Hunter of Mysterious Creature-Chapter 351 - 19: Division (Part 2)

"Blame yourself for coming here blindly, I suppose."

The heavy hunting pistol spun once in Sun Hang’s palm before it smashed solidly onto the chin of the one lying upside down.

Who said a hunting pistol is useless after it runs out of bullets? Even without them, it still makes a formidable weapon.

Especially with that handle customized with extra weights.

Sun Hang gripped the gun, wielding the metal-clad handle like a nimble war hammer, striking down on the inverted figure repeatedly. It wasn’t long before the ear-piercing screams ceased, leaving only intermittent gasps.

"Tsk, so dirty."

Sun Hang glanced at the gun in his hand; the handle, coated in metal, was covered in bits of flesh and blood, with a few maggoty mush remains faintly visible — one must admit, the protein level was indeed off the charts.

Sun Hang placed his foot on the head of the inverted man, ripping a large piece of cloth from his clothes with a ’tearing’ sound, and began wiping the pistol leisurely.

The entire square was silent, every gaze locked on Sun Hang. The "host" on the stage stood there dumbfounded, staring at Sun Hang who had just finished the violence, even forgetting to lower the arm holding the feather fan.

"Why are you looking at me? Continue the music, continue the dance!" Sun Hang shouted at the stage, "If such a trivial matter delays everyone’s grand sacrifice, how embarrassing that would be!"

Sun Hang’s words seemed to press the "pause end" button. The "host" on the stage resumed the strange dance, the sound of wooden soles rhythmically stamping on the wooden floor filling the air once again.

And the townspeople below also slowly turned their heads back.

Sun Hang meticulously cleaned the pistol, returned it to the holster, then ground the round head under the boot, asking, "Didn’t I tell you this is a fine thing? How handy it is in a fight, isn’t it better than your little blades?"

"Mmm... Mmm..."

The mouth of the inverted man uttered some indistinct sounds.

"Still alive? Not dead yet?" Sun Hang paused, then shifted his foot upward a few inches and stomped hard.

With a sound of a spine cracking, the body of the inverted man spasmed for a moment before going limp.

Sun Hang stepped back two paces, wiped his boots on the clean concrete, leaving two dark red blood marks.

Seeing the inverted man was dead, several nearby townspeople immediately gathered around.

They pulled out various knives, axes, saws from who knows where, and within minutes dissected the inverted man’s body clean, not even sparing the bits clinging to the ground.

"Seriously? I merely entertained the thought of chopping the fellow into bits, but I didn’t actually mean it," Sun Hang said in astonishment, "Are you guys serious?"

A townsman holding a big leg, covered in paper talismans turned around, said respectfully, "He offended someone favored by the mayor, and according to the host of the festival, this time he will receive blessings and be distributed as provisions for everyone next month."

Just as this townsman said, the townspeople who divided up the inverted man’s body didn’t keep the meat to themselves, instead carrying it all to the stage, where that post-modern style host danced a completely different dance around these pieces of flesh.

"One more piece! One more piece!"

A little boy with empty eye sockets crawled out from between the adults, grabbed the maggot-infested rot the inverted man had vomited on the ground, and held it high over his head.

But lo and behold, the surrounding townspeople all burst into laughter.

"Hahaha, little blind one, that meat has long rotted, it’s inedible!"

"Only someone like Skinny Monkey would treasure it as if it’s gold."

"Throw it away, throw it away, soon there’ll be fresh stuff to eat!"

"Yeah, yeah, all thanks to the mayor, otherwise we’d be starving again!"

The topic among the townspeople swiftly shifted to the sacrificial ceremony, and the square brimmed with a joyous atmosphere.

Looking at this scene separately, one wouldn’t imagine the thing exciting the townspeople so much would be the division of a fellow townsman’s corpse.

"It’s freakishly bizarre, a bit insane." Sun Hang muttered standing there, "But somehow, it feels quite reasonable."

"Of course, it’s logical." A familiar voice rang beside Sun Hang, making his eye twitch sharply as he twisted his head to look to the side.

The old lady Sun Hang had met in the wilderness was standing next to him, leaning on a cane, looking kindly at the townspeople in the square.

"After all, all these years, Maoyun Town has always lived this way," the old lady said.

"By the way, are you the mayor of this town?" Sun Hang asked softly, using polite language.

"Mayor? Maoyun Town has no mayor," the old lady replied with a cheerful smile.

"But everyone I met mentioned a mayor," Sun Hang said, puzzled.

"And those who mentioned the mayor to you, have they ever seen the mayor themselves?" the old lady asked in return.

"...If there’s no mayor, then who gives these ’blessings’ to the ’food’?"

"Blessings? Where are there blessings?" the old lady’s smile remained unchanged, the crow’s feet extending deep into her hairline.

Sun Hang was taken aback, looked up at the stage.

The festival host in Taoist robes, with precepts burn scars had stopped dancing, using the scalpel to slice meat from the inverted man, distributing it to the queued townspeople below.

"Meat is still meat, but in their eyes, it’s cattle and sheep, chickens and ducks, white rice and white noodles," the old lady said. "There have never been blessings, it’s all just their delusion."

"...Could you elaborate?"

"You’ve probably heard about the famine in Maoyun Town back then?"

"I’ve heard a bit," Sun Hang nodded.

"When there’s truly nothing else to eat, and driven mad by hunger, people turned their eyes on their kind... But they are unwilling to admit they are eating human flesh. They can only make up some self-deceptive lies, using chopsticks to point at the bloody meat in the bowl, telling themselves it’s rice, it’s an old hen, it’s that fat pig slaughtered at the village entrance... Over time, they come to believe those lies, and meat indeed becomes rice, becomes old hen, becomes greasy pork belly."

"What about the curse of not dying?" Sun Hang pressed.

"It’s all obsession," the old lady shook her head, "In chaotic times, life is cheap, all people wish for is a full meal, a way to survive."

"Then why did the bait block you gave me..."

"If you believe, then it is bait, if you don’t, then it is what it originally is," the old lady said, "Now, take out the banknote I gave you again and take a look?"

Hearing this, Sun Hang quickly retrieved the banknote from his pocket.

The banknote had turned into a shabby food voucher, its face value changed from five cents to five liters of rice, but it bore a fresh red stamp on the front.

"[Invalidated]."

[P.S. Just a heads up, I’ll be on a business trip during the National Day holiday, with a tightly packed schedule, so I might not have time to write. As you all know, I don’t have any drafts saved up, so from October 2nd ~ October 4th, I might take 2-3 days off, the exact days depend on the actual arrangements then.

There’s also a chance I might sneak in some writing on my phone at the hotel after work ends... However, writing 4000 daily is definitely not doable.]