The Hand of Confession – Chapter 376

Volume 11: The Days of Traversing Through the Mirror

Filled

Second Playthrough Guide¹

Shen Maomao had a dumbstruck face: “‘Ah? But wouldn’t kicking it open be faster?”

A vein popped out on Lou Jingmo’s temple: “But now every ghost in the whole building knows you are here.”

Shen Maomao was not afraid at all: “Don’t I have you? Originally, my instance wasn’t this hard; it only became difficult because of you, so you have to take responsibility for this person.”

Lou Jingmo let out a long sigh, chanting “I chose this myself” three times in her heart to avoid vomiting blood from anger at the Bear Child² Shen. She seriously suspected this difficulty wasn’t added by the game, but added for her by a certain Shen.

But after all, she chose this Wife herself. Aside from spoiling her, there didn’t seem to be any other way.

As the dust settled, the situation inside the office was revealed to the group without reservation: tables and chairs were toppled in disorder, documents and papers were scattered all over the floor, some papers had dried blackish-red water stains on them, and the air was filled with an uncomfortable smell of rust.

The group filed in with their flashlights raised and began searching the room for clues.

Sharp-eyed Lou Jingmo spotted something, squatted down to pick up a piece of paper from the ground, and said, “It is a signed whistle-blowing letter, reporting Wu Huiling for cheating on an exam. The surname is Zhang, but the given name is obscured by blood.”

Shen Maomao said, “That is a bit ruthless. At our school, if you get caught cheating, you do not get a degree certificate. You went to college for nothing.”

Peng Xiaorui: “But if she herself did not cheat, reporting it would not be useful, right? Would the school not investigate?”

Shen Maomao: “They dared to use their real name, so they must have evidence. Let’s look around; there might be clues in the papers. I have a feeling this reporter is very important.”

The three of them started rummaging on the floor, working their way from the outside in, and soon ducked behind a row of desks further inside the office.

Da-da——

Da-da-da-da——

Just as they were seriously looking for clues, a rush of footsteps suddenly appeared in the corridor.

Aside from that, there was an increasingly loud sha-sha sound, like the noise a snake makes moving quickly over the ground.

Shen Maomao’s heart skipped a beat. She hurriedly turned off her flashlight, simultaneously tugged on Lou Jingmo’s clothes, and whispered, “Something is coming——”

The other two flashlights also went out, and the office returned to darkness.

After losing their vision, any sound in the dark became exceptionally distinct.

The footsteps became clearer and clearer, accompanied by a woman’s rapid breathing. Someone was running in the corridor separated from them by only a wall, but this office was pretty much at the end of the corridor, so——she had nowhere left to run.

Suddenly, the footsteps stopped, followed immediately by a woman’s weeping: “I was wrong… I really know I was wrong… I shouldn’t have treated you like that, please let me go…”

Shen Maomao frowned. She dimmed her phone brightness to the lowest setting, typed a message, and showed it to the other two: 【This voice sounds like I have heard it somewhere; is it someone we know?】

Lou Jingmo nodded, confirming her statement.

The woman outside was still crying, her mouth non-stop muttering words of mercy, saying sorry over and over again.

Pu-chi——

Then a scream resonated through the entire corridor, followed by the sound coming to an abrupt halt, returning to silence.

Shen Maomao shivered, her heart beating so fast the vibrations made her eardrums ache.

Sha-sha——

Sha-sha——

Something crawled into the office.

The three covered their mouths, crouching behind the office desks, slowing their breathing and pricking up their ears to listen to the movement outside.

Ga-zhi—— It sounded like a cabinet being pulled open.

Guang-dang—— Something was thrown into the cabinet.

Guang-dang guang-dang guang-dang—— The metal cabinet shook continuously.

Then the crawling person sound gradually faded away; it had not noticed them behind the desks.

The three did not act rashly and squatted there for another few minutes. Only when they could no longer hear any sound at all did they stand up and turn their flashlights back on.

Shen Maomao moved her numb legs and whispered, “It seems to have thrown something into the cabinet.”

Lou Jingmo: “It should be a corpse.”

Peng Xiaorui: “Should we open it and see?”

Shen Maomao hesitated for a second: “Open.”

There were many cabinets in the office, and Shen Maomao was not sure which one the thing had thrown the corpse into, but judging by the sound just now, it should be near the desks.

These desks were placed against the wall, forming a right angle with it. On the other side was a whole row of metal cabinets. The cabinets were divided into upper and lower tiers, none were locked, and under the cabinet doors, there were streaks of blood.

The three of them each stood in front of a cabinet and pulled the doors open together.

Because she had prepared herself mentally beforehand, Shen Maomao did not feel much fear when she saw the thing inside.

A corpse was stuffed inside the cabinet.

The reason for using the word “stuffed” was that the internal space of the cabinet was limited. To fit a person inside, one had to fully utilize all the space. That person could hardly be called a person anymore. It³ looked more like a complete, square block of meat. Pitch-black hair and bright red flesh were mixed together, squeezing the cabinet full to the brim; it looked a little disgusting.

So the sound of the cabinet shaking they heard earlier was that thing forcing the corpse inside.

She looked at the two people on the other sides, and the other two looked at her at the same time.

The three spoke almost at the exact same instant: “It is here!”

Shen Maomao was stunned for a moment: “You have one there too?”

Lou Jingmo: “Then open the bottom ones as well.”

Shen Maomao and Peng Xiaorui obediently squatted down to pull the cabinet doors, successively revealing shocked expressions.

Lou Jingmo said, “There are corpses in all the cabinets.”

They just did not know who the corpses were. After all, they were practically mashed into meat paste, so there was no way to see what their faces looked like.

Peng Xiaorui said faintly, “No wonder the documents were scattered all over the floor.”

It was purely to make room for the corpses.

Lou Jingmo looked at the corpses in the cabinets and suddenly reached out her hand to Peng Xiaorui: “Give me your board.”

“Ah?” Peng Xiaorui froze for a moment, then immediately offered it with both hands. “Oh, oh, here.”

Lou Jingmo used the board to poke at the meat blocks in the various cabinets, and finally said, “It is a single person.”

Shen Maomao: “???”

Lou Jingmo explained: “They are all female, hair length is about the same, look here—I found their intact pinky fingers, they all have marks from wearing rings.”

Peng Xiaorui: “How can one person stuff so many cabinets full?!”

Shen Maomao said, “Did we not also encounter another version of ourselves?!”

“Oh——!” Peng Xiaorui suddenly understood. “Your meaning is that the corpses here are this person’s different counterfeits?”

Lou Jingmo: “The one who came should be Wu Huiling.”

Shen Maomao pricked up her ears to listen for a while and added, “I also think it is her; after all, Zhan Xin is still crying in the restroom.”

Sorry Wu Huiling, but the person she hated enough to kill over and over again—was it the one who reported her for cheating?

The two big BOSSes of this game were Wu Huiling and Zhan Xin, and the mirror world was probably created from their resentment and hatred. To leave this instance, did they need to eliminate their hatred?

However, they searched through the pile of papers for a long time but still could not find any information related to the whistleblower.

It was already ten o’clock at night; they could go back through the mirror in another hour.

The group gave up searching and prepared to go see Zhan Xin first. No one had paid attention to her for so long that the child’s crying had become increasingly resentful.

The second playthrough was much more relaxed than the first. Shen Maomao took the medicine bottle from the place where she found it before. When she picked up the bottle, she heard that muffled sound effect of falling from a building again, though this time the one startled was Peng Xiaorui.

The three went downstairs and headed straight for the restroom.

Peng Xiaorui looked at the restroom door, feeling a bit bitter in her heart.

She had come in with Bai Lu, but Bai Lu never appeared; it was very likely she had been killed.

This time she walked into the restroom with the two of them and found a Zhan Xin crying out of breath in the last stall.

Shen Maomao knocked on the door: “Please ask, do you need help? Can I help you? Annyeonghaseyo? Daijoubu desu ka?”⁴

Zhan Xin inside the door said, “My medicine is lost… can you help me find it?”

Shen Maomao decided to banter with her: “I can help you find it, but why are you here?”

Zhan Xin: “There are many monsters outside… I am so scared… so I hid in here…”

Shen Maomao saw an opening and asked, “What kind of monsters?”

Zhan Xin answered every question: “They have no faces… and they took my medicine…”

“Are they bullying you?”

“No, they want to eat me!”

Shen Maomao frowned: “Man, then you just hide for now, I will go find the medicine for you.”

She turned back and motioned for the two to exit the restroom, whispering in the corridor: “She said those Egg Spirits⁵ would eat her… but what we saw in the dorms was clearly her eating people.”

Was Zhan Xin meek in the first half of the night and striking with a heavy fist in the second half?

Lou Jingmo: “The key should lie in whether we let her out or not.”

If the mirror world reflected reality, Zhan Xin very likely died here—her asthma medicine was snatched away after school, then she was locked in the bathroom, or was too scared to come out of the bathroom, and subsequently died from an asthma attack.

Shen Maomao asked, “Then do we give her the medicine or not?”

Peng Xiaorui said, “Better to give it, right? Since you already promised her.”

Lou Jingmo nodded: “She has a point.”

“But what if she drags us into a nested mirror loop like yesterday? If there are too many mirrors, I am afraid we won’t be able to tell if we are in a mirror or in reality.”

Lou Jingmo smiled: “How do you know that what we entered at the very beginning wasn’t a mirror?”

This single sentence made Shen Maomao’s entire scalp go numb: “No way, no way, is the game trying to play Inception⁶ with us? My IQ is very low, I won’t be able to figure it out.”

Peng Xiaorui nodded repeatedly: “I too, I too.”⁷

Lou Jingmo looked at Peng Xiaorui with disdain: “Tsk.”

Then she looked at Shen Maomao again and said, “It is fine, I am here. We will go back through the mirror the guard mentioned first. It is still ten-something minutes⁸ until eleven. We will wait until the time comes, give her the medicine, and then run.”

Peng Xiaorui: “!!” Double-standard Dog!⁹

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