"Lihua, I heard her. The girl said she was hungry, so let's eat this."
Indeed, Meng Shaode came in carrying a piece of meat as large as a washbasin, still bloody.
"Dad, did you pick this up?"
When Ah Jiu asked, Meng Shaode finally reacted.
He looked at the dried meat in his hand, "Yes, why would there be a piece of meat at the foot of the mountain?"
Meng Shaode had been worried about not catching any prey and being punished upon his return. As soon as he discovered the meat on the mountain, his mind had gone blank.
Mao Junlan adjusted the lamp wick, and the light grew brighter.
She stepped forward and saw that it was indeed a piece of fatty meat, "Brother Meng, this meat is good. We can even render some oil from it."
Meng Shaode remained motionless, his eyes fixed in a certain direction, unable to comprehend how such a large piece of meat could be left at the foot of the mountain.
Ah Jiu stared intently as well. Tuoba Yan looked from Ah Jiu to Uncle Meng, seemingly frozen.
"There's meat," Cai Lihua ran out from the kitchen, "Consider yourself sensible. This ordeal is over, and I won't tie you up anymore."
Saying this, she snatched the meat from Meng Shaode's hand.
"Mom, this meat is not right," Ah Jiu thought for a long while. Her father always hunted foxes; how could meat just fall from the sky? Moreover, she had just returned from the morgue.
"Something's wrong," Cai Lihua also realized it and brought it to her nose to smell, "What kind of meat is this?"
Ah Jiu looked at her mother. If even she couldn't tell, Ah Jiu was even more certain.
Ah Jiu grabbed the piece of meat and looked closely. It was still soft, "Little Yan, hurry up and go to the mountain. Catch the suspicious person alive."
"Okay." Tuoba Yan dashed off without even asking why.
Meng Shaode opened his mouth and said hesitantly, "This meat is definitely problematic."
He understood now. How could there be a large piece of meat left at the foot of the mountain at this time?
"Where did you get it?" Cai Lihua pressed.
Meng Shaode pointed outside, "I picked it up at the foot of the mountain."
Ah Jiu ignored her parents' bickering and squatted down to examine the meat closely.
The red and white, interspersed with yellow and white, was not ordinary meat. If it were the flesh of a corpse from a plague, there should be worms inside.
Ah Jiu had to think this way because the meat's appearance was too strange.
Ah Jiu pulled out her ox horn knife and cut into it. Small, delicate worms flowed out from the meat's blood vessels, reflecting a faint, undulating light under the dim lamplight.
"Ah?"
This time, Cai Lihua saw it too and was too shocked to speak.
Ah Jiu had seen such things before, so she wasn't as surprised. She just seemed to understand that these worms would burrow into the meat because the surface had already begun to dry.
"This is the flesh of a victim of a plague; it cannot be eaten," Ah Jiu murmured.
"Ah? Daughter, what did you say this was..." Meng Shaode had killed people, but he had never eaten human flesh. His face turned ashen,
"Human flesh?"
"My heavens!" Mao Junlan covered her mouth and stumbled back a few steps.
Ah Jiu remained relatively calm. When she sent Tuoba Yan to find suspicious people, she had already guessed that the many patients in the morgue were not an accident.
Instead, it was someone's deliberate act.
If Tuoba Yan caught the person, perhaps they could find out the reason.
Ah Jiu used her hand to grab the piece of meat and threw it out the door. Then, feeling uneasy, she used her ox horn knife to dig a hole and bury it.
Her hand holding the ox horn knife trembled, and a chilling gust of fear shot from her spine to the back of her head.
It was too terrifying; it was man-made.
Ah Jiu looked at the loose soil in front of her and, unwillingly, stomped it down with her foot.
"Sister Ah Jiu!"
Tuoba Yan returned.