Chapter 44 (Meat)
In short, Ling Qiu successfully joined the Temple without any barriers. She even received a free red armband and a schedule that listed the Temple's Sunday services and the times of some activities, allowing her to attend whenever she wanted. However, everyone was required to attend the Sunday services.
Ling Qiu verbally agreed, but after carefully reviewing the event schedule, she discovered that in addition to handing out flyers and recruiting people, these individuals would also work in factories, mostly the kind of processing plants that require intensive manpower but not much mental effort, such as canned food processing and beverage processing.
On the way back, Ling Qiu asked Aunt Qiao, "Have you participated in all of these activities?"
Aunt Qiao shook her head: "I still have to run my shop, where would I find the time? I just go every Sunday and see if I have a chance to be chosen by God to fulfill my wish."
"Have you never been selected before?" Ling Qiu asked.
"No, not exactly. I was selected on my very first day of joining."
Ling Qiu thought, "This is exactly the kind of tactic they use. Every newcomer gets a chance to be chosen to fulfill their wish. Once they've tasted the sweetness of success, they'll naturally become devoted to the cult."
"What is your wish?" Ling Qiu asked curiously. After all, in her opinion, Aunt Qiao didn't seem like the kind of person who was short of money or loved money. So what kind of wish could that evil god grant?
Aunt Qiao was silent for a while, then suddenly said, "I saw my daughter."
Ling Qiu also fell silent. She had never heard Aunt Qiao mention that she had a daughter. She had always thought that Aunt Qiao was the kind of single woman who had never married.
Aunt Qiao continued, "When she was five years old, she passed away suddenly due to an acute allergic reaction. It took me a long time to get over it."
Ling Qiu didn't know what to say. This was supposed to be a very heavy topic, but Aunt Qiao brought it up in a very relaxed way.
Ling Qiu asked, "Where is the child's father?"
Aunt Qiao shrugged. "After my daughter died, we got divorced, and I still don't know where he went."
"What was the allergic reaction?" Ling Qiu asked. "Allergies are generally unlikely to cause death. Did the hospital give any explanation at the time?"
"Meat," Aunt Qiao said.
Ling Qiu's hand, which was holding the timetable, suddenly paused.
"...Is your daughter a free person?" Ling Qiu asked.
"No, why do you ask that?"
"Because the free people can't eat the meat from Mante City. After eating it, they all feel unwell. Some feel dizzy and nauseous, some have allergies, and some have diarrhea."
Aunt Qiao remained silent for a long while, and Ling Qiu clearly noticed that this time, when she was silent, even her expression became serious.
“But she’s not like that.” Aunt Qiao said after a long pause. “On her fifth birthday, I had just given her a lung transplant, and there was no rejection reaction at all… The doctor told me that this situation is very rare, and very few people have such a severe allergy to meat.”
After a long pause, she murmured, "I'm just too unlucky."
Ling Qiu took a deep breath, and then she thought of something: "Did your daughter eat meat for the first time when she was five years old? Has she never had any allergic symptoms before? If so, then she must be allergic to that particular meat."
“No,” Aunt Qiao said. “Didn’t you know? Children under five are forbidden from eating meat in Mante City.”
Ling Qiuzhen didn't know this. There was no such concept when she was a child. As she grew up, she knew very little about children and rarely had the opportunity to come into contact with people related to children.
"Why?" Ling Qiu asked.
"It's said that because it's synthetic meat, the ingredients are more complex, and there's a risk of damaging children's digestive tracts," Aunt Qiao said. "But we can understand, after all, most meat these days is synthetic, and there are fewer and fewer foods we can eat."
Yes, because of the air quality in Mante, it is difficult for animals to survive. It is impossible for humans to equip livestock raised for meat with prosthetic lungs, so pollution does exist.
The official explanation was acceptable to everyone, and they expressed their understanding.
After all, Aunt Qiao's daughter's death was just an accident. So many children ate it and were fine, so why did her daughter have an accident?
This is just a coincidence; you can't blame anyone else.
Is that really the case?
Ling Qiu lowered her eyes and looked at the symbol representing the cult temple on the timetable.
“We’ve arrived, Lingqiu,” Aunt Qiao said. “If you need to go to church, you can come to my shop and I’ll drive you there, but I don’t have time for other activities.”
"Okay, thank you, Aunt Qiao." Ling Qiu got out of her red car and walked back home.
"Do you think there's something wrong with the meat? Cyrus, last time we went to the hospital, you only tasted one bite and then stopped eating. Could you tell what kind of meat it was?"
“My tongue hasn’t been upgraded to that level yet, my dear,” His voice was tinged with a hint of teasing. “How much human food do you think I’ve eaten? I don’t usually need to eat.”
Ling Qiu couldn't help but laugh out loud. Ah, so it was only after being with her that Cyrus started eating three meals a day on time?
Ling Qiu was about to take the elevator home when a white, wriggling figure caught her attention just as she was about to press the button.
Ling Qiu looked over, and then was stunned.
It was a man with slightly long hair, lying on the ground, feeling around and searching for something. He searched silently and very slowly. Things were piled up in a mess in this area, and if you didn't look carefully, you might not even notice him.
As Ling Qiu looked at it, she felt a strange sense of familiarity, and it was this familiarity that made her feel a chill run down her spine.
She crouched down and examined him closely. Then, as the man continued to search, she saw his face.
Sure enough, it was Wang Zheng.
Ling Qiu hesitated, then stopped. Wang Zheng's two eyeballs were empty, deep red holes oozing blood. He was groping around on the ground, looking for... his prosthetic eyes.
She stood there stunned for a long time, finding the scene before her quite terrifying, yet the person was indeed her neighbor of many years, that kind old man, Wang Zheng.
Ling Qiu's teeth chattered slightly. She hesitated for a moment, then deliberately lowered her voice and changed her tone, asking, "Hey, what are you looking for?"
Wang Zheng paused. His first reaction was to bury his face, very low, and then he whispered quickly, "I will find it... I will find it myself, no need for you to worry."
Ling Qiu's gaze swept around, and then, about ten meters behind Wang Zheng, he saw two prosthetic eyes lying on the ground.
Could he have been bullied by someone? Did he encounter cyborgs who gouged out his prosthetic eye for their own amusement? Or was it workplace bullying?
Countless possibilities flashed through Ling Qiu's mind. She could only walk over, wrap the two prosthetic eyes in a tissue, and return them to Wang Zheng.
"Is this your stuff?" Ling Qiu asked. "Or are those bastards around here playing marbles again?"
Upon hearing the word "marbles," Wang Zheng's eyes lit up, and he quickly reached out to take them, saying, "Thank you, thank you, they're mine! They're mine!"
Then Ling Qiu saw mottled, dried bloodstains in his upward-facing palm and between his fingers.
He dug it out himself.
Ling Qiu slowly swallowed and looked up at it.
"Thank you! Thank you! You're such a kind person!" Wang Zheng kept thanking them.
Ling Qiu strode into the elevator, a chill running down her spine.
After the elevator arrived, Ling Qiu stood at the bottom of the stairs for a while before asking Cyrus, "Can you help him restore his normal vision?"
Cyrus: "Not now."
Ah, yes, Cyrus's power has been sealed.
She quickly opened the door and locked it from the inside. She could feel her heart still pounding in her chest, and the scene she had just witnessed kept replaying in her mind.
Why would Wang Zheng gouge out his own eyes? Didn't he spend over ten thousand yuan on that? Besides, reconnecting the nerves in the prosthetic eye requires going back to the original prosthetic doctor, but how can he go back now that he can't see anything?
In the moment of stunned silence, Cyrus had already separated from her.
"Are you frightened?" He asked.
Ling Qiu pursed her lips and said, "I've discovered that this world is more terrifying than I imagined."
“In fact, the essence of mankind is that of beasts.” As he walked into the kitchen, he said, “The only difference is that some people actually believed the lies of the ruling civilization, while others have always firmly believed that they are beasts.”
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