The Hand of Confession – Chapter 353

Volume 11: The Days of Traversing Through the Mirror

Mirror

The Droste Effect¹

“I’ve heard of her.” Gan Ze covered her mouth and coughed twice, speaking faintly. “There’s a segment of players who believe that as long as they truly know they were wrong and strive to do good deeds in the game, they will one day be able to move the game’s creators and successfully escape the game. That Wu Mei is a prominent figure among them.”

“There are actually people like that?” Bai Lu said with lingering fear. “Thank god I didn’t end up on a team with her.” It wasn’t that she disliked great do-gooders; she was just afraid of being dragged down by the other party’s kindness.

In truth, it wasn’t as if no one had tried this method before, but so far, no one had ever heard of anyone escaping the game by doing good deeds.

Of course, no one had ever successfully escaped the game at all.

The beds were already made with brand-new mattresses and quilts. The five of them divided up their luggage, opened everything up for a once-over, and after confirming there were no issues, they closed the suitcases and stuffed them under the beds.

They could only stay here for seven days at most; there was no point in unpacking.

After putting her suitcase away, Shen Maomao looked up and saw Hai Dongqing standing in the gap between the desk and the windowsill, staring intently out the window.

She glanced over curiously, not understanding what she was looking at.

The even-numbered rooms happened to face inward. The third floor wasn’t far from the ground; you could even see the expressions of the pedestrians below by leaning on the windowsill. There didn’t seem to be anything special.

Seeing the two of them looking so intently, Bai Lu from bed number three poked her head out for a look and couldn’t help but murmur, “Why plant a tree in the middle of four buildings?”

Peng Xiaorui also came over to look and, upon hearing that, slapped her thigh. “Look at this layout! Isn’t it just the character for ‘kun’²?”

And that tree was stretching its branches toward their window, perhaps representing the longest, final na³ stroke in the character for ‘mu’⁴.

Bai Lu frowned. “Hearing you say it like that, it really is too unlucky.”

“There’s something even unluckier,” Shen Maomao said. “Folklore says that willow wood can lock spirits⁵. As long as a body is buried under a willow tree, that person can never be reincarnated.”

Peng Xiaorui said, a little uncertainly, “Don’t tell me the game is going to make us dig up a corpse under the tree…”

Bai Lu retracted her gaze and said, “It’s useless to just stay here. How about we all split up and get familiar with the environment? I don’t have a teammate right now, who’s willing to take me along?”

Hai Dongqing, who hadn’t spoken a word, suddenly opened her mouth. “You go with them.”

Shen Maomao looked at her, an expression of astonishment on her face.

Bai Lu was a bit reluctant. Gan Ze looked like she couldn’t run, and Peng Xiaorui was too young; clearly, neither was the best choice for a teammate. Unfortunately, she was the one left over. Since Hai Dongqing had clearly refused, she was too embarrassed to pester her further, and so the matter of teaming up was settled.

The five of them pocketed their keys and went downstairs together. Before they separated, Gan Ze reminded them to remember to get their photos taken.

Shen Maomao thanked her.

The two of them walked forward along the sidewalk, encountering many pairs of university students along the way. From time to time, cars would drive past them, kicking up a large cloud of willow catkins.

Neither of them spoke; the atmosphere was a little bit awkward.

In the end, it was Hai Dongqing who broke the ice. “I graduated a long time ago. Do you know if Jiang Da⁶ has had any recent strange tales or supernatural incidents?”

Shen Maomao said, “You’ve really asked the right person, I’ve always paid a lot of attention to this stuff. But these things can usually only be listened to as stories, you can’t take them seriously.”

Every school has some strange phenomena or has had some supernatural stories, and Jiang Da was naturally no exception. She still remembered when she first started school, how upperclassmen⁷ would scare them, saying that their dormitory was originally built on a ten-thousand-person pit⁸, and the yin qi⁹ was especially heavy. At night, translucent figures would always drift back and forth in the hallways, which scared her so much that she stubbornly refused to go to the bathroom after nine o’clock, developing the good habit of sleeping early and waking up early.

Only later did she find out that in the mouths of the upperclassmen, every dormitory building was built on a ten-thousand-person pit. The entire population of Jiangcheng wasn’t even enough to fill all those pits.

“A strange thing did happen when I was in school, though it wasn’t in our class. It caused quite a stir at the time.” Shen Maomao rummaged through the memories she had forgotten in the depths of her mind and brought the incident up. “It was one night, probably after twelve. A girl on a top bunk was huddled under her covers, staying up late to read a novel, when she suddenly heard the door to her dorm room open. At first, she thought it was a roommate going out to the bathroom, but on second thought, she didn’t seem to have heard a bed move. Later, she didn’t hear the door being pulled open again, so she endured her fear, put down her phone, and secretly lifted her blanket to look down… guess what she saw?”

Hai Dongqing said, “What, you think you’re telling me a story from a promptbook¹⁰?”

Shen Maomao said, “…Sorry, it’s a habit.”

With that interruption, the terrifying atmosphere she had tried so hard to create instantly dissipated. She could only dryly state the story’s ending. “She said she saw the dorm manager auntie¹¹ from downstairs standing motionlessly in front of the bed of the person on the bottom bunk diagonally across from her, looking down at that person. Including the time from when she first heard the sound, the auntie watched for a good ten minutes before she finally moved her feet and left directly, even helping them close the door before she went.”

“Did they check the surveillance?” Hai Dongqing asked.

Shen Maomao nodded. “They did, but we don’t know what the result was. I heard people say that the dorm manager auntie had a sleepwalking problem, but as for why she targeted that girl, we have no way of knowing.”

“Anything else?”

“Um… I don’t think so?” Shen Maomao thought for another two seconds, then abruptly clapped her hands. “Right! Building 18! I remembered something! Every year, someone jumps from Building 18 at Jiang Da. Everyone says if one person in a dorm room jumps, the others are immediately guaranteed admission to graduate school¹². A couple of years ago, it seems a girl even pushed her roommate off the building. The police came to investigate later and said the two had some personal grudges, but everyone at school said that girl was just crazy about getting guaranteed admission… We’re in Building 18 right now, could this be related to that rumor?”

“Maybe.” Hai Dongqing nodded. After confirming that she couldn’t squeeze any more useful information out of her, she closed her mouth and focused on observing their surroundings.

The two of them strolled around for several laps, even going to look at the library that the class president, Zhang Xiao, had mentioned. They roughly familiarized themselves with the roads around the school, then found a nearby print shop to get their photos taken, preparing several copies with different backgrounds and sizes.

Time flew by. Seeing that it was getting late, the two started to head back, preparing to return to the East District for dinner.

Mealtimes were always when the university population was most active, and this was true even in the game world. It was only at times like this that Jiang Da truly looked a bit like a university.

There weren’t many empty seats in the cafeteria. Shen Maomao snatched a spot and told Hai Dongqing to go buy food first, while she idly looked around.

Hai Dongqing didn’t stand on ceremony with her and squeezed directly into the crowd.

As she looked, Shen Maomao saw a few familiar figures. It was Wu Mei and that little newbie; all six of them were there. They must have chosen to stick together.

Wu Mei was facing her, and when Shen Maomao looked over, she looked back sharply, her gaze revealing an incisiveness that didn’t match her public persona.

As expected, a purely good person can’t survive for long in the game.

Shen Maomao gave her a friendly smile.

Wu Mei returned a smile, then, under her gaze, stood up and walked over to her side step by step. She said, “Why are you alone? Want to sit with us?”

Just as Shen Maomao was about to refuse, she saw Hai Dongqing walk up behind Wu Mei with a tray, her face devoid of expression. Then, she moved past her, slammed the tray down on the table opposite Shen Maomao, and said in a cold voice, “This spot is taken.”

Wu Mei was startled, and Shen Maomao was also made very awkward by this display that was like a declaration of sovereignty. Fortunately, Wu Mei didn’t make an issue of it, simply offering a brief explanation before leaving.

Shen Maomao went to get her food. When she returned, she found that Hai Dongqing surprisingly hadn’t touched her chopsticks but had been waiting for her.

The two of them silently finished their dinner, then silently left the cafeteria and walked back.

The sky had already darkened. Shen Maomao’s mind raced with wild thoughts as she walked.

What’s wrong with this Hai Dongqing person? Why would she do something so easily misunderstood? Or am I overthinking it and getting the wrong idea? Or is it that my rotten eyes see everyone as a ji¹³?

In any case, Hai Dongqing must have had her own purpose for doing that. There were all sorts of strange and bizarre items in the game; maybe her current behavior was to fulfill the prerequisite for an item.

Shen Maomao made up her mind to keep her distance, her guard already raised.

The lights in the dormitory building were already on. The light in the first-floor lobby was yellowish and not bright enough, making it very dim.

Shen Maomao looked at the mirror over by the security office. At that moment, they were standing between two mirrors. The surfaces reflected her and Hai Dongqing’s shadows, layer after layer, frame within frame, stacked one on top of the other, making one dizzy.

Suddenly, Hai Dongqing clapped her on the shoulder, sending a jolt through her whole body and instantly waking her up.

“Don’t look for too long,” she said. “If you look too long, you might get lost in the mirror.”

Shen Maomao pulled her gaze away, not daring to look again, and quickly walked past the mirrors toward the stairs. The lights on the staircase were voice-activated and were now lighting up one by one with the sound of their footsteps.

Shen Maomao, with lingering fear in her heart, asked her softly, “Have you ever heard of the Droste effect?”

Hai Dongqing nodded. “The one from 《Inception》¹⁴?”

“Right. It refers to the infinite loop created when a part of an image is identical to the whole image. Those two mirrors just now formed a kind of Droste effect.” Shen Maomao’s tone shifted. “But this phenomenon can only occur when there is sufficient light. The light just now was completely insufficient to produce a Droste effect. I suspect there might really be an infinitely looping world inside the mirrors.”

“In any case, be careful with everything,” Hai Dongqing said with a sigh. “You really know a lot.”

Alarm bells were ringing wildly in Shen Maomao’s heart. As if she had persecutory delusions, she felt that Hai Dongqing was trying to harm her and quickly said, “I just got interested when I was watching the movie and looked it up. My knowledge is very shallow, it can only be used as a reference. It has no real substance.”

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