Chapter 83
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Time passed second by second, and almost twenty minutes had passed. The garbage heap was almost full.
Finally, a strong voice in the kitchen shouted, “Let’s go, time to serve!”
A group of heavy footsteps carried things out of the kitchen.
It was a good opportunity!
With only ten minutes left until the hour was up, there was no time to waste. Lou Yan gave Li Sanxin and Lin You a gesture, then climbed up the slanted garbage chute first.
The chute was about two meters long, with an angle of about 70-80 degrees. Plus, the grease and blood on the walls of the chute made it extremely slippery. Lou Yan used both hands and feet to brace against the sides of the chute, relying on his muscle strength to climb up slowly.
Li Sanxin and Lin You watched him closely from behind, ready to help if Lou Yan slipped.
The dirt in the chute stuck to Lou Yan’s clothes, making him feel filthy, but Lou Yan, who had gone through all sorts of trials and tribulations in his past life, remained calm and ignored it, steadily climbing forward.
With excellent control over his body, Lou Yan successfully climbed to the exit of the chute. He cautiously peered out without leaving any traces, observing the outside world.
The light in the kitchen was extremely bright, almost blinding Lou Yan, who had been in the dark all this time.
The kitchen was large, over a hundred square meters, laid out like a typical hotel kitchen. In the middle were three rows of large stainless steel countertops, equipped with stoves and various kitchen utensils, as well as condiments and ingredients such as oil, salt, and vinegar. There was about a meter and a half of space between each countertop.
In addition, there were shelves, sinks, refrigerators, and cabinets along the walls.
The gray-white floor tiles were covered with pots and pans of ingredients, all meat. The floor was dirty, with oil stains, footprints, blood… black and red patches everywhere.
Lou Yan quickly scanned the kitchen.
Apart from the people leaving with the dishes, there were also two figures wrapping dumplings. The moment he saw these two figures clearly, Lou Yan held his breath lightly.
They were two pig-headed people.
Just like the pig-headed prison guards in the first-level maze.
These two pig-headed people were dressed in white chef’s uniforms, with large pig brains wearing white chef hats on top, and their bodies wrapped in aprons covered in flour and various stains. The two pig-headed people were chatting with their backs to Lou Yan, their mouths chewing as if they were still eating something.
Besides these two pig-headed people, there was one place that stood out.
In front of Lou Yan was a countertop, and opposite the countertop was a sink. Next to the sink was a rack with hooks, which looked very similar to the hook racks he had seen in a lamb restaurant. However, on this rack hung two inverted figures dressed in prisoner’s clothes.
The ankles of these two humans were pierced by hooks and hung up, their bodies lifeless and hanging straight down. Underneath them were two large iron basins, and blood dripped from their necks into the basins, already filling up more than half of them.
Lou Yan’s expression sank, and he clenched his fingers, moving his gaze away and memorizing the layout of the kitchen in his mind.
As soon as he finished memorizing, a pig-headed prison guard rushed to the door from outside the kitchen, saying to the two pig-headed chefs, “Come with me quickly. We caught three humans at the elevator door, and one of them is almost dead. We need you to come and deal with them!”
Upon hearing this, the two pig-headed chefs immediately grabbed their knives and basins and hurried out.
Once they left the kitchen, Lou Yan crawled out of the garbage chute and waved to Li Sanxin and Lin You, signaling them to come out.
Li Sanxin and Lin You quickly crawled out of the garbage chute, and the three of them carefully moved around the kitchen, bending over. Lou Yan, taking cover behind the countertop, was the first to reach the rack and see if the two bloodletting humans could be saved.
Unfortunately, these two humans were already dead through and through.
Lou Yan sighed, covering their eyes filled with fear, anger, and unwillingness to accept their fate.
When Lin You saw the face of one of the people, his brows furrowed, and his expression became somewhat strange.
Lou Yan lowered his voice and asked, “What’s wrong?”
“This person, Comrade Li Sanxin and I have seen him,” Lin You pointed to the man on the right and explained, “He was the first person we saw entering the second level. But compared to before, he has changed somewhat strangely.”
Lin You looked the person up and down, then suddenly grabbed the hand hanging down to the ground, “Look at this.”
Lou Yan looked down and furrowed his brows, pondering, “This hand… it looks somewhat like a pig’s hand.”
“Yes,” Lin You straightened out the hair and bloodstains plastered on the person’s face, revealing his features, “…his ears and nose have changed, starting to resemble the pig-headed people we’ve seen before.”
Lou Yan lowered his gaze and took out the “Restaurant Food Manual” from his hand, looking at the fourth rule.
—”Please slaughter the ingredients promptly to keep them in a dead state and prevent irreversible changes.”
The reverse meaning of this sentence was: if the ingredients were not slaughtered promptly, irreversible changes would occur to them.
“He was the first person you saw entering the second level, so he didn’t need much time to easily pass through the second level to get here. And we spent some time clearing the second level, and then slept for over two hours in the passage. Adding up all this time difference, this person must have arrived here at least three hours earlier than us.”
Lin You nodded, “Yes.”
Lou Yan looked at the blood still dripping into the basin from the person’s neck, “His blood hasn’t stopped flowing yet, so the time of death should be before we arrived here. This proves that he was alive and hiding on the third level for at least three hours…”
“You mean…” Lin You also looked at the fourth rule in the “Restaurant Edible Manual,” hesitating, “we are all ingredients, and if we don’t die, staying in the restaurant for a long time will transform us into pig-headed people? And this transformation is irreversible?”
Lou Yan said, “It’s very possible.”
If they were to turn into pig-headed people, they would become part of the anomalies, and the other anomalies would no longer be able to harm them.
To prevent the ingredients from becoming like their own kind, the manual urged prompt slaughter of the ingredients.
“F*ck… then we must leave this level before we turn into pig-headed people,” Li Sanxin exclaimed in a low voice, leaning in behind Lou Yan and Lin You, stuffing something into their mouths, “Why is this level so treacherous? We’ve come to the stronghold where the anomalies dine. It’s already extremely dangerous, and now if we stay too long, we’ll turn into anomalies. How can we clear this level?”
Lou Yan and Lin You had something stuffed into their mouths all of a sudden, and their expressions changed instinctively, wanting to spit it out. Li Sanxin promptly said, “Don’t worry, it’s a clean dumpling skin. I found it while you two were busy. I’ve checked it several times and can guarantee that it’s something we can eat.”
With this explanation, Lou Yan and Lin You relaxed and swallowed the still raw dumpling skins in their mouths.
Li Sanxin also swallowed them down and sighed, “Although it’s dangerous in the kitchen, at least there’s some choice in what we can eat besides human flesh. If other people are hiding elsewhere and want to eat something, it’s either dumplings or buns mixed with human flesh, meat pies mixed with human flesh, or just straight-up human flesh. It’s difficult to find clean food… I wonder if biting oneself would work.”
Lou Yan’s mouth was filled with a dry taste of flour, he swallowed and cleared his throat, “There are still many cautious and clever people. In the amusement park, who would dare to eat something of unknown origin? People with brains, as long as they see meat in their food, will inevitably associate it with human flesh. Even if they see a bowl of dumplings placed in front of them, they will only cautiously eat the dumpling skin and not the filling.”
Indeed, if they were hiding outside, they wouldn’t touch these meat dishes.
Li Sanxin sighed and looked at the two humans hanging upside down, a trace of unwillingness crossing his face, “Brothers, rest in peace…”
Such a miserable way of dying made people reluctant to look at them.
Apart from the two hanging humans, all the meat visible in the kitchen was also their kind.
Any h*llish scenes fictionalized in the peaceful era were not as tragic and sorrowful as what was witnessed at this moment.
Li Sanxin silently prayed for the dead to rest in peace, he sighed and said, “Yanzi, I just saw a kitchen staff schedule in the kitchen. Attached to the schedule was a layout map of the restaurant, but that map was different from the one we got in the ‘Restaurant Edible Manual.'”
Lou Yan immediately asked, “Where is the schedule?”
Li Sanxin waved to them and led them to the refrigeration cabinet.
The location of the refrigeration cabinet was extremely dangerous, right where it could be seen as soon as one entered the kitchen. Lou Yan and the others stood here, and as long as someone came in from outside, they could be seen at first glance.
But the schedule stuck to the refrigeration cabinet couldn’t be torn off, so they had to come closer to read it.
Lou Yan’s first glance was at the layout map on the schedule.
This map was indeed different from the one in the “Restaurant Edible Manual.” In addition to the kitchen, four restaurants, and an elevator, this map also included a restroom, a pantry, a garbage pool, and a hunter’s restaurant.
Lou Yan’s gaze settled on the hunter’s restaurant.
This restaurant was separate from the other four restaurants, and it was very likely that the food eaten by the hunters and the anomalies was not the same.
The restroom was next to the kitchen, and the pantry was opposite the kitchen. The hunter’s restaurant was small, similar to a private room, placed next to the elevator, at the end of the corridor.
The garbage pool was across from the elevator.
Lou Yan looked at the schedule above and noticed two lines of text in the grid.
“After the garbage heap is full, immediately put the garbage into the garbage truck and transport it to the garbage pool.”
“At every hour, a supply of food needs to be delivered to the hunter’s restaurant.”
The three of them speculated based on the sound that there were only seven people in the kitchen, and the schedule proved that their speculation was not wrong. There were indeed only seven pig-headed people working in the kitchen.
“A corner here has been circled,” Li Sanxin carefully reached out and smoothed out the piece of paper circled at the bottom of the schedule. Unexpectedly, after smoothing it out, there was still a very small line of words printed on this corner of paper. Li Sanxin squinted and read out each word one by one, “Pig-headed chefs wearing red aprons… guard the food in the kitchen for twenty-four hours…”
“….”
The three of them felt a chill creeping up their spines.
There was another pig-headed chef wearing a red apron, always staying with the three of them in the kitchen?
Where was that chef now?
The author has something to say:
When Lou was stinking and eating raw dumpling skins, the male lead from the neighboring hunter’s restaurant was enjoying his meal in the air-conditioning.
Chief Lou: (╬￣皿￣)
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