The Hand of Confession – Chapter 299

Volume 9: The Days Can’t Be Lived Anymore

I’ll Do It

Kill me…

Just at this moment of a thousand jun hanging by a hair¹, Shang Zhou in the wardrobe suddenly rushed out, holding a coat high and pouncing down from above. He covered Da xiongdi’s head with the clothes, then his whole person clung to his body, forcibly holding him down, while roaring at Xiao Lou, “In a moment, directly poke his eyes!”

Hearing this, Xiao Lou looked to the side of Ren Yue—there were several feathers embedded in the floor, their sharpness likely not much different from a dagger.

Ren Yue, who had been watching her the whole time, understood almost immediately. Taking advantage of Lou Jingmo dodging attacks while moving in her direction, she clutched the wound on her chest with one hand, and with the other, she grabbed a feather in the floor and yanked it outward with force. Finally, before Lou Jingmo could reach her side, she had yanked out a feather, stretched out her arm, and placed it in her hand.

After completing her task, she completely lost her strength, moving herself under the dust-filled bed like a dead fish, hoping to hide and barely stay alive for a period of time.

But misfortunes have always come in twos and threes—she had just poked her head in when she discovered a pair of scarlet, round eyes under the bed, who knows how long they had been secretly hiding under there.

She turned her head, wanting to crawl back out, but was suddenly grabbed by the wrist by that thing and dragged under the bed.

Pitiably, she was quite heavily injured and did not even have the strength to resist. She could only watch helplessly as her face was smeared with the dust on the ground, causing the wounds on her face to burn with stinging pain.

It was too dark under the bed. She could only see that pair of red eyes, unable to even see clearly what kind of thing was grabbing her. However, judging from the hand that grabbed her, it seemed to be a person, or rather—a human-shaped ghost.

A shrill bird cry came from outside. Xiao Lou and the others must have succeeded. The person under the bed pressed down on her tightly with their own body, and roared a sentence next to her ear: “You’re going to die!”

Ren Yue: “???”

The red eyes added: “You’re also going to turn into that kind of strange bird!”

Ren Yue was stunned. With a trembling hand, she touched her chest, wanting to see the color of her blood, but it was really too dark here; she couldn’t see anything.

The shrieking outside stopped, followed by the sound of some heavy object falling to the ground.

The red eyes spoke again: “You are all in my dream. I originally planned to trick you all in here and eat you, but who knew this thing would actually set its sights on you.”

Ren Yue asked: “A dream? Then will we return to normal after we get out?”

That pair of red eyes swayed from side to side and said: “Unfortunately, impossible. You’ve been injected with that thing’s venom. After a period of time, you will become the same kind of thing. Even if you leave my dream, the soul that goes out will be this you inside here that has no self-awareness. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Ren Yue: “So you’re saying I’m sure to die, huh?”

The red eyes bobbed up and down.

Ren Yue retorted: “But why should I believe you?”

“Suit yourself,” the red eyes said indifferently. “You all were targeted by them, implicating me in the danger as well. I have no desire to be the kind of cannon fodder that can’t even think.”

Ren Yue said: “Then hurry up and send us away, ah?”

“You think I don’t want to?” the red eyes said helplessly. “Once you enter a dream, you can only leave after daybreak. This is clearly my turf, and you all only needed to hide from me, just one. How did these damn things find their way here?”

As they spoke, they looked at Ren Yue again and said: “What a pity. Actually, if you hadn’t completely mutated before daybreak, you could have survived, but it’s obvious you can’t hold on that long.”

“I think you’re tricking me.” Although she said she didn’t believe it, in reality, her heart already believed seventy percent of it.

—Because she felt the wound area getting a little hot, and her body was also a bit itchy, like little bugs were slowly crawling over her skin, and even more like… brand new feathers were about to grow out of her pores, scrambling to be first.

……

After Da xiongdi fell, the two people outside immediately separated again—Shang Zhou climbed back into the wardrobe, while Xiao Lou went to the corner of the wall farthest from the window.

The strange bird’s hands were not long enough to reach Xiao Lou in the corner, and at the same time, its arms could not bend, so it also couldn’t grab Shang Zhou in the wardrobe or Ren Yue under the bed.

And its huge size meant that if it rained feathers, it couldn’t reach out its hands, and if it reached out its hands, it couldn’t rain. The two skills appearing alternately were not much of a threat to Xiao Lou.

As for the safety of their physical bodies—whether it was the rain of feather arrows or the random grabbing, all of its attacks passed through their bodies and hit the bed boards, so in comparison, it was their souls that were in slightly more danger.

A brief equilibrium was reached in the room. The strange bird, for some unknown reason, didn’t just tear the house down, but only kept stretching its arm in to grab. It grabbed and grabbed but couldn’t catch anything, getting so angry it started scratching the floor.

A cold wind squeezed in through the gaps the strange bird had not completely blocked, drying the sweat that had formed on their bodies from the series of actions just now, and at the same time, it carried away their body heat.

Shivering, Lou Jingmo heard Ren Yue’s muttering sound from under the bed, but because the bird’s cries were too loud, she couldn’t hear it very clearly.

“Are you so cold you’re having hallucinations?” she asked loudly.

“I’m fine!” Ren Yue’s voice came from under the bed, sounding full of vigor.

Lou Jingmo relaxed slightly, then turned to thinking about how to make this damn thing leave.

Shang Zhou shouted in a muffled voice from inside the wardrobe: “The feather! Poke its eyes!”

Lou Jingmo glanced at the wardrobe: “You do it?”

Shang Zhou: “I can’t, my combat power is too low.”

Lou Jingmo held the feather that had poked Da xiongdi’s eyes between the index and middle fingers of her right hand, squinting her eyes to observe its movements.

After another wave of feather arrow rain came to nothing, the strange bird angrily aimed its murky eyes at the upper window frame and once again extended its claw toward her.

She flipped her wrist, and as if she had practiced countless times, she forcefully threw the feather out.

A bolt of white lightning cut through the air, and before its claw could fall, it stabbed straight into the strange bird’s huge eye.

“Screech—!” It howled at the sky in pain, and with a thud, it lay on the ground, rolling from side to side. Instantly, the ground moved and the mountains shook.

Lou Jingmo left the corner, went to the floor and yanked out a few more feathers to hold in her hand, then quickly returned to the safe spot.

The strange bird rolled for a while, then flapped its wings and returned to the front of the window. It glanced into the room with the eye that was dripping green blood, angrily rained down another wave, and then flapped its wings and flew away.

The red eyes under the bed said to Ren Yue: “How did your friend guess? Don’t be fooled by how scary it looks; actually, as long as you poke out both its eyes, it’s finished. But its eyes aren’t that easy to poke…”

After a moment, it said again: “That woman throws so accurately, oh, so cool. Has she trained before? Look how scared that big guy was. This is the first time I’ve seen it run so fast, ha ha ha—”

Ren Yue was curled up under the bed, her right hand gripping the clothes on her chest tightly, already without the strength to answer its questions.

She felt pain.

A pain like the river overturning and the sea emptying² inside her body.

Her entire body was in pain from head to toe, especially her chest. It hurt so much that she suspected her heart had already been torn in half.

With the crisis resolved, Shang Zhou jumped out of the wardrobe, walked to the side of Da xiongdi’s corpse, squatted down and closed his eyelids: “He was a pretty good person…”

But he was already used to partings, so he didn’t feel much sadness.

“Huu—” Lou Jingmo relaxed, leaning against the wall and exhaling a breath of turbid air. “The one under the bed, come out. It’s safe now.”

There was no movement from under the bed for a long time.

Lou Jingmo froze for a second, then walked to the bedside in a few steps, bending over to look for Ren Yue underneath.

The red eyes quickly rolled to the side and closed its eyes. The entire ghost instantly merged with the night, becoming completely invisible.

Lou Jingmo grabbed Ren Yue’s arm and dragged her out from under the bed.

The moonlight sprinkled on her face, making the several scratches on it look somewhat ferocious. But the most shocking thing was not the wounds, but the tiny bird feathers growing out of the wounds. Those bird feathers were silver-gray overall, exactly the same as the one in her hand, only with a slight difference in size.

“You…” Lou Jingmo was somewhat at a loss for words, and what followed was a panic she had never felt before.

“What’s wrong?” Shang Zhou walked over and also saw the feathers on Ren Yue’s face. “She also…”

“No.” Lou Jingmo pressed her head into her own embrace, a cold light flashing in her eyes. “She did not.”

Shang Zhou looked at her, a trace of hard-to-detect pity in his gaze: “You know.”

Lou Jingmo looked at him, asking back expressionlessly: “So?”

Enduring her murderous gaze, Shang Zhou stated the conclusion: “She will become a new strange bird. The best course of action is to kill her before she mutates.”

“Cough cough…” Ren Yue coughed, and green blood slowly trickled from the corner of her mouth. She faintly regained consciousness, her eyes wide open. It took her a long while to figure out where she was, and instantly, she couldn’t even feel the pain in her body anymore. “This wave… was worth it!”

After speaking, she shivered from the pain, her whole body curling into a ball, almost completely squeezing herself into Lou Jingmo’s embrace.

She could feel Xiao Lou suddenly grip her wrist, using a lot of force, pinching her a little painfully, but compared to the pain in her body, this was nothing.

She shakily held her hand and said with difficulty: “I… I can’t hold on much longer.”

Lou Jingmo’s hands also began to tremble, the frequency of the shaking even greater than hers, as if she were the one in agonizing pain.

“Kill me…” Ren Yue said, as physiological tears produced by the pain slid from the corners of her eyes, landing on Lou Jingmo’s hand, striking the back of her hand with a sharp pain.

Lou Jingmo shook her head, hugged her tightly, and asked in a hoarse voice: “How can I save you? How can I possibly save you?”

Her vision instantly blurred. She had never felt so heartbroken before.

They clearly hadn’t known each other for long, she clearly disliked her so much, she clearly could never possibly like her…

But why did her heart feel so sad?

Why was it so painful?

That pair of bright, lively eyes began to grow murky. Perhaps in the future, she would never again see a pair of eyes like this, nor would she ever again meet a person like this.

Lou Jingmo clutched her heart, closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Something slid down her expressionless cheeks, striking Ren Yue’s hair, one drop after another.

“Let… let Shang Zhou do it…” Ren Yue said with a sob. “It hurts too much… I’m most afraid of pain… I can’t control it anymore…”

Shang Zhou walked over step by step, extending a hand toward Lou Jingmo: “Hand her over to me?”

“No.” Lou Jingmo held the person in her arms, her voice abnormally calm, giving no indication at all that her tears were actually flowing fiercely too.

Shang Zhou heard her say—

“I’ll do it.”

---

---