why Lu Ying wasn’t worried at all. The dormitory was a very simple and open three-story building. If anything happened to the girls, they just needed to scream and the entire school would hear it.

The dormitory warden was a lady in her fifties who just waved him in without even looking at the note carefully.

Su Jin found his sister’s room with the information Lu Ying had given him, only to find that she wasn’t in the room. The dust on her doorknob told him that she hadn’t been inside the room for several days now.

His expression darkened. “Getting bold now, huh?” he thought. He couldn’t believe his younger sister actually started staying elsewhere without telling her family.

“Hello there, do you know where Su Qing is?” Su Jin asked the girl staying in the room next to Su Qing’s. Unfortunately, Su Jin had arrived after school hours. Otherwise, he would have gone straight to the classrooms to look for her.

The girl was very helpful as she replied, “Su Qing? She doesn’t stay here anymore. I think she’s staying with Yang Mengmeng.”

“Yang Mengmeng?” Su Jin blinked. That sounded like a girl’s name.

“Yeah, she’s the girl who sells dumplings just outside the school. You’ll definitely see it once you step out of the main gate,” said the girl as she pointed the way out to Su Jin.

“Thanks!” Su Jin smiled at her gratefully and quickly walked out of the dormitory.

After he left, the few girls in the dormitory started talking about him. The girl who talked to him looked infatuated as she said, “Was that Su Qing’s boyfriend? He’s so handsome!”

“Handsome? I don’t think that’s the right word. But there’s something about him that makes one feel very comfortable around him,” said another girl. The first girl thought about it for a while, and then nodded in agreement.

Su Jin’s looks were only average, but after going through two Challenges and two years of training inside his Personal Hell Domain, he carried himself very differently now. He used to be just another man on the street whom nobody would even take notice of, but now, he was like a highly polished sword outside of its sheath, attracting attention everywhere he went.

When Su Jin walked into the school earlier, he had noticed a shop just outside the school, so he knew which place the girl was talking about. The place looked like it was both a shop front as well as a home for residence. It was only slightly past 8pm but the shop was already closed. The front of the shop was made from a panel of wooden planks and the entire front was sealed.

Su Jin knocked on the wooden planks but nobody responded, so he started knocking harder. To his surprise, someone on the inside slammed something heavy against the back of the wooden plank.

“Hmm?” Su Jin raised an eyebrow and was about to say something when he heard a voice yell out from inside.

“Go away! If you guys make trouble for us again, I’m going to call the police! Mengmeng, you’ve got to pull yourself together!”

“She’s really inside!” Su Jin recognized his younger sister’s voice immediately. But judging from what she said, it seemed like she was being harassed.

“How dare you tell your older brother to go away! I’m going to spank you for being rude!” yelled Su Jin.

“Go to…wait, what?!” Su Qing was about to curse at Su Jin when she suddenly froze as she recognized her own brother’s voice. There was a rustling noise as one of the wooden planks was removed and Su Qing stuck her head out.

Su Jin immediately rapped his knuckles on her head and she yelped. But after that, she squeezed out from between the wooden planks and threw herself into his arms.

“You’re here!!” Su Qing held onto her brother and refused to let go.

Su Jin sighed and couldn’t find it in himself to be angry with his sister. He gently patted her head of fine and soft hair and she rubbed her head against his palm.

“Hey, don’t think that you can get away by pretending to be a cute little girl. What’s going on?” Su Jin purposely put on a stern expression to exert his authority as her older brother.

“Come in first!” Su Qing’s eyes darted about, then pulled Su Jin into the shop.

After Su Jin entered the shop, he realized that there was another girl inside. She looked around the same age as Su Qing and she was staring at him. The shop used old tungsten bulbs, so the light was bright but yellowish, which made the girl look especially frail.

“Let me introduce you. This is my best friend, Yang Mengmeng. Mengmeng, this is my older brother, Su Jin!” Su Qing hooked an arm around Su Jin’s and looked like she was about to make an extremely important announcement.

“Hello, Brother Su!” Yang Mengmeng spoke very softly, like an easily frightened bunny.

“Hello, Mengmeng.” Su Jin nodded, then looked around the shop. The shop space was very small and there was no second story nor separate room. Besides the kitchen, the only other thing in the shop lot was a double bed, which meant that Su Qing and Yang Mengmeng were the only ones staying here.

“Have a seat!” Su Qing got Su Jin a stool.

Su Jin sat down, looked at Su Qing and asked calmly, “Ms. Lu called me and said that your grades have been slipping recently, then I found out you’re no longer staying on campus. Don’t you think you owe me an explanation for this?”

Su Qing was mentally prepared that her brother would ask about what was going on, so she made a face and was about to start explaining the situation when the sound of someone banging against the wooden planks echoed in the small shop.

“Come out, you two! I know you’re in there! Did you think you’d be safe inside? If you don’t hand the shop over today, I’m going to teach you a lesson!” There were a number of voices yelling from outside, so there was more than one man outside the shop.

Su Jin saw the two girls instantly tense up and guessed that this must be the issue affecting his sister. He got up to walk towards the shopfront but Su Qing pulled him back.

“Don’t go out! They’re nothing but a bunch of gangsters. If we ignore them, they’ll eventually go away.”

But immediately after she said that, the banging noise from outside grew even louder. The men outside were attempting to break the planks.

Yang Mengmeng trembled frantically and even the usually brave Su Qing started feeling scared. Su Jin patted his sister’s hand to assure her, then walked to the front. He followed the noise and pulled the wooden plank there aside.

“Oh my god!” The man trying to break the plank was shocked to see the plank suddenly disappear.

“I see the two girls have gotten a man to help them out! And you think that would make a difference? Do you know who the hell I am? I’m the big brother around here! Young man, if you know what’s good for you, fuck off, or I’ll break your legs!” Standing outside the shop were six men in their twenties who looked like thugs. The one speaking was only about 1.6 meters tall and wore chains all over himself. His fashion sense was very weird.

Su Jin slapped the man across the cheek without saying a word. This time, he knew how much strength to use. The man stumbled backwards after being slapped and his cheek instantly swelled up.

The other men didn’t expect Su Jin to suddenly strike like that, so they stood in stunned silence even after Su Jin had slapped their leader.

“My sister has only one big brother and that’s ME! If you want to be her big brother, I can send you to hell right now and you can reincarnate as her brother in your next life!” spat Su Jin frostily. These men were clearly just small time hooligans, yet they were so daring. This was a very unsafe place for his sister, he thought.

“Why, you! How dare you slap me! All of you, thrash him!” yelled the man as he clutched his cheek in pain. Su Jin’s slap had broken several of his teeth and his mouth was filled with blood.

The other five immediately charged towards Su Jin. If Su Jin were still that ordinary office employee of the past, these five men might have ended up killing him. But now, these fellows weren’t even enough for a warm up.

In mere seconds, Su Jin had given each of the five men a slap across the cheek as well. In fact, he had slapped every single one in the same place, so all of them clutched the same cheek and wailed in pain on the ground.

“Come on, let’s go! Let’s go!” The leader could see that they were no match for Su Jin, so it was better to just run for it. They had come to threaten the two high school girls only to run off with their tails between their legs.

Su Qing and Yang Mengmeng were still in shock from Su Jin’s first slap. By the time they snapped out of their daze, all the men had disappeared out of sight.

Su Jin sat back down on his stool and cupped his face with both hands. He could sense this angry sort of restlessness inside him threatening to gush out from within his body and there was something very wrong about it. It was probably the power of the Demon Lord taking its effect on him.

After he started using the Demon Lord’s Spirit Power, he started feeling this odd restlessness inside. It usually disappeared almost instantly, but after he punched Thomas the day before and slapped those men earlier, Su Jin realized that this rage wasn’t normal. It was a rage that didn’t come from himself.

He had already guessed that bad things would happen once he started using the Demon Lord’s Spirit Power, but in a life and death situation, he didn’t have a choice. The good part was that the Demon Lord was eating into him at a fairly slow pace, so he still had time to prepare himself for what was to come.

‘Calm down, calm down!’ he told himself. ‘The Demon Lord’s hold over me isn’t too strong yet, so as long as I keep myself in check, I should be okay.’ Su Jin’s quickened breathing slowly calmed down.

When he took his hands away from his face and looked up again, he saw that Su Qing and Yang Mengmeng were both looking at him like he was their hero and their eyes sparkled with admiration.