The Hand of Confession – Chapter 40

Volume 2: The Days of Playing with Monkeys in the Village

Beat the Monkey

Yangmei Tuqi¹ Shen Maomao

There was a burning sensation in her palm, but it didn’t hurt.

Shen Maomao flipped her wrist, wrapping the willow branch around her palm. The twig left bright red marks on her hand as it tightened, but at least it stopped her fall.

She had grabbed onto a willow tree stretching out from the cliff. In the height of summer, willow branches are extremely flexible and not so easily broken, but she saw the roots gradually being exposed from the soil due to the excessive force, realizing that this lifeline probably wouldn’t last much longer.

“Sister Lou, hurry! I can’t hold on much longer!”

Lou Jingmo painfully twisted her waist, holding the very end of the small knife, using all her strength to push it towards her leg.

With a “crack,” she heard the sound of her own shoulder dislocating. Fortunately, she couldn’t feel pain now, so she could still hold on.

The dislocation made it easier for her to move. She laboriously slid the small knife across her leg, cutting through skin and flesh, severing layer by layer the arms wrapped around her leg, as easily as cutting tofu.

The monster howled in pain, its arms stretching longer and longer, persistently wrapping around her.

Shen Maomao urgently said, “The tree is about to break!”

“I know!” Lou Jingmo gripped the knife handle tightly, aimed at the monster’s bright red eyes below her, exerted force with her hand, and threw the small knife.

The small knife accurately pierced the monster’s left eye. It let out an earth-shattering roar of fury. The arms wrapped around her uncoiled one by one, and it thrashed about wildly in pain, causing the ground to shake and the mountains to tremble.

Shen Maomao clearly felt the force trying to pull them down loosen. She immediately called out to Xiaolou, “Sister Lou, you grab onto me and climb up first! Can you do it?!”

“I’m fine!” Lou Jingmo hesitated a bit, “Can you hold on?”

Shen Maomao gritted her teeth, “Never mind whether I can hold on or not, if we don’t get up there soon, we’re both done for! Just be as quick as you can!”

Lou Jingmo realized she was right. The thing below had nearly struck her several times, which she had dodged by swaying. The two of them were hanging off the cliff edge, on the verge of falling, their lives hanging by a thread. They had to get to cliff quickly.

Just as she was about to maneuver her two arms to climb up, she suddenly came to her senses, remembering that her left shoulder had just dislocated and now had no response at all.

“F*ck…” As composed as she was, even she couldn’t help but want to curse at this moment. “My shoulder’s dislocated! I can’t climb up!”

It really seemed like heaven wanted them dead…

Shen Maomao cried out, “Then what do we do?!”

Lou Jingmo: “Let go!”

Shen Maomao held onto her tightly, refusing to let go: “Let go my ass! If something happens to you, how am I supposed to live?” Even though she knew it was because of the contract, these words still had a hint of undying devotion to them, making Lou Jingmo can’t help but smile: “Let go of me, I’ll try to fight that thing down there.”

Shen Maomao: “Can you do it?”

Lou Jingmo said with certainty: “I can. Maybe only by dealing with it can we escape from this dream world.”

“Ghosts and monsters in the game can’t be defeated” – this phrase was generally used to scare newcomers. To be precise, most couldn’t be defeated and would go berserk when provoked. The remaining small portion were those that had to be dealt with to advance the plot or to escape.

Seeing her confidence, Shen Maomao hesitantly let go with her right hand, and Lou Jingmo instantly fell.

She kept her eyes fixed on the scene below, only to see Lou Jingmo step on the monster’s shoulder with one foot, hanging in mid-air by its noodle-like arms, not falling further. Only then did she breathe a sigh of relief and start climbing up herself.

Soon she successfully reached the cliff, finding herself face to face with the monkeys that seemed to have drawn closer.

She tried taking a step forward, but the monkeys had no reaction. So she picked up a small stone and threw it in front of them, still nothing happened.

They looked like they were watching a clown in a performance, their monkey faces showing mocking and playful expressions.

Shen Maomao spat and thought to herself that when she becomes a big shot, she’d definitely “shark” all these demons and monsters.

After confirming that these monkeys would only inch forward a bit and not attack her, she turned and lay on the edge of the cliff to watch the battle below.

Lou Jingmo, with her foot on the monster’s shoulder, yanked her dagger out of its ear. There was no blood on the dagger, but it had some yellowish-green marks. The monster roared, swaying its body, its hands frantically grabbing to try and remove the little bug on its body. Lou Jingmo, like an agile bird, climbed onto its head and stabbed the dagger into its other eye.

Another earth-shaking tremor followed, with pebbles falling in a rustle. Shen Maomao quickly grabbed onto her old friend, the willow branch, pulling out even more of the tree’s roots.

She watched Lou Jingmo’s figure darting up and down without blinking, seeing her create one wound after another on the monster’s head while teetering on the brink of falling, her heart in her mouth.

Compared to losing one arm and losing both eyes, it seemed Lou Jingmo had the upper hand. But considering the current environment: the monster’s body was fixed in the cliff, so it didn’t have to worry about falling, and Lou Jingmo needed to stand on it to continue fighting, so even without eyes, it could still find her position. Meanwhile, Lou Jingmo only had one arm she could use freely. She not only had to use this hand to attack but also to keep her balance…

As time went on, the disadvantage became more apparent.

Seeing that Lou Jingmo was about to be overwhelmed, Shen Maomao standing above became anxious.

She picked up a large stone, stood at the edge of the cliff, and shouted, “Sister Lou, be careful!”

Lou Jingmo spared a glance at her and replied, “Throw it at its head!”

Shen Maomao obeyed and threw the stone. Her aim was quite good, hitting the monster’s head squarely.

Unfortunately, the impact wasn’t significant, but it was better than nothing.

She threw everything she could find on the cliff down below. When she finally ran out of things to throw, her gaze inevitably fixed on these monkeys.

There were six monkeys in total, less than half the height of a person, with slender limbs and bright red eyes. Apart from being a bit eerie, they seemed no different from humans.

Shen Maomao began to consider the possibility of dealing with these few creatures.

Perhaps the monkeys weren’t on the same side as the thing below. If she threw them down… would the two sides start to tear each other apart?

In reality, she could easily handle six monkeys, but considering the unscientific nature of the game world, she wasn’t sure what would happen if she went for it.

Lou Jingmo’s situation couldn’t wait for her to hesitate too much. She selected a thin willow branch, quickly tugged at its roots, and successfully broke off a small section. Then she tore off the leaves, gripped the root end to test the feel – it made a “swoosh swoosh” sound as it cut through the air.

When she was almost ready, she cautiously took a few steps forward, exerted force with her hand, and whipped at the tallest monkey in the middle.

“Crack—”

The sound of the whip cracking sounded the horn of attack.

The whip landed on the monkey’s head, causing it to let out an enraged shriek. The other monkeys instantly surrounded her, extending their sharp claws towards Shen Maomao’s body.

With the cliff behind her, she had little room to dodge and could only rely on her skills to tangle with the six monkeys.

Although they were quite humanized, they were still very different from humans. They didn’t know how to use schemes or tricks, only knowing how to confront head-on.

One monkey pierced its sharp claws into her body, tearing open a long gash. Shen Maomao felt a cool breeze blow into the wound, but it didn’t hurt at all.

Right, this was a dream, and in dreams, you don’t feel pain.

So she simply decided to trade wound for wound, and for a moment, she wasn’t at a disadvantage.

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Lou Jingmo wasn’t clear about the situation above. Although the thing below had a human shape, it wasn’t like a human at all, with strength that was frighteningly powerful. Her entire left arm was useless, and she had to use several small props just to fight this thing to a standstill.

Actually, she had some more powerful tools, but unless it was absolutely necessary, she didn’t plan to use them.

At the beginning of the fight, Shen Maomao was still throwing stones from above, but now for some reason, there was no sound. From her angle, she could only see the edge of the cliff, completely unaware of what was happening up there, which inevitably caused her some worry.

In that moment of distraction, two more hands sprouted from behind that thing, wrapping around her ankles again, lifting her into mid-air, and about to fling her down the mountain.

She tried her old trick, wanting to use her dagger to break free, but her weapon was slapped away.

At this critical moment, a loud shout suddenly came from the cliff: “Qiao li ma!² Take this!”

Accompanied by chaotic “squeaking” sounds, an unidentified flying object fell from the sky, crashing heavily onto the monster’s body.

Then came a second, a third, a fourth…

Lou Jingmo was dumbfounded, momentarily forgetting to resist.

The monster’s arms stretched out, wrapping around the falling monkeys, but it quickly realized that three arms weren’t enough to grab all the monkeys, so two more arms sprouted from behind.

Soon, the sixth monkey was also thrown down. The monster couldn’t sprout two more hands, so it looked at Lou Jingmo, then at the continuously falling monkey, and finally just threw Lou Jingmo away, reaching out to grab the monkey.

Shen Maomao, covered in blood, poked her head out from the top: “Sister Lou! Are you okay?!”

Lou Jingmo’s back slammed against the cliff, and her back slid down, scraping off who knows how much skin and flesh.

She conjured another dagger out of thin air, and stabbed it backwards into the steep cliff. After sliding down for a bit more, she cut a large gash in the mountain wall, finally stopping her descent, hanging in midair.

“What did you do?” She looked up and made eye contact with Shen Maomao.

Shen Maomao grinned, revealing a mouthful of small red teeth, looking even scarier than a ghost: “I took care of those stinky monkeys, let’s run!”

Lou Jingmo: “I can only go down, you run from the top by yourself.”

Shen Maomao: “I’m too scared QAQ!”

“Where’s the courage you had when you were beating up the monkeys?!”

“Monkeys aren’t ghosts QAQ!”

Lou Jingmo: “…” Feeling exasperated, like hating iron for not becoming steel.

She looked back at the monster’s roots growing into the cliff, pinpointed the location, then braced her feet against the cliff wall, pulled out the dagger, and accurately landed at the junction between it and the cliff. Gripping the dagger in reverse, she thrust it downward with all her might.

The dagger sank completely into its body but didn’t pierce through. The monster’s six hands were all grabbing monkeys, unable to stop Lou Jingmo’s actions. It could only watch angrily as she gripped the handle tightly and sliced downward, cutting open a large portion of its body from the cliff, leaving only a small section still connected. Yellow and green liquid splattered all over her…

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The author has something to say:

Shen Maomao knows judo! If I haven’t mentioned it before, I’ll mention it later _(:3」∠)_

Charge towards the thousand-word earnings list!! Whether we can get on it depends on these three days! Can you little darlings fatten up after these three days? Promise me!!

I’m so afraid you’ll think this article is 6000 words per day, but I’m not, I don’t have it, I can’t do it! This is to make up for the previous gap. During these few days off, I didn’t type for about five days due to some matters. After double updates for 5 days, I’ll probably return to 3000 words depending on the situation 【emits a noob’s cry】

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