Chapter 126

126/Seven Flows

A spotlight cut through the gloom of the conference room, its harsh beam illuminating the center of the floor like a stage set for a grand performance.

Under the gaze of the assembled crowd, Lü Zhi stood at the heart of that light, the hem of her gown pooling on the ground around her.

If not for the eight serpentine tails coiled beneath her skirts, Lü Zhi would have looked indistinguishable from her human self. Her face retained that same imperious, haughty beauty, perhaps even more striking than in her youth.

The circular platform beneath her feet began to rise with a low hum, lifting her into the air. From the gap between the platform and the floor, thick, dark blood welled up, its coppery scent flooding the chamber and stirring the nerves of every pollutant present.

A smile spread across Lü Zhi’s lips. "This marks the 28th annual meeting of the Abattoir, convened two months earlier than usual. Our primary purpose is to welcome our new colleagues. Seventy-three new hires from across the globe have joined our great collective!" Her voice rang out, clear and commanding. "Let us offer our most enthusiastic applause and blessings to these new, diligent, and courageous workers!"

The moment she finished, the room erupted. The massive gorilla seated in front of Lu Yan hammered its chest with fists the size of watermelons, letting out guttural, excited roars.

"In addition," Lü Zhi continued, "we extend our gratitude to our veteran staff for their hard work over the past year. Without you, our Abattoir would not have flourished, nor would we have received orders from every corner of the world."

As her words faded, a shower of finely minced meat rained down from the ceiling, tossed by unseen monkeys clutching woven baskets. The butchers below rose as one, stretching their necks, mouths gaping wide like grotesque, hungry chicks, scrambling to catch the falling scraps.

Their expressions were a mix of frenzy and greed, the atmosphere thick with fervor.

It was clear Lü Zhi understood how to manage pollutants far better than the Brain Blossom had. She ate the meat herself but never forgot to let her underlings taste the broth. No wonder the Abattoir had survived long after the Divine Kingdom had been destroyed.

Lu Yan rose with the others but kept the black veil of his hat firmly in place. Fortunately, the gorilla in front was massive enough to conceal any oddity in his posture completely.

The frenzy lasted only a few minutes before subsiding.

Silence returned. Lü Zhi spoke again, her tone shifting to one of authority and simmering rage. "Our Abattoir wishes only to mind its own business, to sell the finest meat pigs. Yet humanity refuses to tolerate even this. Recently, I have received intelligence. A team of Awakened has infiltrated X City. They intend to dismantle our operation!"

A jolt of alarm shot through Lu Yan. How does she know?

In that instant, a dozen possibilities flashed through his mind—a mole within headquarters, a breach in security...

Then, the system’s answer cut through his thoughts. [She doesn’t. She’s making it up. Needs a rallying cry to make the workers fight.]

Lu Yan: "..."

Lü Zhi’s brows drew together in cold fury. "This, I will never allow. Twenty-eight years ago, when I took over the Abattoir, it was nothing but a hidden pork stall on the city’s outskirts. Today, we are a notorious contaminated zone in the mouths of humans. The labor of generations of workers will not be destroyed by their hands. They have sent dozens of high-level Awakened, including the infamous Tyrant himself. But the Abattoir will not yield! At midnight tonight, I will expend every resource to draw all headquarters’ Awakened into our domain."

She clenched her fist, her sharp, elongated nails piercing the serpent scales on her palm. Deep indigo blood welled from the cuts. "Only by making humanity pay, by making them hurt, will they learn to be obedient meat pigs!"

If the Brain Blossom had represented ideological evolution, then Lü Zhi embodied suppression by force. Their ultimate goals, however, were the same.

"Though the enemy is strong," Lü Zhi declared, "this time, we have secured allies. The master of the Hound Base is already on his way with his dogs."

"We will make humanity understand their time is over! The future belongs to us! We will forge a great commercial empire! And we will defend our right to exist on this land with blood!"

Her speech was forceful and resonant, igniting a deep-seated hatred in the hearts of the butchers.

Someone roared first: "Kill them!"

"Kill them!"

"KILL THEM!"

The chant unified, rising to a thunderous crescendo. On the platform, Lü Zhi’s face finally broke into a smile of satisfaction.

"I look forward to your performance. Meeting adjourned!"

*

The Abattoir had no employee dormitories. Here, if you fancied a house, you simply broke down the door and claimed it. The style was thoroughly bandit-like.

But just like in the Surface World, the largest, most comfortable houses were firmly held by the butchers with the highest contamination values.

Those with shops on Pork Lane, for instance, resided in X City’s famed luxury villa district.

Events in the Inner World were not without effect on the Surface. The higher the contamination value of an area, the greater its influence.

In X City, many expensive properties remained unsold, their value ruined by an inexplicable, pervasive stench of rotting meat.

Though the two worlds did not directly intersect, the thought of sharing a living space with pollutants was deeply unsettling. The bed you slept in every night might have once held the dismembered corpse of a meat pig.

The Goat Butcher, ever the enthusiastic fellow, clapped a hoof on Lu Yan’s shoulder. "Little brother, have you picked out a place yet? Need me to show you around?" He winked. "Won’t cost much. Just save me the offal from your first pig tomorrow."

Lu Yan’s lips pressed into a thin line. "I’ve already chosen one."

The Goat Butcher’s expression fell with evident disappointment. "Suit yourself. I’m off home to watch the World Cup. Heard the men’s team made the finals this year. Gotta grill up some belly pork to celebrate."

Though Lu Yan paid little attention to sports, this seemed... improbable. He couldn’t help asking, "Which region are you from?"

"Third District. Why?"

Lu Yan: "No reason. Just curious."

After a friendly farewell, the Goat Butcher ambled away.

Lu Yan followed the dispersing crowd out of the conference hall.

The air outside was still foul, but at least it lacked the suffocating density of hundreds of unwashed pollutants packed together. Some of those butchers hadn’t bathed in years; they smelled like walking biochemical weapons.

Lu Yan intended to first secure a house as a base of operations and observe the ecology of the Inner World.

The system chimed in. [Due to the mass exodus from X City, fewer and fewer humans enter the Inner World each night. Gradually, it can no longer meet the butchers’ demands. Many butchers have shifted from local assignments to out-of-town ‘business trips.’]

[But butchers operating outside are easy prey for Awakened. Consequently, even the Abattoir faces a shortage of meat pigs to distribute, especially with the large volume of external orders they’ve taken.]

[The City Lord is somewhat negligent and lazy, content to wait for Abattoir deliveries for his meals. His contamination value has grown very slowly over decades, causing the Inner World’s expansion to lag behind the Abattoir’s needs. This is also why Lü Zhi must consider territorial expansion. She hopes the Abattoir can exist beyond the confines of the Inner World.]

Lu Yan walked alone for a stretch, his senses sharpening. He was being followed.

The system paused. [It’s the little rabbit. Harmless, for now.]

Lu Yan glanced back. The street behind him was empty, save for a few flying pollutants passing overhead.

The little rabbit was a C-Class pollutant, posing virtually no threat to the current Lu Yan. Its buck teeth probably couldn’t even scratch his scales.

Direct fights between butchers were prohibited within the Abattoir’s territory.

Not wanting to draw unnecessary attention or complicate matters, Lu Yan ignored his shadow.

Having treated Zong Yan, Lu Yan was familiar with X City. The Pollution Disease Prevention Center had gifted him a property here.

His memory was excellent. Even from the back seat of a car, he could recall the route from the Center to the new address.

Thirty minutes later, Lu Yan arrived at the entrance of a residential compound. The rabbit butcher had trailed him the entire way, moving with furtive stealth.

With over two hundred butchers scattered across the city, running into another was statistically unlikely.

Lu Yan pressed the elevator button. The metal doors slid open with a soft chime.

Inside, a pool of dark blood stained the floor. A single, deflated eyeball rested in one corner.

The elevator climbed from 1 to 12 before shuddering to a halt.

Stepping out, Lu Yan didn’t proceed to his unit. Instead, he positioned himself just outside the elevator doors.

As expected, minutes later, the floor indicator above the elevator began to light up again.

Lu Yan’s eyes narrowed slightly. His grip tightened on the knife in his hand.

The blade of Hellfire in his grasp emitted a faint sizzle, like a red-hot brand pressed into thick fat.

The elevator doors parted once more.

Seeing Lu Yan standing there, the little rabbit’s crimson eyes widened in shock. It instinctively tried to flee.

It darted forward, attempting to slip through the gap, relying on its small size. Lu Yan’s hand shot out, catching it firmly by the ears and lifting it into the air.

The rabbit kicked its legs futilely for a moment before going still, accepting its capture.

The rabbit butcher stood barely twenty centimeters tall, covered in short, black, curly fur. Its rabbit mouth had been crudely stitched shut with thin thread, forming a permanent, grotesque smile.

Lu Yan knew that beneath this rabbit costume was a child who had been crushed into a ball. Over more than a decade, the costume had fused with its body, becoming one and the same. If you cut open the rabbit's skin, you'd find nothing but white, fluffy stuffing.

He frowned. "Why are you following me?"

The little rabbit's reaction was oddly docile. It carried a carrot-handled scissors nearly as tall as itself and let out a soft, milky cry. "Mama."

The system's tone was one of exaggerated shock: [You have a secret love child behind Dog-Dragon's back!?]

Lu Yan wanted to smack it again. Unfortunately, he couldn't.

Though the rabbit's face showed no expression, when those crimson eyes looked up at him, Lu Yan could read a pitiful, aggrieved emotion in them.

[You've been in contact with Yan Bei. Yan Bei carries Li Ping's scent. Li Ping is its mother. By the way, to care for Yan Bei, Li Ping also came to X City.]

[Even though the trace of Li Ping's scent on you is faint enough to ignore, for the Rabbit Butcher, this is the first time in seventeen years it has smelled that memory. The familiar scent that belongs to Mama.]

Being lifted by the ears was actually quite painful. Fortunately, the Rabbit Butcher was just a stuffed toy. It felt no pain.

But after a moment of silence, Lu Yan still shifted his grip from the ears to the back of its neck.

Butchers didn't like to bathe. The little rabbit was no different. Its fur was filthy, caked with blood that had dried into hard clumps.

Lu Yan used the fingerprint lock to open the apartment door.

He pressed the rabbit into the bathroom sink and scrubbed it for a long time with body wash, but the stuffed bunny still looked grimy.

After a moment's thought, Lu Yan swapped the body wash for laundry detergent.

This time, the little rabbit finally came clean. Its fur wasn't black. It was white.

While being scrubbed on its belly, the little rabbit couldn't help it. It spat out half of a human finger bone from its mouth.

Lu Yan stared at the pale fragment and stopped moving.

The Rabbit Butcher hurriedly grabbed the bone with its soft paw and swallowed it in one gulp.

It glanced at Lu Yan's expression and said cautiously, "Mama, Rabbit found this. On the ground."

"Rabbit never killed piggies. Piggies are so cute. But... if Rabbit doesn't eat piggies, Rabbit gets hungry. So hungry. Rabbit couldn't stand it anymore."

"If Mama doesn't like it, Rabbit won't eat anymore."

As it spoke, the Rabbit Butcher pulled the scissors from its back and cut open the stitching on its belly.

White stuffing spilled out, stained with long-dried blood. Mixed within were partially digested bones, strands of hair, and an eyeball.

The little rabbit cried, "Mama, don't leave Rabbit at the amusement park. Rabbit wants to go home with Mama... Rabbit hurts."

Most of the time, Lu Yan's attitude toward pollutants was one of detached indifference.

His emotions were typically muted. But in this moment, looking at the sobbing little rabbit, a strange feeling welled up inside him.

This feeling was directed at the pollutant that had turned the little child into this stuffed toy.

He felt a tightness in his chest. It was deeply uncomfortable.

The system emitted a low chuckle. [Feel it? That's anger. That's hatred. Humanity's most extreme, most impulsive emotions. Also the driving force that keeps many Awakened locked in a fight to the death with pollutants.]

Lu Yan turned off the faucet. He wrapped the rabbit in a towel, bundling it into a roll.

He found a needle and thread, sat down at the dining table, and stitched up the little rabbit's wound.

For a doctor, this wasn't difficult.

After sewing up the belly, Lu Yan took out a hairdryer and began drying it manually.

Under the warm, steady stream of air, the little rabbit, still sniffling, sprawled on the table and fell asleep.

Pollutants didn't dream. The little rabbit probably wouldn't dream of the years spent with its mother either.

But it remembered the feeling of its mother holding its hand. It remembered the feeling of its mother drying its hair. Just like now.

So, like a tiny kitten, it stretched out its limbs comfortably and lay soft and limp in Lu Yan's palm.

Lu Yan gently set down the hairdryer. He spoke softly, as if to himself.

"So this is what anger and hatred feel like."