Chapter 24 - Value of the Dead (1/2)

Dong Zhen's shop that also served as his home consisted of two floors. According to Kang's hypothesis, the ground floor was used to welcome visitors and conduct business while the upper one was where the merchant's bedroom was located along with that of his personal guard. But, since it seemed strange that the slaves had been placed in plain sight, it was probable that there was also a basement.

While praying that his companions were there, Kang led the group to the back of the building. There, a closed door led to inside the house. It was from there that the two guards with the crates had come. Thankfully, it wasn't locked, so they could get inside without problems.

Once inside, they looked around. They were in a kind of small corridor that served as a link with the back door.

In front of them, there was a door that led to the interior rooms. On the left instead, there was a small table with unlit lamps, and a little further up a staircase that descended downwards into what, at first sight, looked like a basement.

With silent steps, Sen went to the door in front of them and pulled out a small mirror. Then he silently opened the door as far as it took to insert the mirror. Through the reflection, he could see what was behind the door.

After looking sufficiently, he slowly closed the door and joined the others, communicating what he had discovered.

”There are two people inside, but they are just guards who are playing cards; the interior is instead a room to receive guests.”

Listening to this, Kang smiled slightly.

”I was right. The fat man is on the other floor with his guard; otherwise, the guards on the ground floor wouldn't dare to play during their turn. The group to relieve the guards present now will only arrive in the evening, so we still have some time. Let's continue.”

Everyone then headed towards the stairs leading to the basement, without having first taken a lamp each, which they lit with a fire striker. As the stairs creaked loudly, they had to walk slowly, taking one step at a time to avoid making loud noises.

When they came down, the sight they saw was somewhat disconcerting: there were many large metal cages, and in each of these, there were people who went from children to young adults, with the majority of them being women. Each of the confined people had worn-out clothes and lay on the ground with a defeated air as if they had resigned themselves to their fate.

While feeling angry inside, Kang began to inspect the cages one by one in search of his companions with his subordinates, hoping they were unharmed. Luckily, they had foreseen that there would be little light in the basement, otherwise searching in the dark without the aid of a lamp would have been very difficult.

In the meantime they were looking, Hei was attracted by a door that led to another room. Since he didn't know the four abducted belonging Kang's group, he preferred to explore the basement as he couldn't be useful in searching for them anyway.

When he pushed the door, he was greeted by a strong smell of blood mixed with pee and other recognizable scents. The room was completely dark and cold since no light source heated it.

Moving the lamp to direct the light, he noticed a blood-stained table with the corpse of a woman above it. Approaching, he examined the woman's body, seeing various signs of bruising. Since she didn't emit a lousy scent, Hei sensed that it hadn't been long since her death, at most one or two days, but since the temperature was low inside, it was difficult to determine if she hadn't been here for longer.

'Are you okay, Hei? Does the sight of this woman bother you?' Asked Bao Bei when she saw her son remaining thoughtful in front of the woman's body. It wasn't as if he had no experience seeing a corpse, yet there seemed to be something different this time.

'No, I'm fine. I was just asking myself something, that's all.' Hei answered as he continued to stare at the woman.

'Tell me. You know you can tell me everything.'

At that point, Hei was silent for a moment and then began to express his doubts.

'You always said that we shouldn't waste food, and when we kill any living being, we must honor it by not wasting their deaths. Furthermore, you have always said that the value of spirit beasts' life is the same as humans.'

'Yes, this is what I taught you from an early age.' Bao Bei confirmed while she was waiting for what doubt her son had. Xing and Ye were also carefully listening because they could sense that their big brother was particularly serious.

Hei, therefore, formulated his question,

'If this is true, why have we never eaten human flesh? Looking at this woman's body left behind in this way, I wondered why to waste such a resource. At the village, I learned that ordinary people have to suffer and struggle so hard to live and yet at the same time they burn the bodies or bury them in wooden crates, and they then kill other living beings when it would have been enough to eat the person who had just died.'

'Yeah, it's true. We, too, have asked ourselves several times the reason, right Xing?' Ye commented as Xing nodded her head while also adding to what his sister had said,

'Long ago, you took the bandit's leader body, and yet, even after all this time, you never gave us his flesh.'

Hearing her children say this, Bao Bei was struck. The fact that Ye and Xing were wondering about this wasn't at the end so surprising, given they were spirit beast. But what struck her the most was that it was Hei the first to ask that question. Thinking about it, she forgot to discuss this during their stay in Leaf Village as, excluding the bandits' attack, they had lived peacefully.

With a serene tone, she asked them.

'If I died, would you eat my carcass? If Lei Lei and Lei Bai had died, would you have eaten them?'

Hearing this, Hei seems horrified by this idea as well as his two little sisters. Eating their mother? That action was something they had never thought of in their heads. Their mother was their world. How could they think of eating her?

The same applies to Lei Lei and Lei Bai. They were indeed human, but they had been kind towards them, becoming important people for the three of them.

Sensing their mood, Bao Bei continued, 'The same goes for humans, it is unthinkable for them to eat their loved ones as well as strangers. In the human race, this taboo of not eating human flesh is firmly rooted. There are exceptions, but those that are discovered in doing so are considered monsters that must be annihilated and purified.

The reason I never made you eat human flesh is that, otherwise, they would have considered you like monsters, and I don't want that to happen. So, for whatever reason, you mustn't eat human flesh, all right?'

'Okay, mother, we will do as you wish.' Her three children answered in unison while agreeing to their mother as they had sworn long ago to respect her rules.

However, Hei continued on the subject by proposing something else.

”What if I give the people I kill, the bad ones who harm good people, as a meal for animals and other spirit beasts? Thus, the latter won't be forced to eat each other, and they will live longer. By avoiding wasting their bodies, those bad people will regain their value in their deaths by prolonging the life of other living creatures. It would be nice to live without having to extinguish other lives, but even if we can't do it, at least we can reduce the number of deaths, right?”

Watching his son smile innocently at this proposal, Bao Bei was stunned. Inside, she felt rather strange. She was proud of how Hei grew up, but at the same time, she couldn't help but wonder if it was good to have raised him that way. Had he been born into a human family, would he still have such thoughts?

Casting her insecurities away, Bao Bei gently stroked Hei's head and answered.