The Hand of Confession – Chapter 326

Volume 10: Days of Cultivating in the Republic of China

Soaked and Swollen

The First Victim

Shen Maomao lay awake for half the night but didn’t notice anything unusual in the room.

In the latter half of the night, she really couldn’t stay awake any longer and drifted off in a daze. When she opened her eyes again, it was already the next morning.

She was still a bit disoriented when she first opened her eyes, but then she immediately came to her senses, scrambling up with a start to look at the two cards in her hands.

The cards were still there, and none of her limbs were missing.

It seemed the ghost from last night hadn’t come for her, and the ghost brother in her room hadn’t attacked her either.

She let out a big yawn. The two bluish-black semicircles under her eyes made it clear she hadn’t slept very deeply.

It was still early. She groggily got dressed, slipped on her leather shoes, and went downstairs, planning to get some water to wash up first.

But as soon as she reached the ground floor, she discovered someone slumped over the dining table.

It was a man wearing the student uniform. For the moment, she couldn’t tell which of the four men it was, but he had a somewhat chubby build, his uniform stretched taut. It could be Dahai.

Shen Maomao’s steps faltered. She held onto the staircase railing, watching the person below, and asked tentatively, “Hello?”

The person didn’t react at all.

Shen Maomao was conflicted, not knowing whether she should approach or go back.

“Drip—drip—”

As she hesitated, the sound of dripping water reached her ears.

She looked down and saw a faint puddle of water at the man’s feet.

Alright, she knew what she had to do.

She didn’t walk over. Instead, she cleared her throat, tested her voice with a couple of “Ah”s, then sunk her qi into her dantian¹, took a deep breath, and let out a loud “AHHH—!”

Normally, this job would fall to a terrified newcomer, but since the newcomer wasn’t awake, she took on the task herself, even though she wasn’t particularly scared.

The massive shout jolted all the residents of the house awake. The door of the first room on the right was thrown open, and Dahai ran out while putting on his uniform jacket. “What’s wrong? What happened?!”

Since Dahai was here and perfectly fine, the person at the table wasn’t him.

Shen Maomao furrowed her brows, pointed at the table, and then compared the two figures.

Looking at them comparatively, Dahai seemed to be slightly chubbier, but the difference wasn’t huge. Among the remaining three men, Kang Yuanhuai and Gauss were both the slender type, and A Nan was the tall and sturdy type. Clearly, none of them matched the back of the figure at the table.

Dahai was also stunned when he saw the figure. He asked Shen Maomao, “Is that…?”

Shen Maomao shook her head, indicating she didn’t know either. “I saw him there as soon as I came downstairs, so I decided to wake you all up first before doing anything else.”

While they were talking, the others also came out of their rooms one by one. Everyone gathered downstairs, surrounding the dining table, casting curious or solemn gazes at the person in the middle.

Sisi nudged Shen Maomao’s shoulder with her own and asked, “Was that you who screamed just now?”

Shen Maomao nodded. “It was me. I guess I’m the first witness.”

Sisi jutted her chin towards the table. “Dead?”

“Not sure.”

Kang Yuanhuai, neatly dressed, arrived slowly². At this point, the only one who hadn’t shown up was Gauss.

It was obvious, then. The person slumped here was undoubtedly Gauss. But why had he suddenly gotten so fat?

Shen Maomao took the initiative to explain the situation to Kang Yuanhuai, and also recounted the events for Golden Retriever, Mingyue, and the others who arrived later.

After she finished, Kang Yuanhuai frowned, walked over, and gave Gauss’s back a push. The next second, Gauss collapsed bonelessly, slumping like a pile of sludge into the puddle of water and knocking over two chairs beside him.

Mingyue, who was standing relatively close, was startled and let out a short gasp, immediately taking two steps back from the table.

Unflustered, Kang Yuanhuai crouched down and used his hands to turn Gauss’s face forward.

All the players gasped. Sisi’s face turned pale, and she covered her mouth and ran outside.

It was Gauss’s face, and yet it wasn’t.

His entire body looked as if it had been soaking in water for several months. It had reached a state of being soaked and swollen³, puffed up to twice its normal size. When Kang Yuanhuai touched him, the flesh on his face sloughed off with a ‘pitter-patter’ sound, while a pale, bloody fluid oozed out.

Even though Shen Maomao considered her courage to have been tempered by the instances, she was still thoroughly disgusted by the scene. A putrid stench filled the air. Unable to bear it, everyone left the room.

Kang Yuanhuai propped his chin on his hand in thought, asking the people around him in confusion, “How did this happen? Where did Student Gauss go last night?”

Dahai thought for a moment and said, “Could it be that he already died when we fell into the lake yesterday, and he just didn’t know it?”

Kang Yuanhuai frowned. “That is simply baseless talk. If he were dead, how did he come back with us? Someone must be pretending to be a god and playing the ghost⁴. In any case, let’s report it to the authorities first and let the people from the Public Security Bureau⁵ handle it.”

However, he didn’t want to go back into the house to make a phone call now, so he simply called Dahai and A Nan, and the three of them went out together, heading straight for the town’s Public Security Bureau.

The remaining people stood around in the courtyard, showing no intention of going back inside.

Seeing Kang Yuanhuai leave, Sisi, who had finished rinsing her mouth, moved palely to Shen Maomao’s side and said, “Do you think Gauss’s death is related to the person who rang the doorbell?”

Shen Maomao nodded. “It’s highly possible.”

Mingyue interjected, “Did any of you hear singing last night?”

Shen Maomao hadn’t heard a thing. “What singing?”

“A little girl was singing.” As she spoke, Mingyue’s face paled. “Don’t tell me An Jing and I were the only ones who heard it?”

The others around them didn’t speak, but their expressions were all blank. The answer was obvious: indeed, only the two of them had heard the girl’s song.

Mingyue said worriedly to her teammate, “Let’s sleep separately tonight.” This way, they wouldn’t be double-killed by the ghost, but it also meant each of their survival chances would be one in two.

Before long, the three returned with a group of police, their speed so fast it was unlike the police in a horror story.

Several police officers dressed in black military-style uniforms, carrying old-fashioned rifles on their shoulders and wearing black, brimmed police caps similar to their school uniform hats, carried the body out of the house.

As expected of people who had seen it all, they showed no fear or discomfort upon seeing the scene inside.

After the body was carried away, a policeman with a cigarette dangling from his mouth sauntered over to them and asked, “Who was the first to discover the body?”

Shen Maomao: “I was.”

“What was it like when you saw the body?”

Shen Maomao described the situation once more.

The policeman said, “What is your relationship to the deceased?”

“Classmates.”

“This many people are all classmates?”

The others all nodded.

The man asked a bunch of other random questions, and finally said slowly, “It hasn’t been peaceful lately. Don’t go wandering around the river if you don’t have to.”

After speaking, he waved at them, turned, and left with his subordinates.

Shen Maomao watched them leave, thinking to herself that although they were fast, that was about it. Just like in horror movies, this bunch didn’t serve much of a purpose; they were probably just here to collect the body.

Because of this incident, no one had eaten breakfast, though it was true that no one had the appetite for it now.

Despite what had happened, Kang Yuanhuai acted as if nothing was wrong, urging everyone to get ready to go out and check on the He Bo Temple as they had agreed yesterday.

Seeing everyone’s worried expressions, he added, “I’ll hire someone to come and clean up the room in a bit, so don’t worry.”

That’s not what they were worried about at all, okay?!

However, no one was really interested in watching someone else clean up what was left of the corpse, so they all followed him out the door.

This time, Sisi led the way, guiding Kang Yuanhuai towards the He Bo Temple he was curious about.

The group rented three boats and reached the other side of the river without incident.

The the He Bo Temple still stood on the lake. The eight bells on the door and the temple roof swayed in the wind, tinkling together in a continuous ‘ding-ding-dong’. But the wooden bridge built over the lake had, for some unknown reason, a large section broken off, creating a gap too wide for a person to cross.

The wooden bridge was several meters higher than the lake’s surface, so the idea of climbing up from the water was clearly not feasible. Dahai looked left and right, remarking, “How come there’s no one around this temple? It’s too desolate, isn’t it?”

Kang Yuanhuai’s eyes were fixed on the temple roof. After a moment of contemplation, he said, “This temple seems a bit different. Does it have some special meaning?”

Shen Maomao looked at him. “Where is it different?”

“Look there.” Kang Yuanhuai pointed to the painted decorations on the roof. “The patterns painted there are a bit different from what we saw before.”

Though both were He Bo temples and could differ in scale, logically, things like decorative patterns and paintings shouldn’t be different.

Kang Yuanhuai paused, then added, “Maybe it’s because I’m seeing things from so far away. Let’s look around the area; we might find a passerby to ask about the situation.”

The group split up to find someone. Sisi was already spooked by this temple and was eager to get farther away from it, lest she suddenly lose control of herself again. She stopped looking for Golden Retriever to hang out with and instead stuck to Shen Maomao, probably thinking she was more reliable. Dahai also chose to follow them, and the four of them decided to walk left along the river.

Dahai was quite talkative, chatting with them as they walked. “Why do you think the little newcomer was the first to die?”

Sisi said, “Probably because newcomers are easier to bully?”

Dahai smiled as if concealing a deep secret⁶ and said, “I think I might be next.”

Shen Maomao guessed he probably thought He Bo killed using water, so he and Gauss, having fallen into the river, had become He Bo’s targets. But An Jing and Mingyue had said the voice they heard was a little girl’s…

They had seen the statue of He Bo; he was clearly a tall, sturdy man. Perhaps this meant that besides He Bo, other ghosts existed in this instance.

The three were each lost in their own thoughts. The mute Golden Retriever had nothing to do, so he was looking around everywhere. As he looked, he seemed to spot something floating on the river’s surface. He quickly patted Shen Maomao’s and Sisi’s shoulders, grunting “mm, mm” twice, signaling for them to look at the river.

Everyone stopped and followed the direction his finger was pointing. And then they saw… a bamboo hat… floating on the water?

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