Chapter 66

66/ Seventh-Rate

Almost the moment after mailing the order, Lu Yan felt the surrounding air grow considerably colder.

A fly landed on Lu Yan's shoulder, rubbing its hands together excitedly.

Having lived here for nearly a week, Lu Yan was almost getting used to these ubiquitous ugly things.

He pulled out the insecticide spray from his pocket and gave it a couple of sprays.

Not only did the fly not die, it even found this watermelon-scented insecticide a perfect, refreshing match for summer. It opened its mouthparts and took a few extra whiffs.

However, sensing Lu Yan's disgust, they eventually buzzed away.

The System said: [These flies are the slaughterhouse's surveillance eyes.]

"All of them?"

[Yes.]

Lu Yan, holding his umbrella, started walking back.

It was a day off, and the streets were bustling with people.

Shannan was a major pork province, and X City was its capital. Therefore, even in commercial districts, you could see several century-old pork shops.

Butchers with broad shoulders and round waists, wearing aprons and sleeveless shirts, stood in front of their shops. Half-cut pigs hung from meat hooks, heads missing.

These shops typically had pig farms run by their owners in the background, providing a stable supply, and they specifically came to the city center to attract more customers.

The smell of blood lingering at the tip of Lu Yan's nose gradually grew stronger.

Honestly, pig blood and human blood don't smell that different.

By the roadside, traces of blood remained near a sewer grate, diluted by rainwater. The citizens of X City seemed accustomed to it, passing by without even a glance.

Just as Lu Yan was about to comment on how unfazed X City's residents were, he accidentally stepped on a small round object that had rolled out from an alley.

Looking down, he discovered it was a human eyeball.

[Wow, it even splatters like a bursting tapioca ball.]

Lu Yan glanced into the alley. Despite it being broad daylight, the inside was pitch black, with noisy human voices audible.

[From the moment you mail the order until it is completed, you are a starred customer of the slaughterhouse.]

[The butchers understand the principle that the customer is king, but the butcher who took your order seems to have some questions. You can go, or you can not go.]

On the Apocalypse Forum, the slaughterhouse had always been classified as a high-risk contaminated zone, with pitifully little information available.

Even after over a decade, people only knew it was located somewhere in X City, and that contaminants could place orders to the slaughterhouse via postboxes. The specifics remained completely unknown.

Because no Awakener who entered the slaughterhouse ever returned alive.

Lu Yan pondered for a moment: "If I go in, can I still come out?"

[Of course, you're a customer, not a meat pig. But you're too sweet and soft, my dear boy. I'm really afraid you'll be mistaken for a meat pig and slaughtered by those butchers.]

[If you insist on going, I suggest you reveal King Fish. Its aura can conceal your origins.]

Lu Yan gave a slight nod.

Holding his red umbrella, he walked into the alley.

Fish scales slowly emerged from beneath his skin. Ever since growing a fishtail last time, the coverage of scales on his body had been increasing.

King Fish stuck out its tongue to help hold the umbrella for him.

Lu Yan saw his reflection in a puddle. He was still wearing a mask, his fingertips had become strangely curved and elongated. Behind his ears, fish fins had grown out. The pupils in his eyes were an inorganic silver color.

The alley was paved with blue stone bricks, covered in moss. In the faint sunlight, three distorted, blood-red characters were illuminated: "Pork Alley".

These characters were in traditional script. The first character for "pig" was written as "[?][?]".

[High school Chinese. [?]: pig. [?]: person of a certain type.]

Lu Yan looked at it quietly. Because the characters for "[?]" and "[?]" were spaced too far apart, he wasn't entirely sure if it read "Pork Alley" or "Pig-Person Meat Alley".

Passing through this gloomy alley, the scene ahead suddenly opened up.

Like a food market, pork stalls lined both sides in rows. On many of the butchers' chopping blocks lay human heads with gruesome death expressions.

Various misshapen contaminants moved among them. Some resembled blobs of slime; others were cloaked in black robes, their exposed hands skeletal and ghastly; some weren't even human—their necks separated from their heads, plant stems and leaves growing from their tracheas, their heads replaced by enormous roses.

In comparison, Lu Yan's appearance seemed quite normal. But humanoid contaminants weren't uncommon either.

The fish scales masked his aura perfectly.

The only scent left for Lu Yan was a thick, foul stench. The smell of blood, long settled and concentrated.

Apart from the sound of large cleavers chopping bone, there was little other noise here.

Even the ever-present buzzing of flies around his ears had vanished.

[Be careful.]

The System whispered.

Although the System was often frivolous, it always turned serious at critical moments.

Lu Yan understood. After all, he was a doctor.

When people in the operating room joked around, the chief surgeon spitting out witty lines while the assisting doctors rushed in and out, the patient usually wouldn't die.

Conversely, if the chief surgeon looked serious, and the medical staff outside were cautious and spoke softly, the patient was likely on the verge of kicking the bucket.

He let King Fish hold the umbrella and, like a regular customer, strolled among the various meat stalls.

Undoubtedly, the "meat pigs" here were all humans, occasionally including some mutated individuals who hadn't fully transformed into contaminants yet.

The latter were usually treated like buy-one-get-one-free extras, pierced through the chest with chains and tied up in rows beside the pork stalls, alive or dead indistinguishable.

Perhaps because he was mentally prepared, Lu Yan's expression didn't change much.

The butchers' appearances also varied greatly.

The butchers selling meat from carrying poles at the outermost area were the most numerous.

They wore brown paper wraps around their waists, were bare-chested, and wore large, pointed triangular hats that covered their heads completely.

The white hats had no openings, making it unclear how they saw.

Lu Yan wasn't even sure if there were heads under those hats.

[These are the lowest-tier human-meat butchers. They don't speak.] the System introduced.

[Pollution value: 1000 to 1500.]

[Abilities vary individually.]

[Lesion direction: Mental derangement, Bloodthirst.]

A contaminant with rabbit ears walked up: "I want to buy a pig."

The human-meat butcher glanced at it, grabbed the large sickle beside him, lifted the rabbit by its ears, and with a swipe, cut one ear off.

The little rabbit teared up from the pain, kicking its legs: "You unscrupulous merchant! Other bosses only charge one ear!"

The human-meat butcher ignored it, tossed a fat man with a plump fat layer from his meat pole onto the ground.

This meat pig had already been gutted and given preliminary processing. Its brain was removed, soaking in a pool of blood; buying it would cost extra.

As for the offal like intestines and heart, they had been sent to the slaughterhouse's high-precision processing plant. These could be made into meat paste for unknown purposes. Anyway, there was always a buyer, more profitable than selling raw.

The butcher also grabbed a nearby mutated person, lifted his leg, and with one chop, severed it, throwing it onto the ground as well.

The mutated person strung on the chain let out a scream.

The little rabbit approached and took a bite of the meat pig's loin. Its cute, furry rabbit mouth split open to an exaggerated degree, red blood staining its fur.

Feeling today's meat pig quality was good, it no longer felt much pain from the severed ear. Putting on a checkered beret, it dragged the meat pig away.

Lu Yan walked further in. The environment of the inner pork market seemed cleaner.

Various parts of the meat pigs were cut and sorted neatly. Legs hung on racks above, fresh, some still dripping blood. Besides adult meat pigs, piglets were also sold.

The butchers here were brawny, wearing metal masks. Their blocky muscles were coated with a glossy layer of oil. From the waist down, they had thick snake tails, standing nearly 3 meters tall when upright.

The snake-tail butchers had narrow waists yet exuded a sense of powerful strength, like the 'dog waist' physique you only see in certain videos.

"Customer, you carry the scent of the sea," a snake-tail butcher couldn't help but solicit business, flicking out a slender tongue. "Did you come from the ocean? X City is inland; guests from the sea are rare. I can give you a discount."

As he spoke, the snake-tail butcher bent slightly, the torture instruments hanging on him clanking.

None of the meat stalls here had listed prices, and there seemed to be no market regulatory organization. It all depended on the stall owner's whims.

Lu Yan dared not buy anything in this unscrupulous black market.

[Snake-tail butcher. Pollution value: 3000 to 4000.]

[Lesion direction: Pythonization, Bloodthirst.]

Lu Yan stood lost in thought in front of this meat stall for a while.

The System asked: [What are you thinking?]

Lu Yan: "Wondering if Zhou Qiming would go crazy with joy if he saw these butchers."

Even though their faces were hidden, they all seemed like handsome, muscular tops.

The System: [...You don't need to attribute everything to Zhou Qiming.]

Lu Yan didn't answer the snake-tail butcher. Holding his umbrella, he continued forward.

King Fish had been holding the umbrella with its tongue for a while and was getting a bit tired, wriggling as if throwing a tantrum.

Frankly, a red strip of meat wriggling mid-air was quite mentally polluting.

It couldn't speak, but after symbiosis for so long, Lu Yan knew what his big son wanted just by the twitch of its tongue.

So, Lu Yan took back the umbrella.

The next second, in a place he couldn't see, a mouth split open on the back of Lu Yan's neck.

A long, frog-like tongue lashed out, snatching a red fly from the air and retracting into a new mouth that had split open on the back of his neck.

The unseen mouth chewed with wet, grinding sounds. Lu Yan reached back and felt the spot, his fingers coming away slick with fresh blood.

"Don't eat random things," he chided softly. "What if you get sick?"

Wang Yu’s primary tongue extended to lick the blood from his palm.

The Snake-Tail Butcher watched the exchange, then finally looked away, its interest fading.

In Pork Alley, the truly powerful were the shop owners with proper storefronts.

Right now, only one of the ten shops had its door open.

The proprietor sat on a stool out front, sharpening a blade on a whetstone.

It had the head of a boar. Its leather apron was a stiff, dark tapestry of blood from countless kills. An array of grotesque butchering tools hung from its belt: cleavers, saws, and on the other hip, a rusted triple-barbed hook.

Customers here were even fewer.

The Pig-Head Butcher’s gaze landed on Lu Yan. Its yellowed tusks curved toward the gloomy sky above the alley, and a faint, hungry green light glinted in its eyes.

[Pig-Head Butcher. Pollution Value: 7,700.]

[Afflictions: Sanguine Gene, Brute Force]

[Mutation Direction: Anthropomorphism, Blood Craving]

[It was once a Sanjiang white pig, bought by a farm. To ensure tender meat, it was castrated young. A clever pig, it always ate the least and hid the deepest. After years in the pens, it mastered the arts of raising and slaughtering its own kind.]

[So, when it finally stood up, it slaughtered every farmhand. Avenged its long-dead fellows.]

**[A shame. This pig had the chance to run the X City Slaughterhouse, but it was no match for that woman.]

Behind the butcher, rows of iron cages were stacked against the wall.

Inside were the "meat pigs"—living Awakened, though most were barely breathing.

[Awakened command a high price. They don't sell often. So a butcher might keep one alive for a long time before a buyer comes.]

[The ones sold here are usually low spiritual power, though. High-threshold Awakened are premium stock. The Slaughterhouse's owner and her inner circle keep those for themselves.]**

The Pig-Head Butcher’s bulk quivered as it breathed.

You know, Lu Yan thought to the System, I actually like pork. But this is the first pig that’s ever killed my appetite.

As he was silently complaining, the butcher stood up from its stool, the rhythmic shhhhk-shhhhk of blade on stone ceasing. It was massive, a brass ring pierced through its snout. The stench of blood clinging to it was so thick it was physical, a testament to slaughter on an industrial scale.

"You came quick," it grunted, its voice a low rumble thick with rural accent. "You the one placed the order?"

It pulled a crumpled, stained piece of paper from its apron pocket—a patient record form.

"What's this say?" The Pig-Head Butcher thrust the paper toward Lu Yan, its expression darkening. "Read it. I can't read."