Chapter 712: Its Appearance

Zhu Li's words carried a hidden edge. I only half-understood him. "The tenants in this building are divided into humans and pigs?"

"Exactly."

I caught a flash of deeply hidden disdain on his face. "I've seen a lot of pig-related themes in your artwork. Does the word 'pig' mean something specific to you?"

Zhu Li looked surprised by the question, then his face twisted into a strange expression that looked like a smile. Right in front of Bai Ya'er and me, he shoved his ragged, foul-smelling pants down to his knees.

At first, I had no idea what kind of crazy stunt he was pulling. But when I saw two starkly different colors of skin on his thigh, my heart jumped. I felt a surge of shock, then deep nausea—a patch of pig skin had been sewn onto his outer thigh.

"So you were the main subject in that photograph, Skin Grafting?" I couldn't wrap my head around it. What kind of twisted mindset drove a man to sew pig skin onto his own body? Judging by the seam where his thigh met the pig skin, he had seemingly removed his own skin first before performing the graft. He wanted that pig skin to completely grow on him.

'A lunatic?!'

That thought had crossed my mind more than once. He didn't just target others; he wouldn't even spare himself. This went beyond simple murder. He had elevated cruelty and slaughter to a spiritual realm.

Thinking of this, my wariness toward Zhu Li grew even deeper.

"You must think I'm a madman, don't you?" His bloodshot eyes locked dead onto me, as if he had already seen through every thought in my mind. "Sewing pig skin onto a human makes me a madman? Then what about those doctors in hospitals researching organ transplants between animals and humans? Are they all crazy too?"

Before I could argue, Zhu Li pressed on. "Humans and pigs look different on the outside, but the size and structure of our internal organs are exactly the same. Fundamentally, there is no difference between us. You could even say the gap between a human and a pig is far smaller than the gap between two humans."

His perspective was bizarre, yet it made you listen involuntarily, as if a devil were whispering in your ear.

"Humans and pigs are two completely different species. The distinctions are obvious. I have no idea what you're talking about," I replied, a cold glint in my eyes. Back when I was streaming at Henshan Psychiatric Hospital, I had learned a crucial lesson: when conversing with the mentally unstable, you must never follow their train of thought. The moment you start agreeing with them, you drag yourself into a psychological quagmire.

"Objectively speaking, the differences are obvious—appearance, species. But those are the most superficial things of all." Zhu Li tilted his head back, staring up at me. "The true difference isn't external, but internal. And in that regard, humans are far inferior to pigs. Take you standing in front of me right now. Our organs are identical, yet there is an infinite gulf between our thoughts and minds! The human heart is a maze. The closer two hearts get, and the deeper their understanding, the easier it is for them to get lost and lose sight of one another. That is the true gap between humans."

Zhu Li was explaining his artistic philosophy to me, making sophistical arguments for his madness. I didn't think deeply about his words, because one fact could not be changed: he had stripped away the lives of innocent people for the sake of his art.

"I have no interest in the differences between humans and pigs. Stop beating around the bush. Just tell me why you divide the tenants in this building into pigs and humans." Afraid of being brainwashed by Zhu Li, I forcibly cut him off.

"It's very simple. This place is called the Pig Cage Apartments. The vast majority of the tenants living here cannot be called human. They are pigs—the sort of cheap, filthy lifeforms that most people speak of." Zhu Li walked over to the corner, lifted a black cloth draped over some clutter, and pulled out a half-meter-long picture frame. "This piece of mine is called Banquet..."

I had already seen the artwork he pulled out on Bai Ya'er's phone. A pig wearing a suit sat at a dining table covered in plates, and upon those plates rested a dismembered human specimen.

The real piece was even more shocking than the photo on Bai Ya'er's phone. Its cruelty and coldness struck straight at the soul.

Setting aside his character, Zhu Li's photography skills were undoubtedly top-tier. Through his masterful use of composition, casting, and lighting control, this Banquet brought viewers an absolute sense of reality.

The pig in the photograph seemed to possess the emotions of a living human. A greedy smile hung on its ugly face as it faced the lavish dinner; its appetite had been thoroughly whetted, looking as if it wanted to immediately pounce and gorge itself.

Corresponding to the pig's vivid expression, the human in the plates had been carved up and minced. Every part had been meticulously processed. It was obvious that the photographer was obsessive to the extreme when it came to his own work; even the angle of a severed finger had been carefully designed, with every blood vessel and tiny hair clearly visible.

It was too cruel. Precisely because I knew it was art, I felt it was even more cruel.

While I was still reeling from the shock, Zhu Li's voice echoed in my ears again. "Pigs are omnivores. If you mix minced pork into their feed, even if they realize what it is, they will still eat it. In that regard, they are just like humans."

He leaned the frame against the wall, revealing a smile brimming with malice, and pointed at the pig in the picture. "Look at it. Does it look like a human?"

I simply couldn't fathom Zhu Li's thoughts, but the moment he extended his finger, my heart inexplicably gave him an answer: 'Yes, this pig's expression and demeanor look very much like a human.'

"That's why the difference between pigs and humans is so small. Some people even turn into pigs just by living their lives. They are merely wearing a layer of human skin. No matter how much they breed, the blood of pigs flows through their descendants' veins." Zhu Li draped the black cloth back over the picture frame. As the cruel image vanished from my sight, a thought surfaced in my mind.

'Is he hinting at something with this artwork? The Pig Cage Apartments went through the chaos of war decades ago. Based on the clues I have, cannibalism must have occurred here. Does the pig in the picture represent the cannibals? Zhu Li also said pig blood flows through their descendants. Putting it all together, does he mean the current residents of the Red Building are the descendants of the original survivors of the Pig Cage Apartments?' My eyelids twitched. 'The tenants are divided into pigs and humans. Do the pigs represent the descendants of the Ancient Building's survivors, while the humans are the newly moved-in tenants?'

Zhu Li was talking in riddles, so I decided to test him with another question. "There's a blind old woman on the second floor. According to your logic, which category should she be put into?"

"Her?" Zhu Li probably hadn't expected me to ask about her. He thought about it seriously for a moment. "She counts as human. In her household, she's the only one who counts as human."

That Old Granny had startled me when I first entered the building, but I hadn't felt any malice from her; I just found her behavior very strange. "You said she's the only human in her home. Does something else live there?"

Zhu Li glanced at the clock on the cabinet. "It's not midnight yet. When you came upstairs, she must have been standing in the doorway waiting for someone, right?"

"That's right. Was she waiting for her family? Wait, you said she's the only human in her home. Was she waiting for her deceased husband?" I had experienced too many of these kinds of situations, so I immediately blurted out what I assumed was the most accurate guess.

"No one knows who she's waiting for." After Zhu Li finished speaking, he stared at me, gave a sinister smile, and added, "Who knows, maybe she was waiting for you."

"That's actually possible. She closed her door and went back inside right after I came upstairs." I wasn't sure if Zhu Li was just joking or if he had some deeper meaning, so I didn't take his last comment to heart and just gave a casual reply. But to my complete surprise, my offhand remark caused both Zhu Li's and Bai Ya'er's expressions to drastically change.

Instead of questioning me, Zhu Li locked his eyes onto Bai Ya'er. "You went upstairs with him. Is he telling the truth?"

"I don't know, I was drunk! He dragged me up here!" Bai Ya'er looked terrified, as if something utterly horrific had just happened. She spun around and grabbed my arm with all her might, her fingernails digging deep into my flesh. "That blind old woman went back inside after seeing you? Why... why didn't you tell me sooner?"

I found the two of them absolutely baffling. I shook off Bai Ya'er's hands and stepped back. "Let me correct two things. First, that Old Granny is blind, so she couldn't have seen me. Second, I clearly remember that she only went back inside when the voice-activated light on the first floor suddenly turned on by itself."

When I had reached the landing between the second and third floors, the voice-activated light down on the first floor had abruptly flicked on. When I looked back, the old woman had already closed her heavy red wooden door and retreated into her apartment, leaving only me and the drunken Bai Ya'er alone in the stairwell.

"So it seems the old hag wasn't waiting for you." Zhu Li looked as if a heavy weight had been lifted from his shoulders, but a few seconds later, his face tightened again. "It wasn't midnight yet, but she willingly closed her door, and the light on the first floor turned on by itself. It looks like that thing followed you two into the Red Building."

After he spoke, Bai Ya'er nodded in agreement. "Yes, it must be here."

"Can you two just speak clearly?" I asked. Bai Ya'er had said something similar back in her apartment, leaving me completely lost.

"It's nothing. Every time it rains at night, unclean things find their way into the Red Building. As long as you don't open the inner red wooden door, it won't be a big problem." Zhu Li's slender fingers flipped through the pile of picture frames in the corner. "I know you're curious in your heart. Do you want to know what that unclean thing looks like?"

"You've seen it?"

"What do you think?" He yanked two frames out of the pile. This time, they didn't hold photographs, but pencil sketches.

I looked forward, and just one glance was enough to make goosebumps break out across the exposed back of my hand.

The first frame depicted a skeletal, vaguely humanoid creature. Its body was covered in bite marks, its flesh torn open like an antelope that had been ripped apart by a pack of hyenas on the savanna. It was mutilated from head to toe, and its face was a gruesome, unbearable mess. I had no idea how Zhu Li had even managed to sketch such a monstrosity.

Compared to the first, the visual shock of the second sketch was a little milder, but it was far more bizarre. A fat man was outlined in pencil on the paper, and the most grotesque thing about him was that his internal organs weren't located inside his stomach—they were dangling outside his belly.