Chapter 42: The Starving |
The god who descended without warning had no past, no people, no ties to bind it.
To the starving villagers, this god was nothing more than a piece of unclaimed flesh.
The villagers gathered under the locust tree, chattering as they debated how to handle the fallen god. They longed to feast on its raw flesh and blood, yet they were terrified of some unspoken sin, of divine retribution.
Finally, the old village chief stepped forward, declaring he'd had a dream the night before. The dream, he said, revealed that the god's arrival was an act of salvation—its very flesh and blood a divine gift.
The old chief was the first to carve a piece of flesh from the god's body. To the villagers' astonishment, the wound healed before their very eyes, cementing their belief that the god had truly come to see them through their hardship.
They gathered in a circle, each one vividly recounting their own dream, as if every single person had been visited by the god, as if all their actions now carried its blessing.
Relying on the endlessly regenerating god-flesh, the villagers survived the famine.
They remained poor, but every household pooled their money to build a new shrine, dedicated to the god who had seen them through the famine.
They embellished the tale of the god's gift of flesh, and by word of mouth, the legend spread to villages near and far.
The villagers instinctively refused, but the merchant produced a fistful of money, tempting them. "You say the flesh grows back, that the wounds heal instantly, don't you?" he purred. "So what harm is there in letting me have just one piece?"
The villagers wavered. In the end, it was the old chief who made the decision, agreeing to the merchant's request.
Su Clan Village used the merchant's money to pave its roads. As word spread, more and more people, drawn by the tale, came to see for themselves.
The legend about the god was sanitized, its bloody origins glossed over. The story spread, polished and embellished until it resembled little more than a piece of local folklore or a cheap gimmick.
Some said the god-flesh could cure diseases. Some said eating it granted immortality. Others were simply driven by morbid curiosity; seeing everyone else rush in, they followed the crowd.
These ignorant people had never seen the god's body for themselves, and so they felt little in the way of moral qualms or guilt. Driven by a deep-seated, inherited superstition, they flocked to the entrance of Su Clan Village, demanding to buy the god-flesh with money, just as the trailblazing merchant had done.
Su Clan Village was nothing more than a backwater hamlet, yet many of its visitors were people of influence. The allure of money was constant, and the sight of their own poverty grew more galling by the day.
Finally, one night, the old village chief summoned the influential village elders to his home for a secret meeting.
The chief said, "Last night, I had a dream. The great god knows of our plight. He has taken pity on our poverty and granted us permission to trade his flesh for money, so that our children might lead better lives."
The elders quickly chimed in, each adding their own details, claiming they too had dreamt the very same dream. It was a divine decree, they insisted, from the god himself, a command to help Su Clan Village improve its fortunes...
And so a new legend was fabricated. The very next morning, Su Clan Village announced it was open to the public; for a certain price, anyone could taste the flesh of the god.
With the money earned from the god-flesh, the people of Su Clan Village ate their fill, built new houses, and even had money left over for all sorts of pleasures.
But they gradually discovered that the wounds on the god's corpse were healing more and more slowly. At the same time, a small number of villagers began to undergo a strange transformation; after death, their bodies started to exhibit the same properties as the god-flesh...
...
"Well, I'll be damned. So in the end, these villagers just dug their own graves!" Zhang Licai slapped his thigh. "If they'd just worshipped the god properly after the famine passed, or at least called it quits after that first score with the merchant, none of this mess would have happened."
"But that's humanity for you," Qi Si said with a faint, chilling smile. "If I offered you five million to pull out a single strand of your hair, would you take it?"
Zhang Licai answered without hesitation. "Of course I would, why wouldn't I?" Qi Si asked again, "And what if you could get fifty million for cutting off one of your fingers?"
Zhang Licai fell silent. He could more or less guess where the questions were heading, and he knew that answering "yes" would be walking right into Qi Si's trap.
But if he was being honest with himself, he knew that if it came down to it, he wouldn't refuse.
The smile on Qi Si's lips deepened as he unhurriedly posed his final question: "Then what if, one day, you learned that your head could be traded for five hundred million?"
This question was a no-brainer. Zhang Licai quickly shook his head. "Of course not! If I'm dead, what's the use of money?!"
"But everyone who knows about that deal would be trying to chop off your head for the money," Zhu Ling concluded grimly from the side, her gaze lifting from the page to the window outside.
"Desire is endless. Once you start down a certain path, there's no turning back. Even knowing that the road ends in death, most people will cling to a sliver of hope, thinking that a little more greed won't necessarily lead to misfortune, or rather—that the disaster won't necessarily befall them."
The sun had sunk to the rooftops, dipping in and out of view as it prepared to set. It was getting late.
Zhu Ling let out a light breath, lowered her head again, and read the final passage from the village history: "There were too many visitors drawn by the fame. A single god's corpse could not supply enough flesh, so the villagers had to pass off the bodies of the transformed as the real thing."
"In the end, everyone was transformed."
Zhang Licai couldn't help but suck in a sharp breath. "And then what?" he pressed. "Does it say anything about what happened to Su Po? Does it mention any way to deal with this?"
"No." Zhu Ling placed the village history on the dust-covered table and continued calmly, "The villagers discovered that they would transform into god-flesh upon contact with sunlight. So they changed the direction of their doors, pasted black paper over their windows, and holed up in their houses during the day, just barely surviving."
Zhang Licai blinked a couple of times. "No offense, but they're in that state and they're still taking in travelers? Are they choosing money over their lives? Even as ghosts, they're still obsessed with money?"
Qi Si stroked his chin, his tone pointed. "Are you sure it's money they want? Remember, we were all thrown in here by the Weird Game. None of us paid Su Po a cent."
His words were like a flash of lightning, illuminating another path of reasoning.
Zhu Ling seemed to have realized something. Her face grew cold as she continued, "They don't want money. They want our flesh. That's why when Yang went out to explore last night, he was stopped by those villagers demanding flesh."
"What do they want our flesh for? They're ghosts and they're still thinking about their next meal?" Zhang Licai patted his chubby cheeks in confusion and asked, "Does anyone have any clues about this?"
There were none.
There was a gap in the clues. Some pieces of the puzzle had been solved, but the answers only led to new questions, like an ever-expanding jigsaw puzzle that was still missing its most crucial pieces.
Perhaps they would only find the final answer once the clues from the shrine filled in the gaps.
Qi Si took a pocket watch from his coat and glanced at it. The hands pointed to six o'clock. There were still three hours until nightfall.
It was about time for dinner, and there were still some odds and ends to take care of—a thousand tangled threads with no clear starting point.
Qi Si glanced at the dust-covered village history, but ultimately decided against stuffing it into his coat.
He put away the pocket watch, his smile vanished, and he said lightly, "Let's go back to Su Po's house."
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