**Chapter 39: Meat Ban**
The flickering candlelight illuminated the dark, narrow tunnel in a rosy hue. I could tell this was a man-made hole, carved out with a shovel. The walls were rough and irregular, twisting downwards for about four or five meters, and in the faint light, I could see the exit in plain view.
This was definitely a shabby cellar…
I slid swiftly deeper into the tunnel, quickly reaching the darker exit. I stood up, dusting off my backside and taking a deep breath of the stale, foul air. I furrowed my brow, holding the candle up, ready to investigate further, when suddenly, a whooshing sound sliced through the air from my left.
Sure enough, it was here… hmph.
**Smack!**
Without even glancing, I grabbed the arm that swung toward me, locking the wrist in a painful grip. The woman squealed like a distressed bird: “Ahhhh!!!”
**Whoosh—**
In the next instant, a sharp ice shard shot out from behind me. As my gaze shifted to the left, the ice whizzed past my ear, and with a “thud,” it pierced through the woman’s arm I was holding, making her weapon clatter to the ground. Her scream intensified, sounding like a pig being slaughtered, sending a twinge of pain through my eardrums.
“Shut up.”
I kicked her, making her double over, clutching her lower abdomen as she stumbled back two steps, crashing into the dirt wall with a “bang.” She dropped to her knees, her shouting abruptly cut off, replaced by violent retching.
“What’s wrong? What’s wrong!”
At that moment, Barry rushed into the tunnel, panicking for a couple of beats before spotting the woman on the ground: “Uh… is this the runaway maid?”
“Yep, that’s her.”
I passed the candle back to Barry, signaling him to hold it behind me, then crouched in front of the woman. After she *finally* stopped vomiting, I yanked her hair, pulling her head up to reveal a tear-streaked, filthy, and painfully contorted face.
“Hi there.”
I greeted her with a forced grin that probably looked more like a grimace: “Looks like you were hiding out here.”
Her face lit up in the flame’s glow—yup, she was the maid from the tavern.
She wasn’t completely dimwitted…
She deliberately left the kitchen’s back door wide open, trying to trick me into thinking she escaped that way… heh, she almost had me fooled.
“What is this place?”
I asked casually, but the woman, clearly unable to put together coherent words at the moment, only trembled like a leaf. I hadn’t even kicked her that hard, but she seemed shaken, probably injured inside. She curled up on the floor like a shrimp, completely oblivious to the bl**d oozing from her arm, her eyes rolling back slightly, features twisted, and her consciousness fading.
Seeing her like this, I shrugged and let go. I stood up and told Barry, “You keep an eye on her,” before wandering deeper into the cellar. My gaze wandered over the dim space until I found a few more shadows huddled together in the corner.
This cellar was actually pretty tiny—one candle practically lit the whole place. The moment I stepped out of the narrow opening, I noticed the few black figures in the corner. Now, as I approached, I could finally see their faces in the dim light. There were four girls in total: three alive and one dead. All were shackled with foot restraints, squished together against the wall.
They didn’t say a word. As I walked closer, they instinctively shrank a bit more together, not showing much fear, but rather a blank, dazed look on their faces. The three living girls all looked up at me, while the one dead girl leaned against the older one among them.
The corpse looked a bit stiff and couldn’t have died more than a day ago, still in a rigor mortis state. But both legs and one arm were gone, as if hacked off with a kn*fe, and there wasn’t much bl**d—probably cut off after d*ath… ah.
So, that’s where the meat from the butcher’s table came from.
I began to connect the dots.
I understood what kind of twisted operation this tavern was running, and from the moment I entered, the maid must have had some plan to use me.
These girls seemed to be kept here by the maid and those men. They looked young; the smallest was probably about my age, all skin and bones, but relatively well-kept. Their hair was tidy, no clear dirt on them, just wearing thin burlap cloaks that barely covered them, exposing more skin than should be visible, but they didn’t seem to care.
They weren’t bad-looking, one of them was even quite pretty, but their eyes lacked any sparkle. Even illuminated by the candlelight, there was no sign of brightness in their pupils.
*Meat Ban…*
That phrase instinctively popped into my head.
“You all… *cough cough.*”
My throat felt a bit scratchy, so I coughed forcefully and squatted down to check one girl’s restraints. When my hand touched her calf, she merely shuddered, showing no other reaction, her dazed gaze fixed on me as if she didn’t understand what I was about to do.
“How long have you been locked up here?”
I asked, but after a moment of silence, no one replied, which didn’t bother me too much. I leaned down, rummaging through my bag, and pulled out the *Dragon Claw*. The white blade gleamed as I raised it high, my eyes flashing a crimson glow. The loud *clang clang clang* echoed as I severed all the restraints binding the girls.
Standing back up, I tucked *Dragon Claw* at my waist and gently said, “Get up.”
But they remained huddled in the corner, staring at me blankly.
“Uh, um, this girl seems to have fainted…”
I heard Barry calling out from the side, but I ignored him and continued speaking to the three girls: “You’re free now, you understand? You can leave this place and no longer be forced to do what you don’t want to. You can live well out there… I mean, you can all stand up, right?”
Once those words left my mouth, they finally reacted, although it wasn’t exactly dramatic. They exchanged hesitant glances, then slowly began to rise from the corner.
Once up, they stood dumbly in front of me, three pairs of dull eyes fixed on me, waiting for my next instruction.
“Ugh…”
I rubbed my forehead, letting out a soft sigh.
The last time I witnessed something like this was back in the Fortress of Silence…
Suddenly, memories of the anguished cries and sobs that once echoed in the rain flooded my mind, and their faces appeared again, clear as day.
“Let’s go.”
I shook my head, pointing toward the cellar’s opening: “Climb out that way, leave this tavern, run far away, and never come back.”
As I turned to head back to Barry, I suddenly heard one of the girls speak.
“If we leave, we’ll starve…”
I spun back around.
Under the dim yellow light, I saw the girl who had been holding the corpse stand between the other two girls, pulling them back slightly. She looked at me, a hint of defiance shimmering in her eyes—this was the first clear emotion I had sensed from her since entering the cellar.
“Here, there’s food.”
