Chapter 20: Which Link Went Wrong?
“Sand—Sand—!”
The sound of heavy objects dragging echoed in the darkness, mixed with the sound of a viscous liquid falling.
Li Weiyi coldly gripped the corpse’s ankle, dragging it down the empty corridor, soon arriving in front of a dark opening.
It resembled an old-fashioned garbage passage often seen in traditional buildings, but the opening was considerably larger, enough to accommodate a several hundred-kilogram pig sliding down.
He paused in front of the entrance, memories of that night he was dragged deep into the South Suburb Slaughterhouse by iron hooks flashing through his mind, his heartbeat uncontrollably accelerating, and his breath becoming somewhat erratic.
——
That night, when Li Weiyi woke up, he found himself trapped in a cage.
It was a steel cage welded together, resembling the iron cages used for large dogs at animal markets, confining an adult within, unable even to turn around.
The cage was covered in black cloth, and it was pitch dark inside, the air thick with an indescribable stench and the smell of mold.
After a few seconds of daze, he began to panic, yelling and screaming, forcing himself to endure the pain of his shoulder wound as he struck the steel bars of the cage.
Then.
With a tremor of the cage, the waterproof cloth covering it slipped away.
He saw a vast space filled with countless cages stacked together like Tetris blocks.
A ghostly light shining from somewhere illuminated the cages, outlining the deformed figures inside.
Staring at the scene before him, Li Weiyi’s mind went blank, his heartbeat thrumming loudly in his ears, banging like drums.
At that moment, he suddenly heard a thin, sharp whisper from behind him, as if someone was deliberately squeezing their throat to speak.
“You’re here too?”
Li Weiyi’s pupils contracted slightly, and he quickly turned around to look, spotting another person locked in a cage like him.
It was an extremely obese individual, hairless, making it hard to distinguish their gender, their white, fat body piled together under the dim light, resembling an inflated balloon, almost filling the entire cage, glistening with oil.
If it weren’t for the presence of a human face, Li Weiyi wouldn’t dare believe that this was human.
Gazing at the creature, Li Weiyi swallowed hard, suppressing his fear as he asked, “What did you just say? What do you mean?”
As soon as his words fell, there was a commotion from the adjacent cage, and faces bloated from excess fat rose silently from the darkness like ghosts.
Their minds were clearly not normal, with bulging eyes looking vacant and blank, their facial muscles appearing uncontrollable, displaying exaggerated expressions of crying, laughing, curiosity, or disgust and vigilance.
They all spoke the same phrase, continuously repeating it, countless voices converging as if trying to drive him insane.
“You’re here too?”
“You’re here too?”
“…”
The legends are true!
At the South Suburb Slaughterhouse, there are actually urban legends breeding humans!
I have now become one of them!
Li Weiyi broke out in a cold sweat, his thoughts in disarray, instinctively pulling back. However, as he moved, his back crashed against the cold steel bars.
“You’re here too?”
That thin and eerie whisper rang in his ears, the murky warmth of breath hitting him from behind, and he whipped around, his face nearly pressed against that oily, fat creature’s grotesque face.
“Ah—! You, don’t come near!”
He yelled, collapsing to the ground.
Panic and intense activity exacerbated his injuries, bl**d oozing from the wound, and soon his consciousness began to blur, feeling as if his soul was leaving his body, turning light and weightless.
In his daze, he heard heavy footsteps approaching from afar.
Massive figures, towering two or three stories high, moved slowly in the dark, doing some incomprehensible actions, waving their pale, large hands and shaking their incredibly huge, hairy heads.
Those horribly ugly heads bore a resemblance to humans, yet featured many pig-like characteristics…
Then, a pale, large hand grabbed him, passing through the dim space and throwing him heavily onto a dining table.
Chunks of bloody meat, a cold, enormous long table, stoneware stained dark red with bl**d.
Four deformed, ghastly urban legends sat around, moving in strange postures, tearing flesh and splitting bones, fighting over the meat.
The table was in disarray, with severed limbs, chunks of flesh, and piles of eyeballs pickled in black goo, rising and falling.
“Creak—Creak—!”
The sound of chewed muscle and bones conveyed a pure and malicious appetite, as if their existence was solely for endless eating and growing.
The immense fear stemming from primal biological instincts tormented Li Weiyi’s nerves. Just as he was about to descend into madness, the four urban legends stopped eating and pushed a stone basin in front of him.
The basin was filled with putrid bl**d and flesh, mixed with an indescribable viscous substance.
Li Weiyi stared blankly at those urban legends; they gazed back at him silently, as if waiting for something, peculiar smiles on their faces.
In that moment, he suddenly understood their intention: they wanted to see him consume that disgusting offering for their amusement.
Just like humans feeding their pets…
——
“Thud—!”
Li Weiyi threw Li Daqiang’s body into the vertical opening, which fell for a long while before a muffled sound was faintly heard.
“As agreed, I’ve delivered the first offering to you.”
He spoke toward the dark opening, and the next moment, his shoulder wound began to throb lightly, followed by a howl from within the opening.
The howl was unpleasant, difficult to discern whether it was anger, pain, annoyance, or despair, not even able to tell if it belonged to a human.
Accompanied by the howl, strange noises came from the vertically descending opening, like flesh crawling and writhing, followed by a hairy, oversized face, its huge, vacant eyes staring intently at Li Weiyi.
It was hard to imagine how such a colossal body could crawl through the narrow tunnel.
Li Weiyi frowned, a look of disgust flashing in the hidden depths of his eyes under the brim of his hat, but he quickly forced a smile.
Seeing his smile, the hairy face slowly retreated back into the darkness, crawling deeper into the tunnel, while Li Weiyi’s expression became increasingly grim, madness flickering in his eyes.
Those inhumane tortures and abuses.
That food, a blend of mold and decaying flesh, unworthy of being called food.
Those terrifying faces with vacant, cold gazes and mocking, sinister smiles.
All felt like parasites, digging into his memory, wanting their eradication could only come from their destruction.
Once everything fell silent, Li Weiyi took out his phone from his pocket and sent a message to the man.
[The review has already begun, I’ve killed the first person, the others may be difficult, when are you coming?]
After a moment, an account with the Black Sun Totem avatar replied briefly.
[Soon.]
The unknown man encountered by Li Weiyi after his narrow escape from the South Suburb Slaughterhouse claimed he could help him seek revenge against the urban legends, against the urban legends in the South Suburb Slaughterhouse.
The power he demonstrated was quite convincing.
Li Weiyi thought as he subconsciously brushed his shoulder wrapped in thick gauze.
——
Regarding the matter of infiltrating the South Suburb Slaughterhouse to undergo the urban legends chat group review, Jiang Li initially intended to find a relatively safe spot, read some books, space out, and k*ll time by playing a few rounds of Mahjong on her phone.
However, after seeing a registration book that subtly revealed important information absent from the Siye Society’s files, she changed her mind on the spot.
She needed to investigate the formation factors of the urban legends’ gathering place in the South Suburb Slaughterhouse, fundamentally identifying the root of the issues present here.
The Siye Society could not entirely eliminate urban legends gathering places like Shihhekou Middle School and the South Suburb Slaughterhouse. Besides the series of issues related to reconstruction and demolition of buildings, there was an equally vital reason: the formation factors of those urban legends gathering places were not understood.
If these formation factors could be identified, it would be possible to strike them from the root, as with Mu Se, incapacitating them so they wouldn’t be able to wreak havoc for a long time.
However…
Why did the agents responsible for the investigations previously fail to discover such important clues, like the registration book in the feed formulation room?
Or, if they did discover it, why didn’t they continue the investigation based on that lead?
Could it be that Li Xuan was right, that there was an insider in the Siye Society?
Jiang Li felt an uneasy feeling brewing within her; perhaps after this matter was concluded, she should return to examine who was in charge of the South Suburb Slaughterhouse cases a few years ago.
Lost in thought, Jiang Li unknowingly left the feed formulation room and, upon regaining her senses, found herself in front of the office building of the South Suburb Slaughterhouse.
The dark, towering building loomed like a solitary grave guardian, its dark, deep windows serving as its eyes.
Jiang Li gazed at the building, her eyes narrowing slightly as she approached the front door, lightly slicing the shut door lock with the tip of her kn*fe, severing it in half.
If the information in the feed formulation room’s registration book could be neglected or concealed, what was possibly more important may lie deep within the office building’s archives and work days, perhaps revealing something even more crucial.
Thinking this, Jiang Li stepped into the building, but after a few steps, she suddenly felt something was off, pausing her step and retreating a few paces.
“Is it an illusion?”
She sensed that from the moment she stepped into the building, a pair of eyes was locked onto her.
The eyes, slowly following her footsteps, turned their heads, moving inch by inch as if shadowing her.
Upon realizing this, Jiang Li immediately expanded her spirit perception to the maximum, her expression turning serious.
Her spirit perception was **interfered with**, disrupted by a slowly flowing yet highly concentrated foul spirit energy. Originally able to cover most of the South Suburb Slaughterhouse, her spirit perception could only extend ten meters away.
This meant that she had been targeted by one or several high-level urban legends, yet she didn’t know why they hadn’t revealed themselves.
This made her a bit unhappy.
She wasn’t afraid of urban legends confronting her head-on; if she won, that was good, but if she lost, well, if the urban legends were that strong, then d*ath was the worst that could happen.
What she detested most were those sneaky urban legends.
Laughing at her from behind with their rotten smiles while she looked in the mirror.
Extending dirty hands over her head with their fingers scratching at her hair when she bowed her head to wash.
Sneaking up beside her when she’s asleep, only to wake up in the middle of the night to find one glaring at her with bl**d-filled eyes, grinning foolishly…
“Ugh—!”
Jiang Li spat softly in annoyance, then, holding her kn*fe casually over her shoulder, strode confidently toward the depths of the building, looking like a delinquent girl going out to commit violence.
She passed through the first-floor corridor without entering the rooms on either side, following the guide map she saw at the entrance, heading toward the third-floor data room.
As she reached the second floor, upon seeing its scene, she suddenly halted.
The second floor corridor was stained with large amounts of dark red ooze, appearing filthy, as if someone had dragged a struggling living creature through, and upon closer inspection, there were numerous handprints and footprints scattered over the floor, walls, windows, and security door.
Could this be the result of an urban legend attacking the slaughterhouse employees years ago? Jiang Li tilted her head, retracting her gaze and continuing upward.
Just as she stepped onto the staircase to the third floor, the tightly shut security doors along the second-floor corridor suddenly opened silently. Figures wearing uniforms emerged from those rooms, which had been closed for an unknown length of time.
They didn’t head upstairs but wandered about the corridor, appearing as if the bustling scene of the previous day at the South Suburb Slaughterhouse had returned.
Uncertain whether it was an impression, Jiang Li felt that the third-floor corridor seemed much longer than the second floor’s.
The corridor walls were painted white, with a rusty iron door visible every few meters, each door adorned with yellowing seals, indicating they had been untouched for some years.
The office experimental building had been sealed for many years, logically suggesting it should have been long unoccupied. Yet strangely, the dust was minimal, as if someone had periodically come to clean.
According to the guide map by the front door, the third floor was filled with storage for data, which naturally included various specimens required for research.
In reality, storing textual documents did not take up much space at all, with seven or eight rooms on the entire third floor devoted to holding specimens.
Through the corridor windows, she could vaguely see the dark rooms filled with shelves, and those shelves, which should have been emptied long ago, were still lined with jars and vials.
When Jiang Li saw what was stored in those jars, she paused slightly.
Those glass jars filled with orange-red liquid contained not only pig organ specimens, but also numerous human organ specimens. More bizarrely, some of the twisted and deformed specimens were seemingly stitched together from both human and pig organs.
Jiang Li extended her spirit perception into those rooms, scanning over the specimens, ensuring there were no spirit energy fluctuations before continuing onward.
However, she soon halted, stopping in front of a rusty metal door.
That door was welded in place with steel strips and deliberately secured with several locks, the locks etched with solidified sealing spell formulas.
Next to the door, a shaky metal sign hung, reading “Pig King Specimen Exhibition Room” in large letters.
Jiang Li stared at that door, her gaze deepening.
She sensed a spirit energy fluctuation behind that door…
——
Meanwhile, on the other side, Zhang Dexian was entrenched in a fierce battle within the breeding grounds.
His action strategy upon entering the South Suburb Slaughterhouse was entirely the opposite of Jiang Li’s. The moment he set foot on this evil land, he headed straight for the breeding grounds, the source of the strongest evil aura.
In his view, capturing the leader first meant that as long as he could take down the most formidable urban legend right upfront, the upcoming hours would be easy.
However.
He somewhat underestimated the number of urban legends within the South Suburb Slaughterhouse and somewhat overestimated his strength.
He burst into the breeding grounds and encountered a group of urban legends transporting something, stripping off his coat and rushing in, spending nearly half an hour forcing himself into a dead end, landing in a desperate situation.
“Ha—Ha—!”
In a corner of the breeding grounds, Zhang Dexian leaned against the hard, cold wall, breathing heavily, his muscled and taut bare chest rising and falling with his breaths.
The copper rings that had once glimmered on his thick arms had all dulled, covered in various nicks and chips.
In front of him stood a group of figures wearing breeding ground uniforms, watching him like hawks.
Some of them looked somewhat human, although skeletal, completely hairless, their surfaces coated in filthy black ooze that seemed almost alive, squirming beneath their tattered uniforms. They clutched rusty iron hooks or butcher knives full of chips.
In the darkness, pairs of bl**d-red eyes stared at Zhang Dexian, emitting an array of eerie low growls.
Though they only ranged from D-level to C-level low-ranking urban legends, their overwhelming number, in the hundreds or thousands, was daunting.
“Gah—!”
Suddenly, an ear-piercing scream echoed in the breeding grounds, and amidst the shrieks, the ghostly figures closed in, the stench overwhelming.
Zhang Dexian seemed resigned to accept his fate, straightening his back, clenching his fists, and shouting at the approaching urban legends.
“Come on! You sons of bitches! A true warrior pushes forward even in eternal darkness!”
“Secret Technique: Fearless Lion!”
As he roared, channeling the little spirit energy left within him, the wall behind him suddenly crumbled.
With a loud “bang,” a graceful figure burst through the falling dust, shouting, “Miaomiao Sauce, I’ve come to save you!!!” swinging a kn*fe and unexpectedly decapitating several urban legends in the chaos.
Lu Xianbei had rushed over upon hearing the sounds of battle. As she broke through the wall, she was taken aback by Zhang Dexian’s muscular physique, shiny as if covered in olive oil, resembling a bodybuilding champion.
What the hell? What’s going on? This is™ not what I had prepared for!
Her original plan had been perfect.
Suspected Jiang Li’s Miaomiao Sauce was in danger; she would come swooping down, effortlessly smashing all the urban legends and saving the day.
Suspected Jiang Li’s Miaomiao Sauce would then be safe, her favorability would increase, and Lu Xianbei could acquire a beautiful cosplay girl and possibly even win the favor of her superior.
It was supposed to go this way! But what the hell is this before me? What link went wrong? Lu Xianbei wondered.
