Ling Yun patted his head and sighed, "Yeah, I'm not old yet, but my memory is already failing me. Honey, if I really get old and can't remember things, you'll have to help your husband remember them!"
Xiao Rou smiled sweetly and said softly, "Silly husband, you're as strong as an ox, how could anything happen to you? We're going to live a healthy and happy life together!"
Ling Yun smiled happily, squeezed her soft hand tightly, and the two walked together toward the crowd gathered in the market. A dozen or so townspeople were gathered in a circle, looking at something and whispering among themselves. Each of them had a withered face, filled with a deep sense of death and despair.
Hearing footsteps behind them, the townspeople stopped talking, turned around and saw Lingyun and Xiaorou walking up. They nodded and greeted them, saying, "Xiaoliang, Meiyun, you two are here."
Ling Yun smiled and greeted everyone, while Xiao Rou greeted everyone with a little shyness, as if she knew everyone in town.
Several townspeople moved aside to let the two of them step forward and take a look. The moment Xiaorou saw what was placed in the center of the circle, she immediately turned her head away, her pretty face turning deathly pale.
Ling Yun glanced at the center of the circle. On the ground lay a gruesome, mutilated corpse, as if it had been devoured by some wild beast. Its limbs had been torn off, and most of the remaining flesh had disappeared, revealing bloody, white bones mixed with fresh blood. Most of its head was gone, leaving only a bloody eye that looked utterly terrified.
Chapter 314 This monster is you
Ling Yun stared intently at the horrific mutilated corpse. The nauseatingly bloody scene elicited no reaction from him, as if such sights were commonplace. He gently embraced Xiao Rou's trembling waist, comforting her while continuing to scrutinize the wounds on the corpse, as if he could glean some clue from them.
"Xiao Liang, this isn't the first time you've seen this, so why are you looking at it so closely this time?" A round-faced middle-aged man asked curiously, seeing Ling Yun examining the corpse with the gaze of a professional coroner.
Ling Yun didn't react at all, just staring intently at the corpse, seemingly not hearing the middle-aged man's question at all. Xiao Rou gently nudged his shoulder, "Honey, Uncle Tang is asking you a question. Why aren't you answering?"
Ling Yun gave her a strange look. "Did Uncle Tang call me?" His gaze shifted to the round-faced middle-aged man, a strange expression flashing across his face. "Excuse me, Uncle Tang, did you call me just now? I was too focused and didn't hear you call my name."
Tang Sanshu's round face showed a hint of displeasure: "You're such a young child, how can you not even hear what others are saying? I clearly called your name, Xiao Liang, how could you not hear me? Are you thinking about something? Besides you, even your wife heard it, and the other neighbors heard it too." As he spoke, he turned his gaze to the crowd, and everyone immediately nodded in agreement, indicating that what Tang Sanshu said was true.
Ling Yun's face immediately showed an embarrassed expression: "I'm sorry, Third Uncle, I was a little distracted just now and didn't hear you. Hehe, why are you looking at me so carefully? Actually, I just wanted to identify whose body it was..." He suddenly stopped speaking here, his face showing a mixture of fear and sadness.
The morning air seemed to freeze instantly, and an eerie and terrifying feeling spread among the crowd. Everyone remained silent, their faces once again showing despair and lifelessness, as if they were waiting for the inevitable verdict of the apocalypse.
After a long silence, a heavy voice slowly said, "It's the second son of the Wang family. Last night, his mother and he had locked the door and were hiding in the bedroom. But when she went to the bathroom and returned to the bedroom, the second son was gone... There are only so many people in our town, and this place is only so big. He's the only one who's gone. Who else could this mutilated body be but him?"
Ling Yun looked in the direction of the voice and saw an elderly man in his fifties speaking. Ling Yun recognized the man as an old neighbor from the town, whom everyone respectfully called Sixth Master. The crowd fell silent again, clearly agreeing with Sixth Master's words.
"You two should go see Aunt Wang when you have time. She's been crying so much that she doesn't even have the strength to come here to identify the body. The other neighbors are still there trying to comfort her. We just came out." A young man about the same age as Ling Yun said softly. His face, which should have been that of a bright and energetic young man, was filled with gloom and despair. Clearly, the bloodshed in the town had weighed heavily on everyone's hearts.
Lingyun and Xiaorou nodded in unison. This was necessary. There were only a few dozen households in the town, with a total population of less than three hundred. Although not everyone knew each other, most of them were familiar with each other. Now that their neighbor had suffered such a major misfortune, they had to go and offer their condolences no matter what. Of course, the neighbors who went were also filled with a sense of shared sorrow, thinking that perhaps one night, such a tragic fate would befall them or their families. Rather than comforting others, it was more like comforting themselves with empty hope.
"This is the twenty-eighth one already," Uncle Tang said with a heavy sigh. "Every night, a monster eats one person. Our town seems to be cursed. I don't know when this monster will leave and restore the peace our town used to have."
Silence fell again. Everyone was filled with unease. The series of deaths and the gruesome state of the corpses had plunged their hearts to the bottom. Perhaps tonight, it would be their turn, and tomorrow, the same group of people would stand here, discussing their own mutilated bodies, repeating yesterday's story. This had been going on for twenty-eight days.
“The key to the problem isn’t here,” the young man who had sent Ling Yun and Xiao Rou to Aunt Wang’s house to offer their condolences suddenly spoke up. Everyone was taken aback by his words and their gazes immediately turned to him. The young man’s expression suddenly became agitated, and his already ashen face suddenly contorted with a deep, terrifying look: “Haven’t you noticed? It’s not that the monster eats people; the problem is that, logically, every time the monster eats someone, the population of our town should decrease by one. But from the time the twelfth person died, I noticed something particularly strange.”
"What strange thing?" Including Ling Yun, everyone's hair stood on end. Even on a bright sunny morning, it still felt eerie. The cold atmosphere froze deep in everyone's hearts, enough to turn hot blood cold instantly. The fact that the monster ate people had already chilled everyone to the bone, but the young man's sudden words pushed everyone's mood into the abyss.
"Xiaohe, what exactly did you find out? Tell me quickly." Sixth Master stamped his foot and said, his voice inevitably trembling slightly. But no one laughed at him at this moment. The others were even more anxious than Sixth Master, and everyone stared wide-eyed at Xiaohe.
Xiaohe involuntarily took a step back, his Adam's apple bobbing involuntarily. After swallowing several mouthfuls of saliva, he finally managed to speak with difficulty under everyone's gaze: "When the twelfth person died, in order to check when the monster would devour everyone in the town, I counted the number of people in the town. I specifically went door-to-door to count, and to avoid any mistakes, I checked no less than five times, and then I counted again every day. And then I discovered..."
He paused here, a lingering fear suddenly filling his eyes, and said, word by word, "Even if one person dies every day, the total number of people in the town remains unchanged. It's still 357 people every day, not a single person less, not a single person more!"
Dead silence, an empty, deathly silence.
The heart, which had already fallen to the bottom, plunged even deeper into an icy abyss. An endless chill emanated from everyone's heart. Suddenly, the sunlight turned into countless golden snowflakes, falling not only on everyone's body but also into everyone's heart.
A dozen or so people stood frozen in place, their eyes, filled with deep despair, now as empty and lifeless as dead fish. After the disaster, their greatest hope was that one day the monster would tire of eating people and leave the town, restoring the peace they hadn't seen for so long. But now, an even stranger problem had arisen: people were dying every day, but the total number of deaths remained unchanged, and no one had noticed anything amiss... What did this mean?
Suddenly, everyone felt confused, as if their minds were not up to the task to understand this question that defied common sense. A dead person meant that the person had disappeared from the world, so why was the number still the same? This was impossible, absolutely impossible. For a moment, everyone looked at the young man Xiaohe with suspicion.
"Xiaohe, are you sure you haven't made a mistake?" Sixth Master held his breath and asked softly, "Although there aren't many people in the town, there are still several hundred, and everyone does their own thing. You can't possibly find the right answer in a day..." He stopped there, but everyone understood the implication: could you possibly find the right answer in a day?
Xiaohe's face lit up with excitement: "Fellow neighbors, what I said is absolutely true. If there is even the slightest falsehood, may I be eaten by a monster tonight!"
"Hey, Xiaohe, don't talk nonsense." Another middle-aged man with gray hair said repeatedly, "What kind of oath could you make? Oath with a monster? Don't you know that sometimes lies can become the truth?"
Xiaohe quickly rummaged through his clothes and soon pulled out a ledger from his pocket. He held it out and said, "You don't believe me, do you? I've recorded the population statistics since the twelfth person died, including the names of every family member in the town. Sixteen days, sixteen pages in total. Anyone who's interested can take a look and see if I'm lying."
The crowd exchanged glances, their last hope extinguished. Judging from Xiaohe's appearance, he was clearly not lying, and he certainly had no reason to lie. In the end, it was Sixth Master who stepped forward and took the ledger, then flipped through it page by page. Although Sixth Master was old, he was still in good health, with sharp eyesight and hearing.
With each account book he opened, Sixth Master's face grew paler. By the time he reached the sixteenth book, his face was ashen, bluish-purple like a corpse. He closed the book with trembling hands, glanced at everyone with trembling lips, then suddenly closed his eyes and fell straight backward.
"Sixth Master!" Everyone cried out in alarm. Several people standing next to Sixth Master quickly helped him up. Ling Yun and Xiao Rou exchanged a surprised glance and rushed over as well. They pinched his philtrum and patted his chest, finally managing to wake the old man from his unconsciousness. Fortunately, it was just a temporary fainting spell caused by the intense emotional turmoil, and Sixth Master was not seriously injured. He soon woke up and roared as if beating his chest and stamping his feet, "Heaven has forsaken my town! Heaven has forsaken my town!" With that, he pushed aside several neighbors who were helping him and walked away crying and laughing like a madman, leaving behind a group of people who were now incapacitated.
Ling Yun gently picked up the ledger that Sixth Master had dropped when he fainted from the ground and flipped through it page by page. He looked at it very carefully, but with each page he turned, just like Sixth Master, Ling Yun's brows furrowed a little more. After turning all sixteen pages, Ling Yun's brows were now furrowed into a huge knot.
Xiao Rou stood beside him, tilting her head to look at the densely packed names on the ledger, and said with some surprise, "Xiao He's handwriting is really beautiful. I remember he doesn't seem to have a very high level of education. It must be hard for him to do so much every day."
Ling Yun gently closed the ledger: "Yes, Xiao He has really worked hard. It's admirable that he was able to discover such a strange problem. Every day, a monster eats one person in the town, but the total number of people hasn't changed, and no one can detect anything unusual. Why is that?" A thoughtful expression suddenly appeared on his face.
Xiao Rou's face turned pale, and she took his arm and said, "Honey, we don't need to think about these things. Besides, it's no use thinking about them. Let's go to Aunt Wang's house and see. Xiao Er is dead, she must be very sad."
"Wife, wait a moment." Ling Yun patted her hand and said softly, "I'll return the ledger to Xiao He first."
Xiao Rou nodded, watching Ling Yun step forward and hand the ledger to Xiao He. "Thank you, Xiao He, for your tireless statistical work every day, showing it to us all. If it weren't for you, no one would have discovered this problem."
Xiaohe took the ledger and looked Lingyun up and down: "Xiaoliang, you've also looked at the ledger. What do you think?" His voice wasn't loud, but it attracted several other townspeople to come over and listen. Clearly, although they were on the verge of collapse, they still couldn't help but want to know even the most vague rumors about monsters eating people.
Ling Yun looked at Xiao He and suddenly laughed, "Xiao He, just tell me your opinion. You don't need to ask me. After all, I and the others have only just realized the existence of this problem. You have been doing the statistics for so many days, so you probably already have your own judgment."
Everyone was taken aback and looked at Ling Yun. They all felt that Ling Yun was behaving strangely today. They wondered why Xiao Liang, who was usually quiet and reserved, had become so lively today.
Xiaohe looked at Lingyun with a surprised expression, clearly astonished that Lingyun could see through his thoughts so easily. However, he genuinely wanted to voice his deepest thoughts, which had been buried in his heart for so long. Seeing the crowd gradually gathering around him with attentive expressions, he hesitated for a moment before saying, "Actually, my opinion is quite simple. I suspect the real reason why some people have died but the total number of people remains unchanged is that monsters have turned into townspeople!"
Everyone was stunned, as if struck by lightning. Before they could react, Xiaohe looked at them nervously and said, "Don't blame me for my absurd idea. I not only counted the number of people, but also repeatedly checked the number and names of those who survived the deaths. But what puzzles me is that no matter how I searched and checked, I couldn't find out who this extra person was. It seems that this person was originally one of us, but didn't exist before, and then appeared out of thin air after being eaten by the monster. It doesn't feel abrupt at all. After thinking about it, the only possibility is that a monster impersonated a villager and misled everyone, making others think that he was one of the villagers and not suspect anything, while the monster secretly ate people."
Upon hearing this, Ling Yun frowned again and asked, "From what you're saying, there's more than one man-eating monster?"
“Of course,” Xiaohe said confidently, “and those who fill the gaps in the number of the dead are definitely monsters.”