Chapter 723: Gluttony

Zhang Shuxue huddled against the wall, sobbing uncontrollably. Her deepest memories had been awakened. Crying and gagging, she shoved her hands into her mouth, digging at her throat and pulling at her tongue.

Whether she had eaten human flesh no longer mattered. I sighed and slowly released my grip.

I had no idea how to comfort her. In truth, the moment she swallowed that first bite of meat, she ceased to be the Zhang Shuxue she once was.

She knew this perfectly well. The mind could forget, but the body couldn't hide its reactions. Tortured and imprisoned by Doctor Zhang, she had grown accustomed to eating meat. Even her body was steeped in its heavy, roasted scent.

I picked her coat off the floor and tossed it to her, then stood up and sat on the edge of the wooden bed. "How long have you lived here?"

"Over a year. Maybe longer," she said. "I've never left Pig Cage Apartments."

"You opened the door for me earlier, which means you can leave this room whenever you want. The Red Building isn't massive, but it's not small either. With four separate units and all those stairwells and corridors, you could have easily slipped past your brother and escaped. But you didn't." I paused, staring hard at her face. "In over a year, you couldn't find a single opportunity to run?"

Zhang Shuxue's tragic ordeal was agonizing to hear, but her story was riddled with holes. A good detective never let personal feelings cloud an investigation, and I kept myself completely rational.

Slumped against the wall, the woman clutched her coat. Her chest heaved, and it took a long while before her breathing finally smoothed out.

Her face was ashen, radiating a numb, hollow despair. "I can't leave anymore. This place is an inescapable maze. A prison. It's exactly what the name says—an isolated pig cage, meant to trap people who live like pigs."

"Can you explain that?"

I looked into her eyes. Tears welled up in them as she opened her mouth, but she only lowered her head again. "Just leave me be. Once the sun starts to rise, get out of here as fast as you can. The more you know, the deeper you'll sink."

"Don't you want to end this miserable life? Even if you've grown numb, have you thought about your mother? Her killer is still out there, finding new ways to torture and humiliate you. Don't you want revenge?" Love and hate were the most fiery emotions in the human heart. If I wanted to awaken her conscience, I had to start with those.

At the mention of her mother, a flicker of emotion finally crossed Zhang Shuxue's eyes. Tangled black hair falling over her face, she looked up and stared at me. "There's no going back! I can't go back, do you understand?!"

Her agitation spiked. Pressing a hand against the floor, she let the coat slip away and forced herself to her feet.

She was heavily overweight now, and as she moved, the excess rolls of fat trembled. "I changed a long time ago. Right now, I'm just a monster..."

She grabbed a handful of fat on her stomach and squeezed viciously. Her nails dug deep into the flesh, leaving thin bloody scratches behind. I could tell she wanted nothing more than to tear the meat right off her own body.

Bleeding from the fresh scratches on her stomach, Zhang Shuxue stepped over her fallen coat and walked to the head of the bed. She opened the bottom drawer of the nightstand, pulled out a photograph, and handed it to me.

The picture was old and heavily creased. It had been torn into several large pieces and taped back together from behind.

"Why are you showing me this?"

It was an ordinary photo of a smiling young woman, maybe eighteen or nineteen years old. She was short and petite, dressed in a school uniform top and tight jeans. She looked radiant, beautiful, and brimming with youth.

"That was taken when I graduated high school at nineteen," Zhang Shuxue said, sitting back down beside me. The rolls of fat on her body pressed heavily together.

"You're saying this girl is you?" I studied the picture again, utterly astonished. The girl in the photo was delicate and pure. Meanwhile, the Zhang Shuxue sitting in front of me—even ignoring the drastic shift in her aura—was easily twice as heavy.

"That was the old me. Now..." Zhang Shuxue let out two strange, snorting chuckles. "Now I feel like a farm pig. Locked in a cage, waiting day after day for my owner to come feed me."

She gave a miserable smile. "Zhu Li told me once that when farmers raise pigs, they sometimes scrape their leftover meat and vegetables into the troughs. Some pigs grow up eating pork."

"You just can't get past that psychological hurdle, can you? So you gave up on yourself and hid away in Pig Cage Apartments." I handed the photo back to her. "Your trauma is going to take time to heal. You need to return to a normal life, not rot away in this place. Staying here will only let your wounds fester and stink until you rot from the inside out."

My voice was quiet, but deeply earnest. "I can get you out of here. I can send you to another city where you can start over. Nobody there will know your past, and nobody will ever hurt you again."

Through my tone and emotion, I had unconsciously laced my words with hypnosis, making everything I said incredibly persuasive.

I fabricated a paradise for her, a safe haven to cradle her battered, traumatized heart.

For the first few seconds, I could tell she was genuinely swaying. But right as she was about to agree, a strange, ruthless glint flashed through her eyes. Her demeanor instantly flipped, and she shoved me away.

'My hypnosis didn't work? How did she snap out of it?' My willpower was several times stronger than a normal person's. Combined with the hypnosis techniques I'd learned from Chu Men, I shouldn't have failed.

'This is the second time. I tried hypnotizing her out in the living room, and that failed too.' Suspicion gnawing at me, I studied Zhang Shuxue closely. The chilling ruthlessness in her eyes receded like the tide, fading so quickly that it almost felt like I'd imagined it. 'It's like there are two different souls living inside her body. Does she have a split personality?'

Certain psychiatric disorders were caused by genetic defects and could be hereditary. Her brother was a lunatic; it was entirely possible that she had her own mental issues.

After shoving me away, Zhang Shuxue sat alone on the edge of the bed. A lingering trace of guilt surfaced in her eyes. "Why go through all this trouble? It's a thankless effort. Coming to Pig Cage Apartments in the middle of the night, saying all these strange things to me..."

She seemed to break down again as she spoke, gripping her own flesh tightly enough to dig her nails in. "You can't save me. You don't understand the horrors of this place. Before the sun even comes up, you might be twisted into a monster just like me."

"I've challenged authority and absolute laws before, but I always stand by my own sense of justice. You don't just give up on something just because you know it's going to be difficult. You're a victim too, and that gives me all the reason I need to get you out." Her sudden mood swings had caught my full attention. Stroking the Ghost Ring on my finger, I activated the Judging Eye to see right through her.

"Pig Cage Apartments isn't what you think it is. This place..." Zhang Shuxue seemed to finally make up her mind. Gritting her teeth, she spat out the words, "This entire building is full of ghosts!"

"Ghosts?" My heart sank. That was a wildly different answer from what Zhu Li had told me. He'd claimed the building housed pigs and humans. Why was Zhang Shuxue saying the building was full of ghosts?

I sat back down beside her and lowered my voice. "What do you mean by ghosts? Your brother and Zhu Li both live in this apartment building. Are you saying they're ghosts too?"

I had a feeling her definition of "ghosts" was very different from mine. She was probably just trying to describe how unnerving the Red Building Tenants really were.

"Come see for yourself." She grabbed my sleeve and dragged me to the bedroom door, motioning for me to peer through the crack.

"Look at what?" I asked, following her lead and peering out into the living room.

The sound of chewing reached my ears. I traced the noise, and my eyes widened in shock.

Out by the dining table, Li Ming was standing on a chair. He was snatching handfuls of meat out of the serving basin and furiously shoving them into his mouth like a madman.

Leaning over the table, he looked like some sort of mutated monster. His face was smeared with grease, and thick blue veins bulged along his neck. He was eating faster than he could swallow, forcing large chunks of meat to back up into his esophagus.

'Just how hungry is he? No, this goes completely beyond mere starvation. The way he's acting... it's as if the more he eats, the hungrier he gets.' The sight was horrifying. I rubbed my eyes, not daring to even blink.

Faced with food, Li Ming had devolved into a monster. His tiny body rapidly repeated the motions of chewing and swallowing. Within moments, he had completely cleaned out the first meat basin, leaving only the basin of broth behind.

'A grown man would take ages to finish a basin of meat that size. Zhang Shuxue and I have only been talking for ten minutes, and he's already devoured all of it?' The basin was larger than the boy's face. I honestly had no idea how his stomach had managed to hold it all.

But the shock didn't end there. Having stripped the large basin completely clean, Li Ming still wasn't satisfied. Stepping higher on his chair, he dragged the basin of broth over.

He leaned over to sniff it, then plunged both hands directly into the broth to fish out the leftover scraps of minced meat, greedily cramming them into his mouth.

Broth splashed everywhere. His primitive way of eating left me reeling in shock.

This wasn't just hunger. He had developed a pathological dependence on eating.

Li Ming looked positively ecstatic. After scooping scraps for a while, he seemed to realize that this was too slow. Grabbing the rim of the basin with both hands, he slowly hoisted it into the air.

Opening his mouth as wide as it would go, he began chugging the broth in massive gulps. From my spot in the bedroom, I could clearly see his stomach swelling larger and larger, stretching so taut it looked like it might burst at any second.

"He was perfectly normal when I first came inside. How did he turn into this in the blink of an eye?" I shot a look at Zhang Shuxue. "Did you slip drugs into the broth?"

"I didn't add a single thing. What you're seeing is the real him." She was clutching her photograph in both hands. Her tears hadn't even fully dried, yet I could clearly hear her gulping down saliva as she stared. "Pig Cage Apartments is filled with nothing but ghosts. No matter who you are... once you step inside, they'll latch onto you..."