The Hand of Confession – Chapter 339

Volume 10: Days of Cultivating in the Republic of China

Lightning Strike

The Killing Plan

Shen Maomao breathed a sigh of relief. To be honest, she wasn’t sure she could have beaten that black shadow, and she certainly couldn’t have guaranteed the safety of the people around them if a fight had broken out. The fact that they didn’t have to fight was a huge relief for her.

She glanced left and right to make sure the shadow was really gone and not just bluffing her, then retraced her steps, squeezing through the crowd of people blocking the entrance to get back into the temple.

A few grumbles of discontent followed her, but the townspeople, mindful of the divine statues, didn’t start an argument with her.

The two sisters were sprawled haphazardly on the ground. The worshipers didn’t seem to see them, stepping right over the heads of their Hebo’s true forms one by one to go pray to two dead statues.

Shen Maomao covered her face.

She had no choice but to get in line behind the crowd and inch forward at a turtle’s pace. Once she shuffled next to the two, she used the motion of lifting her leg to walk to kick them into a corner.

Her objective achieved, she saw there were still a few people ahead of her offering incense and making wishes. Not wanting to wait any longer, she turned and handed the incense in her hand to the person behind her. “I have something urgent to do, this is for you!”

With that, she turned and walked away, then stealthily crouched down in the corner, pretending to adjust her shoes and skirt. Then, grabbing one sister in each hand, she picked them up and ran for the exit, stealing the temple’s gods right under the nose of the temple keeper.

She marched out, head held high and chest puffed out, even shooting a triumphant look at the man collecting money at the door. The man stared back with utter confusion, unable to stop himself from scratching his head.

What’s going on? Is there something on my face??

…

“They’re not dead, are they?” As she spoke, Sisi poked one of the little girls’ bodies curiously.

The girl convulsed at her touch, which scared Sisi into snatching her hand back immediately, terrified she was about to get caught in a fake injury scam¹.

“They shouldn’t be dead, right?” Shen Maomao said uncertainly. “Aren’t they still twitching?”

Sisi sat up straight, turned to Shen Maomao, and asked, “What happened in there? Did you beat them up?”

“Since when am I that capable?” Shen Maomao helplessly recounted what had happened after she went inside. “So after I went in, this and that happened…”

Sisi swallowed hard as she listened, the hairs on her arms standing on end. “That’s the kind of thing I’m most afraid of—people who don’t even know they’re dead, still mixing in with the living… Holy shit, we’ve been eating and living with a ghost for days…”

Shen Maomao reminded her, “He hasn’t realized he’s dead yet. When we go back, don’t let on, so you don’t beat the grass and startle the snake².”

Sisi nodded. “I know. I’m not an idiot.”

Then she changed the subject. “Actually, there’s still a lot I don’t understand. Is Kang Yuanhuai really the Hebo? Why would he give up being a perfectly good Hebo to be someone’s son? And he was away from Huai Town for so long, so why did he come back? And bring us back? What’s his relationship with the five Hebos? Why did he want to make those five Hebos get human lives on their hands?”

If they could figure all that out, they could probably publish a book.

Shen Maomao gave her a pair of dead fish eyes. “You sure ask a lot of questions.”

Sisi: “…” Fine, she’d shut up.

The three of them fell silent, sitting in a circle around the two sisters, deciding to wait for them to wake up first.

But they waited and waited, and the two showed no signs of improving. Sisi thought for a moment and suggested, “Maybe they’re dehydrated? Should we throw them in the river?”

Shen Maomao was hesitant. “Their enemy is probably connected to water too, right? Is that a good idea?”

Sisi looked at the two sisters, a cold glint flashing in her eyes. “Then let’s just throw one in first. If something goes wrong, we’ll keep the other one.”

Shen Maomao was silent for two seconds before rejecting her idea. “Let’s not. I’ll figure out a way to haul some water from the river…” She picked up an umbrella and started walking toward the river, clearly planning to use it as a bucket.

“Wait!” Sisi stopped her. “Did you forget there are piranhas in the river?! You haven’t gone soft on them, have you?”

Shen Maomao’s steps paused. With her back to Sisi, she said, “What difference does it make if I’m soft-hearted or not?” If killing the two sisters would let her leave the game, she’d be the first one to draw her blade.

Sometimes she wondered if this unnecessary soft-heartedness of hers was what people called the cat crying for the mouse³, a false mercy. But some things, especially certain emotions, weren’t things she could control just because she wanted to.

Sisi pressed her lips together. “‘Those who are not of my race must have a different heart.’⁴ You know that saying without me having to tell you, right?”

Shen Maomao didn’t answer or argue with her. She just started forward again, walked to the riverbank, opened the umbrella to scoop up some river water, and then returned to the shore. She picked a lucky little girl at random and poured the water over her.

The little girl smacked her lips, clearly not averse to the river water.

So Shen Maomao made a few more trips. At one point, she was almost bitten by a piranha that leaped out of the water, but her reflexes were quick, and she pinned it to the riverbed with a single stab of her dagger.

Doused with river water, the little girl slowly came to. She seemed dazed for a few seconds, but then her eyes sharpened rapidly. The hair on her head stood on end, dancing like seaweed at the bottom of the sea. “It’s him! How did he become so powerful?! Could it be that one of the Hebos has already met with disaster?!”

Great. The one who woke up was the older sister.

Shen Maomao closed the umbrella, preparing to leave the idiot younger sister in the older one’s care.

Sisi asked cautiously, “What do you mean? Kang Yuanhuai gets stronger when a Hebo dies?”

The older sister turned her head, her pupils shrinking to the size of pinpricks as she stared at Sisi. The sight made fear churn in Sisi’s stomach, and she couldn’t help but take a small step back.

That single step was enough to get her disqualified in the sister’s eyes.

She looked at Shen Maomao instead, speaking rapidly. “There isn’t much time. You should know more about the past than I do by now—Hu Qinghuai is the Hebo of Huai Town. His true form is an evil jiao⁵, and he wreaked havoc in the surrounding region. His evil deeds were so numerous that he triggered a Heavenly Tribulation⁶. After the tribulation, he was on the verge of death. To recover, he devoured the Hebo of the Huai River, disguised himself as the new Hebo, and staged his own miracles to trick the common people into giving him their faith…”

A bolt of lightning tore across the sky. The once clear, sunny sky instantly darkened. A series of thunderclaps reached everyone’s ears, but no rain fell. It was as if something was trying to stop her from saying the rest.

The older sister looked up at the sky and continued fearlessly, “Thirty years ago, his actions were finally discovered by the Heavenly Dao⁷ again. This time, an even greater lightning tribulation was coming. He calculated that he would die in this tribulation, so he used heretical methods to disperse all his power among the six of us, making us scapegoats to die in his place. He himself was reborn into the Hu family, born as an ordinary person to evade the Heavenly Dao’s search.”

“Boom—” A thin bolt of lightning shot down from the sky, aiming straight for the sister’s feet.

“Holy shit!” Shen Maomao cried out, pouncing almost immediately like a golden retriever. She also stretched out an arm and tackled Sisi. The three of them—Shen Maomao, Sisi, and Golden Retriever—fell to the ground together, the soles of their shoes nearly melting from the intense heat.

The older sister bore the brunt of the attack and had no way to dodge. She could only take the hit head-on, her body falling stiffly to the ground. She twitched from time to time, arcs of electricity still dancing across her skin.

Such a loud and strange noise didn’t attract the attention of the nearby townspeople. It seemed only the few of them could see the lightning.

The electricity slowly dissipated, but they could still faintly hear a sizzling sound coming from her body. They gathered around her but didn’t dare touch her, afraid they’d get electrocuted too.

Shen Maomao bent down slightly and asked from above her, “How are you? Are you gonna live?”

The older sister struggled to open her eyes, looking utterly wronged. “What was that? You’re not allowed to call people out when they do something wrong?”

Shen Maomao’s heart sank. She immediately grabbed Sisi and Golden Retriever and pulled them back. Sure enough, two seconds later, another small bolt of lightning struck down, making the sister twitch a couple more times before she went silent.

The three of them gathered around again. Shen Maomao whispered, “Maybe… you shouldn’t mention that thing you’re not supposed to mention.”

The sister yielded. She climbed to her feet, her head covered in black soot, and continued, “The six of us were all living sacrifices offered to the Hebo. He used us to become new Hebos. It couldn’t find Hu Qinghuai, so it assumed he was dead, allowing him to escape for over twenty years. Now that Hu Qinghuai has grown up, he wants to take back his power. But we’ve gathered a fair amount of faith ourselves to keep from dissipating, so he can’t just take it back. He has to resort to heretical methods. As long as our faith is reduced, or if we become tainted with karma⁸ and can no longer receive faith as Hebos…”

This time, she didn’t explicitly mention those two words or criticize anyone, so she wasn’t struck by lightning and managed to finish her sentence.

Shen Maomao looked up at the sky. She hadn’t expected something as high-level as the “Heavenly Dao” to exist in this instance.

But judging from this Heavenly Dao’s behavior, it probably wasn’t some fair and just entity either. It shared a striking resemblance to the creators of the Confession Game.

Sisi asked her, “If none of you can deal with him, what makes you think we can?”

The sister shook her head. “No, you can. Our power comes from him, so we can’t harm him at all. We tried to kill him every night before, but we failed every time.”

“Then why did you kill innocent people?” Shen Maomao asked.

The sister tilted her head and looked at her. “There’s something in the house. Unless you feel no fear toward us, we’ll kill uncontrollably… But for some reason, killing you all… doesn’t seem to taint us with karma…”

It was true. They weren’t people of this world but outsiders who had appeared out of thin air. Kang Yuanhuai had used himself as bait to lure the six ghosts into killing him. His real goal was to make the six Hebos kill a few players, forcing them to be tainted by karma so they could no longer absorb faith to protect themselves, allowing him to completely reclaim his power. But he probably never imagined that the people he’d found weren’t from this world at all, and naturally had no karmic ties with the natives.

Sisi stood up straight and scanned her surroundings. “There isn’t much time. For now, let’s go with her plan. Since Kang Yuanhuai ambushed you, he must already know all this and will definitely be prepared when we go back. We should think carefully about how to handle this and come up with a plan to kill him, to make sure it’s foolproof.”

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