The Hand of Confession – Chapter 315

Volume 9: The Days Can’t Be Lived Anymore

The Rules

The Vanished Judas

How should I put this?

Shen Maomao had said she was just stopping by so that Mother Ren wouldn’t insist on paying for anything. Her motive for rushing over wasn’t pure, but she had indeed come specifically for Ren Yue. Now, hearing her say that, it made things feel strangely awkward.

The man nodded at her words and said politely to the two of them, “To think we troubled you both to make a trip for such a small matter. Would you like to get something to eat later? There happens to be a funeral reception¹ this afternoon…”

Shen Maomao had no interest in drinking at Ren Yue’s funeral reception and politely refused him.

Another half an hour or so passed. The cremation was complete, and a staff member from the funeral home called for the family to collect the ashes. Mother Ren went with the urn, while Father Ren stepped outside and lit a cigarette.

A staff member came over to stop him. “Sir, smoking is prohibited here.”

The man gave an embarrassed smile and said to the two women, “I’m going out for a smoke.”

Shen Maomao said, “Go ahead.”

Only after he had walked a fair distance away did she say to Lou Jingmo, “What do you think the selection mechanism for this game is? You get pulled into the game, Golden Retriever gets pulled into the game, but a person like that is still out there living free and easy…”

Lou Jingmo said, “Perhaps it’s a satire of the world.”

Shen Maomao: “But evil has degrees. Even prison sentences are divided into three or five years. Everyone’s level of sin is different, yet they’re all indiscriminately pulled into the game. Isn’t that inherently unfair? The game’s creator fancies themselves a god, yet they can’t achieve true fairness like a god. What’s the point of a game that punishes evil unfairly?”

Lou Jingmo leaned her back against the wall, lazily bending one leg. She answered in a slow, unhurried tone, “Looked at from another angle, maybe the game has no creator at all. ‘God’ is just a product of the players’ imagination, and the rules are also fabricated by the players themselves. As for the statement that ‘all players are sinners,’ it’s possible that the person who said it already had a ghost in their heart².”

Hearing her say this, an image couldn’t help but surface in Shen Maomao’s mind: the first batch of random players meet in the game and coincidentally discover that they had all recently done something bad. So they immediately decide to spread the news everywhere that doing bad things will get you pulled into the game…

For some reason, the scene felt a little silly.

Mother Ren, having collected the ashes, had red-rimmed eyes again. She carried the urn and, with Shen Maomao and Lou Jingmo, went out to find Father Ren, who was already on his second cigarette.

Next, they had to go to the cemetery. A relative of the Ren family was waiting outside the funeral home with a car. To avoid awkwardness, Shen Maomao and Lou Jingmo hailed a separate cab to follow them.

There were quite a few people at the cemetery, likely relatives of the Ren family. Shen Maomao scanned the crowd but didn’t see the figure she remembered.

Following the staff’s instructions, Mother Ren placed Ren Yue’s urn in its designated spot. A circle of relatives conversed in low voices, their words expressing pity for Ren Yue’s death.

Lou Jingmo asked her, “Nothing?”

Shen Maomao nodded. “The person isn’t here.”

Lou Jingmo said, “The card has already been taken. There’s really no need for her to stick around.”

Shen Maomao didn’t want to give up and asked Mother Ren about the woman’s situation.

Mother Ren looked around, also a bit puzzled. “She said she would come today… Let me give her a call and ask, just in case something happened…”

As she spoke, she pulled a phone that looked very familiar to Shen Maomao from her bag and began to search through her contacts with some difficulty.

Shen Maomao was standing right in front of her and could clearly see the contents of the screen.

She watched as Mother Ren found a contact named Qianqian³ and dialed it directly using SIM 2⁴.

A “beep” sounded from the phone’s earpiece, followed by a mechanical female voice: “Sorry, the user you have dialed is currently unavailable. Please try again later…”

Mother Ren put down the phone, embarrassed. “She’s probably busy with something.”

Shen Maomao comforted her, “It’s fine. It wasn’t anything important.”

If that master of hers was really a game player and had taken the Judas card at the first opportunity, then she must know about the grudge between her, Shen Maomao, and Lou Jingmo. Therefore, she wouldn’t have stayed behind and waited for them to come knocking.

For now, it seemed they had run a trip for nothing.

Without finding Judas, they couldn’t find out why Ren Yue had died, and Lou Jingmo couldn’t be at ease.

After the funeral, the group arranged to go to a restaurant for a meal. You couldn’t see much sadness on anyone’s face; it was as if the deceased was just an insignificant passerby, not a relative to whom they were bound by the fact that blood is thicker than water.

Afterwards, Shen Maomao declined Mother Ren’s invitation to the banquet and left the cemetery directly with Lou Jingmo.

With a cigarette dangling from his mouth, Father Ren watched the two leave and mumbled, “Looking at them, they must be kids from rich families, right?”

Mother Ren said, “What’s the use of being rich? They don’t even know to give a condolence gift⁵ at a funeral.”

“We’re rich now anyway, are you still concerned about two or three hundred?”

“Are you saying you can have too much money?”

“Well, no…”

…

Lou Jingmo felt that since Shen Maomao had been alive and kicking for so long, she probably wasn’t going to die.

And as for looking back at her worried and fearful self from the past few days… she chose not to look.

Shen Maomao was still wondering why it was Ren Yue who died and not her. After thinking it over and over, she could only attribute it to the Judas card being a trap.

With the lesson learned from Simon Peter’s overturned cart⁶, Shen Maomao had reason to suspect that the Judas card also had some kind of negative effect.

The two returned to Nancheng. Lou Jingmo finally stopped watching over Shen Maomao like a helpless infant, never leaving her side, and instead started to catch up on the business she had neglected for the past few days. After all, even a domineering CEO couldn’t live on the northwest wind⁷.

Two days after returning home, the freezer Lou Jingmo had ordered online arrived.

The two of them looked at the freezer being carried into the living room, both falling silent.

After a long moment, Lou Jingmo remarked somberly, “I didn’t expect the freezer to arrive before you did.”

Shen Maomao gave her the white of her eye⁸. “Can you wish me something good for a change?” This was a clear sign that she was certain Maomao wasn’t going to die, which was why she dared to joke about life and death like this. Who was it that couldn’t even sleep well a few days ago?

She patted the freezer lid. “So where do we put this thing now?”

Lou Jingmo didn’t want to keep it. Having this thing in the house felt extremely, extremely unlucky to her.

Shen Maomao, on the other hand, wasn’t too bothered. She felt that since they’d already bought it, it would be great to put it in the kitchen to freeze meat and vegetables. To put it bluntly, what if Ren Yue’s death was just a feint with a spear⁹? Then this freezer might just be her future home, so of course, they had to keep it safe.

Lou Jingmo couldn’t win the argument against her and ended up helping her carry the freezer into the kitchen, finding a random corner to place it.

Shen Maomao clapped her hands together, feeling quite happy. She unexpectedly got a feeling of “building a home with my girlfriend.”

A few days later, Golden Retriever, whom they hadn’t seen in a long time, came over again, leading his little nephew Xu Jianxi, who had no one else to look after him.

Little Xu Jianxi still remembered Shen Maomao. The moment he saw her, he happily pounced on her and gave her a big kiss.

Not far away, Lou Jingmo’s eyes narrowed.

To protect his poor nephew, Golden Retriever quickly took him to the next room to play with toys. He returned by himself a moment later and said to Lou Jingmo, “Xiao Lou-jie, after you spoke to me that day, I went back and thought about it for a long time…”

Lou Jingmo frowned. “What did I say?”

Golden Retriever: “…”

Shen Maomao laughed and gave Lou Jingmo a push. “Don’t interrupt, let him finish.”

Golden Retriever instantly felt a bit more confident. He gave Shen Maomao a grateful look and continued, “Xiao Lou-jie, you told me you couldn’t be my power-leveler¹⁰ forever. After I went back, I thought about it for a long time and finally mustered the courage to contact a newbie myself and piggyback on his instance. I understand, you did it for my own good. Someone who lives forever under protection can never truly grow. Only when one can face their fears directly does growth itself manifest.”

Lou Jingmo cleaned out her ear.

What “for his own good”? She only let him run the instance himself because she felt the effort and the reward were no longer proportional.

Shen Maomao, who understood her, had already guessed what she was about to say that would leave Golden Retriever staring with dog-like stupefaction. She quickly covered her mouth and asked Golden Retriever, “So you went into the instance and drank some chicken soup¹¹?”

Golden Retriever said, “Actually, I discovered the instance wasn’t as hard as I imagined. The ghosts inside weren’t very original and not scary at all. I could handle it completely on my own.”

Shen Maomao said with considerable envy, “That’s great… I’m also about to be heartlessly abandoned by Lou Jingmo to train on my own. If I…”

Before she could finish, Golden Retriever let out a howl and burst into tears. “Rabbit-jie! Is Xiao Lou-jie not power-leveling for you anymore either? Then let’s team up! I can’t do it alone, wuwuwuwu!”

Shen Maomao: “…” Weren’t you just saying you thought you were perfectly capable?

Golden Retriever cried like a dog of over two hundred jin¹². “Waaahhh, it was so scary… I almost died in there. Why wasn’t I a good person? If I could, I don’t want to be human in my next life, wuwuwuwu…”

Torn between laughter and tears, Shen Maomao patted his shoulder to comfort him. It was as if she could see that classic line floating above his head—”I had no choice before. Now, I just want to be a good person.”¹³

She glanced at her wife, and after confirming she had no objections, she agreed. “Teaming up is fine, but I’m pretty weak. If you don’t mind…”

Golden Retriever said repeatedly, “I don’t mind, I don’t mind, I don’t mind! Being able to clear an instance with Rabbit-jie is truly the good fortune cultivated over eight lifetimes¹⁴…”

Lou Jingmo’s eyes narrowed again.

Her features were already cold and sharp. Now, with her eyes narrowed, her presence was naturally more imposing than before. Her sharp gaze pierced into his shoulder blades like two steel needles, making his body stiffen for a moment and causing a few threads of fear to sprout.

But then a thought occurred to him: in a society ruled by law, could Lou Jingmo really snap him in half on the street right in front of Shen Maomao? His courage immediately swelled, and he continued to flatter Shen Maomao, “Rabbit-jie, you’re so kind… My next instance is in a few days. Why don’t we discuss some strategies together?”

Shen Maomao: “How do you want to prepare? The situation in an instance changes in a flash. The most important thing is to adapt to the circumstances.”

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