Hell's Handbook

“It’s Lust and Pride!” Su Jin’s expression was nasty. The two Original Sins in their way weren’t Gluttony and Sloth but two other Original Sins. He immediately realized what was going on.

“The items we collected are things that can suppress them. Once we collected them into our Handbooks, they were set free,” said Su Jin with a frown. It was very clear that once they came across an item related to a punishment and kept it in their Handbooks, the Original Sin connected to that punishment would appear.

But figuring this out now wasn’t of any use. These two Original Sins were no fun to deal with and they had to find a way to get past them.

“I’ll take on one of them,” said Long Zhenglei weakly even as he was still being carried by his team mate.

“Leave the other one to me!” As the team leader of Moon in the Blue Skies, he was fairly powerful too. He clasped his palms together and a huge beam of orange light shot out from his back.

A blue gleam shone in Long Zhenglei’s eyes as he clasped the air with one hand and shouted, “Invisible Entrapment!”

Lust’s body suddenly became distorted and looked like it was being sucked into an invisible space.

The orange beam behind Cai Dexiang turned into a gigantic hammer. Cai Dexiang brought it down on Pride and smashed it on the spot.

Both of them were on the verge of collapsing after doing that. Just like how Chu Yi had unleashed a Quadruple Qi Thrust earlier, these two techniques were clearly their trump cards.

Now that the coast was clear, everyone started running again. Chu Yi asked, “Boss, if we take those things out of our Handbooks, would we be able to suppress them again?”

Su Jin nodded and said, “That’s probably possible, but we can’t do that.”

“Why?” Cai Dexiang was the one asking this time.

“There’s something odd about these Original Sins and I suspect these are not their original forms. I think they’re either clones or merely a part of their actual bodies,” Su Jin explained his guess. “I think the Original Sins are unable to appear in their actual forms within the temple because the city contains things that can suppress their existence. Our final destination might be a place where the seven of them are unaffected, so we must bring these items from the city along because they might save us later on!”

The rest agreed with this analysis. If these Original Sins were the same ones they had met in the desert, there was no way they would be able to defeat them so easily. That in itself was very strange.

“There’s also a possibility that the thing suppressing the Original Sins is the city itself, while these items are important items to this Challenge. We’ve kept the items away in our Handbooks, but the power of the city continues to suppress their existence, and so the seven of them can only appear in this manner,” Long Zhenglei continued to analyze the situation in the same vein.

Su Jin nodded in agreement. Long Zhenglei’s explanation made sense too. In no time, they found a pot of hot oil and Greed appeared.

The other four Original Sins were still hot on their heel, so Su Jin had no choice but to activate the Attack of the Demon Lord and slice Greed into half with his Boning Knife. They just needed to get the Original Sins out of the way and didn’t need to actually get rid of them permanently.

“The hot oil is Greed, the snakes, rats and toads are Gluttony and Sloth, the brimstone and carriage are Lust and Pride,” mumbled Su Jin to himself as he confirmed which item was for which Original Sin, since he might need these items to counter the Original Sins later on.

“Ice water’s over there!” Kano Mai found a lake that was frozen up ahead and threw her Handbook at it. Just like the fire and brimstone, the frozen lake was instantly absorbed by her Handbook.

Jealousy instantly appeared, so the four veterans used their Spirit Power to shatter it in seconds.

“Icy waters is jealousy,” noted Su Jin.

As they continued running for their lives, the six Original Sings continued running after them as well. But besides running as hard as they could, they were also on the lookout for the last item they needed. The introduction to the Challenge only mentioned taking limbs apart, but they figured it couldn’t be referring to broken arms or legs.

They couldn’t find the last item and the six Original Sins were about to catch up with them. If they didn’t find the last item soon, they were doomed.

“Taking limbs apart…if it’s not broken limbs, then…it’s some tool of sorts?” Su Jin’s eyes lit up. This sounds plausible. And something that could take limbs apart was probably a knife or something along those lines.

Su Jin quickly found his target. A standalone building at one corner of the city was filled with all sorts of knives as well as the head of a strange looking creature. This was probably a slaughterhouse.

“You guys go ahead, I’m going to retrieve the last item!” said Su Jin before running towards the slaughterhouse. Once he stepped in, he noticed a golden sword stabbed into the floor.

“You’re it!” Su Jin threw his Handbook at it and the sword was instantly absorbed by the Handbook. This was indeed what Su Jin was looking for.

But by the time Su Jin walked to the entrance of the slaughterhouse, Wrath was already waiting for him there, staring at him with bloodshot eyes.

“Sorry, no time to play with you! Move aside!” Su Jin instantly activated the Attack of the Demon Lord and used his extra sharp Boning Knife to slice Wrath into two.

He dashed out of the slaughterhouse and quickly caught up with the rest. Kano Mai said, “Jin, I think we’ve reached our destination.”

Su Jin looked at where she was pointing at and saw that there was a gigantic golden roulette wheel at the far end of the city. From afar, the slots looked like giant doors and were quite obvious even from this distance.

“Is there something on it?” Su Jin’s eyesight wasn’t as powerful as Kano Mai, since she was a sniper and he wasn’t. But since she seemed so certain, he felt that there had to be something on the golden roulette wheel.

She said, “Pictures of all seven Original Sins are drawn on it.”

“Speed up, everyone!” Su Jin yelled. Everyone was already moving at their fastest, but at the same time, all seven Original Sins were right behind them. Su Jin grabbed Long Zhenglei off his team mate’s back and carried him instead since the team member looked exhausted and was unable to move as quickly as before.

As they came closer to the roulette wheel, they saw that the image of all seven Original Sins were indeed drawn onto it with a gigantic slot beneath each image.

“We probably need to put those items in each slot,” said Long Zhenglei.

“But how?” asked Cai Dexiang. Each Original Sin had their own slot, which meant that there was a particular item they had to place in each one. If they placed the wrong item in the slot, it probably wasn’t going to be accepted.

Su Jin retrieved the golden sword and said, “This belongs to Wrath,” and placed it in the slot beneath Wrath’s image.

A beam of light flickered around the sword and turned into the exact same image of Wrath inside the slot.

He retrieved the pot of oil and said, “This belongs to Greed.” The pot of oil also became the image of Greed.

“The frozen lake belongs to Jealousy.” Kano Mai put the frozen lake in her Handbook into the slot.

The three items they were most certain of were placed in their correct slots, but they weren’t sure of the remaining four. Sloth and Gluttony had appeared at the same time, just like Lust and Pride.

“Hurry up and decide! They’ve caught up already!” said Cai Dexiang frantically as he turned to see that the seven Original Sins were already looming behind them.

“We’ve got to stall for some time!” said Su Jin. Chu Yi, Long Zhenglei and Cai Dexiang immediately turned to face the seven Original Sins, since only the veterans had the ability to buy some time for the group.

“Boss, you need to hurry! We won’t be able to hold them off for long!” said Chu Yi with a pained look on his face. All three of them were already exhausted at this point, so they weren’t sure how much longer they could hold up.

Su Jin began to tap his nose with his finger as he labelled the snakes, toads and rats together as item 1, just the snakes as item 2, brimstone and fire as item 3 and the carriage as item 4.

1 and 2, as well as 3 and 4 were interchangeable, so it was either 1, 2, 3, 4; 2, 1, 3, 4; 1, 2, 4, 3 or 2, 1, 4, 3. Those were the four permutations.

He started going through the permutations systematically. Once any one of them transformed into the image of its corresponding Original Sin, the rest was easy to deduce. They were done with the arrangement in a matter of seconds.

But these few seconds were enough for the three veterans to be beaten up pretty badly. At the same time, the fact that they hadn’t been killed instantly from being attacked by all seven Original Sins at the same time proved that they were really formidable fighters.

Once the items had been placed in the correct slots, the golden roulette wheel began to turn. The wheel broke into pieces and the images of the seven Original Sins gathered together to form a giant door that shone brilliantly.

There was a roaring sound as several beams of light shot out from the giant door, surrounded the Original Sins and dragged them into the door.

“Is it over?” Everyone had excited looks on their faces at first, but when they realized that the Original Sins were transforming within the door, their faces fell.

As the dazzling light covered their bodies, the seven Original Sins lost their ugly appearance. Wings grew out from their backs as they slowly transformed into angels.

“This makes me feel…very uneasy…” Su Jin started shivering. Watching the Original Sins morph into angels made him feel a great sense of impending danger.

Just then, one of the Original Sins stopped evolving. Pride walked out from the door. Its metamorphosis was not complete, so even though its body looked like an angel’s and it had white wings like an angel, its head did not change. It was still a ball of light that kept changing its face.

After Pride walked out of the door, Gluttony, Jealousy, Greed, Lust, Sloth and Wrath walked out as well. Just like Pride, their metamorphosis was not complete, so their faces were still the same as before.

Everyone paled instantly. The seven Original Sins had definitely not changed for the better. They seemed to have evolved into something even more dangerous now.

All of them were injured and were already finding it hard to hold up against the clones of the Original Sins earlier. How were they going to face these newly evolved Original Sins?

“Are we really going to die here? That’s…that’s how terrible a Level A Challenge is?” Su Jin refused to resign himself to such a fate, but the future looked bleak.

“Light and darkness are like twin brothers. I can be darkness, and I can also be light!” declared Pride loudly. He turned to look at Su Jin and sneered, “It’s time for the second round to begin!”