Volume 2: The Days of Playing with Monkeys in the Village
Eyes in the Tree Hollow
Holy crap, what’s that!
Shen Maomao felt somewhat hair-raising.
Is the current younger brother transformed from a monkey? Was the real younger brother… eaten by someone?
She sat dazedly on the sandy ground, struggling to digest this clue.
After saying those words, the elder sister returned to normal, casually wiped away the drawings on the sand, and began a new creation. Shen Maomao squatted beside her and watched for a while, discovering that she was writing some meaningless simple Chinese characters, probably learned during class.
She tried to ask her: “Who ate the younger brother?”
The elder sister didn’t even glance at her, lowered her head and answered: “How would I know? The monkey was sold by mother, money to buy new clothes for younger brother, I and younger sister don’t have new clothes.”
Then, no matter how she asked, the elder sister refused to speak again.
The monkey is the younger brother, the younger brother is actually the monkey, mother sold the younger brother to buy clothes for the monkey?
Shen Maomao’s heart was in chaos, and she felt a bit scared, not daring to communicate too much with the suddenly strange elder sister. Coincidentally, Wei Yu and Wang Xiaoming finished their day’s investigation and were walking over from afar. She simply stood up, patted the sand off her body, and took the initiative to greet the two: “You’re back?”
Wang Xiaoming nodded slightly to her, Wei Yu asked her: “Rabbit? What are you doing?”
“I took them out to play and chat a bit.” After saying this, she changed the subject, “Was your exploration smooth?”
Wei Yu doesn’t like Lou Jingmo much but has no bad impression of Shen Maomao, and is also happy to share clues with her: “We’re fine, but today someone else had an incident.”
“When did it happen?” Shen Maomao said in surprise, “Who was it?” She and Lou Jingmo had wasted a whole day on the back mountain, knowing nothing.
Wei Yu said: “It’s one of the five new people, a girl.”
“What’s her name?”
“Don’t remember.”
Wang Xiaoming also added: “Anyway, everyone’s going to die, who has time to remember so many people’s names?”
This remark was unusually cold, yet incredibly real. Too many people have died in the game, and those alive are also repeatedly jumping on the edge of death. The person remembered today might die tomorrow, so old players prefer to use aliases, not only to protect their real-life information but also to be more easily remembered.
Shen Maomao asked again: “How did she die?”
“She’s not dead, she’s missing,” Wei Yu sighed, “That girl was still very young…”
Still, as said before, going missing in the game is almost equivalent to death. All the people who went missing in the last game, without exception, all died. This copy… presumably is the same.
The three were all somewhat silent, the remaining sun on the horizon was like blood, orange sunlight shone on Zhang family’s wall, warm and bright.
Dinner was ready, Aunt Zhang called out in the courtyard, the two little girls threw away the tree branches, hopping and skipping into the yard; the three adults also gathered their emotions, following closely behind.
Before entering, Shen Maomao paid attention to the patterns on the sand, but couldn’t dig out any useful information.
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The whole family sat around a table eating, harmonious and happy, the afternoon’s disturbance was thus turned over, no one mentioned it again.
After dinner, Shen Maomao finally found an opportunity to be alone with Lou Jingmo. Fearing her summary might not be comprehensive, she recounted everything in detail, successfully earning a disdainful look from Lou Jingmo.
Shen Maomao: “…” Mentally exhausted, won’t love again.
Lou Jingmo inserted her camera’s memory card into Shen Maomao’s camera, brought up the family photo for her to see.
Shen Maomao was a bit afraid, she feared seeing some monster staring at them in the photo again. After fully preparing herself mentally, she took the camera and looked—
Indeed, there was a problem.
In the photo, every member of the Zhang family’s facial features were very clear, except for the naughty child’s face which seemed overexposed, covered by a large patch of white light, making it indistinct.
She fiddled with the DSLR, not knowing what expression to make: “It seems what the elder sister said might very well be true…”
Lou Jingmo: “…I asked you to look at the tree.”
“What’s wrong with the tree?” As she spoke, she zoomed in on the image, observing the leaves piece by piece, “Could it be that the one following us really came to the Zhang family?!”
“Look at the trunk…” Lou Jingmo said helplessly.
She moved down to the tree trunk, looked carefully for a few seconds, and suddenly made eye contact with a light brown eye.
“Holy crap, what’s that!” The remaining camera jumped a few times, almost slipping out of her hand. Shen Maomao wasn’t feeling too good.
That eye’s white was murky, looking almost the same color as the pupil, and the pupil was close to the color of the tree trunk. The two blended together, and without looking carefully, one couldn’t notice there was a hole in the trunk with an eye behind it.
“Is this just one eye, or is there a person inside the tree?” Shen Maomao thought both possibilities were scary.
Lou Jingmo rescued the camera, turned it off and put it back in the bag: “How would I know? I observed it up close for a while, this eye never blinks, just stares straight at me.” After all, the tree belonged to others, and they couldn’t cut it open to see what was inside. While staring at it, she even pretended to poke it with a tree branch, but couldn’t make the eye move at all, like a plastic model.
Shen Maomao gave her a thumbs up: “Sister Lou, you’re awesome.” She even stared at it, while Shen Maomao didn’t even want to go near that tree anymore.
After summarizing the intelligence gathered today, Lou Jingmo continued to wrap the door with pants, preventing unknown creatures from night raids.
Shen Maomao curled up in the blanket, whispering goodnight to her.
The light was extinguished, and the world fell into darkness.
Rustling sounds came from the bed as Lou Jingmo slipped into the warm blanket that Shen Maomao had been covering herself with. Her warm arm draped over Shen Maomao’s arm, bringing her a sense of security.
“Goodnight.”
Perhaps knowing they couldn’t open the door, the naughty child didn’t visit tonight.
The two slept until dawn, preparing to start a new day of exploration.
Just as they walked downstairs, they heard Zhang Jianshe calling his wife: “Xiaoliu’s wife is about to give birth, they’re calling you over to deliver the baby!”
Aunt Zhang walked out of the kitchen, still holding a half-peeled potato: “What? Isn’t she only six months pregnant? Why is she giving birth so early?”
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Zhang Jianshe said urgently: “Who knows why she’s giving birth at six months, who am I supposed to ask? Hurry up, don’t bother with cooking!” (LP: On average, a monkey’s pregnancy period ranges from 4 to 6 months (⊙ _ ⊙ ))
Aunt Zhang wiped her hands on her apron, untied it and tossed it aside, looking apologetically towards Shen Maomao on the stairs: “Girl, auntie is in a hurry here, can you manage breakfast yourselves?”
Shen Maomao said: “Sure, you go quickly, auntie. We’ll also go see if we can help.”
“What help can you kids offer?” She said while walking, already out of the Zhang family’s gate, but turned back to shout, “Girl! Help auntie take the pot off the stove! Don’t let it burn dry!”
“Alright—” Shen Maomao responded, quickly going to the kitchen to handle the pot.
Premature birth at six months… the fetus isn’t fully developed yet, right? Can a child like this survive?
When she came out of the kitchen, Weiyu and Wang Xiaoming had also come down. The three seemed to have discussed something, and finally all looked at her.
Lou Jingmo said: “Let’s go take a look, it’s likely to be an important plot point.”
As mentioned before, the game rarely has plots unrelated to the main storyline, so they really need to go join the crowd.
《Confession Game》 is not a game with a single gameplay mode. Besides the first dungeon’s passive plot-pushing and exit-finding mode, there’s also an active plot-pushing and ending-farming mode, which this world seems to be. In this mode, to clear the game, players need to trigger storylines themselves, and finally generate different endings based on the player’s promotion and understanding of the plot—like a pixel-style RPG horror puzzle game.
The four walked out of the Zhang family home, and on the way met Ye Tingnan, Wang Sheng, and the dazed and pale-faced Shao Mei, as well as many villagers who had heard about this and came to join the crowd.
Liu Zhuangshi’s doorway was once again crowded with people. Yun Shengji and the two newcomers were also there, as well as the big brother who had been sent to the back mountain…
Shen Maomao shivered, wanting to huddle with Lou Jingmo for warmth, but was pushed away with a slap by the boss who wasn’t cold at all. She could only squeeze into the crowd by herself to check on the statue’s situation in the courtyard.
From inside the house came a woman’s desperate scream. Liu Zhuangshi paced anxiously around the courtyard. The statue in his house was covered again with red cloth. Shen Maomao didn’t quite understand – since everyone had already seen it, why not simply let the statue see the sun?
She squeezed out of the crowd again and reported the results to Lou Jingmo.
Lou Jingmo nodded, indicating she understood.
Shen Maomao curiously looked at the revived big brother and quietly asked Lou Jingmo: “Did he really die or not?”
Lou Jingmo didn’t care about this at all: “Dead or not, stay away from him.”
Shen Maomao made an “OK” gesture.
Time ticked by second by second, the voice of the woman in labor grew fainter, and everyone’s nerves became more tense. Liu Zhuangshi rubbed his hair, suddenly walked to the statue, yanked off the red cloth from the statue, then “thud” fell to his knees in front of it.
“Monkey God! Please bless my wife and child to be safe and sound. As long as they can be safe and well, I’m willing to dedicate everything I have!”
The moment the red cloth was lifted, all players except the big brother instinctively turned their backs to the courtyard to avoid ending up in the same situation as him.
The big brother gave a cold laugh, without expressing any opinion.
Yun Shengji said: “This won’t do. We must keep our eyes on the statue to see clearly if it changes!”
Shen Maomao rolled her eyes: “If you can do it, go ahead. If not, stop yapping.”
Yun Shengji chose to remain silent.
Everyone looked at each other, and Shao Mei, who was the least believing in ghosts and spirits, had already started shaking: “I don’t want to look… I don’t want to…”
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Lou Jingmo thought for a moment and said: “I’ll go look.” Her tone was very determined, leaving no room for negotiation.
“Sister Lou?” Shen Maomao was silent for a second, then also turned around: “I’ll go with you!”
At this moment, she was almost moved by herself.
What a great friendship this is! What a great fan she is! She can’t let her goddess face danger alone! No matter how rough the road ahead, she’s willing to accompany her all the way…
Lou Jingmo expressionlessly turned her little head back: “I need a save point.”
The other people had question marks on their faces, but Shen Maomao strangely understood.
What are save points for? Of course, they’re for reviving after doing something fatal! Xiaolou was reminding her not to waste her second life!
I treat you as a sister, but you only treat me as a save point! Is this what humans do?!
The author has something to say:
Thanks to the little angels who cast emperor votes or poured nurturing fluid for me~