The Hand of Confession – Chapter 169

Volume 6: Days of Being Zapped in the Lab

Spider

Happily Tossing a Leather Ball

The door flew off its hinges and slammed heavily onto the ground. Shen Maomao felt a wave of lingering fear.

If she hadn’t run fast enough, the one flying out with the door might have included her.

There wasn’t much dust behind the door, so Shen Maomao saw at a glance who the violent door-breaker was—it was Lou Jingmo.

She immediately went up to greet her happily: “Lou-jie!”

Lou Jingmo frowned slightly. “Shen Maomao?”

Shen Maomao nodded repeatedly. “Yeah, yeah, it’s me.”

Lou Jingmo: “What’s wrong with your eyes?”

Shen Maomao said joyfully, “I think I’ve awakened some strange special ability. I have night vision now!”

Lou Jingmo walked unhurriedly towards her. The two faced each other in the darkness. Shen Maomao looked up slightly at Lou Jingmo’s eyes, and Lou Jingmo looked back at her.

Shen Maomao caught an indescribable scent, and her heart suddenly pounded wildly, making her feel flustered.

She seemed… a little afraid of Lou Jingmo… Heaven knew how hard she had to fight the urge to step back.

What was going on??

After staring at each other for a few seconds, Lou Jingmo suddenly reached out, grabbed her collar, and pulled her closer.

Shen Maomao’s ears buzzed, her mind went blank.

This blank period wasn’t too long; she regained consciousness after a few minutes.

She saw the floor close at hand, felt pressure on her back, and pain in her right arm—Lou Jingmo was pinning her right arm, pressing her entire body onto the floor!

Piercing cries filled her ears. Looking to the side, she saw Little Ancestor sitting on the floor, bawling loudly.

“Hiss… Ow ow ow…” Shen Maomao wailed twice, asking bewilderedly, “Lou-jie, why did you suddenly hit me?!”

Lou Jingmo said, “That’s what I wanted to ask you.”

Shen Maomao: “What’s the situation??”

Lou Jingmo released her hand, pushed off the floor to stand up, then offered her a hand. “You suddenly attacked me just now.”

“No way?” Shen Maomao rolled over, grasped Lou Jingmo’s hand, and was pulled up instantly. “Where would I get the nerve?”

Lou Jingmo: “That’s what I was wondering too, where you got the nerve.” That was why she had almost thought this Shen Maomao was an imposter.

Shen Maomao rushed over, picked up Little Ancestor in a few quick steps, and rocked him gently. Little Ancestor stopped crying, grabbed her hair again, and climbed onto her head. Two pairs of nearly identical red eyes looked at Lou Jingmo simultaneously.

Lou Jingmo frowned. “You’ve already started mutating.” Shen Maomao: “I know…”

“You know shit.”¹ Lou Jingmo interrupted her. “Do you think mutation is a good thing?”

Shen Maomao: “Huh?”

Lou Jingmo felt a headache coming on. She told Shen Maomao about the virus, then said, “Lab B is researching what kind of mutations humans undergo in air containing the IM Virus.”

Shen Maomao looked past her towards the interior. “So how did you get out? I was planning to come rescue you…”

Lou Jingmo: “Including me, there were six people in Lab B. Two mutated and completely devolved into irrational beasts. One was shot dead by the researchers, the other mutated after the power outage, and I cut off its extra hand.”

Shen Maomao’s arm throbbed faintly. “Was it that kind of small hand? Will I grow one too? From my belly button?”

“That’s uncertain.” Lou Jingmo smiled faintly. “The one who was shot dead grew a small hand from its tongue. The one whose hand I cut off grew it from its tailbone.”

Shen Maomao: “…” If her hand grew out of some weird place… that would be really awkward.

She felt like crying a little. “Then what should I do? Will I also turn into an irrational monster? What if I… wait…” Before she could wallow much in misery, Shen Maomao forced her eyes wide open, looking at the glass room behind Lou Jingmo. “Lou-jie… there seems to be something inside…”

As soon as her voice fell, a large piece of glass suddenly flew out from the room. Shen Maomao’s pupils contracted; she instinctively pulled Lou Jingmo aside, her scalp aching as Little Ancestor yanked her hair. The glass landed on the floor and shattered into countless shards with a crash!

“Ah—! Help!” A woman screamed as she was thrown out of the room. Her limbs flailed wildly in the air, desperately hoping to grab onto something to stop her outward flight.

Shen Maomao steadied Little Ancestor and offered a hand to Lou Jingmo. “Lou-jie, are you okay?”

Lou Jingmo shook her head.

Just as the woman was about to fall into the glass shards, Little Ancestor on Shen Maomao’s head suddenly moved.

A tentacle extended from under his clothes, shot towards the woman, and finally wrapped around her just before she hit the ground.

Just as Shen Maomao was about to ask, “What are you trying to do?”, the tentacle forcefully swung the woman straight back inside.

The woman screamed again.

The unknown thing inside the room let out an inhuman growl, then flung the woman back out again.

…

Shen Maomao’s face was blank.

Little Ancestor and the thing inside were clearly treating the woman like a bouncy ball. One inside the door, one outside; you throw the ball over, I’ll toss it back.

The woman went from terrified screams to furious cursing. After cursing for a while, she grew dizzy and shut her mouth. The only sounds left in the corridor were the “huffing and puffing” from inside the room and the “Hahahaha” laughter from outside.

Lou Jingmo watched for a moment, then lost interest. She said to Shen Maomao, “Any other key cards? Give them all to me.”

Shen Maomao immediately started emptying her pockets without a second word, handing over all the key cards like she was surrendering her bank cards.

Lou Jingmo gave instructions: “You stay here and play with him. I’ll go look for clues.”

Shen Maomao: “What if you run into danger without me?”

Lou Jingmo fell strangely silent for a second, then said, “My chances of survival might actually be higher.”

Shen Maomao puffed up like a pufferfish, wishing she could stab Lou Jingmo with her metaphorical spines.

Lou Jingmo suddenly reached out and accurately found Shen Maomao’s puffed-up cheek, pinching it gently twice.

Like a balloon pricked and leaking air, Shen Maomao grumbled, “Bye, won’t see you out.”

Lou Jingmo withdrew her hand and said seriously, “We must leave this place before you fully mutate.”

“What happens if I completely mutate inside the instance?”

“You’ll be classified as one of them by the instance.”

Lou Jingmo didn’t elaborate much, but Shen Maomao understood instantly—once she became one of them, she would be part of the instance, and the NPCs and monsters inside a instance could never leave.

Her expression turned grave. She said solemnly, “Lou-jie, you have to succeed!!”

“Cowardly look!” Lou Jingmo thought for a moment, then added a reminder, “If you completely mutate, I will kill you immediately.”

Shen Maomao: “Eh? Oh! Right, what am I afraid of? Take your time looking, I’ll definitely stay home and take good care of the kid…”

Lou Jingmo: “…” She gave a helpless smile, shook her head, and walked off in one direction.

Shen Maomao focused intently on taking care of the kid.

Little Ancestor was very low-maintenance; he could play perfectly well by himself without needing her supervision. Shen Maomao leaned against the wall, bored stiff, counting how many times the woman in the middle was tossed back and forth.

After recovering a bit, the woman intermittently communicated with her: “We… are both players… Are you just going to watch me get thrown around like this?!”

Her voice drifted nearer and farther, but the woman clearly expressed her meaning: summed up, it was that Shen Maomao was actually helping the monster faction, which seriously violated socialist core values, would corrupt the child, was basically scum of humanity, and she hoped Shen Maomao would repent and rescue her, blah blah blah…

Shen Maomao listened, utterly dumbfounded.

Is this how you ask someone for help? Why so entitled?

So she closed her eyes, deciding that out of sight was out of mind.

Not long after, the airflow in front of her suddenly fluctuated. A massive impact force struck, pinning her tightly against the wall. If it hadn’t been a wall behind her, she might have been blown who knows where.

She quickly opened her eyes, shielding her face with her arm as she looked ahead.

Little Ancestor had also flown over, slamming heavily into her, nearly making her cough up blood. And Ms. Taken-for-granted had completely vanished from sight.

“Waaah QAQ!!!” Little Ancestor wailed at the top of his lungs. The thing inside the room also let out an angry roar. Shen Maomao thought, This is bad, immediately scooped up Little Ancestor, and ran forward.

A huge tentacle slammed into the spot where she had just been, deforming the wall.

After running a few steps, Shen Maomao remembered she had given all the cards to Lou Jingmo and couldn’t help cursing, “F%ck!”

This corridor twisted and turned like crazy, with doors at every junction between hallways. Unless she could blast the doors open like Lou Jingmo, she was a bird in a cage—unable to escape even if she grew wings.

Shen Maomao felt like cursing someone’s mother.

A bizarrely shaped thing crawled out from the doorway. It seemed to have eight legs, was about half a person tall, and looked like a giant spider.

Shen Maomao turned her head back and got a clear look at it—what spider? That was f%cking two people stacked together in a grotesque pose!!

A tentacle shot out, heading straight for Shen Maomao’s head. Shen Maomao patted Little Ancestor’s bottom. “Stop crying! Someone’s trying to steal your toy!!”

Little Ancestor paused, his gaze instantly sharpening.

He used Shen Maomao’s arm to quickly scramble onto her head, opened his mouth wide, and yelled at the “big spider”: “Yaaah yaaah yaaah!!” Extremely angry.

A small arm extended from his navel and collided heavily with the big spider’s tentacle. Six eyes opened simultaneously, flashing with cold red light.

The two small appendages collided, sending out a shockwave. Visible ripples spread through the air.

Shen Maomao’s scalp ached from her hair being pulled, but she was angry and didn’t dare speak. She raised both hands to steady Little Ancestor and just ran.

Whatever happened, running was the answer. Figure things out when she hit a dead end.

With this thought, Shen Maomao’s feet flew, zooming along the corridor. Although the big spider behind her had many legs, it hadn’t quite adapted to its newly fused body, so it couldn’t catch up immediately, but it wasn’t falling behind either. Little Ancestor, perched on her head, engaged in a contest of powers with it. The two sides were evenly matched, achieving a strange kind of balance.

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The author has something to say:

The lucky goose has appeared, let me see how many unlucky ones² are acting as the denominator³.

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