The Hand of Confession – Chapter 332

Volume 10: Days of Cultivating in the Republic of China

Jiejie

Packaging to Create a Persona¹

An Jing got the information she wanted and stopped paying her any mind, turning to enter Mingyue’s room.

Sisi shook her arm, complaining as she looked at the bruising fingerprint on her wrist, “Has she gone mad? How much force did she use?”

“Was it that bad?” Shen Maomao said.

Sisi said, “I have a bad feeling about her. She’s not planning to go head-to-head with the ghosts, is she?”

Shen Maomao nodded. “It’s very likely.”

Sisi glanced at her. “Do you think what I did just now was wrong?”

“It has nothing to do with me,” Shen Maomao said.

Sisi paused for a moment, then laughed. “You’re certainly frank. But even so, I want to explain. I felt like her state of mind was off. Just now, I really had the feeling that if I didn’t say something, she would have pushed me down the stairs… Ugh, forget it, I won’t talk about it. You didn’t experience it firsthand, so you probably wouldn’t understand how I feel.”

Shen Maomao nodded in agreement. “You don’t need to care about what I think. My opinion isn’t important. What’s important are your own thoughts.”

Sisi pressed her lips together. “I… I understand. See you tomorrow.”

Shen Maomao waved to her, then entered her room and closed the door.

The last instance had, after all, left its mark on her. Her compassion was being worn away, bit by bit, by the game. She just didn’t know if this change was for the better or for the worse…

She lay on the bed and turned off the light, her mind filled with the game’s plot. She didn’t even have the spare energy to think about what An Jing was doing.

The night was like a monstrous beast, lying dormant outside everyone’s window, waiting for the darkest moment to arrive. The sound of the rain blended into a single sheet of noise. Tonight, unusually, there was no wind, nor the chirping of insects. The entire Western-style building was as silent as a graveyard.

The doorbell didn’t ring, but when the moonlight outside the window was completely blocked by dark clouds, Shen Maomao still had a premonition—it was here.

A wave of damp air swept in, carrying a pungent, fishy stench.

“Hee hee~”

Someone laughed beside her ear, and then the sound gradually drifted away.

“Come play~ Come play with me~”

The voice was sometimes far and sometimes near, erratic and unfixed, making it impossible to pinpoint its exact location.

It seemed the one who had come was the jiejie of the pair.

Shen Maomao wasn’t the least bit scared. Her head turned for a moment, following the direction of the voice, and then she asked, “Aren’t you tired?”

The jiejie’s laughter stopped. “…”

The scene seemed to rewind to the previous night. Shen Maomao sat up in bed and asked, “What are you trying to do? Are you going to speak?”

A hazy black shadow stood fixed at the foot of the bed. Shen Maomao couldn’t see its face clearly, only a pair of red-glowing eyes and what looked like gleaming, sharp red fangs in its mouth.

The figure spoke, its voice still very childish, but the words it said were wildly arrogant. “I want your life—”

Shen Maomao said, “Didn’t your meimei tell you? I have something in my hands that can freeze the entire Ye Lake…”

The jiejie gave her a ferocious grin. “Then we’ll have to see if you still have the chance—”

Before the words had even fallen, she raised her hand and charged at Shen Maomao.

Shen Maomao quickly rolled off the bed, used a small speed-boosting prop, and immediately rushed for the door.

With a splat, the jiejie dissolved into a puddle of pale blue water, seeped into the cracks of the floorboards, and vanished from the room in the blink of an eye.

Shen Maomao heard the sound, and when she looked back, her running speed couldn’t help but slow down.

If it was using this method to go downstairs—

Then she wasn’t going down.

She turned around, returned to her room, and sat back down on the bed unhurriedly, waiting for the little girl to come back up.

Three minutes later, the child rushed up with her hair standing on end, clearly incensed. “Why didn’t you go down?!”

Shen Maomao looked innocent. “I never said I was going to go down, did I?”

The little girl’s expression turned ferocious again as she pounced. “I want you to die!”

Shen Maomao directly used the quilt to block her, wrapping up the little thing that had thrown itself into the net².

She tried to reason with it. “Can you not be so aggressive?”

The next second, the quilt went empty. The little girl must have turned into water again. She threw the quilt onto the floor and watched as it separated itself from the fabric, two tufts of cotton batting stuck to its head as it glared at her furiously.

If one ignored her mouthful of small, sharp, shark-like teeth, she was actually quite cute.

Shen Maomao said, “Can’t we sit down and have a nice talk? Since you have your own consciousness, you surely don’t want to be like those mindless ghosts who only know how to kill, kill, kill, right? What’s the point of that?”

The little girl knew exactly what had happened to her sister. She knew the woman before her had a very persuasive mouth and could easily lead a ghost astray without it even realizing. So, she was determined not to listen to her nonsense. With a sharp shriek, she charged again, simultaneously summoning two jets of water to strike at her. It was unclear what she intended to do with such harmless-looking water.

—A ghost knows what effect it would have upon contact.

Shen Maomao hastily grabbed a pillow for defense, first blocking the water jets, then raising her leg to kick the little girl in the chest. She used eighty percent of her strength in this kick and had expected to send it flying, but who would have thought its chest was like a pile of mud? It actually caved in, enveloping her foot, and because of this, it managed to grab Shen Maomao’s calf.

Sharp nails pierced her skin, causing Shen Maomao to suck in a sharp breath from the pain. This time, she used her other foot to kick the little girl’s head, finally succeeding in sending it flying. But at the same time, its nails left two long scratches on her leg; her skin split open and her flesh burst³.

Shen Maomao had no time to tend to the wound on her leg. She quickly rushed to the little girl’s side, reached out and grabbed one of her small pigtails, lifting her straight up. She pulled out the dagger that was a loving gift from Lou Jingmo and threatened her coldly, “Do you really want to fight until you die and I live? Do you think I can’t kill you just because you’ve become a ghost? See this dagger? Want to have a taste?”

The little girl didn’t make a sound, her body beginning to elongate. She was probably trying to turn into water again.

Shen Maomao’s brain worked rapidly, thinking of how to keep it here to get some information out of it.

As she thought, she remembered the teacup on the desk. A flash of inspiration struck her, and she suddenly shouted to stop it, “Don’t you dare change! Otherwise, I’ll trap you in a teacup and pour you into the latrine pit⁴!”

“Ahhhhhhh!!” the little girl shrieked. “You vicious woman!”

Shen Maomao snorted coldly. “If I were vicious, you’d be the one going to the eighteen levels of hell⁵.”

The little girl whimpered for a while, the thoughts in her little head having long since shifted from how to kill this person to how to keep herself away from that disgusting thing. After thinking for a long time, she still couldn’t come up with a way to guarantee her cleanliness and could only say reluctantly, “What do you want?”

Shen Maomao smiled gently but didn’t let go. Instead, she carried her by the pigtail over to the desk, used her other hand to feel for the teacup, and only then did she say, “I want to ask you about some things.”

The female ghost snorted. “Hurry up and say it.”

Shen Maomao opened the door to see the mountain⁶. “Are you He Bo?”

The little girl’s eyes darted. Just as she was about to speak, Shen Maomao said faintly, “Think carefully before you decide whether to lie or not.”

It paused for a second, then said, deflated, “Not yet…”

Shen Maomao asked, “What do you mean?”

“There isn’t enough faith yet…” Halfway through, it became wary again. “You don’t want to be He Bo, so why are you asking so much?”

Shen Maomao grasped the key point. “So you and your sister are the West Hebo the townspeople talk about?”

The little girl said, “More or less.”

“You died twenty-three years ago. Why are there stories about you from fifty years ago?”

The little girl glanced at her. “You’ve certainly done your research… We also need to rely on stories to attract believers. Without stories, we can only resort to altering their memories ourselves…”

Shen Maomao nodded and summarized, “Oh, so it’s packaging to create a persona, right? I get it.”

“What?”

“Nothing.” Shen Maomao changed the subject. “If I ask you about your cause of death, will you fly into a rage?”

The little girl looked at her as her skin smiled but her flesh didn’t⁷. “You can try.”

Shen Maomao said, “Forget it, I cherish my life. Last question: What is your wish? To kill Kang Yuanhuai? Or to become He Bo?”

“Who is Kang Yuanhuai?”

Shen Maomao: “? Then what are you doing here every night?”

“Killing people, of course,” it said, as if it was as reason dictates it should be.

“Didn’t you go looking for Kang Yuanhuai last night?”

The red light in the little girl’s eyes began to flicker. “He told you his name was Kang Yuanhuai? Hahahahaha, you’ve all been deceived by him!”

Shen Maomao asked, “What’s going on? Who is he?”

“He…” It had just said one word when a scream suddenly came from the room next door, so loud it made Shen Maomao’s head buzz, and she didn’t hear what it was saying at all.

“Fuck!” Shen Maomao swore. “What the hell! Does someone always have to interrupt whenever something important is being said?!”

“Something’s happened!” The little girl frowned, instantly turning herself into a puddle of water and seeping through the cracks in the floor.

“Wait! Say it again before you go!!”

But the ghost was already gone.

She gritted her teeth, unwilling to give up such a good opportunity. Besides, tomorrow was the fifth day, and she was afraid she wouldn’t get another chance if she didn’t hurry. After weighing the pros and cons, she quickly dressed in the dark and pushed the door open to go out.

This was the first time she had left her room at night.

The moonlight cast the shadow of the window frame onto the floor. A shadow meant the moonlight was bright, yet it was pitch black outside the window, and nothing could be seen.

The small villa seemed different at night than during the day, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was. She could only sense a dangerous aura, and every cell in her body was screaming at her to go back.

She lifted her foot lightly, the tip of her toe landing on the wooden floor without making a sound.

There were five rooms on the upper floor, and the sound had come from Mingyue’s room in the very center. The person living there now was An Jing—as expected, An Jing had done something.

She walked to the door of the middle room and peeked through the slightly ajar door. Suddenly, a face with the left half of its skin torn off flashed before her eyes, startling her so much that she jerked her gaze back. She leaned against the wall, clutching her small, pounding heart.

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