Chapter 722: Eat

The word "eat" caught in her throat. Her pupils slowly dilated as she chewed a mouthful of fatty meat, realizing she had said the wrong thing.

I hadn't expected her to break free of the hypnosis so quickly, but I already had the answer I wanted.

"So human meat actually tastes better? What? Have you eaten human meat before?" A playful smile touched my lips as I stared at the woman right in front of me.

She was leaning most of her body against the back of my chair. We were so close we looked like an affectionate young couple.

Grease stained her full lips. My sudden question threw her into such a panic that she forgot to chew.

Shreds of meat clung to her stark white teeth. The sauce-dipped fat pressing against her thick lips created an indescribably eerie picture; she looked like a cannibalistic witch exuding an untamed wildness.

Our shoulders were practically touching. I could smell the aroma of meat coming from her body—a scent even stronger than the food on the table.

"What are you talking about?" She swallowed the chunk of meat with difficulty. Her tone was cold as she leaned back, looking as though a bucket of cold water had been dumped over her head, instantly killing the mood.

"I was just joking. Why did you take it so seriously?" Like a beast locking onto its prey, I grabbed her shoulder and pulled her close. We were just near enough to hear each other's breathing. "Suddenly, I'm not in the mood to eat."

"The meat is freshly cooked..." Her voice faltered. My sudden change in attitude had caught her off guard.

"Let's go to the bedroom." I stood up, my gaze locking onto her face. "I've found something much tastier."

My burning, aggressive stare brought a flush to her neck. She obediently took my sleeve and led me toward the bedroom.

"Eat up out here, little guy." I rubbed Li Ming's head, snatched the Good and Evil Asura Mask off the table, and put it back on.

The woman pushed open the bedroom door. Grabbing the hem of her shirt with greasy hands, she leaned against the wall, pouted, and kicked the wooden door shut with her heel. "Hurry up and come in."

The bedroom was cramped, with a wooden double bed taking up most of the space. The windows had been sealed shut with red bricks. The air was stagnant, carrying a faint, lingering stench of blood.

The sheets and bedding were perfectly clean, but two empty plates sat on the nightstand, holding a few bones that had been gnawed completely bare.

The woman had a very soft body. Tossing her jacket aside, she revealed pale, fleshy skin. "You're an interesting guy. It's just the two of us in here, so why the mask? Do you have a kink for this sort of thing?"

In the intimate space, the sound of her breathing seemed to raise the room's temperature. Her gaze grew hazy. She placed a finger to her lips, sucking away the leftover grease. Perhaps seeing that I hadn't moved an inch, she took the initiative, walking over and reaching her pale fingers toward the zipper of my jacket.

"It's just the two of us in here. No one can see..." As she reached out, I raised my right hand. Unaware of my intentions, she willingly stepped closer and pressed herself against my chest.

"Yeah, no one can see." My voice turned cold. Moving with sudden, explosive speed, I grabbed her by the throat, stepped forward, and slammed her against the wall beside the door.

"That hurts. Not so hard."

She still hadn't realized her situation. The Red Building Tenants likely had far too many twisted quirks, and she had long grown accustomed to being treated this way.

"Does it hurt?" I grinned, steadily tightening my grip. Her eyes bulged, and her face turned purple as she suffocated. Finally realizing something was terribly wrong, she thrashed her pale body like a large fish dragged ashore, struggling desperately.

I remained completely unmoved. While wearing the Good and Evil Asura Mask, my attitude toward life was incredibly apathetic.

I squeezed harder and harder, only letting go when her struggles began to weaken.

"Cough! Cough! Cough..." She slumped against the wall and collapsed into a heap on the floor, gasping greedily for air. "Are—are you trying to kill me?!"

"If you don't cooperate, killing you might not be a bad way to solve the problem." I crouched down, running my fingers through her hair. I took a light sniff; the aroma of meat clung even to her roots. "Just how much meat have you eaten?"

Her body trembled slightly. Hovering on the brink of death had not been a pleasant experience. Keeping her head bowed and wrapping her arms defensively across her chest, she didn't dare meet my eyes.

"Answer a few questions about the Red Building honestly, and I promise I won't hurt you. I won't tell the other Red Building Tenants, either. I only want the truth." Ignoring her attempts to block me, I gripped her pale neck once again. "Think carefully before you answer. I've killed a lot of people, and I'd hate for you to become one of them."

"You're an outsider?" She finally raised her head, a complex look in her eyes. She opened her mouth but didn't speak. After a long pause, she pursed her lips. "Ask."

"First question. Why did you move into the Red Building? This place is filthy and disgusting. Not even stray dogs would want to visit." I didn't spare the Red Building Tenants' feelings in the slightest, voicing my most honest thoughts.

With my hand still wrapped around her throat, she avoided my eyes, staring instead at the scars on my palm. She hesitated for a long time before speaking in a heavily suppressed tone. "If you weren't an outsider, I would never tell you this."

She slowly looked up. "I'm being held prisoner here."

"Take your time. I might even be able to help you." I subtly wove some minor hypnotic techniques into the conversation, steering the topic while observing every shift in her expression and demeanor.

"I ended up in the Pig Cage Apartments because of my older brother. His name is Zhang Jiayi." Her voice trembled, and her face went frighteningly pale. Under my questioning, the traumatic memories she had tried so desperately to repress came flooding back.

"Is Zhang Jiayi the Doctor who lives on the fourth floor?" When I had left the fourth floor earlier, I'd spotted a medical diagnosis notice in the Doctor's shoe cabinet. The name of the admitting relative listed on it was Zhang Shuxue. The two of them had to be siblings.

"He lives on the fourth floor and dresses like a doctor, but he isn't a doctor at all! He's a lunatic, a mental patient, a twisted pervert!" Her voice rose, forcing me to squeeze her neck tighter in warning.

"Your brother imprisoned you? Why would he do that?"

"We're half-siblings. His mother died of illness a long time ago, and our father died in a car crash later on. After that, it was like he became a completely different person. He grew withdrawn, and his mind started slipping." She spoke of her brother with utter revulsion.

"His mind started slipping? Was it you who had him committed to a psychiatric hospital, and to get back at you, he imprisoned you here in the Red Building?" I guessed.

She shook her head, her emotions surging. "Do you have any idea what he did? Back when he was in medical school, his classmates reported him for stealing human specimens and taking severed body parts back to his dorm room. My mother rushed to the university and begged everyone she could. Finally, the school agreed to give him a second chance. But instead of fixing his behavior, he only got worse. He even started defiling the specimens."

"The very first day he came home after getting expelled, that monster did something I will never be able to forget." Dragging up her darkest, most deeply buried memories, she panted heavily and gritted her teeth. "He told us he wanted to cook dinner for me and Mom, and he sent us out to buy groceries. By the time we got back, the rich aroma of meat was already wafting through the apartment."

"An iron pot was sitting on the dining table. Mom even praised him for his effort. But when he lifted the lid, you couldn't even begin to imagine what I saw!"

"He had boiled Mom's cat."

She buried her head. "After that, his behavior grew more and more unhinged until it was completely unbearable. He developed a twisted obsession with meat, constantly seeking out different types and aromas. Mom and I forced ourselves to tolerate it. But our patience and love didn't change him. Our indulgence only led to a more horrifying result. One day, after he finished eating, Mom went to clean up—and smelled formalin inside the cooking pot..."

"You must know what that meant. That very afternoon, Mom looked under his bed and found several black plastic bags. They were stuffed with the human specimens he'd stolen from the university."

"I couldn't endure him anymore. I finally convinced Mom, and the very next morning, we called a psychiatric hospital and had him forcibly committed."

"I thought the nightmare was finally over. Deep down, I even hoped he would recover and go back to being a normal person."

"But one day several years later, I was at work when I received a sudden phone call from the psychiatric hospital. They told me that both he and his attending psychiatrist had gone missing."

"An awful premonition washed over me. I rushed home in a daze, and the moment I opened the front door, I smelled the rich aroma of cooked meat."

"I didn't think much of it at first; the scent just felt vaguely familiar. It wasn't until I stepped inside and closed the door that I realized something was wrong."

"Mom was sitting completely motionless at the dining table with her back to me. She had changed into a set of loose, dark clothes, and an iron pot sat right in front of her."

"I called out to her a few times, but she didn't answer. As I walked over to the table, a sudden wave of déjà vu from all those years ago hit me, and my eyes were drawn uncontrollably to the iron pot."

"The rich aroma filling the apartment was pouring out of that pot. Inside it, simmering alongside various spices, was a chunk of internal organs."

Tears streamed down her face, dampening the back of my hand. She shook her head violently and frantically shoved her fingers into her mouth, digging into her throat to gag herself.

She convulsed as though having a seizure, taking several minutes to finally calm down.

"He suffered immensely in that psychiatric hospital, so he decided to force all that suffering onto me and Mom." Her voice was still trembling. "To punish me, he dragged me to the Pig Cage Apartments and locked me in this room. Every few days, he comes by to drop off meat and water."

She clutched her head. "Only meat. Every time he brings it, it's packed in a black plastic bag—just like the one you're holding."

She didn't have to finish; I already understood exactly what she meant. In an environment like this, a perfectly normal person had been brutally driven insane.