The Hand of Confession – Chapter 286

Volume 9: The Days Can’t Be Lived Anymore

Shang Zhou¹

What to do? Seems like he’s already thoroughly dead.

The three people present had faces full of question marks. Only Huo Dongdong, lying on his father’s back, asked naively, “How terrible will it sound?”

Ren Yue smiled, “The kind that might give you nightmares at night.”

Huo Dongdong’s eyes widened in surprise, as if he couldn’t imagine just how terrible that must be.

“Why don’t—” Boss Huo said curiously, “why don’t you sing it for us to hear now?”

Ren Yue: “A killer mace² always has to be left for last. If I sing it now, you’ll know the tune, and the ghosts will know it too.”

Boss Huo had nothing to say; after all, he wasn’t a professional. However, his curiosity was completely hooked, and he couldn’t help but start to look forward to what kind of singing voice he would hear. It couldn’t be that bad, right?

—Women seem to always like to be self-deprecating in areas they are skilled at.

Xiao Lou, on the other hand, didn’t care at all what her singing was like. As a bodyguard, she immediately focused on the situation in the labyrinth’s small town. “Is there a problem in the town?”

“There’s no problem in the town.” Ren Yue raised her head to look up at the distant city wall. “But the premise is—the one you enter has to be the real community.”

The atmosphere froze for a moment. After that, no one spoke again. Everyone walked under the sun, huffing and puffing, leaving a row of messy footprints on the snow that stretched into the distance.

The sky gradually darkened, and the temperature dropped. The originally clear sky had unknowingly gathered thick, dark clouds again. Fine snowflakes fell, sprinkling down, and swirled a layer of water mist around the group.

In the haze, the lights of the small town seemed to be right before their eyes, but no matter how long they walked, the town and its lights remained just as distant, as if they could never reach it no matter how they walked.

“Gachi—gachi—”

The sound of snow being compacted underfoot never stopped. Boss Huo, who had no luggage and was only carrying his son, was still walking at the very end of the group, tired as a dog, wishing he could stick his tongue out to dissipate heat.

To prevent Huo Dongdong from falling asleep and catching a cold, he also had to constantly chat with his son. After walking for so long, his throat was about to emit smoke.

After taking two more steps forward, his legs went soft, and he knelt directly in the snow, letting out a muffled thud.

The sound wasn’t loud, but Xiao Lou heard it. She turned her head to look, and called out to the two people in front, “Stop for a moment!”

Ren Yue glanced at her phone. “It’s almost four o’clock. It gets dark early in winter. The sky will be completely dark around five-thirty. We’ve walked about three-quarters of the way. We can rest for ten minutes.”

This time, Boss Huo didn’t try to act tough.

Mainly because he couldn’t get up.

Xiao Lou picked up the startled Dongdong, while Ren Yue supported him, helping him to the bus stop by the roadside to rest.

As his butt touched the ice-cold bench, Boss Huo pounded his own legs and said with a bitter smile, “I’m getting old… my stamina can’t even compare to you two little girls…”

Ren Yue mercilessly exposed his age excuse, “This is you being sub-healthy.”

Boss Huo sighed, “See through it, but don’t say it through, okay?”

The others also placed their backpacks on the station bench to rest for a bit. The Da xiongdi stood in the snow, looking around. His sharp eyes spotted something dark buried in the snow not far away. It looked… like a head.

He paused for a moment, then called to Xiao Lou, “Come take a look, what is that thing over there?”

Xiao Lou took two steps forward and confirmed it with just one glance. “It’s a human head.”

Boss Huo shot to his feet, his legs no longer soft. “What the hell? Should we run?!”

A strong gust of wind swept past, blowing away the snow behind the human head, revealing the person’s neck and hands. The Da xiongdi slapped his cotton pants. “What human head! It looks like a person!”

He quickly ran over, his gloved hands pushing away the snow burying the person.

Boss Huo was more timid and didn’t dare to follow and look. Xiao Lou and Ren Yue both ran over. They originally wanted to help, but the Da xiongdi grabbed the person’s collar with one hand, directly lifted him out of the snow, and shook his wrist, shaking off sheets of accumulated snow.

It was a man, not wearing a hat, dressed in a cotton coat. His face was bluish-white, and his body was ice-cold. He seemed to have already frozen to death here.

The Da xiongdi said, “What do we do about this? Seems like he’s already thoroughly dead.”

Xiao Lou said, “It’s better to put him back.”

The person was already dead. For someone they met like duckweed on water meeting by chance³, it wasn’t worth it for them to find a place to settle the corpse.

The Da xiongdi casually threw the man back into the snow, clapped his gloves, and said, “Shall we set off now?”

“Urgh—”

The moment his voice fell, the man in the snow suddenly let out two faint groans, then shot up from the ground with a jolt, his speed as fast as a nimble monkey.

Boss Huo immediately picked up Huo Dongdong, ready to flee at any moment. The three people in front of him also took a step back without leaving a trace, staring at him warily.

The man’s handsome and rugged face still held some confusion, which looked a bit like a contrasting cuteness, but to the two women present who were bent into mosquito coils⁴, it held no attraction.

He looked around blankly, finally fixing his gaze on the five people in front of him, and asked, “Did you save me?”

The Da xiongdi answered honestly, “No, we were just passing by.”

The man continued to ask, “Excuse me, what is the date today?”

Ren Yue looked at her phone. “November third.”

He thought for a moment, then first explained the reason he was unconscious here. “I am an Evolutionary. I set out from Bayside Community yesterday to come here and encountered a ghost-built wall. I couldn’t get out before dark. To prevent any accidents, I used my own ability.”

Bayside Community was next to Ren Yue’s community. If he also wanted to enter the labyrinth, there was indeed no problem with taking this route.

He introduced himself as Shang Zhou, the Shang of ‘shangye’ (commerce), the Zhou of ‘zhouji’ (oars and boats). The ability he evolved was to confuse ghosts by entering a state of suspended animation. In the state of suspended animation, he would not be harmed in any way, but someone had to touch him from the outside without any malicious intent for him to wake up.

Ren Yue felt that she could only believe half of these words. Towards this kind of guy of unknown origin who could die and come back to life, she maintained sufficient vigilance. “Since you’re already awake, let’s part ways here,” she said.

Shang Zhou bent down and dug around in the snowdrift beside him, digging out a backpack similar to theirs. He said, “You are also people going to the labyrinth, right? Can you give me a ride for a stretch? We can part ways when we get near the labyrinth. I can pay a reward.”

The few working stiffs looked at Boss Huo.

Boss Huo hesitated for a moment and said, “We don’t know the way either…”

Shang Zhou smiled and shook his head. “No, you do.”

Boss Huo’s eyes darkened, and he asked probingly, “How can you tell?”⁵

Shang Zhou raised his hand and pointed to the road behind them, on which there was a row of clear and distinct footprints. “Your route of advance is very slow and clear, and there are no messy footprints around. It’s obvious you are heading straight for your destination. And your group looks tired, but not disheveled or panicked. If I’m not mistaken, among you present, there should be an Evolutionary related to this.”

Boss Huo was a little surprised. “You came to such a conclusion based on just this?”

“Not only that,” Shang Zhou added, “I also know that you all should have an employer-employee relationship. You are the employer, so as long as I convince you, I can join your team.” In just a few short minutes, his goal had changed from traveling with them to the labyrinth to joining their team.

Boss Huo smiled, “So how do you plan to convince me?”

The man was silent for a second, then slowly replied, “There is no way.”

Boss Huo: “…?”

“In fact, your team is no longer lacking members—one to scout the path, one to protect. My evolutionary ability is of no practical use to you—” The man was very realistic. “Saying it like this, even I feel that I seem to be of little use. And I am a stranger you met by chance; you must hold a suspicious attitude towards me—of course, I am the same towards you. However, my combat power is okay, my character is also passable, and I have weapons on me that can attack ghosts. Isn’t it better for you to have one more free combat force?”

Boss Huo was a bit hesitant.

Ren Yue leaned against the pillar of the bus stop and glanced at the time. “One minute left.”

The rest time was about to run out. He finally made a decision, pressing close to Huo Dongdong’s ear in his arms and saying, “Son, look at this Da gege, is there anything strange on him?”

Huo Dongdong opened his eyes wide and looked for a couple of seconds, then shook his head slightly.

Boss Huo breathed a sigh of relief. “Alright, you can follow then. But we’ll just consider it mutual cooperation. You don’t have to protect me, as long as you don’t harm me.”

Shang Zhou’s lips curved into a smile. After slinging the luggage onto his back, he said, “I think you will definitely not be disappointed with this cooperation.”

The group set out on the road again, only this time there was an extra guy of unknown origin in the team, and the formation changed slightly.

The man stood in the second position, clearing the path with the Da xiongdi. Ren Yue, on the grounds that she couldn’t walk anymore, switched places with Xiao Lou, placing her in the relatively safer middle. Walking at the very end was still the physically weakest Boss Huo. The few people in front trampled the snow down firmly, saving him a lot of effort.

Ren Yue looked at Xiao Lou, then at Shang Zhou. She always felt that she had some impression of this name, as if she had heard it somewhere.

Her intuition told her this was very important, so she lowered her head to watch the road while pondering. Unfortunately, after thinking for a long time, she still couldn’t remember where.

The snow fell heavier and heavier. The snowflakes obstructed their vision, and with the sun sinking in the west, their visibility was also much lower.

Ren Yue said that after passing this winding mountain road, they would be able to reach the labyrinth’s small town. These words were undoubtedly a heart-strengthening needle⁶ for Boss Huo.

His hair had frozen, freezing stiffly in front of his face. Because he had been breathing with his mouth wide open for a long time, his tongue was now like a piece of ice, making it impossible for him to even exhale a puff of hot air. His clothes, from head to toe including his socks, were all wet. His ice-cold socks stepped into the snow, freezing the entire soles of his feet until they were numb.

This was simply not a suffering a person could endure.

But the four people in front were not as disheveled as he was, whether they were male or female, or Shang Zhou who had been lying in the snow for a day.

If it weren’t for his son still being there, he would have even wanted to cry his eyes out.

As he was thinking this, a patch of light seemed to faintly appear before his eyes. He suddenly lifted his head and saw the wall close at hand, and the bustling small town beneath the wall.

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