When we returned to the police station, Dali had heard about what just happened. He rushed up and asked with concern, “Are you guys hurt? I told you I should’ve gone with you!”

“Why?” sneered Xiaotao. “So you can help the murderer tie his shoelaces?”

“Oh, come on, Xiaotao-jiejie!” Dali lamented. “That happened ages ago!”

I got ready for a bit and went straight into the morgue to examine the body found in the basement. When I opened the bag, everyone was stunned to see the condition that the body was in. The victim was covered in purple bruises. It looked as if he must’ve gone through a lot of pain. Most of his muscles and fat tissues had been cut away too. I could hardly imagine what harrowing experience he must’ve gone through before his death.

“It’s awful…” Xiaotao frowned.

I started to do some routine examinations. I found the victim to be about twenty-five years old, he was male, his body was medium-sized, and he was a healthy individual before his death. The time of death was about ten days ago. However, because the environment his body was kept in was relatively cold, there was no serious decay.

His internal organs and bones were almost all intact. The cause of death was a heart attack caused by shock. It seemed that he was hit by a staff-like object all over his body. Not an inch was spared. There was no damage on the skin’s surface, but a lot of blood had accumulated under the skin.

It was these wounds that caused the traumatic shock that led to a heart attack. In other words, the victim died because of extreme pain.

After listening to my explanations, everyone was silent. There was a long pause before Xiaotao asked me, “Why did the murderer do this?”

“The same reason he did those things to the first two victims—to make the meat delicious! I have read about people in ancient times who would kill the pigs without using a knife—they would beat them to death instead. This works to accumulate all the blood from the body out of the flesh to underneath the skin. It makes the meat delicious.”

I looked at the victim on the bed. “To think that someone used this method on a living person is just unspeakable!”

“I really want to go to the hospital now and pull out all the tubes that’s keeping him alive!” yelled Xiaotao. “Was the flesh on the victim’s body cut off after his death?”

“Yes!” I replied.

Although the murderer had been caught, I still extracted the fingerprints from the body and the bag as evidence.

Once the autopsy was complete, I said to Huang Xiaotao, “It seems that nothing else will be happening today. I’ll go back first and wait until Shopkeeper Tang wakes up. Call me when you’re ready to question him.”

“Do you intend to personally interrogate him?” Xiaotao asked.

“No, that’s not my expertise at all. I just want to hear what he says about some things that I haven’t figured out, that’s all.”

“Okay!”

Xiaotao sent us to the door and said, “Song Yang, thank you for what you did today!”

“You're welcome. I want to thank you too.”

“Right, by the way…”

“What is it?”

Xiaotao’s face was red. It was already late, and the golden light of the sunset was scattered on her face, highlighting her soft beauty. She smiled and mumbled, “Nothing!”

Dali rushed me to hurry up as we were about to miss the bus. “Come on, dude! Hurry up! You’re as slow as a grandma!”

I hastened my pace, but when I looked back, I saw Xiaotao still standing there and watching us. Perhaps I had seen too many ugly things in the past few days, but I thought the smile on her face at that moment was just so beautiful that my heart probably skipped a beat.

I returned to normal life in the next few days, though I had some difficulty readjusting to the mundane daily activities.

A long period of time after the human meat bun case, I found that I had lost the appetite for meat. I especially couldn’t eat any more steamed buns.

One day, when we were just hanging out, I asked Dali in a roundabout way, “Dude, I watched a movie two days ago. The protagonist got together with a policewoman at the end. Do you think he’d be happy?”

“Well, that varies from person to person. If the protagonist is also a police officer, then they’d probably get along fine. But if he’s a criminal, then that’s not such a good idea, is it?”

“What about civilians like us?” I asked.

“Hmm, I don’t know, dude. A police officer must be really busy all the time. Why don’t you ask Xiaotao-jiejie? She must know about this.”

Well, that’s the one thing that I absolutely couldn’t do.

About a week later, Huang Xiaotao called and told me that they were going to question Shopkeeper Tang today, so I rushed to the police station. He was still covered in bandages when I saw him in the interrogation room, and he looked very defeated. Two police officers were interrogating him, and there was a clerk next to him taking down the transcription of their conversation. Xiaotao and I went to the room next door and we watched his every move through the surveillance camera.

Shopkeeper Tang insisted that he knew nothing about the whole incident. He showed signs of panic and confusion.

“Please, officers, I didn’t kill anyone and I know nothing about all this! It’s definitely that bastard Ma Jinhuo! He did everything! He threw the bodies into my shop, so I just threw them away!”

No matter what the police asked him, these were all what he said. Everyone was losing patience, until suddenly, the expressions on Shopkeeper Tang’s face changed. The officer interrogating him noticed it and yelled, “Ma Jinhuo?”

“What are you yelling for, bastard?” Shopkeeper Tang sneered. “Why didn’t that little shit who hurt me come and interrogate me himself? Is he too scared of me?”

No matter what the police asked, he folded his arms and refused to cooperate. He insisted that he would only talk to me.

I exchanged a look with Xiaotao. She picked up the internal telephone and told the people inside to get out of the room. Then she told me, “Let's go!”

“You’re not traumatized by what happened, are you?” I asked.

“Don’t be silly. How can a police officer be afraid of a criminal?” Xiaotao denied while rubbing her nose.

“Okay, let’s go in there, then.”

We entered the interrogation room. When Shopkeeper Tang looked up, he asked me if I had any cigarettes. I said no.

“Ma Jinhuo,” said Xiaotao. “There’s a mountain of evidence against you. You can’t escape the death sentence now. This questioning is just for proper procedure, so come clean! Don’t waste everyone’s time!”

Shopkeeper Tang smiled contemptuously and turned to me. “I’m happy to finally meet you again, so I’ll tell you my story.”

It turned out that Ma Jinhuo owed Shopkeeper Tang 100,000 yuan three years ago. At that time, he really had no money to pay Shopkeeper Tang, so he would deliver meat out of the slaughterhouse he worked at to Shopkeeper Tang. Since they were both from the same village, they trusted each other enough not to put everything on paper.

After three years, Ma Jinhuo had lost track of how much pork he’d given to Shopkeeper Tang, but he thought his debt must’ve been paid off long ago by now. To his surprise, though, about three months ago, Shopkeeper Tang’s family urgently needed 100,000 yuan, so he refused to accept the meat as payment and insisted on being paid back in cash.

The two then got into a fight and it turned violent. Shopkeeper Tang threatened to expose Ma Jinhuo’s ugly past, triggering Ma Jinhuo to attack Shopkeeper Tang. But Shopkeeper Tang turned out to be physically much stronger than him, so in the end, he was overpowered and killed.

When his senses returned to him, Shopkeeper Tang panicked at the fact that he had murdered somebody. He knew he’d be thrown into jail if the body was found, so he decided to deal with it the same way he saw in the movie The Untold Truth—he turned Ma Jinhuo’s meat into the filling of his buns.

Of course, there was a difference in taste between human flesh and pork. Shopkeeper Tang was afraid that the customers might notice, so he added a lot of spices. Once the buns were cooked, he tasted them to check the quality, but after a while, he realized that he had unknowingly eaten half of the buns that he made!

Just like Ma Jinhuo in the past, he had become addicted to the taste of human flesh. Also, something else happened to him. Every evening at about 8.00 p.m., which was the time Ma Jinhuo was killed, Shopkeeper Tang’s temperament changed, and he would start to devour the meat buns made with Ma Jinhuo’s flesh with gusto. Sometimes he would be so obsessed with the taste that he’d stuff his mouth with the raw flesh left over from making the meat buns.

As he was eating, a curious smile would appear on his face and he would be inexplicably happy.

Gradually, another soul appeared in his body, and this soul belonged to the dead Ma Jinhuo!