The Hand of Confession – Chapter 345

Volume 10: Days of Cultivating in the Republic of China

A Just Reward

Old and brain-paralyzed¹

Shen Maomao opened her eyes. Before she even had time to check what Mingyue had stuffed into her hand, she threw herself into the arms of Lou Jingmo beside her and started wailing at the top of her lungs, “Lou-jie! I missed you so much, wuwuwu…”

Lou Jingmo wrapped one arm around her waist and used the other to lift her up by the bottom, a hint of a smile in her eyes. “How did it go?”

Shen Maomao burrowed haphazardly into her embrace. “I came back safe and sound, of course!”

As for how much she had suffered in the game, how many injuries she’d sustained…

While she was in the game, she kept thinking: After I get out, I have to tell Lou Jingmo all my grievances and make her dote on me and feel sorry for me. But now that she was really out, she didn’t want to say a word about it. She just wanted to lie in Lou Jingmo’s arms and stick to her until the earth is old and the heavens are barren².

The sight made Golden Retriever want to stab his own eyes out. He asked weakly, “Since you’re all out… can I go now?”

Lou Jingmo waved a hand. “Scram.”

“Alright.” Golden Retriever got up helplessly and obediently went to the door to put on his shoes. “I’ll head back then. If you want to run an instance together next time, Rabbit-jie, just send me a message. But don’t call me for your own instances. I’m afraid of dying; I just want to get through my own instances peacefully.”

Shen Maomao lifted her head from Lou Jingmo’s embrace. “Why haven’t you left yet?”

Golden Retriever: “…Goodbye.” With a thud, he pulled the door shut for them.

With the extra lightbulb³ gone, Shen Maomao completely let herself go, grabbing Lou Jingmo’s collar and starting to gnaw on her chin.

Lou Jingmo froze for a second, then let the force on her neck pull her head down slightly, allowing the kiss to land on her lips.

The sweetness in the air began to rise like boiling syrup, bursting into one sugary bubble after another. The innocent kiss soon changed in nature. Shen Maomao quickly went from the one in control to the one being controlled, held tightly in Lou Jingmo’s arms with her chin tilted up to receive her kiss, kissed so thoroughly she could hardly close her mouth. A transparent trail of saliva trickled down from the corner of her lips, only to be licked clean by Lou Jingmo with an embarrassing, heart-pounding squelch.

A lovely blush spread across Shen Maomao’s face, and her lips turned an intoxicating color. She was straddling Lou Jingmo’s thighs, her body so limp it was about to melt into a puddle. If not for her arms still clinging to Lou Jingmo’s shoulders, she would have slid right under the coffee table.

When the kiss ended, both of them were a little breathless, holding each other to calm their breathing.

Lou Jingmo stroked Shen Maomao’s back from top to bottom and said softly, “Did my baby have a hard time in the instance…”

Shen Maomao’s eyes stung and her old face flushed. Just as she was about to shyly ask, “Who are you calling baby?” she heard Lou Jingmo say, “Come, let Daddy dote on you properly.”

Shen Maomao: “…” If they hadn’t been apart for so long, she would have slapped Lou Jingmo across the mouth to let her know what it means for a mother’s love to be like a mountain⁴.

The romantic atmosphere vanished in an instant. She got off Lou Jingmo’s lap and began to debrief her on what had happened in the instance.

“That’s pretty much it…” Shen Maomao said, her mouth dry. “In the end, all five Hebo temples collapsed, Kang Yuanhuai was struck dead by lightning, and the exit was in the courtyard of the Western-style house. An Jing couldn’t get out, so I lent her Simon Peter… I just lent out a card like that. Do you think I did the wrong thing…?”

“No. The card is yours, you can give it to whomever you want,” Lou Jingmo said, reaching out to pat her head. “And I think you did the right thing. Maomao’s all grown up…”

As she spoke, a suspicious glint of tears flickered in her eyes, making Shen Maomao wonder if she was her wife or her daughter.

She quickly shook off the terrifying thought, forced herself to ignore Lou Jingmo’s expression, and changed the subject. “Right, Mingyue stuffed something into my arms before I left… Let me see if I can find it.”

She scrolled through her item bar but didn’t find what Mingyue had given her. Instead, the first thing she found was Simon Peter.

Simon Peter was a reusable card. Now that An Jing had used it once, perhaps it would have some other changes.

Shen Maomao took the card out and looked at it in her hand, and she did indeed notice some changes.

First, the card had turned gray and was in an unusable state. Second, the face on the puppet in Simon Peter’s hand had disappeared, becoming a blank slate. She guessed this change was because An Jing wasn’t dead yet. Without a puppet, Simon Peter naturally couldn’t substitute for a life.

Lou Jingmo said, “An Jing definitely won’t be entering an instance anytime soon. If it were me, I wouldn’t tell them about Simon Peter’s side effects.”

Shen Maomao said, “I don’t really care. Simon Peter is so damn creepy, I’m not going to use it anyway.”

Lou Jingmo lectured her, “Dying one instance later is always better than dying on the spot.”

Shen Maomao laughed. “I’m not an idiot. If I’m ever truly at the end of my rope, I’ll definitely use it. But I hope that time never comes.”

She returned Simon Peter to her item bar and continued scrolling down through the slots, finally spotting something that didn’t originally belong to her.

In the item bar, the object was perfectly square-shaped, a perfect rectangle.

Shen Maomao’s heart couldn’t help but start beating faster.

She pressed her lips together, nervously took the item out, and slapped it onto the coffee table. A gasp escaped her. “Holy shit!”

Lou Jingmo looked up at her. “It’s Thomas, isn’t it?”

“Holy shit!” Shen Maomao had turned into a shock machine, repeating “holy shit” three times before she found her language system again. “It’s really Thomas? She just gave it to me like that?!”

Lou Jingmo said, “I could more or less guess. After all, something as heaven-defying as reviving a person inside an instance couldn’t possibly be some ordinary little item.” She then smiled. “This must be a case of good people get good rewards⁵.”

Shen Maomao picked the card up again and examined it closely.

The face of the Thomas card depicted two identical people. One had their eyes closed, facing forward. The other was looking at the one with closed eyes, their right hand raised and holding a heart.

It did have the ability to resurrect people, but it could only be used within the instance where the person died; it was ineffective after leaving the instance. This meant that Yun Shengjin’s quest to find Thomas to resurrect his wife could only be a futile effort.

Besides the corpse having to be fresh and warm, Thomas was only effective on the dead. The card could only be used by someone else on the deceased; one couldn’t use it on oneself in advance. Furthermore, the user had to personally kill a monster and swallow its heart. As for what side effects came with eating a monster’s heart… the card didn’t explicitly say.

In other words: the person who obtained Thomas either had a companion willing to kill a monster, take its heart, swallow it raw, and not fear the side effects for them, or they themselves were unafraid of these things and willing to use it for someone else. Otherwise, Thomas was a useless card.

“Based on what you’ve said,” Lou Jingmo analyzed, “the person who eats the monster’s heart will take its place and become a new monster. And how can a monster leave the game? The Thomas card is nothing more than a life for a life.”

Shen Maomao nodded. “I think so too. How could the game creator be that kind? The people willing to use Thomas for each other are either immediate family or lovers like An Jing and Mingyue. They think using Thomas can save the other person, but they don’t realize they’ve already been branded by the instance, fated to be separated from their loved one by death.”

Speaking of which, Shen Maomao herself was starting to figure something out. “Is the game creator some kind of brain-paralyzed idiot who can’t stand to see other people happy??”

Lou Jingmo scoffed. “You’re only just now realizing that?”

“Fair point. He must be a psychopath, probably some eighth-grade syndrome⁶ case who thinks he’s a supreme god, arrogantly using his powers to arbitrate evil in place of the country’s⁷ laws.” Shen Maomao considered her assessment to be quite on point, adding at the end, “An old brain-paralyzed fool.”

Lou Jingmo deliberately teased her. “You’re saying that so loudly. Aren’t you afraid he’ll hear you?”

Shen Maomao said smugly, “My girlfriend is about to complete her card set. When she does, we’ll just kill him directly—so, Lou-jie, how many cards are you missing again? I think we talked about it before, but I don’t remember.”

Lou Jingmo leaned back against the sofa and said lazily, “Oh, quite a few.”

Shen Maomao copied her posture, lying back as well and wheedling, “Tell me again. I think you were missing five or six? Let’s complete one set first, then we can directly wish for the creator to go die⁸ or for the game to stop. Then everyone can leave this bullshit game.”

Lou Jingmo had indeed had the same thought.

Before, she only wanted to save herself, so the wish she wanted to make was to escape the game. Now, she also wanted to save Shen Maomao, so she really needed to switch to a wish that could solve the problem once and for all. Otherwise, who knows if it would be the year of the monkey and the month of the horse⁹ by the time they collected two full sets.

Hearing this, she sat up straight and said seriously, “Five cards.”

Shen Maomao immediately replied, “Then I think I know. You’re missing Feili¹⁰, Thomas, Simon Peter, John, and Judas. I have the first three now, so you’re only missing Judas and John.”

“Yun Shengjin has a John card, and Ren Yue’s Judas is with her master,” Lou Jingmo said, her eyes narrowing. “Snatching the cards from them might be easier than getting them from the game.”

Shen Maomao understood the logic, but Yun Shengjin wanted Thomas, and all they had was a used-up Thomas that lacked the resurrection effect he wanted. As for the other one, they had no idea who Ren Yue’s master was, what their name was, or where they lived. How could they even talk about snatching the card?

Lou Jingmo sighed and draped an arm over Shen Maomao’s shoulder. “You just got out of an instance. Don’t think about these depressing things. How about big sister takes you to do something fun?”

Shen Maomao turned to look at her.

Lou Jingmo generously threw her a flirtatious wink.

Shen Maomao immediately lost all her principles. “Should we go back to the room, then?”

Lou Jingmo: “What for?”

Shen Maomao looked down at the sofa beneath them, then at the floor-to-ceiling window next to it, and seemed to understand. “Um… wouldn’t this be a little too exciting?”

Lou Jingmo had an innocent look on her face. “Is it?”

Their floor was pretty high up—no one outside should be able to see anything.

With that thought, Shen Maomao started to feel a little restless again. After all, she hadn’t had any meat for five days in the game. Now that she thought about it… she was pretty hungry… ahem.

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The author has something to say:

I’m so awesome!!! I updated today at just past 10!!

Yesterday I was squatting for a house until 4 a.m., waited bitterly for 12 hours only for someone else to snatch it. I immediately logged off, shut down my computer, and burst into tears 555 I’m never squatting again, if I do I’m a dog. Also, about An Jing and Mingyue: they aren’t stuck in the instance??! They have Simon Peter, Mingyue is just going to wait for An Jing to die and come out, don’t torture yourselves!!

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