The Hand of Confession – Chapter 268

Volume 8: The Days of the Ghost Marriage

The Great Fire

I don’t want to summarize anymore, I’m tired.

Not long after, the crying suddenly stopped, and the bloodstains on the door also vanished in an instant.

A red glow could be faintly seen in the distance, like the morning sun slowly rising, which made Shen Maomao sigh in relief. “Is it morning? Is it over?”

Lou Jingmo searched for her watch in her backpack. “That’s not right. The sky isn’t bright yet, and the chickens haven’t crowed.”

After finding it, she placed the watch in front of them. All four of them clearly saw the time displayed on it—01:37. It was still a long way from dawn.

Su Han frowned and looked outside. “Then what is this light? A lantern?”

The moment her voice fell, a scorched smell drilled into their noses, immediately followed by the sound of chaotic human voices.

“The water is walking! The water is walking!”¹

“Quick, run!! Help!!”

Potato Chip’s eyes flew wide open. “A fire? That’s not right… Why would there be a fire? How come I have no impression of this at all?”

A figure appeared outside the door. The person knocked twice urgently and said with a rapid pace, “Wake up! There’s a fire!” It was a woman; from her voice, it seemed to be Baozhu?

After knocking, she did not linger, but instead went straight to the next room, continuing to knock and repeating the same words: “There’s a fire! Wake up!”

Shen Maomao said anxiously, “Is this real or fake?”

Was it a trick to lure them out, or was there really a fire?

They had finally come to such a choice again. To flee or to stay. It seemed like a fifty-percent chance of being correct, but for a “black ghost”² like Shen Maomao… the mortality rate would probably reach one hundred percent.

Potato Chip was completely stunned. She stared blankly at the firelight dancing on the window and murmured in a low voice, “So a Cleaner doesn’t know everything… Why would a fire suddenly start?”

Su Han put on her shoes, got off the bed, and pressed herself close to the door panel to feel it for two seconds. Outside, Baozhu’s knocking continued, one knock after another; the sound of the wind mixed with the “crackling” of burning wood; and also the shouts of servants, the sound of splashing water, and the clatter of basins and wooden buckets colliding. Everything was so real.

The temperature in the room also began to rise, baking them until a thin layer of sweat appeared on their foreheads.

“How could a fire start so suddenly?” She placed her hand on the door panel but couldn’t bring herself to push it. “It must be a trick to lure us out, right?”

Lou Jingmo also got off the bed and stood beside her, looking out the window. “Want to gamble?” she said.

Shen Maomao quickly followed her, trotting eagerly³. “How do we gamble?”

Lou Jingmo: “Do you think we should go out?”

Shen Maomao shook her head: “I don’t think so.”

Lou Jingmo understood: “Then let’s go.”

Shen Maomao: “…???”

“Eliminating one wrong option in advance.” After saying this, she pushed the door open with one hand.

A wave of hot wind blew against their faces. Tongues of fire licked at the surrounding houses. There was firelight everywhere, and under the firelight were people with their clothes in disarray. The great fire spread, devouring all combustible materials.

The fire must have started from the house on the far left. Their house was in the very middle, and it looked like it was about to be burned as well.

The four of them ran to a safe place and then began to help fight the fire.

There were no wells here. To get water, they could only go to the kitchen in the southwest direction. Shen Maomao followed them for two trips. Because there were too many people going, nothing unusual happened.

But distant water cannot save a nearby fire. The fire was raging fiercely and looked as if it was about to get out of control.

Baozhu raised a hand to wipe the sweat from her head, instantly drawing a gray streak across her face. In her other hand, she held a basin. The pitiful amount of water in it evaporated as soon as it was thrown.

She looked at Shen Maomao and said, “Are you all alright? In the middle of the night, how could a fire suddenly start? I wonder if the others are okay…”

The moment her voice fell, a person covered in flames rushed out of the inferno, rolling on the ground in agony. It so happened that Feicui was returning with water. She and Baozhu quickly lifted a bucket and splashed its contents onto him. With a “hiss,” the fire was thankfully extinguished.

The smell of smoke and cooked meat wafted over together. The expressions on the faces of the people present were not very good.

The man’s clothes were almost completely burned away, his skin, scorched by the flames, was directly exposed to the air. He looked both terrifying and pitiful. He lay on the ground, letting out weak groans, yet he laboriously raised a hand toward Shen Maomao and the others.

Shen Maomao was taken aback.

His wounds were so horrific that, other than the fact that he was a man, they couldn’t tell who he was at all.

Shen Maomao glanced at Lou Jingmo, who nodded at her. So, she walked over and squatted down beside him. Overcoming her fear and disgust, she looked directly into his eyes. “What are you trying to do? A doctor might be here soon, don’t be afraid…”

The man opened his mouth, his throat, injured by the thick smoke, laboriously squeezed out two words: “Cheng… Rui…”

Shen Maomao paused, faintly guessing the man’s identity. She quickly collected herself and asked probingly, “Are you trying to say this fire is related to Cheng Rui?”

The man blinked his eyes twice.

Shen Maomao’s expression grew solemn. She nodded at him. “Thank you, we understand.” The man closed his eyes, but he was still breathing. He had probably just fainted from the pain.

She didn’t dare to move him recklessly, afraid of causing secondary injury, so she could only retreat to her original position and exchange information with Lou Jingmo. “He’s the newcomer who was following Cheng Rui.”

Lou Jingmo: “How did he end up like this?”

Shen Maomao shook her head: “I don’t know. He said this great fire is related to Cheng Rui.”

“Cheng Rui…” Lou Jingmo repeated his name, recalled for a good while, and finally said, “I don’t have this name in my mind. He isn’t active on the forums, but he shouldn’t be a simple character.”

Su Han asked Potato Chip, “What’s his situation? Do you know?”

Potato Chip hesitated, only speaking after a long moment: “I’m not too sure, but did he get his hands on that book?”

The book?!

Shen Maomao thought of the book that Yun Shengjin had mentioned. “He does seem to have a book, acting all mysterious and not letting others see it.”

Potato Chip: “It’s that evil book that Old Master Shao picked up. It records many strange and bizarre evil arts. I’m not clear on the specifics, but the core principle of that book is—equivalent exchange.”

“Tonight, someone was supposed to die. The ghosts were responsible for blowing out our lamps, and then they could do as they please. If we wanted to live, we had to ensure the light didn’t go out… but someone was bound to die tonight. If the fire is related to him, then he used this method to create light, and at the same time, had this unlucky newcomer take the place of the person who was supposed to die tonight.”

The process didn’t matter. As long as a death occurred tonight, the other players would be relatively safer.

A few minutes later, the fire was completely out of control. The entire servants’ courtyard was ablaze, the flames soaring into the sky and illuminating half the sky. The Second Young Master Shao arrived in a hurry with the Shao Estate’s steward and a few servants.

At that time, the open ground in front of the courtyard was already filled with a circle of injured and sick people, either standing, sitting, or lying down. Cries of agony and groans rose and fell one after another. Paired with the sky-high flames and billowing smoke, it would not be an exaggeration to call it a living hell.

The Second Young Master first sent people to take the more seriously injured to the medical hall⁴, then organized the remaining servants to go to the edge of the courtyard and chop down the trees to prevent the fire from spreading to other courtyards.

Of course, he assigned the task of chopping trees to the men. The servant girls only needed to hide far to one side and ensure they didn’t get hurt.

Shen Maomao looked around and found Yun Shengjin and Jiang You, but she couldn’t see Cheng Rui.

Tang Lusen was sent to the medical hall, but the player sent there before him had yet to return. Moreover, his burns were truly too severe. In an era with such backward medical standards, it was likely that the situation was already beyond saving⁵.

Shen Maomao felt a wave of inexplicable emotion in her heart.

She was incomparably thankful that the first person she had met was Lou Jingmo. It was Lou Jingmo who had guided her through her most ignorant period, helping her grow, bit by bit, into the person she was now.

If she hadn’t met Lou Jingmo, she feared she would have ended up like Tang Lusen, completely entrusting her hopes of survival to someone who was not at all trustworthy, until she was utterly screwed over and killed…

Thinking of this, she couldn’t help but grasp Lou Jingmo’s hand.

Lou Jingmo was thinking about the plot. Feeling her action, she immediately turned her head to look over, revealing a slightly puzzled expression.

Her pitch-black eyes were still reflecting the raging flames, which then transformed into the image of a collapsing house…

Lou Jingmo’s pupils contracted abruptly. Grabbing Shen Maomao’s hand, she pulled her and ran outside.

With a BOOM—, several houses collapsed at the same time. Thick smoke carrying dust scattered in all directions, burying everyone still inside the courtyard.

She only had time to press Shen Maomao’s head firmly into her embrace before, in the next second, she was covered from head to toe by the overwhelming dust.

“Ptooey, ptooey, ptooey—!” Even though she was being held by Lou Jingmo, Shen Maomao still got a mouthful of dust.

She spat three times and quickly went to check on Lou Jingmo’s condition.

This one look immediately made her unable to resist laughing.

This wave of dust was quite powerful, turning the entire surrounding environment gray. At first glance, it looked like a black-and-white photograph—including Lou Jingmo, several NPCs and players looked as if they had just returned from digging in a mine, each one blackened into a little black coal ball⁶.

Lou Jingmo also spat out a few mouthfuls of dust. She turned her sleeve over, used the clean inside to wipe her eyes, and then, in a huff, smeared a handful of dust on Shen Maomao’s fair, tender face. “What are you laughing at? If it weren’t for me, you’d be this black too!”

“Cough, cough… pfft…” A nearby human-shaped pile of dust trembled twice, and immediately a cloud of dust scattered from it.

The incident happened suddenly, but because they were relatively far away, they were fortunate that aside from getting a mouthful of dust and grit in their eyes, there were no casualties.

The dust extinguished most of the fire; its effect was actually better than water.

The Second Young Master personally ran over from a distance to ask if they were injured.

Everyone shook their heads.

Only then was he relieved. He said, “Half of the courtyard has been burned, but the back part should still be habitable. Tonight, you all should try your best to clean up the back. Tomorrow morning, you can stay here and rest. The miscellaneous chores will be temporarily divided among the servants from the other courtyards…”

The NPCs had no objections. After hearing his instructions, they set off to clean up.

On the players’ side, Su Han asked, “Second Young Master, our oil lamps have all been buried underground and are probably unusable now. What should we do about this?”

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