Chapter 46 Beef, Pork, and Chicken...
Wang Zheng's matter was temporarily resolved. It was almost Thursday, and Ling Qiu planned to visit the processing plant where the Temple had sent her to work. She wore clothes that allowed her to move around easily, hid the red armband under her sleeve, and then took a car to a processing plant located on the border between the suburbs and the city center.
This is a canning factory, divided into two parts: the front one is a vegetarian canning factory, and the back one is a meat canning factory.
Ling Qiu had seen the canned meat sold in supermarkets. All meat products were made according to this standard. Meat was just meat, a general term, and there was no longer any distinction between beef and chicken. However, there was beef-flavored meat and chicken-flavored meat.
Everyone accepted it well.
Ling Qiu's job today was to press minced meat into patties using a machine and then pack them into cans. These were all mechanical operations, and she only needed to control a few buttons, which were all very simple.
She was thinking about how to sneak away to another place.
She negotiated with the Cyrus inside her body: "I'll leave for a while, can you continue operating for me?"
"...Are you really using me as a wish-granting machine?" Cyrus said. "Find someone to cover for you, just say you have a stomachache."
Ling Qiu looked around, “But everyone is busy with their own work and can’t spare a moment to help me.”
The operating workshops are all enclosed and cannot see each other. You can't stay in one workshop for too long, otherwise an alarm will go off. Ling Qiu calculated that the maximum time you can stay in one workshop is five minutes.
“Even if I have a stomachache, they can’t cover my shift!” Ling Qiu said.
“I said, just find someone to cover your shift, do you understand what I mean?” Cyrus emphasized.
Ling Qiu paused for a moment, then said, "You mean I can find anyone, and it doesn't matter whether they agree or not, right?"
"A clever little girl."
With Cyrus's assurance, Ling Qiu confidently walked out of the workshop, intending to find some manager or random person. Then, she saw a cleaner cleaning at the entrance of the restroom.
"Hello." Ling Qiu strode forward. "I have a stomachache and need to go to the toilet, but there's no one in workshop number 5. Could you cover for me for a while?"
The cleaner first gave her a strange look, then her eyes slowly changed, becoming cloudy and dull. She then put down her work and turned to walk towards workshop number 5.
Done!
Ling Qiu immediately scurried towards the exit; she needed to start from the source to find out what the meat was actually made of.
However, just as she passed Workshop 1, a supervisor in a suit walked towards her. Ling Qiu suddenly turned around, trying to find a place to hide, but the workshop was too spacious, and there was nowhere to hide except for a ventilation opening in the corner.
"Quickly! Cyrus! Open this quickly!" Ling Qiu shouted.
Cyrus hesitated for a moment, but did as she was told. What she really wanted to say was that she could control this supervisor, and she didn't need to panic so much.
But seeing how hurried and flustered she was, he found it quite adorable, and Cyrus curled the corners of his lips without saying a word.
Ling Qiu quickly jumped in.
"Ah!" Ling Qiu cried out briefly as she fell in, her voice so soft that it went unnoticed by anyone.
Ling Qiu was sliding down the metal pipe on the slope.
"What's going on! Wasn't this a flat area? How did it suddenly turn into a slope!" Ling Qiu exclaimed in a panic. More than not knowing where she was going to slide to, she was afraid that she wouldn't be able to get out.
"It looks like a secret passage," Cyrus commented. "A lucky accident."
Ling Qiu tried her best to steady herself, holding her head. The pipe was straight the whole time. She slid all the way to the bottom and then flew out, landing hard on the sandbags below.
Ling Qiu quickly got up. These sandbags were very sturdy and must have been there for a long time, as if they had been prepared to catch anyone who fell.
What attracted Ling Qiu's attention even more was this place, which resembled an underground palace.
The gray-brown brick walls are decorated with strange patterns at intervals, resembling some kind of totem. The underground lighting is slightly dim, and ancient oil lamps hang on the walls, somewhat like the underground palaces beneath the ancient Egyptian pyramids.
Ling Qiu stood there for a moment, looked at the two directions to the left and right, and then randomly chose one and walked slowly.
"Wow, Cyrus, what do you think this place is? There's an underground palace beneath the factory. This doesn't look cyberpunk at all." Ling Qiu even had a strange sense of temporal displacement, as if she had really traveled through time.
“Hmm…this place looks very old, Lingqiu,” Cyrus said. “Roughly estimated, it should be about a hundred years old.”
"Do you think this looks like the palace of an evil god? Do you think that guy from Noah Corporation might live here?" Ling Qiu wondered. It was the first time she had seen such a building, and she was extremely curious. Perhaps because Cyrus was with her, her curiosity outweighed her fear.
“This place does indeed resemble the palace of an evil god,” Cyrus confirmed her guess, “but it may not necessarily have been built for the evil god; it’s more like an underground communication point for the believers.”
He added, "We don't usually like being confined to one place."
It was a long corridor, but for some reason, it reminded Ling Qiu of the long operating workshop on the ground. She felt that the operating workshop must be right above her head.
After walking for a while, Ling Qiu saw three doors, or rather, three holes.
It was very dark inside, without a single ray of light, and we had no idea where it led.
"Which path should we choose, Cyrus?" Ling Qiu asked.
"My intuition tells me that these paths eventually lead to the same place. The reason there are three entrances is probably because each entrance leads to a different place. We have plenty of time, so we can take our time to explore."
Ling Qiu glanced at her digital watch; it was only 9 a.m.
She chose the middle door and went inside. It was pitch black inside. If it weren't for Cyrus being there, allowing her to see clearly even in complete darkness, she probably would have had to feel her way along the walls.
Then she saw something.
Or rather, it was a skeleton, a stark white skeleton, sitting perfectly still on a stone pier, like some kind of work of art displayed there.
Ling Qiu gasped, instinctively covering her mouth and nose. She had seen before that such skeletons could harbor a large number of bacteria...
Ling Qiu slowly approached and then discovered that the skeleton was very clean, without a single impurity or even a trace of blood or other blemishes. It was just very white, as if it had been specially treated.
Ling Qiu wondered, could this be fake? Just something placed here as decoration? Or perhaps it really is an artifact...
However, she dismissed this idea after carefully examining the skeleton. In some places, there were many unevenly distributed knife marks on the skeleton, messy but not obvious. Artworks would not be like that.
"Wow... Cyrus." Ling Qiu's scalp tingled. This was the first time in her life she had ever seen such a skeleton. The skeleton had two black, hollow eyes, as if it were staring at her.
"Alright, stop looking at it and keep moving forward." Cyrus noticed that Ling Qiu was scared, so he could only comfort her in a low voice, "Nothing here can hurt you."
Ling Qiu looked away and continued forward.
After walking for a while, she saw several iron gates with mottled rust, but the carvings on the gates were very detailed, making it impossible to guess what they were used for.
Ling Qiu pressed her ear against one of the iron gates to see if she could hear anything, and then she heard breathing.
Or rather, it's similar to snoring, but not as loud; it's more like heavy breathing, as if something inside is sleeping.
There are actually living things in here.
"You want to see what's inside?" Cyrus's voice rose at the end. "Beg me, and I'll let you see."
Ling Qiu said without hesitation, "Please, Bobo!"
"..." That's really boring.
Ling Qiu could feel a hand gently covering her eyes, and then she could see the scene behind the iron gate.
They weren't wild animals, they were people, slovenly and filthy people, locked up inside like wild animals.
Ling Qiu went in to observe. One room contained a man, another a woman, and a third contained children, most of whom were asleep. Only one little boy sat blankly in the corner, his face expressionless.
Ling Qiu was stunned. Wasn't this illegal detention?
Ling Qiu then discovered that there were words on these iron gates, a string of strange symbols that looked very much like words.
“It’s Greek,” Cyrus told her.
He explained them to her one by one: “Men - beef, women - pork, children - chicken.”
Ling Qiu pursed her lips. What did that mean?
A terrifying thought suddenly rose in her mind, and this chilling feeling made her scalp tingle, as if goosebumps were about to rise all over her body. Ling Qiu quickly turned around and left the place.
After exiting the middle doorway, Ling Qiu took a deep breath and entered another one, which was as dark as ever. She continued walking forward, being cautious and careful, trying not to make a sound.
In this quiet state, her hearing was exceptionally sharp. Ling Qiu heard footsteps coming from ahead, and there was more than one person. She quickly hid behind a stone block to her left and peered through a small gap.
There were three people wearing dark red cloaks, and they were holding something in their hands. It was made of metal, and Ling Qiu couldn't see it clearly, but he could vaguely make out that it was something sharp.
After the three left, Ling Qiu continued walking forward. She couldn't help but think that it was fortunate that Cyrus was with her. If she had been exploring here alone today, she would have been a thousand times more nervous than she is now.
In the distance, she seemed to see some light. Ling Qiu hid behind the jagged rocks and moved forward little by little. Then the light began to grow larger, and she saw several people.
People, people wearing dark red cloaks, gathered together in a circle.
Others had their throats pierced by sharp iron hooks, hanging in mid-air like raw meat in a butcher shop, swaying precariously.
Those people are all dead.
The cultists were gathered together, chanting, and the ethereal yet eerie sounds whispered into Ling Qiu's ears.
She didn't look any further, turned around and left, then entered the last cave entrance.
This entrance was quite different from the other two. The other two maintained the style of ancient architecture, but this last one looked like it had been newly renovated. It was a cold cellar, surrounded by dark metal walls, and the floor was filled with huge freezers, neatly arranged in rectangular shapes, which looked just like coffins.
Ling Qiu pursed her lips, then slowly stepped forward. She mentally prepared herself for a while before opening a freezer, which contained a pile of meat.
A blurry mass of meat; she couldn't even tell what kind of meat it was.
Just as she was about to check out the other freezers, she heard footsteps behind her. Ling Qiu found a dark corner where the light didn't reach and squatted down.
Two people entered, but this time they weren't wearing cloaks. Their steps were heavy, and Ling Qiu had to lower her head to see that they were dragging someone else with them.
She squinted and observed carefully. When she saw the person being dragged, she paused, realizing he looked familiar; she felt like she had seen him somewhere before.
"Wasn't he very enthusiastic? How come he resolved it so quickly?" one of them said.
"If I talk too much, who knows if I might accidentally leak some information."
After listening to the two men, Ling Qiu suddenly remembered that this man was one of the people who had been chatting with everyone at the table that day. He had told everyone how to distribute flyers more effectively.
Ling Qiu froze as the shadow of a knife appeared on the ground, followed by a series of rhythmic slashes.
"Go and turn on the chainsaw, we'll need it soon."
Ling Qiu sat stiffly in the corner, her eyes glazed over.
It's human. The canned meat produced in this processing plant, the synthetic meat consumed throughout Mante City, the meat that makes free people sick, the synthetic meat that caused Aunt Joe's daughter to die—it contains human components.
When the sharp sound of the chainsaw rang out, Cyrus laughed.
"I was wondering why the steak I ordered at the hospital last time had a strange sense of familiarity."
Ling Qiu squatted on the ground, supporting herself with one hand, and felt like gagging several times. She could almost smell the nauseating and sticky smell in the air.
It's human flesh. No wonder only cyborgs can eat it, because their organs have been mechanically modified, so of course they won't react.
The humans locked behind the iron gate, the humans strung together and hung up like pigs, and the ear-piercing sound of chainsaws all stimulated Ling Qiu's nerves. She collapsed and tightly hugged her head, trying to suppress this disgusting feeling, but it was no use. She could still smell the disgusting smell of meat in the air.
"Alright, alright, good boy." Cyrus's voice appeared, seemingly able to drown out all other noises, and he gently patted Ling Qiu's back with one hand.
“Let’s go home now,” He said softly.
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