The Hand of Confession – Chapter 163

Volume 6: Days of Being Zapped in the Lab

Child

Where did this child come from?

Right now, Shen Maomao was in freefall.

But she didn’t fall for long before slamming heavily onto the ground, nearly getting a concussion.

Just moments ago, she thought she was going to die. She was even worried that if Lou Jingmo was hiding somewhere dangerous, her reviving next to her might cause Lou Jingmo to be discovered. But just as she turned a corner, a large hole had suddenly appeared in the ground. She stepped into empty air and fell before she could react.

After she fell, the large hole closed up as suddenly as it had appeared, cutting off the last ray of light and simultaneously blocking out all sound.

Shen Maomao sat for a long while before groping around and managing to stand up.

It was very dark here, so dark you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face¹. The ground beneath her feet seemed a bit strange: it was hard—her still-buzzing head could attest to that—but it wasn’t stationary. Instead, it moved with a rhythmic undulation, like the giant belly of some animal…

Shen Maomao was frightened by her own imagination.

The wound on her arm was still throbbing, making its presence known. Dried blood on her fingers felt sticky and unpleasant.

“Hiss—” She gritted her teeth and felt the wound, confirming it was no longer bleeding. She stopped worrying about it and focused intently on figuring out where she was.

“Wu…”

As she was exploring blindly², her ears suddenly caught a very faint crying sound.

At first, she thought it was an auditory hallucination. Then she stopped walking and tilted her head, listening carefully in one direction.

“Wuwuwu…”

She hadn’t misheard; there really was crying! And it was the voice of a child…

In this environment, she already felt like there were people in front of her, behind her, above her, and below her. Now, with this kid crying, the ghosts of her imagination gained substance, becoming like rows of copy-pasted Junxiong kids³.

“What the f—” Shen Maomao shrank back, wishing she were a giant sea turtle that could pull its head and limbs into a safe shell.

She stood rooted to the spot, her voice trembling, “You… who are you?”

The kid stopped crying and started giggling, “Heeheehee.” The laughter was just a short distance in front of Shen Maomao.

“What’s so funny?” Shen Maomao’s legs were shaking rapidly, like she was standing on a sewing machine. As she spoke, she suddenly thrust a hand forward but touched nothing; there was only air in front of her.

“Heeheehee~”

The child kept laughing, not answering her question. Or maybe he was too young to talk?

Anyway, regardless, Shen Maomao first took a small step back, then another large step back.

The child’s laughter suddenly stopped.

Shen Maomao sensed trouble and immediately bent forward sharply. Something brushed past her back, then spun around and wrapped tightly around her, dragging her rapidly in one direction.

The long thing felt like an arm; when it constricted her, she could even feel a throbbing pulse…

Her already closed wound tore open again. Shen Maomao hurt so much she wanted to cry, wanted to scream a few times—maybe that would calm the fear in her heart—but she already hurt too much to speak.

The kid seemed to have gotten a fun toy and started laughing happily again, “heeheehee.” The laughter was ethereal and eerie, echoing constantly in her ears.

At first, Shen Maomao was terrified, but after this bratty kid⁴ had dragged her around in circles three times, her fear had turned to numbness. As for what the long, bone-like objects she bumped into while being dragged across the floor were, she didn’t want to dwell on it.

The child definitely wasn’t a normal child, though his personality seemed quite similar to one.

She remembered her childhood. Her mom had tied a string to her toy car and let her pull it around everywhere… The current scene seemed remarkably similar in principle⁵.

Shen Maomao: “…” Looks like she was being treated as a toy.

She was dragged back and forth like a dead fish, and soon her butt felt a stinging pain.

This couldn’t go on.

Shen Maomao tried to communicate with him: “Hello?”

“Heeheehee.”

“I’m a bit tired. If you keep this up, I’ll die, and dead things aren’t fun.”

The kid braked abruptly, and Shen Maomao was thrown several meters by inertia.

It really, really hurt. In novels, after the overbearing CEO⁶ and the female lead achieved the great harmony of life⁷, the author always described the female lead as being like a broken doll. Shen Maomao felt like a broken doll right now—the kind with its arms and legs torn off.

The kid started crying again: “Wuwuwu…”

Shen Maomao couldn’t afford to focus on the pain. Afraid the bratty kid would think up some other twisted ways⁸ to torment her, she quickly continued trying to communicate: “Baby? What’s wrong? Are you unhappy?”

If something’s making you unhappy, tell Jiejie so she can be happy about it?

The bratty kid’s cries were soft, quite pitiful sounding—if only they weren’t getting closer and closer.

Shen Maomao didn’t dare retreat, afraid the child would think she was trying to run and kill her.

The kid finally stopped in front of her, just crying without speaking.

A pair of red eyes appeared in her line of sight, then blinked gently.

Shen Maomao’s hand trembled. She tentatively reached out and touched his icy arm.

Confirmed the body temperature; it was the same person who had touched her hand earlier.

Trying her best not to look at those two emotionless red eyes, she asked cautiously, “Want Jiejie to hold you? Want to spin around?”

Two small arms, as cold as ice, rested on her arms, making Shen Maomao shiver involuntarily.

It seemed he agreed…

Shen Maomao mustered her courage, trembling all over. She half-squatted, fumbled to grip his armpits, took a deep breath, lifted him up suddenly, and then spun around once in place.

“Hahaha~” The bratty kid’s laughter lilited upwards, looking utterly delighted in his own special manner.

Shen Maomao’s arm was bleeding freely; she felt like she was done for.

The bratty kid was about the size of a one or two-year-old, with no extra arms or legs, just the appearance of a normal child. This reassured Shen Maomao quite a bit. As for what that thing dragging her across the floor was… she didn’t want to consider it for now.

He was a bit lighter than she expected, but not completely weightless, and extremely cold to the touch. Just holding him for one spin made Shen Maomao feel like she couldn’t keep it up.

So she carefully placed the bratty kid, who was grinning like the landlord’s idiot son⁹, back on the ground, terrified that if she accidentally dropped him, he’d fling her away in the same manner.

The idiot son stopped laughing, his two emotionless eyes staring coldly at her.

Shen Maomao wanted to cry again: “My… my arm hurts, wuwuwuwu… Jiejie’s arm is broken, can’t hold you anymore…”

An icy little hand touched her arm. Shen Maomao’s feigned crying stopped abruptly. She couldn’t control her trembling arm; the urge to retreat had already sprouted in her heart.

But she knew she couldn’t run away.

Fingers like ice awls suddenly stabbed into her wound. Shen Maomao let out a scream, “Aooo—” and continued letting out this howl like a pig being slaughtered¹⁰. The pain made her reflexively try to pull her arm back, but the bratty kid’s grip was crazy strong; she struggled for ages but couldn’t break free.

After digging into the wound, the bratty kid lay entirely on her arm, while something else wrapped around her other wrist, preventing her from moving at all. “Aowoo—” Shen Maomao even thought a chunk of her flesh had been bitten off.

The bratty kid’s eyes began to glow, red as if filled with blood, piercingly bright.

The next second, Shen Maomao saw another pair of eyes above those two—two pairs, four red eyes in total, staring at her, making her scalp tingle.

She couldn’t imagine how four eyes could be arranged on a person’s face. These four eyes were positioned two on the left, two on the right, in two neat rows, upper and lower. If the original pair was in the normal position, the upper pair would be where his eyebrows should be; if the newer pair was normal, the first pair would be on his cheeks… Either possibility was enough to make one’s hair stand on end.

Shen Maomao felt like fainting, but her nerves were stronger than she thought. So even though she was terrified to the extreme, she couldn’t get her wish.

An unknown amount of time passed. The bratty kid licked her arm, then jumped off.

The force restraining her arm loosened. Shen Maomao immediately pulled her hand back, only to discover her arm… didn’t hurt anymore?

She shook her arm in disbelief¹¹ and found it really didn’t hurt!

She touched the spot where the wound had been. The skin there was perfectly smooth, covered only in some sticky saliva. If her clothes weren’t still torn, she would even suspect she hadn’t been injured at all.

The bratty kid shook her hand, urging, “Yaya…”

Shen Maomao: “…” I kneel before Big Brother.¹²

She picked Big Brother up, closing her eyes to ignore the abnormality on his face, and started spinning and jumping in place with eyes closed¹³.

Big Brother laughed very happily, which made Shen Maomao feel less afraid. Although he wasn’t normal, his personality seemed not much different from a real kid’s.

Shen Maomao liked children. Since she was young, she had always been the king of the kids¹⁴ in her residential complex, the type who could play well with every child. So when she used all her skills¹⁵ to please a child, no kid could refuse, not even a mutated bratty one.

The bratty kid’s laughter carried far. Shen Maomao played energetically with him. If it weren’t pitch dark¹⁶ and she wasn’t afraid of accidentally throwing the child and not being able to catch him, she could have even let him experience what a flying sensation felt like.

Because he was very light, Shen Maomao didn’t get too tired, but after playing for just a short while, both her hands were completely frozen stiff.

Shen Maomao put him back on the ground. The bratty kid grabbed her arm and wouldn’t let go: “Yaya… Ya…”

“Jiejie’s hands are frozen…” Shen Maomao said with difficulty. “Really can’t play anymore now. Besides, it’s very late, Jiejie’s friend will be worried…”

The light in the bratty kid’s eyes lost its previous warmth, gradually turning cold and cruel.

Shen Maomao quickly tried to salvage the situation: “Let Jiejie rest a bit, then we’ll play ‘fly high’¹⁷ a few more times, and then you lead Jiejie up to play, how about that?”

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