The Horrible Truth

Song Yang and I went back to the police station. Wang Dali rushed over and asked with concern, "Were you two hurt? I knew I should have gone with you, but you wouldn't let me."

Huang Xiaotao scoffed, "What could you have done if you went, tied the perpetrator's shoelaces?"

Wang Dali said unhappily, "Sister Xiaotao, why do you always have to bring up my weaknesses? That was a long time ago."

I prepared myself and then went to the morgue to examine the corpse found in the basement. When the body bag was opened, everyone present was shocked. The victim's body was covered in bruises, and could be described as battered beyond recognition. His expression was extremely twisted in pain, and large amounts of muscle and fat had also been carved away. It was hard to imagine what he had gone through before death.

"How cruel!" Huang Xiaotao frowned.

I began doing some routine checks. The victim was around 25 years old, male, medium build, healthy. He had been dead for about ten days, but there was no serious decay due to the cold environment he was in.

The victim's internal organs and bones were almost completely undamaged. The cause of death was shock leading to cardiac arrest. His injuries seemed to be from being beaten with a rod-shaped object. The perpetrator had slowly pounded every inch of his skin with a wooden stick, leaving no spot untouched. The surface was unbroken, but there was a large accumulation of blood under the skin.

It was these injuries that led to traumatic shock and eventual cardiac arrest. In other words, the victim was beaten to death.

After hearing my account, everyone fell silent. After a while, Huang Xiaotao asked, "Why did the perpetrator do this?"

"Same as the first two victims, for the delicious meat! I've heard that in the past, some high officials who ate pork didn't kill it with a knife. They had their servants beat the pig to death with a stick. This sealed all the blood under the skin, and the fiber was beaten soft and the tendons were severed. It made the meat exceptionally tender and delicious..." I looked at the corpse on the dissection table, "Treating a living person this way, I can't even imagine it."

"I want to run to the hospital right now and pull all that bastard's tubes out!" Huang Xiaotao cursed. "The meat on the victim was carved away after death?"

"Yes!" I replied.

Although the perpetrator had been caught, I still took fingerprints and palm prints from the corpse and body bag as evidence.

After the autopsy, I said to Huang Xiaotao, "It looks like nothing else today. I'll head back first. When Master Tang wakes up and you guys want to interrogate him, call me back."

"Are you going to interrogate him yourself?" Huang Xiaotao asked.

"No, I'm just a coroner. I won't overstep my bounds. There are some things I still don't understand, so I want to hear what he has to say." I explained.

"Alright!"

Huang Xiaotao saw us to the door and said, "Song Yang, thanks for today!"

"You're welcome, I should be thanking you."

"Oh right..."

"What is it?"

Huang Xiaotao blushed. By now it was dusk, and the golden sunset shone softly on her face and figure. She smiled and said, "It's nothing!"

Wang Dali was anxious to catch the bus and kept urging us, "Hurry up, why are you two suddenly acting all shy."

I walked some distance away, and looking back, Huang Xiaotao was still standing there seeing us off. Perhaps after witnessing so many ugly things these past days, her smile seemed especially beautiful.

In the days that followed, I returned to my normal life. The abrupt change left me a little disoriented.

For a long time after the human meat bun case, I lost my appetite whenever I saw meat, especially steamed buns.

When I was bored, I indirectly asked Wang Dali, "Hey, the other day I watched a movie where the male lead ended up with a policewoman. Do you think a relationship like that could be happy?"

Wang Dali said, "I think it depends on the person. If the male lead was also a cop and they spent a lot of time together, it would probably be fine. But if the male lead was a criminal, then it's hard to say."

"What about an ordinary person?" I asked.

"I can't say for sure. Cops are probably really busy, why don't you ask Sister Xiaotao? She would know for sure." Wang Dali said.

Of course I'd ask her instead of you if I could.

About a week later, Huang Xiaotao called to tell me they were going to interrogate Master Tang today. So I went to the police station alone.

Master Tang in the interrogation room was wrapped in bandages with an IV drip, looking rather haggard. Two policemen were interrogating him, with a clerk taking notes on the side. Huang Xiaotao and I observed through the monitor in the next room.

But to my great surprise, Master Tang claimed to know nothing about the whole affair, and acted very panicked, holding his head and crying, "I didn't kill anyone, I don't know anything. That bastard Jin Huo Ma dumped the corpse at my shop. I had no choice but to help dispose of it."

No matter how the police questioned him, this was all he said. Just as everyone was about to lose patience, Master Tang's expression suddenly changed. The interrogating officer tried calling his name, "Jin Huo Ma?"

Master Tang scoffed coldly, "Why are you calling me? Why doesn't the cop who stabbed me come interrogate me himself? Is he afraid to see me?"

No matter what the police asked, he just sat there with his arms crossed, aloof and indifferent, saying he wouldn't talk unless I came in.

Huang Xiaotao and I exchanged glances. She picked up the intercom and had the people inside leave. Then she said to me, "Let's go in together!"

"Are you okay after what happened last time? No lingering trauma?" I asked.

"Of course not, would cops be afraid of criminals?" Huang Xiaotao brushed her nose disdainfully.

"Alright, let's go in then."

When we entered the interrogation room, Master Tang immediately asked me for a cigarette. I said I didn't have any. Huang Xiaotao said, "Jin Huo Ma, the evidence against you is ironclad now. This interrogation is just a formality. Just come clean! Don't waste everyone's time."

Master Tang laughed derisively and said to me, "Since you're here, I'll come clean. Let me tell you my story."

It turned out Jin Huo Ma had owed Master Tang 100,000 yuan three years ago. At the time he really couldn't pay it back, so he suggested using meat as payment. Taking advantage of his job, Jin Huo Ma smuggled meat from the meat processing plant every day. Since they were from the same hometown, no formal agreement was made at first.

Over three years, Jin Huo Ma didn't know how much pork he had given Master Tang. The debt should have been paid off long ago. But unexpectedly, three months ago Master Tang urgently needed 100,000 yuan. He denied ever owing Jin Huo Ma anything, and demanded he pay up.

The two of them argued heatedly, and Master Tang threatened to expose Jin Huo Ma's dirty secrets from back then. Jin Huo Ma lost his temper and attacked. But unexpectedly, Master Tang was very strong and beat Jin Huo Ma to death.

Master Tang panicked when he came to his senses, afraid of going to jail if the body was discovered. He thought and thought, and decided to emulate the movie "Human Meat Buns", mincing Jin Huo Ma into meat buns to sell.

This guy who had never killed anyone actually made a whole person 'disappear' using this divide and conquer method.

Of course, human meat is different from pork. Master Tang was afraid customers would notice, so he added a lot of five spice powder. Still uneasy, he tasted each batch of buns himself after steaming. Once while eating, he unconsciously finished half a tray. When he realized what happened, he broke out in a cold sweat.

Like Jin Huo Ma back then, Master Tang had tasted the deliciousness of human flesh, and started to change...

Every night at 8 pm, the time Jin Huo Ma was killed, Master Tang's personality would drastically shift. He would madly devour the human meat buns he made, sometimes hugging buckets of raw mince and shoveling it into his mouth.

As he ate, an expression of satisfaction and eerie laughter appeared.

Gradually, another soul emerged within him - the dead Jin Huo Ma!