The Hand of Confession – Chapter 289

Volume 9: The Days Can’t Be Lived Anymore

Reality

Reality and Illusion

Xiao Lou said, “I’ll guard for the first half of the night.”

Ren Yue: “The middle of the night is the most dangerous and also when one is sleepiest. I’m afraid you won’t be able to hold on…”

Xiao Lou said, “It is precisely because of that, that the middle of the night should be left to me.”

Ren Yue was startled.

Why does this plot have a damn sense of familiarity? It seems like a similar scene has appeared somewhere else before? Could it be that she has foreseen the future again?

Peng Fei, who was beside them, said weakly, “Actually… my combat power might be a little weaker than Xiao Lou’s…”

Ren Yue: “…” For some reason, I have a feeling that this isn’t surprising at all.

Shang Zhou turned over and said, “Not considering using me for night watch? Then I’ll just go straight to sleep?”

Xiao Lou said, “No, you will guard the first half of the night with me.”

Ren Yue: “??!!”

Shang Zhou smiled. “Alright, please wake me when it’s time.”

Ren Yue: “…” This is unbearable. I want to cry. Fucking why.

She said weakly, “How about I switch with him?”

Xiao Lou: “No need. You can’t handle it.”

Ren Yue shed useless tears.

Boss Huo did not make this one extra move¹ to ask them why he himself did not need to stand watch. Since he was not scheduled, he was also happy to paddle water², lying in his warm bedding and closing his eyes.

The night had only just begun, and the other residents in the house also began their activities at the same time.

The windows, door panels, and cabinets were all making “pa pa” sounds, as if something was about to rush into the room. A child’s sharp cries came from the bedroom, along with a woman’s shrill screams for help.

Huo Dongdong seemed to have sensed something and uneasily shrank his shoulders. Boss Huo gently covered his ears, and his tightly knitted brows slowly relaxed as he fell heavily asleep again.

Ren Yue turned over and fell into a deep sleep amidst this background music she had already grown accustomed to.

Before long, she felt someone gently pat her shoulder.

She opened her eyes with a start and looked at the person who had woken her.

It was Xiao Lou.

She climbed out of her sleeping bag, wrapped a thick coat around herself, and stared at the woman before her. “Is it time already?”

It was so fast she thought the sky had brightened just after she closed her eyes.

“No,” Xiao Lou said, “A situation has come up. We need to leave here quickly.”

Several loud bangs came from outside the door. In the darkness, something seemed to be stirring restlessly³, its scarlet eyes peeking at the situation inside the house through the uncurtained window.

“This is…” She stood up with a start, only then discovering that the others around her were all packing their luggage. It seemed she was the last one to be woken up. Xiao Lou said, “Hurry up and pack. Let’s go quickly, and keep your voice down.”

Ren Yue quickly scanned her surroundings, then retracted her gaze, folding her sleeping bag with her eyes lowered.

The fire in the brazier was still dancing, and the room’s layout was exactly the same as before she went to sleep. There seemed to be nothing out of place.

The sound of the wind mixed with the crashing sound of that thing outside the door. She unhurriedly stuffed the sleeping bag into her luggage and at the same time asked, “It’s outside and can’t get in. If we go out, wouldn’t we be serving it a dish⁴?”

Xiao Lou said, “Have you not discovered it yet? Why don’t you raise your head and look? But you’d better be mentally prepared before you look, and don’t get so scared that you scream.”

Ren Yue raised her eyebrows, her interest piqued. She looked up at the ceiling and discovered what seemed to be a child lying on the ceiling near the chandelier. The child’s four limbs were like they were fitted with suction cups, firmly attached up there, and its head was rotating 360°, probably treating its own head like a big pinwheel spinning leisurely.

Xiao Lou urged, “If we don’t go now, it will discover us. Move faster!”

Ren Yue stood in place without moving.

She actually felt that something was strange.

It was strange that although she had only known Xiao Lou for two days, this person would understand her so well.

She looked at the Xiao Lou before her, shook her head, and sighed. “What a pity. Although you’re very similar, the real Xiao Lou has never been this gentle to me.”

If it were the real Xiao Lou, she would probably kick me awake with one foot, then tell me with a cold face to cut the crap if I want to live.

She took a small folding knife out of her down jacket pocket, put some distance between herself and this fake Xiao Lou, and blurted out, “I hate it most when you people pretend to be her to trick me…”

After saying this, she was startled again. Why did those words make it sound as if this kind of situation had happened before?

But there wasn’t much time for her to dwell on this now, because besides the fake Xiao Lou in front of her, the one on the ceiling was also twisting its body and slowly climbing down, baring its fangs and grimacing at her.

The figures of the others around them instantly dissipated. Only “Xiao Lou” still stood not far in front of her, tilting her head and mocking her, “With such a small knife, who do you plan to stab?”

Ren Yue pressed her lips together and didn’t speak.

Although the knife was small, a relevant evolver had applied an ability to it, making it capable of harming ghosts.

Relying on her skills, she could easily use this knife to slit her throat.

Unfortunately, this was useless. Ghosts’ arms and legs could fly all over the sky, and they could even take off their own heads to play with like a soccer ball. Slitting a windpipe was nothing; they would probably think you were just scratching an itch for them.

“Xiao Lou” obviously understood this as well. She laughed loudly, her laughter especially ferocious, ruining the perfect five facial features⁵ on her face.

Ren Yue’s lips curved. “Is it that funny?”

The impostor’s smile stiffened. It didn’t seem to understand why she was still so calm.

Ren Yue raised her wrist, and holding the small knife, she quickly approached it and stabbed directly at the impostor’s eyes.

The next second, a huge force came from her stomach. A kick sent her flying several meters, making her back slam hard against the sofa with a muffled thud.

The surrounding environment distorted like ripples in water. She clutched her abdomen, her body curled up like a dried shrimp⁶, feeling like she might be having a stomach hemorrhage.

Immediately after, a hand grabbed her shoulder and flipped her entire body over. A cold dagger was thrust into the floor right next to her face. Xiao Lou grabbed her by the collar, straddling her waist and looking down at her from above, and said in a cold voice, “Sneak attacking me?”

Ren Yue: “!!”

Although I don’t know why I suddenly returned to reality, but… Xiao Lou is too close!!!

“I can explain!” At such a close distance, the only thing in her nose was the cool fragrance that naturally emanated from Xiao Lou’s body, and her entire face instantly turned red.

Besides the fragrance, there were also two soft mounds pressed infinitely close to her cheeks…

Ren Yue’s nose tickled, and two bright red streams of blood gushed out.

Xiao Lou moved away in disgust, so quickly that she didn’t even have time to pull out the dagger that was buried to the hilt in the floor.

Ren Yue quickly scrambled up, pulled the dagger |out| for her, and, pinching her nose with one hand, explained listlessly, “Just now, a ghost took on your appearance to confuse me. I was clearly attacking it, but I don’t know why it turned into you.”

Boss Huo said, “You scared me. Just now, you suddenly got up, and when Xiao Lou asked what you were doing, you didn’t respond. You just took a small knife and went to stab her…” The sound of his voice disturbed Huo Dongdong. The child turned over, and Boss Huo quickly patted him a couple of times and lowered his volume. “So, you’re saying that in your dream you were slashing a ghost, but in reality, you were slashing a teammate?”

This kind of situation was quite common in the world after it was overrun by ghosts. People who lived with others would occasionally encounter this situation: in a dream, you kill a ghost or an enemy, but upon opening your eyes, you discover that this is the true beginning of the nightmare, because the one dead before your eyes isn’t the person from your dream, but your relative, friend, or even the person you love most.

Ren Yue nodded her head frantically, and her nosebleed immediately started flowing even more merrily.

Xiao Lou’s brows were tightly knitted. “Go wash your face.”

Ren Yue answered and nimbly slipped into the bathroom.

She took out her phone to look. Only an hour had passed. No wonder she felt she had woken up a bit fast; it was because she hadn’t had time to sleep for very long at all, okay?!

She lowered her head to wash her face. The person in the mirror slowly distorted, becoming an unfamiliar image.

A hand reached out from inside it, silently approaching her, and lunged for her neck.

Ren Yue had already sensed it. With a slight shift of her feet, she took a step back and dodged the arm. “Eh? You missed!”

Then she took a facial tissue from her pocket and unhurriedly wiped the water from her hands, saying leisurely as she wiped, “I have something just like you at my home, but she’s much fiercer than you, and also much cuter.”

The thing in the mirror was so angry it trembled all over, and lifting its leg, it was about to climb out from inside.

Ren Yue quickly backed out, closing the toilet door with a backhand motion, then ran to Xiao Lou’s side to ask about the cold and inquire about the warmth⁷. “Did I hurt you just now? Does it hurt anywhere? Do you need me to blow on it for you?”

Considering that there were still people sleeping, her voice was kept very low, buzzing in Xiao Lou’s ear like a little fly, annoying Xiao Lou so much that she wanted to roll her into a ball and stuff her into the mirror.

She turned over, pretending to be asleep.

Ren Yue didn’t dare to disturb her sleep, so she had no choice but to move back to her own bedding and try to brew up some sleepiness again.

Drowsily, without knowing how much time had passed, she seemed to hear a conversation between Xiao Lou and Shang Zhou in a haze.

Xiao Lou said, “Do you believe this world truly exists?”

Shang Zhou: “I’m not certain, but I’ve also been thinking about this question. Does the world have an end? What is it like outside the maze? Could there be a ceiling above the firmament? Could there be an air wall⁸ at the end of the road? Could everything we see now be an illusion created by our senses?”

“Does the world exist objectively? How should a person determine whether they are awake or in a dream? If it’s said that humans never know the beginning of a dream, then I truly don’t know how I appeared here. But if we take a person’s birth as the beginning of the dream and death as the end, then I indeed don’t remember anything from before I was conscious.”

“For example, are you a character I imagined? Or am I a being imagined by you or someone else? How can I be certain that I am alive? How can I be certain that everything right now isn’t a piece of memory injected into my mind by some unknown existence? Have you seen 《Inception》⁹? Which layer of the dreamscape are we in now? And what method should we use to wake up?”

“My consciousness is completely here. My cognition tells me this world is one hundred percent real, and the things I touch are also real. But my intuition is constantly clamoring, telling me about the sense of disharmony¹⁰ here. That’s why I left Paradise Lost, wanting to see the world outside the maze, wanting to wake up from this dream.”

Ren Yue: “…”

Q_Q I get it. I’m not worthy.

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