Chapter 82
<Previous Chapter<Table of Contents>Next Chapter>
“Finally, we can have a satisfying meal today. Those guys must be eager, right?”
“The ones with no self-control have probably started snacking already, but how can raw meat compare to the taste of our kitchen-made dishes? Everyone, hurry up and prepare, serve whatever dishes are ready first! Let those food bins get a taste and whet their appetite!”
These conversations seemed ordinary, but upon closer inspection, they were terrifying.
Minced meat, roasted legs, raw meat…
Lou Yan’s thoughts took a dark turn.
He remembered that in the first level, if no one emerged from the maze within two hours, they would be crushed into minced meat by the high walls.
Was the minced meat mentioned in the conversation the people who hadn’t escaped the maze and were crushed into minced meat?
The kitchen conversation continued.
“Hey boss, there’s something else mixed in with the minced meat.”
“Let me see… sigh, how did these things get mixed in? How can we eat this? The texture is ruined. You and whoever go quickly pick out these things from the minced meat and throw them away. Hurry up!”
The noisy voices became even more lively, with the ping-pong sound of chopping vegetables, the sizzle of oil in the iron pot, and the bustling chatter sounding like a market.
From the different voices in the conversation, there should be seven “people” in the kitchen.
After a while, someone approached the garbage chute. This person’s weight should be quite heavy, causing a slight tremor with each step. Lou Yan and the others below keenly sensed someone approaching, staying motionless and slowing their breathing. After a while, a large, dark mass was thrown down the garbage chute.
As they looked at the mass, they almost vomited.
The mouth of the black garbage bag was untied, and its contents spilled out. It was a tangled mess of bloody hair and fabric, smeared with minced meat and blood, emitting a strong smell of blood.
—It was human hair and the gray prisoner’s clothing!
The stomachs that had just felt hungry due to the kitchen’s aroma now churned with nausea. Li Sanxin dry-heaved silently a few times, wishing to slap himself for swallowing saliva after smelling the aroma just now. Looking at these things, how could he not know what the kitchen ingredients were? They were all people who came to participate in the amusement park together!
Behind, one bundle after another of hair and clothing was picked out by the people in the kitchen and thrown into the garbage chute. As they threw the garbage, they complained, “There are too many useless human wastes in the first-level maze who haven’t escaped and have been crushed into minced meat. We can’t even fit them all in the kitchen. Although minced meat can be used to make dumplings, buns, and meat patties, it can get too greasy if you eat too much. I prefer meat with some chewiness.”
“Anything edible is fine, why are you being picky?”
“You can’t say that. Would you dare say you don’t like a whole piece of meat with some chewiness?”
“I definitely love it. I heard there are over one hundred and thirty crushed human beings, and we have filled over two hundred pots. Fortunately, there are many other intact human bodies. The meat can be used for stir-frying and barbecue, which should be enough for us to eat once.”
“Hahaha, that’s right, that’s right. The bodies killed by the hunter and other anomalies have also been sent over. Several have just died and are having their throats cut to bleed out. It’ll be done soon. The meat and blood are still fresh. Whether they are sliced into meat slices for hot pot or grilled on skewers, they will definitely be delicious. Slurp, just talking about it makes me hungry.”
“Gurgle, gurgle,” several loud stomachs growled with hunger, and the two people taking turns throwing away the garbage burst into laughter. The laughter echoed clearly in everyone’s ears through the garbage chute. Lin You clenched his fists tightly, the back of his hands bulging with veins, his eyes reddening as he stared at the garbage chute, lips pressed tightly, exuding a chilling aura.
Lou Yan reached out and pressed against Lin You’s chest, his expression equally grim. He silently mouthed to Lin You, “Stay calm.”
They didn’t know what was happening outside, and all they could do now was to preserve themselves. Even if these anomalies were disgusting, they couldn’t lose their rationality due to anger.
Lin You breathed heavily and closed his eyes with difficulty.
After the garbage heap was piled up like a small mountain, no more garbage was thrown in. Lou Yan used his learned sign language to communicate, “We need to find an opportunity to get out.”
Li Sanxin also gestured, “There are people outside. Shouldn’t we wait for them to leave before we go out?”
Surprisingly, Lin You also understood their sign language and gestured, “According to what they said, there are over two hundred pots of minced meat. If they want to use all that minced meat as food at once, we’ll be waiting here for a long, long time.”
The longer they waited, the more unsafe it became.
Lou Yan looked at the pile of garbage, suppressing his disgust as he approached to search for other useful garbage by pushing aside the bloody garbage bags filled with hair and clothes.
Lin You stepped forward to help, flipping through the garbage with care. Li Sanxin watched their actions, wanting to help but hesitating as his stomach churned.
With his cleanliness and obsessive-compulsive disorder, it had been difficult for him to endure until now. Now, he had to dig through this stinking sewage-like garbage. Li Sanxin felt like he was about to throw up just touching this pile of garbage.
But since his brothers were digging through it, even Lou Yan, who usually lived a privileged life, overcame his disgust and dug through the garbage efficiently. It wouldn’t be right for him to just stand there and enjoy the fruits of their labor.
If it were Lu Haoxiu or Duan Zege here, they would have already dived into the garbage heap with them.
After mentally preparing himself for a long time, Li Sanxin finally gritted his teeth and reached into the garbage heap with his eyes closed, only to touch a pile of unknown liquid.
“!!!”
Li Sanxin’s expression twisted, and in an instant, he imagined all sorts of disgusting things in this sticky, slippery liquid. He immediately pulled his hand out, but as he did, he accidentally touched a piece of paper in the water. Instinctively, he pulled out the paper.
Upon inspection, the liquid on his hand was a dark red to black color, thick and viscous, emitting an extremely foul smell. Li Sanxin closed his eyes in pain; he couldn’t keep this hand.
Trembling, he handed the paper to Lou Yan.
What’s this?
Lou Yan took the paper, ignoring the dirt on it, and read the words under the light from the garbage chute.
Restaurant Food Manual:
- The restaurant is open 24 hours a day, and the menu varies depending on the ingredients of the day.
- The kitchen is a restricted area, and non-staff members are not allowed to enter.
- After entering the restaurant, please consume food within one hour. You are not allowed to leave without consuming food.
- Please slaughter the ingredients promptly to keep them in a dead state and prevent irreversible changes.
- When the garbage heap is full, please clean it up promptly.
Under these five rules was a simple restaurant floor plan drawn with lines. The kitchen was in the bottom right corner of the floor plan, and outside the kitchen was a straight corridor. At the end of the corridor was an elevator, and on both sides of the corridor were two wide-open restaurant entrances.
This piece of paper revealed a lot of information. Lou Yan carefully read through the five rules, furrowing his brows in thought.
The kitchen is a restricted area, and non-staff members are not allowed to enter… But they needed to get out through the kitchen’s garbage chute. What about the people who cleared the third level? Did they also need to exit through the kitchen?
Lou Yan didn’t think the others would be so unlucky. Judging from the attitude of the kitchen staff and the untouched garbage heap beside them, they were probably the first ones to arrive here and the first ones to leave through the kitchen.
Sure enough, their difficulty was different from the others…
And the exit from the third level was the elevator farthest from the restaurant.
To reach the elevator, they needed to pass through the entire corridor, where there were four restaurants in total.
This exit route was extremely dangerous; they could be discovered at any moment.
What concerned Lou Yan even more were the last three rules on the manual. The third rule stated, “After entering the restaurant, please consume food within one hour. You are not allowed to leave without consuming food.” Did they need to do this? Was this rule aimed at anomalies or did it include humans who entered the restaurant? If the three of them didn’t consume food within an hour, could they still leave the restaurant?
And were they considered to be within the restaurant’s range while staying in this garbage heap?
Lou Yan’s gaze shifted to the fifth rule, “When the garbage heap is full, please clean it up promptly.” This rule was written in the Restaurant Food Manual, indicating that the garbage heap was also within the restaurant’s range. In other words, when they arrived at this garbage heap, they were already inside the third-level restaurant.
As for the rule about consuming food within an hour, Lou Yan analyzed it rationally. This rule was more likely aimed at humans than anomalies.
Obviously, the amusement park was a playground for anomalies, so why would the rules manual make things difficult for them? Moreover, anomalies came to the restaurant to eat; why would they not eat when they came here?
Therefore, this rule seemed more like a restraint and trap for humans who cleared the third level.
The anomalies were full of malice. If humans who arrived at the third-level restaurant didn’t discover this rule in time and didn’t consume food within an hour, even if they were strong, they couldn’t leave the restaurant.
If humans did discover this rule, the anomalies would only watch the show with even more excitement… Because once the food provided by the kitchen was all made from human flesh, they would be openly forcing humans to eat their own kind.
To survive, to leave the restaurant, they could only eat the flesh of their own kind.
This rule, regardless of whether humans complied with it or not, would provide the anomalies with a lot of entertainment.
It’s disgusting.
Lou Yan stared at the paper expressionlessly, his face calm, but the veins on the back of his hand bulged, and his fingertips turned slightly pale.
The anomalies’ traps were becoming increasingly nauseating.
Lou Yan looked at Lin You and gestured, “How long do you think it’s been since we arrived here?”
Lin You held up three fingers, indicating that it had been about thirty minutes.
Half of the hour had already passed.
Lou Yan pointed to the fifth rule, “Please clean up the garbage heap promptly,” for Lin You and Li Sanxin to see, then gestured to the nearby mountain-like garbage heap.
Lin You and Li Sanxin understood his meaning.
The garbage was almost full, and once it was full, the people in the kitchen would clean it up, and the three of them would be discovered.
They obviously couldn’t continue hiding here.
Li Sanxin, feeling hopeless, touched the equally dirty paper with his dirty hand and pointed to the fourth rule.
“Please slaughter the ingredients promptly to keep them in a dead state and prevent irreversible changes.”
Li Sanxin knew how to cook, and he knew that if some ingredients weren’t handled promptly, they would rot and spoil. But that usually referred to lifeless ingredients. For example, how could live poultry and fish spoil? According to common sense and normal logic, only dead poultry and fish would spoil.
But this rule completely reversed common sense, stating that only by keeping the ingredients in a dead state could irreversible changes be prevented.
Therefore, Li Sanxin paid special attention to this rule.
He felt that the irreversible changes mentioned in the manual were likely not simple spoilage. But if it wasn’t spoilage, then what kind of changes would occur?
And these changes were ones that the anomalies didn’t want to see, so they needed to promptly slaughter the ingredients and wrote it in the manual as a rule.
Li Sanxin was puzzled, and Lou Yan and Lin You weren’t much better off.
The three of them glanced at each other.
The only thing they could be sure of was that the ingredients referred to them, to humans.
<Previous Chapter<Table of Contents>Next Chapter>
