Hell's Handbook

“Mai, go back in and tell everyone to be on guard. If there’s anything that I can’t help to handle, get Wu Chen to make the decision. Also, bring this back!” said Su Jin without hesitation as he passed the book back to Kano Mai. He was a good distance away, but he could still see that the older woman had eyes that resembled broken glass.

Kano Mai did not say anything and quickly returned to the church. Su Jin stared straight at the older woman, then took a step off the roof with his hands in his pockets. He kept eye contact all the way until he hit the ground with a loud thud.

It wasn’t because Su Jin wanted to look cool or anything like that. He had kept eye contact because that helped to alleviate his fear of heights.

“You’re the affliction demon?” asked Su Jin.

The older woman grinned, revealing her yellow teeth. The height of her teeth was uneven, and there were loads of yellowish gray plaque trapped in between her teeth.

“It’s me. Aren’t you pleasantly surprised?” asked the affliction demon as she looked into Su Jin’s eyes with a cheeky glint.

Su Jin made a face and said, “I’m not sure about the pleasant part, but I am surprised. I didn’t think you could escape this quickly.”

“Do you know the phrase, ‘curiosity kills the cat’? I like cats. What about you?” said the affliction demon with a smile.

“Cats? I prefer dogs, really, because I’m not a very secure guy. I always feel like cats might attack me in my sleep,” said Su Jin as he scratched his head and looked like he was replying to her seriously.

The affliction demon looked at Su Jin with some surprise and said, “What an interesting man you are. I’ve made my escape, yet you’re still so calm. Let me guess what gives you the courage to remain like this… is it because you managed to insult me earlier and it’s increased your ignorance?”

She let out a nasty roar and sent a mouthful of foul smelling spit toward Su Jin. He quickly turned his face away to dodge the spit before looking back at her with a sigh.

Find the original at bit.ly/3iBfjkV.

“Hey, don’t you know basic oral hygiene?” said Su Jin.

“Humph! Stop pretending that you’re confident! What have you done to Artoris?” she asked.

Bang! Bang! Su Jin suddenly pulled White Ash out and fired rapidly at the affliction demon. The holy bullets made her stumble backward but couldn’t kill her. Just like what Artoris told him, the affliction demon was a high level demon, so holy bullets wouldn’t be enough to kill her.

The affliction demon stumbled more than ten steps backward, and once Su Jin stopped firing, the bullet holes on her face instantly healed. Su Jin could see the fury on her face, but he didn’t give her the chance to speak at all. He pulled his shirt off with one smooth movement, threw it aside, then ran toward the affliction demon like a car driving at its maximum speed.

Before the affliction demon could regain her balance, Su Jin rammed into her. As a high level demon, it should have been impossible for the strength of a human to be anywhere near hers. But just when she was about to teach Su Jin a good lesson, she quickly realized that her opponent was no ordinary human.

This human exorcist didn’t look very strong, yet he was able to exert strength like an angry dragon. Before she could launch an attack, Su Jin had smashed her against a wall.

Bam! Bam! Bam!

Su Jin’s fists moved so quickly, they were a blur. The damage his fists did was even more severe than the bullets from White Ash. All his punches landed on her head, and almost every punch was able to turn her head into mush.

Her head didn’t have enough time to recover and remained mush throughout, and Su Jin didn’t look like he was going to stop anytime soon. Eventually, a large mouth appeared at her stomach.

“Enough! There’s no point in doing this! I can’t die, so once your attacks stop, I’ll be able to recover immediately,” yelled the affliction demon. Her head had been hit so rapidly that it didn’t have time to recuperate at all, so she had no choice but to create a mouth at the stomach area to speak.

Su Jin seemed to be done hitting her as well, so he flicked his wrists and took a leap back. There was actually white smoke swirling around his fists. That was how quickly he had been throwing his punches.

The affliction demon’s head quickly returned to normal again and she scoffed. “I told you, once your attacks stop…”

But before she could finish her sentence, Su Jin pounced toward her again and started his close range violent attack on her. There was no break in between his punches and every punch landed on exactly the same spot.

“Are you an idiot or a lunatic?! I already told you, there’s no point in hitting me like this! I won’t die because I’m a high level demon. A mortal like you cannot do anything about me!” the mouth at her stomach started yelling again.

Su Jin stopped and waited for her to recover, and once she had recovered, she opened her mouth to curse angrily at him. But that only made him start punching her rapidly again. This cycle went on and he ended up going on his punching rampage at least five or six times.

“What… what the hell are you trying to do?! You should know by now that you can’t kill me.” The affliction demon stared at Su Jin as though she were looking at a madman.

Su Jin nodded. “Of course I know I can’t kill you.”

“Have you lost your mind then? Since you know, why do you still try to attack me? Why are you wasting your time and energy?” asked the affliction demon in disbelief.

Su Jin laughed. “It’s true that I can’t kill you, but at the same time, since you can’t even defend yourself from my attacks, it’s telling you that you can’t kill me either!”

“Haha! You’re a mere mortal. Even if your body doesn’t die, your soul could die. I have plenty of ways to kill you,” said the affliction demon with a snort.

“If you were capable of doing that, you would have done so by now, no?” said Su Jin disdainfully.

“Since you prefer death, then… I’ll make sure you die a slow and miserable one!”

The affliction demon narrowed her eyes, then the body of the older woman suddenly collapsed onto the ground. A black smoke came out from her nose and rushed toward Su Jin.

Su Jin didn’t dodge and allowed the black smoke to enter his nose and mouth. The process was quite uncomfortable but still bearable. Once the affliction demon had entered his body completely, his eyes began to change to look like broken glass as well.

But halfway through, the transformation paused and he reverted to normal again. Su Jin grinned and said, “Gosh, I can’t believe you really tried!”

“Damn it! What’s going on? Your soul… how is your soul this powerful? This… this is a soul at the same level as a god’s!” exclaimed the affliction demon in horror. She had originally hoped to defeat his soul and take control of his body, but things had not turned out the way she had imagined.

“No, wait, your soul isn’t complete. There’s something controlling it. That way… you shouldn’t be able to trap me here for too long, but… but how is this happening?” The affliction demon was very puzzled and didn’t understand why Su Jin’s soul was like this.

But of course, Su Jin knew that the thing that was supposedly controlling his soul was really just the power of Hell’s Handbook. Even a real god like the Mad Hatter wasn’t able to fight against the power of Hell’s Handbook, never mind himself.

“It’s true that I can’t keep you here for long. But so what?” said Su Jin nonchalantly as he turned to walk back into the church. Everyone had heard the terrible sounds of fighting earlier and were relieved to see that Su Jin had returned safely. But they also remembered that Artoris had said before that the affliction demon couldn’t be killed, so they were curious to know how Su Jin managed to deal with the demon.

“Jin, are you alright?” Kano Mai was worried that he might be injured.

Su Jin shook his head. “I’m fine, don’t worry.”

“What’s happened to the affliction demon? You managed to chase it away?” asked Wu Chen curiously.

Su Jin shook his head again. He pointed to his head and said, “Nope. I captured him and trapped him inside here.”

Everyone was puzzled for a moment before they reeled back in horror. His team mates became terribly anxious. Locking a high level demon inside his head sounded as good as a death wish.

Wu Chen’s lips twitched nervously. “This… I feel like I’ve seen something like this before. Are you… are you going to become like Stephen Chow in that movie? Are you going to suddenly turn into a madman and hack us all to death?!”

“You like that movie too? We can talk about it once all of this is over. But now, that thing is more important.” Su Jin pointed to the book in Kano Mai’s hands.

Wu Chen gave him a nod, then dragged the three newbies besides Bo Ya over. While they were still confused about what was going on, he made a cut on one of their hands.

“Since the three of you can’t fight, you can contribute some blood then!” said Wu Chen before turning to Su Jin. “I don’t know if the other things written inside are of any use, so it’s best to use fresh blood.”

“Oh? What’s so special about fresh blood?” asked Su Jin curiously. At the same time, all of them had noticed that Su Jin’s left eye had transformed rapidly to look like a ball of broken glass.

Wu Chen had noticed it too, but he remained calm as he explained, “Humans aren’t considered the highest lifeform for nothing. From one of the Challenges I went through, I found out that human blood originates from God and has holy attributes. That’s why human blood has always been one of the best components for all sorts of ceremonies, magic circles and the like.”

Su Jin looked like he had learned something new. After Wu Chen got quite a bit of blood from the three newbies, he told Su Jin to take off all his clothes. Su Jin blinked and frowned slightly. It was getting a little difficult to hold the affliction demon down.

“Are you alright?” asked Wu Chen a little worriedly.

“Jin, hang in there!” Kano Mai chimed in.

Su Jin nodded, then used a hand to tear his clothes off. He had to focus in order to hold the affliction demon down, and taking his clothes off properly would be a form of distraction.

“If you end up having trouble holding up, what should we do?” asked Wu Chen as he used a finger to draw the strange symbols in the book on Su Jin’s skin.

Su Jin’s eyelid began to tremble. He gritted his teeth and said, “Run!”

Wu Chen nodded slightly to acknowledge the instruction.