Chapter 91: Human Flesh Slaughterhouse (1/2)

I took the lead and held Xiaotao’s hand and led her down into the basement. The steps had been soaked in water and moisture in the air for so many years that it was very slippery, so we had to be very cautious with our every step.

The walls of the basement were covered with old tiles. The original color was no longer visible because of the water stains. A lamp hung down from the ceiling. The light was on, but it flickered from time to time, probably due to unstable electricity.

The entire basement was divided into two by a plastic curtain. I sensed a strong bloody smell from behind the curtain—it was definitely human blood. Who would’ve thought that the real culprit had been in front of us the whole time!

Xiaotao pulled out her gun and examined the room cautiously. I reached out and pushed the curtain and walked further into the basement with Xiaotao. There was a row of rusty iron hooks hanging from the ceiling, like the ones that butchers used to hang meat. I noticed congealed blood on the hooks.

On a long table beneath those hooks, there was a long black plastic bag. Judging from the shape, there was probably a person inside. Blood dripped over the edge of the table, gathering into a small pool on the floor.

There was another table, and on it was a huge circular chopping board. The knife marks on it were so numerous and deep that it must’ve been used for a long time. It was sunken in the middle, and blood pooled into it.

A row of knives was next to the chopping board. There were big cleavers and strong steel deboning knives. The blades gleamed in the dim light of the basement—they’d been polished with oil!

On the floor, there was a hand-cranked meat grinder fixed into place with bolts. It was connected to a red washbasin that contained suspicious-looking meat.

This whole place made my skin crawl. I could feel the hairs on the nape of my neck stand up and I began to get cold sweat. There was no doubt about where I was—a human flesh slaughterhouse!

Xiaotao took out her phone and dialed the number for the police station. Before the call got through, I heard some movements from behind us. It sounded like footsteps. We both looked back at the same time.

A tall, dark shadow appeared behind the curtain, and it was holding a long wooden staff in its hand!

Before we could react, the staff swept across the air from behind the curtain. Xiaotao screamed. Her phone was thrown out from her hand and landed somewhere in the dark. Her forehead was bleeding.

Xiaotao immediately took a step back and steadied herself. She held the gun with both hands.

“Put the weapon down!” she shouted. “Otherwise, I’ll shoot!”

The curtain was slowly raised by the thick staff. It was more than a meter long, so it could very easily be used as a weapon. Once the curtain had been pulled away, Shopkeeper Tang’s face was revealed.

Or at least it looked like Shopkeeper Tang. But for some reason, he seemed like a different person. The expression on his face didn’t show any anger or distress whatsoever. Rather, he was smiling slightly, his mouth was slobbering, and his eyes were staring at us as a hungry man would when he saw food.

I wanted to kick myself for not noticing when Shopkeeper Tang appeared behind us. As I regretfully found out later, we were so intrigued by the human flesh slaughterhouse that we didn’t carefully investigate the other parts of the basement. In fact, Shopkeeper Tang had been hiding behind some bamboo baskets filled with potatoes and cabbage in another corner of the basement all along, and because of that he could block the exit, preventing us from escaping.

“Meat! Meat is coming right into my hands!” Shopkeeper Tang muttered to himself. It recognizably his voice, and yet it sounded like someone else entirely.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“I am the one you’ve been looking for—Ma Jinhuo!”

We were shocked. Shopkeeper Tang was Ma Jinhuo? Did that mean that he had a split personality?

It’s not that I didn’t think of the possibility that the murderer had a split personality, but I had always assumed that Ma Jinhuo had a mental illness. Who would’ve thought that the Ma Jinhuo that we had searched for all over didn’t exist at all—he was just Shopkeeper Tang’s other personality!

“Nonsense!” yelled Xiaotao. “You’re Shopkeeper Tang! I order you to lay down your weapon! Don’t mess around; this place has been surrounded by the police!”

I immediately understood what she was doing. The phone that was hit by a stick and flew into the corner had been connected to the police station. Xiaotao deliberately shouted so that the police at headquarters could hear what was happening and rush here as soon as possible.

But Shopkeeper Tang paid no heed to her words at all. He got closer to us step by step, and that crazed expression of a hungry man on his face became clearer and clearer to me.

In his eyes, we were probably just walking meat, no different at all from pigs and cows. He did not have any sense of morality or conscience. He killed people in order to turn their flesh into buns. We were just food to him, and that thought made me shudder!

Shopkeeper Tang suddenly raised the staff in his hand. Xiaotao fired her gun immediately, at the same time the staff hit her hand and the gun flew out of her grasp. She only managed to hit Shopkeeper Tang’s left shoulder.