The Hand of Confession – Chapter 44

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

Crystal Clear

If only you could always stay this gentle

Old Zhang, resembling a giant caterpillar, kept writhing on the floor, causing the wardrobe to resound with. His mouth emitted “zhi zhi zhi”, sounding like a monkey’s cry.

The noise was loud, yet it didn’t disturb the Zhang family downstairs.

In the game world, there’s no need to respect the elderly or cherish the young. Besides, these two monkeys wanted to kill them. She merely dislocated their arms, which could be reattached anyway.

Thinking this way, Shen Maomao felt no guilt at all.

“Sister Lou, can you restrain that bear child (slang for misbehaving kids) and stop him from moving around?” she asked.

Lou Jingmo replied, “I can.”

Shen Maomao rubbed her hands together, eager to try: “Then hold him down, tell me where he is, and I’ll dislocate all of that little brat’s limbs!”

Lou Jingmo: “…Why do I feel like you’re looking forward to this?”

Shen Maomao laughed awkwardly: “No way! I’m just a bit sleepy and want to go to bed early.”

Lou Jingmo didn’t answer. After a while, a series of “ping ping pang pang” came from the darkness. Then she said, “I’ve got him. He’s at the head of the bed, on my side where I sleep.”

Shen Maomao carefully made her way over, holding onto the bed’s edge and listening to Lou Jingmo’s voice to pinpoint the exact location. She stretched her hands forward to avoid bumping into things. Before she could take two steps, something suddenly kicked her hand.

“Aren’t you just courting death?!” Shen Maomao’s hands moved at lightning speed, instantly grabbing the little devil’s retracting ankle. With a twist of her hands and a burst of strength, there was a “ka-cha” as she dislocated his ankle.

The child, who had been silent until now, let out a strange cry and struggled fiercely.

His knife had been taken by Lou Jingmo and thrown on the bed. For Lou Jingmo, an unarmed little boy was like a sitting duck (literally “delivering vegetables”, meaning an easy target). His struggles were like small splashes in a vast ocean, easily suppressed by her.

Shen Maomao treated the grandfather and grandson equally, swiftly dislocating all four of the boy’s limbs, leaving the pair lying together, swaying helplessly.

Crisis averted, Lou Jingmo fumbled to turn on the light. In the dim light, the big and small, old and young pair were rolling back and forth on the ground, unable to get up. The scene was somewhat eerie, yet also slightly comical.

Job done.

Shen Maomao dusted off her hands and spat at the two: “What’s with this midnight ambush? Don’t you know your grandaunt (a respectful yet assertive way to refer to oneself) is a 10th-dan in judo (highest rank)?”

Lou Jingmo saw her smug little expression and felt like laughing but held it back.

She thought Shen Maomao’s skill was quite useful. Although it couldn’t fight ghosts, at least it could beat up people with ghostly intentions (idiom meaning to harbor evil intentions).

No matter what kind of demons or monsters these two monkeys were, as long as they were still in human bodies, they could be dealt with using standard beat-down procedures.

After the satisfying ordeal, Shen Maomao felt a bit worried: “What should we do with these two?”

Lou Jingmo calmly said: “Ignore them.”

Shen Maomao: “Leave them here?”

Lou Jingmo nodded.

“Can you sleep like this?”

Lou Jingmo hesitated: “How about we gag them?”

Shen Maomao’s eyes lit up. She took a pillowcase from the bed, smiling like a demon as she approached the grandfather-grandson pair. Then, amid their angry and terrified expressions, she gagged both of them and used a bedsheet to tie them together.

Lou Jingmo felt she might have awakened some formidable qualities in Shen Maomao. She picked up the camera to photograph the pair, but her sharp eyes caught a glimpse of red on Shen Maomao’s arm. She couldn’t help but step forward and grab her arm: “You’re hurt?”

Shen Maomao was nonchalant: “Huh? I’d forgotten about it until you mentioned it. That old guy was pretty vicious.”

It was a long wound, though not deep. It just looked scary.

Lou Jingmo immediately went to her backpack to find some medicine.

Coming to the backwoods (a colloquial term for a remote rural area) for photography, it was impossible not to bring anything. To fit their character settings, the players’ backpacks contained some common medicines, insect repellent, disinfectant alcohol, cotton swabs, and medical gauze, which came in handy at this moment.

She gently applied alcohol to Shen Maomao’s arm using a cotton swab. The sting of the alcohol made Shen Maomao involuntarily suck in a sharp breath.

Lou Jingmo couldn’t help but lighten her touch even more, carefully cleaning the wound.

In the dim light, her eyelashes cast two long shadows on her face, giving her a unique gentleness.

Shen Maomao murmured: “Sister Lou, if only you could always be this gentle- ow ow ow!”

Lou Jingmo smiled: “Sorry, I’m a bit nervous.”

Shen Maomao: “…” As if anyone would believe that!

After that, Shen Maomao didn’t dare to say much more. She was afraid Lou Jingmo might accidentally wreck her arm.

After a simple bandaging, the two lay back down on the bed. Accompanied by the faint “mm mm” sounds from the grandfather-grandson pair, they carefreely went back to sleep until daybreak.

(LP: LMAO, if it was me, I wouldn’t be able to sleep at all!)

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The next morning, Shen Maomao was woken up early by Lou Jingmo. Still groggy, she reattached the limbs of the grandfather-grandson pair who had fallen asleep back-to-back.

The old man woke up first, feeling the pain. He seemed to have returned to normal, looking at the pillowcase in his mouth and the bedsheet on his body with utter confusion. He couldn’t figure out why he was there.

Lou Jingmo, however, felt that this behavior was abnormal.

Old Zhang’s soul had already become a monkey. Would the Monkey God be merciful enough to switch him back during the day?

That seemed unlikely. The most probable explanation was that he… or rather, it had become accustomed to pretending to be human, even believing that it should be human.

Shen Maomao untied him and removed the pillowcase without much explanation, then turned to reattach the limbs of the little devil.

Old Zhang stood up shakily, feeling pain in every joint. He pointed a trembling finger at Shen Maomao, stuttering: “You… you… what are you doing to my great-grandson?!”

Shen Maomao, not about to let him take the moral high ground, immediately bowed her head and pretended to wipe away non-existent tears: “Wuwuwu, you shameless old man! Sneaking into the room of two young girls in the middle of the night and getting handsy with us! How can we ever face people again? We might as well die! Wuwuwu!”

Old Zhang: “??” Who exactly got handsy with whom? His great-grandson was still tied up!

The commotion upstairs attracted attention from downstairs. Hurried footsteps could be heard on the stairs, along with Auntie Zhang’s loud voice: “What’s going on? What happened?”

Shen Maomao quickly yanked the bedsheet off the little devil and tossed it on the bed. She immediately sat down on the floor, leaning against the bed leg, and started crying: “Wuwuwu, I’m so scared!”

Lou Jingmo wasn’t as dramatic. She could only sit beside her, expressionlessly patting her back, feeling unmoved and even slightly amused.

When Auntie Zhang and Zhang Aiguo’s wife pushed open the door, this was the scene they encountered.

Shen Maomao added to her performance: “Wuwuwu, I don’t want to live anymore!”

Auntie Zhang was still confused: “What… what’s going on here?”

Lou Jingmo, unsure of what script Shen Maomao was following, remained silent.

Zhang Aiguo’s wife picked up the still-unconscious child and quietly stepped back without a word.

Old Zhang was also bewildered: “I didn’t…”

Shen Maomao rubbed her eyes red, looked up at Auntie Zhang, and said tearfully: “Auntie! They suddenly broke into our room last night and tried to kill us! Look at the knives on the wardrobe and table! They brought those in yesterday! The wound on my arm was caused by them!”

Old Zhang: “?!” That’s not what you said earlier!

The two Zhang women looked where she pointed. They saw a fruit knife about ten centimeters long stuck into the wardrobe, its tip half-buried, showing the force with which it had been thrown. Not far away, on the table, a cleaver was also embedded, its blade sunk in several inches.

Auntie Zhang was incredulous: “This… one of them is so old, and the other is just a little thing… How could they have such strength?”

Shen Maomao wept bitterly, shouting in apparent despair: “Are you suggesting I brought them up here and then stabbed myself?!”

Indeed, that seemed unlikely.

This was a difficult situation. Auntie Zhang, supporting her father-in-law, hesitated: “How about this, auntie will take you to the town clinic for a check-up?”

Shen Maomao shook her head, wiping her tears: “No need to take us to the hospital, but auntie, you’d better take the child and the old man to a big hospital. When they broke in last night, they were imitating monkey calls (literally “learning to call like a monkey”). We were scared half to death.”

The faces of the two women instantly turned grim. Zhang Aiguo’s wife’s eyes even revealed a hint of fear. She gently patted the little devil’s face to wake him up, then put the eye-rubbing child on the ground to stand by himself, refusing to hold him anymore.

Lou Jingmo finally understood the purpose of this performance. It was simply to remind the Zhang family that the old man and his great-grandson were no longer normal.

But judging from the two women’s expressions, they didn’t seem entirely unaware of this situation?

Now, that was interesting.

Auntie Zhang forced a laugh: “Haha, I guess the little brat was just being mischievous, deliberately imitating monkey calls to scare people. The old man has a bit of senile dementia, so he must have heard this naughty child and followed along.”

Shen Maomao noticed the child glance at Auntie Zhang with an unusually cold look, as if staring at an enemy. When Auntie Zhang turned her head away, he reverted to a child’s innocent and bewildered expression.

“Well… girls, why don’t you tidy up and come down for breakfast? I’ll have your Uncle Zhang come up later to remove the knives…”

Lou Jingmo nodded: “Thank you for the trouble.”

Auntie Zhang waved her hand: “It’s no trouble at all. The food is ready, come down quickly. We’ll take you to the village chief’s house to get clothes later!”

With that, she carefully supported the old man and led him down the stairs. Zhang Aiguo’s wife also gave the child a gentle push, and all four went downstairs.

From a distance, they could still hear the old man defending himself: “I… I don’t know either! What’s going on?!”

Shen Maomao wiped her face and exchanged a glance with Lou Jingmo.

Lou Jingmo said: “The Zhang family very likely knows about these two being abnormal.”

Shen Maomao: “I feel the same way. When did they find out?”

“Not sure,” Lou Jingmo said confidently, “But they definitely didn’t know when we first arrived.” The most likely explanation was that sudden meeting the village chief called…

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The author has something to say:

Looking at the increasingly thin manuscript box, the author’s 36D chest (a humorous way to emphasize the author’s distress) twinged with pain.

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