Chapter 41: Eating Meat (Part 13) - The Village Chief

Long before the famine struck, the deity descended amidst falling embers, sealed within a well by chains woven from vines, existing as a secret for a long time.

The maiden chosen by the deity often sat by the well, and from then on, the secret spread throughout the countryside. The villagers regarded her as a divine maiden, having her preside over sacrifices year after year to pray for bountiful harvests.

The maiden grew into a woman, and the fires of war from the outside world eventually reached Su Family Village. Countless families were torn apart and ruined, and her own son and daughter perished in the conflict.

People prayed to gods and Buddhas, but their cries went unanswered; the deity showed no pity to mortals. Thus, the tradition of offering sacrifices and the legend of the deity beneath the well were buried in the dust, and people ceased to believe in gods.

Later still, the woman grew old, relying on her grandson and granddaughter for mutual comfort, making a meager living by doing odd jobs for others.

Dynasties changed, and the authorities above forbade the people below from believing in deities. The elderly woman received an education and learned that there were no gods in the world.

From then on, Su Family Village no longer had sacrifices or divine maidens, only an ordinary old woman known as "Mother Su."

When Mother Su had leisure time, she often went to sit by the well, muttering to herself about the trivial matters of daily life and the changes in the outside world.

She had grown old and fallen behind the times; everyone around her wore unfamiliar faces, and only this well remained as she had always known it.

Yet the deity never responded.

At last, she came to believe that there truly were no gods in this world.

Days passed like this, one after another, until an unprecedented famine swept across the land.

From time to time, the old, the weak, the women, and the children starved to death in the fields; from time to time, buried corpses were dug up. Springs and ponds dried up, tree bark and grass roots were thoroughly scavenged, and the earth itself seemed to die along with the villages.

Faced with survival, all the pretensions of courtesy and modesty were stripped away. The naked evil of human nature and the instinct for self-preservation ran wild like thorns and brambles.

With nothing to eat, human beings could become food. A gang of ruffians banded together, wantonly slaughtering the elderly and children in households lacking able-bodied men.

They set their sights on Mother Su, bursting through her door brandishing kitchen knives. Driven to a dead end, Mother Su could only embrace Ah Xi and leap into the well.

How she wished there were gods in this world! She wanted to beg the deity to save Ah Xi, just as it had saved her once upon a time.

"That old hag jumped into the well holding her grandson. Bad luck, she'd rather drown than slice off some meat for us to eat," a young voice said with bitter resentment.

"There's no water in the well; go down and pull her up," an aged voice commanded. "At least it's two pieces of meat, and since they threw themselves down, they can't blame us."

The courtyard was crowded with faceless figures. Two figures—one old, one young—sat in the center of the crowd, exchanging words back and forth.

The young man left for a moment and then returned, his voice filled with unease: "Village Chief, that old hag and her grandson are gone. There's only a man down in the well. Though clearly dead, he looks as if he's still alive, so breathtakingly handsome that he's like... a god."

"What gods or ghosts are there in this new era? Watch out for re-education!" the village chief berated harshly. "Bring whatever is down in the well up to me right now. If we can't get a fire going today, I'll chop off your arm!"

The young man led a group of people away and returned to the courtyard carrying a male corpse.

It was a corpse impossible to describe with worldly words, appearing as though it had been dead for a long time, yet simultaneously as if it were still alive, merely fast asleep.

His long hair fell loosely, his skin was fair, and his blood-red robes were embroidered with gilded patterns that possessed no seams, much like the celestial garments of legend.

The very instant they laid eyes upon him, everyone—both believers and non-believers alike—shared a single, unbidden thought:

He is a god.

He was so beautiful, so breathtakingly beautiful, that a single glance was enough to inspire a wellspring of devotion and love, awakening a violent craving to consume him.

Like an angel fallen into hell, the demons could not wait to tear the feathers from his wings and stick them onto themselves to show off.

They knew such beauty could not last, yet they longed to possess it, driving themselves to devour him desperately, extravagantly filling their stomachs with such precious fare.

They imagined the instantaneous pressing against their stomach walls, the illusory sense of fulfillment born from melting together, and could not help but shed tears of excitement.

Yet this era had no gods, nor was it allowed to have them.

Without authority or reverence, dissent meant overthrow, and hunger meant eating—everyone had survived this way.

Therefore, they had no need to think, no need to shrink back, and no need to hesitate.

"Let's eat Him," they said with one voice.

...

"Fuck!" Allen suddenly shouted from the middle of the group.

Everyone's steps faltered as they turned their gazes toward the source of the sound.

Allen raised a hand to wipe his face, holding up his right hand stained with some unidentifiable substance: "Take a look at this, guys. Something dropped onto my face just now, and it's all sticky."

"You're always jumping at shadows, just trying to scare people, aren't you?" the tattooed woman complained with dissatisfaction, though she still leaned in to take a look. "I don't know what it is, looks like snot. Gross."

Zhou Yilin stood beside the tattooed woman, wrinkling her nose. "Could it... could this be the divine meat we're looking for? I... I don't want to eat this..."

Qi Si snapped out of his trance and looked into the distance. He could clearly see that what was smeared on Allen's hand was a blob of flesh-colored slime, resembling meat paste scraped from a living creature with an oily texture, currently writhing and flowing slowly across the skin as if possessed of a life of its own.

Allen spasmed without warning, his gaze fixed blankly on the slime upon his hand, an expression of obsession welling up on his face.

He muttered "so fragrant," slowly raising his hand to his lips and extending his tongue to lick the back of his hand smeared with the slime, as though it were some rare delicacy.

Anyone with eyes could see his state was wrong. Zhao Feng, who stood closest to him, reacted first and slapped him across the face. Even so, the tip of Allen's tongue still brushed against a few droplets of the slime.

His eyes flickered between lucidity and daze as he guarded his right hand as if protecting food, sticking out his tongue and preparing to take another lick.

"What kind of crazy nerve has gotten into you?" Zhao Feng cursed, landing several more slaps. The crisp sound of snapping "slaps" was exceptionally harsh in the silence.

Stunned by the blows, Allen finally regained clarity in his eyes. The muscles on his cheeks twitched violently, and his right shoulder jerked as he shook the slime off onto the ground.

The blob of slime hit the floor and, as if finding a foothold, sprouted dense tiny tentacles from its underside, slowly crawling away into the shadows.

Finally realizing what he had just licked, Allen bent over and retched dryly, howling loudly: "Oh God! What on earth is this thing?"

No one could answer him.

Qi Si raised his head to look at the fabric canopy serving as a roof, suddenly realizing that the reason no light filtered into the courtyard wasn't due to the thickness of the cloth itself, but rather because another layer of slime coated the thin fabric, acting as a screen.

The other players also raised their heads to look around.

The canopy overhead had somehow torn open a few holes, and blobs of flesh-colored slime were dripping downward. Fortunately, the pace was slow, allowing the players to dodge before being stained.

The slime continued to move after hitting the ground, gradually linking together into a patch. It was safe to say that within five minutes, there wouldn't be a single spot left to step on in the entire courtyard.

Worse still, a rich fragrance drifted through the air like wisps of silk, teasing the players' sense of smell and stirring an appetite from the depths of their stomachs.

Shattered bellies of bells rang in their ears, sounding much like the dance music of sacrificial rituals.

The auditory hallucinations grew increasingly vivid. Fantasy and reality blurred into one, and Qi Si saw blazing fires.

Golden vines, flowers, and abundant fruits bloomed upon the pristine sacrificial altar. Faceless figures draped in immaculate shrouds danced and grooved on the ground, resembling the frenzied prelude to a Dionysian banquet.

Torrential rain and scorching sunlight appeared simultaneously in the heavens and earth. Someone stepped on skulls and skeletons to climb the tower step by step, plunging from the high skies the very next instant, their flesh and blood shattering into glittering meteors...

"Move faster! Grab the divine meat and let's go!"

Yang Yundong kicked open the door of the main house, holding his broadsword horizontally before him, but his footsteps halted abruptly on the threshold, and he even took half a step back by reflex.

Right in the center of the bed inside the main house sprawled a gigantic tumor the size of a man and a half. Slime resembling melting candle tears streamed across its surface, and blood-red, striped sinews twitched rhythmically like a breathing lung.

Slime overflowed from the flesh onto the surface of the bed, dripping down the edges like a waterfall, transforming into countless winding streams on the floor that crawled up the door pillars and spread all the way to the fabric ceiling.

Those patches of slime the players had seen earlier were clearly mere extensions of the tumor's limbs!

A pungent aroma of meat suddenly exploded, filling the surrounding air entirely. The hallucinations grew so thick they completely blocked all vision belonging to reality.

People were like wine-besotted fruit flies, drowning drunkenly in the goblets of the gods.

Allen dropped flat onto the ground, sticking out his tongue like a camel that had just finished a desert journey, licking the slime on the floor with wet "splacking" sounds.

Half of his face turned translucent, sprouting dense clusters of tiny granulation buds, each transforming into the shape of a tongue, sucking at the ground in unison.

The tattooed woman clutched a handful of slime to her mouth, her expression shifting between clarity and trance; Zhang Licai puckered his lips, about to kiss a pillar;

Zhao Feng continuously slapped himself in the face, barely managing to suppress his appetite; Zhu Ling closed her eyes, her lips trembling as she recited calming incantations; Zhou Yilin took off her coat to cover her head, tying a dead knot with the sleeves.

The skinny man who claimed to be squeamish about blood saw he couldn't hold on any longer, slashed his left arm with a knife, stared for a moment at the blood endlessly welling from the wound, and successfully passed out.

Qi Si swallowed hard, narrowing his eyes as he looked toward the main house.

Embedded in the top of the tumor was a blurred, aged face, its nose and mouth merged into the slime, leaving only two eyes staring unblinkingly at the doorway.

It kept uttering murmurs, sounding like ventriloquism or groaning: "We killed the god, we are guilty... Go to the ancestral hall and worship to redeem your sins...

"You ate the god, you are also guilty... You ate me, and together we shall suffer retribution..."

This thing must be the village chief.

Qi Si raised a hand to press his temples, trying his best to engrave the village chief's murmurs into his mind. His remaining rationality told him that these were crucial clues.

Yet his vision remained hazy, his thoughts drifting in utter chaos. Specific words and phrases fell into the ocean of his mind, refusing to settle and kicking up unsettling waves.

He licked his lips, suddenly struck by a powerful thought: The village chief's meat must be delicious, so delicious, he wanted so badly to take a bite...