The True Lord has arrived

Chapter 2 My Heart Burns Like Fire
With a roar, Zhou Yan's shoe landed squarely on the butcher's face with a loud thud.

The fat on the butcher's face jiggled like waves.

But without swaying an inch, he lifted Zhou Yan up with a forceful pull, grinned, and exclaimed in admiration:
"So fresh! This is definitely good meat!"

His tone was as if a Cantonese man had stumbled upon a lively, jumping crab at the seafood market. He stared at Zhou Yan, swallowed hard, and said, "It smells so good, so delicious! Damn, I've never seen such fragrant meat in my life."

"Forget about eating, just being stepped on like that makes you feel two ounces lighter."

He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and looked completely intoxicated.

My saliva was practically dripping from between my teeth.

Then he swallowed hard, suppressing his hunger, and tied Zhou Yan up.

"This kind of good meat can't be eaten raw or fried in oil. It must be boiled or steamed. When you eat human meat, it has to be human and have human flavor. The key is to make it tender and delicious."

"What a pity, what a pity, we won't get to enjoy it."

"Three days from now, it's the birthday of the Weaver Girl of Nanshan. We were just worried about what to send over, but this delicious meat is definitely worthy of it."

The butcher carried him around the meat shop himself.

He circled the big locust tree at the bottom of Shizipo three times, muttering incantations, then faced southeast and shouted "Open!" He kicked the door open, as if a portal had appeared in the air, and carried Zhou Yan inside.

It was cold and damp inside; the huge village was lit up with lanterns that cast a bluish glow.

A single step can separate you from the world.

Zhou Yan froze, instinctively turning around.

The butcher shop at the crossroads is still there; the sun shines brightly outside, but the inside is chilly.

This……

Zhou Yan's thoughts froze.

Is this right?
Isn't this right?

The butcher took Zhou Yan to a side courtyard, gave him a few instructions, and then threw him into a cage.

"Boss, new stock?"

A man came closer and sized up Zhou Yan, his eyes gleaming with a green glint.

The butcher said, "I just bought this today. Keep a close eye on it. The shop owner will be here in three days to celebrate the lady's birthday, so this has to be a dish."

"No touching or groping, and no plucking pieces of meat to steal."

"Take good care of it."

The butcher gave detailed instructions, stared at Zhou Yan, swallowed hard, his teeth even becoming sharp, showing how much he wanted to eat. Finally, his stomach rumbled, and he lowered his head and bit his arm until it bled. He sucked hard to suppress his appetite.

"I've never seen anyone smell so good!"

.........

"Damn it, where am I?"

Spells? Supernatural powers?
Or is it an organization?

After the butcher left, Zhou Yan finally relaxed a little.

I felt intense fear, unease in the unfamiliar environment, and finally, a nameless rage burning within me, wondering why I was in this world. My emotions were in complete disarray.

Zhou Yan exhaled.

He slapped his face with both hands.

He was controlling his emotions by taking deep breaths. Now, all sorts of thoughts were swirling in his mind, but there was only one thing that Zhou Yan was certain of amidst the chaos.

These freaks, I don't even know if they're human, plan to eat him in three days.

Everything else can wait.

The most important thing right now is to escape!
Save yourself!

"My lord, my lord, are you alright?"

A soft shout brought Zhou Yan back to his senses, and he realized that there was another person in the cage, a woman.

After regaining his composure, Zhou Yan managed to reply, "I'm fine."

"You are...you were also sold into this?"

The woman was silent for a moment, then nodded.

Zhou Yan felt he had said something stupid, but since he was already in this field, he might as well ask the woman for some information.

But she didn't know much either. All she could say was that a war suddenly broke out, and that things were fine one day near Chang'an, but suddenly things went into chaos, and once the chaos started, it couldn't be stopped.

Chang'an... is this the Chang'an I know?

Upon hearing the familiar name, Zhou Yan was momentarily dazed.

The woman said, "My lord, you... are injured." Zhou Yan looked at his arm. He didn't know if it was from rolling down the mountain or from the struggle he had just been in, but there was a wound that was still bleeding.

"Oh, it's actually not bad, you see."

"hiss!!"

Zhou Yan shook his hand, but the wound was indeed quite painful, and the movement made him wince in pain.

The woman searched around, then, as if remembering something, hesitated for a moment, took out a piece of white cloth from her bosom, and quickly bandaged Zhou Yan's arm. Head bowed, her face a mixture of apology and complex emotions, she whispered:
"This is the white cloth I used to keep vigil for my daughter; it's fairly clean."

"My lord, please don't find it offensive."

Keep vigil...

Zhou Yan didn't know how to respond, so in the end he could only say:
"Condolences."

"However, is it really appropriate for me to use this?"

He partly genuinely thought so, but he also felt somewhat uncomfortable about it.

The woman said, "It's alright, she... my husband doesn't know her."

"She was lively and liked to talk to people passing by her house. If someone was thirsty, she would run home, take her own bowl, and bring out a bowl of water for them. She didn't mind."

A faint smile appeared on her face when she mentioned her daughter:

"My lord has never seen her."

"She was small in stature, but seemed to have inexhaustible energy. When her father came back, she would run over with a towel and keep pestering her older brother to play with her. She even cried because her older brother had to study and wouldn't play with her."

"On rainy days, the snails on the roadside crawl slowly. Afraid that the snails would be crushed, she would pick them up one by one and carefully place them on the leaves."

"It's like they have inexhaustible energy."

A mother's voice is always gentle when she talks about her daughter.

Zhou Yan said, "He's a good kid."

Then the woman shrank back and said, "I sold her."

!!!

The massive rupture froze the softened expression on Zhou Yan's face, especially since he had personally experienced being 'sold out' in this world and knew what it meant for a woman to be 'sold out'.

The woman lowered her head and said, "When war breaks out, we have to go back to our hometown to stay with our parents. Then she got sick, and that strong little guy gradually lost his strength."

“We’re trying to feed her as much as we can, but we’re out of food. There’s nothing left to eat.” “The whole family is going to starve.”

"There was no other way but to sell it."

"After selling some money, they bought some rat meat and rotten cabbage, and cooked a pot of meat and vegetable porridge. Her brother recovered after eating the porridge and shouted to ask where his sister was, saying that he had to leave some for her."

"I wondered, where is she? Could she have turned into a bowl of meat porridge too?"

"Looking at the meat and vegetable porridge makes me feel nauseous."

"But I still finished the meat and vegetable porridge."

"That's food, that's life, but where is my little daughter?"

Zhou Yan's eyes showed pity. He touched the white cloth on his arm and asked in a low voice:

"Where is your son?"

The woman said, "Then, her brother also got sick, died, and was sold."

"It's me now."

“I sold myself secretly. Boss Zhao is kind-hearted. I secretly returned the money yesterday before coming back.”

The woman said, "Someone always has to go home."

Zhou Yan looked at her and asked:

"If you're the only one left, is it still home if you go back like this?"

The woman's expression froze.

The atmosphere in the air suddenly became oppressive and quiet.

After a long silence, the woman, like a fallen leaf in the autumn rain, looked somewhat forlorn and asked, "If we keep walking forward, we'll surely reach home. My lord is a good man, but if we don't go home, can we ever turn back, my lord?"

Neither of them spoke. Zhou Yan felt the atmosphere was very oppressive. He was thinking about the situation and how to escape when suddenly, the guard watching the cage came over and shouted for the woman to leave.

The woman stumbled to her feet, and as she passed Zhou Yan, she lowered her head and said:

"We all ate that bowl of vegetable and meat porridge."

"So, my lord, only this piece of white cloth is still clean."

She said, "She is still very clean, my lord, please don't find this piece of cloth offensive."

Zhou Yan suddenly felt a stinging pain in the white cloth on his arm.

The woman was taken away by the guards.

Zhou Yan leaned his head against the cage.

Did she cry when she said her last words?
Or was she actually crying the whole time?

There were no more tears.

Zhou Yan didn't know.

The skinny man with the large belly turned around and muttered:

"This world is strange. It's only because Master Zhao likes to watch this that you can still see people selling themselves. If you ask me, just sell her and kill her, then give her the money and let her go back to deliver it."

"And what's with all this talk about fairness and propriety?"

"Pah! Thinks he's got some skills and starts acting all high and mighty? What the hell? He's just a butcher! What's with all the swagger?"

He muttered to himself, carrying a bowl of dark soup over. Staring at Zhou Yan, he swallowed hard twice, muttered "It smells so good!" a couple of times, grabbed Zhou Yan by the collar, pulled him over, and forced him to drink the bowl of dark medicine. Watching Zhou Yan coughing there, he said smugly:

"I'm not afraid to tell you, for the next three days you can't eat anything, you can only drink this laxative soup, it's to clean out the filth in your intestines."

"Otherwise, if the workshop owner and the weaver girl eat something unclean, we'll have to fry them in oil too."

After saying that, he looked at Zhou Yan's clear black and white eyes, wiped his mouth and said, "Good eyes, I really want to put them on a bamboo skewer, wrap them in sugar water, tsk tsk tsk, delicious, delicious!"

Zhou Yan supported himself on the ground, coughing with his head down, looking disheveled, but his eyes were clear.

"I don't have that much strength..."

Recalling the struggle just now, and the force with which the man forced the medicine down her throat.

It's much bigger than the average person, but not quite at the level of a butcher.

The man left, and Zhou Yan unzipped his shirt, took out antidiarrheal medicine, and regardless of whether it was the right medicine for him, tilted his head back and forced it down.

Taking laxatives and experiencing severe diarrhea can actually be life-threatening.

He inexplicably ended up here while assisting with mountain search and rescue. Although he lost a lot of things, some things were still there. He touched around and found that his flashlight and cell phone were gone, but the water purification tablets were still there, along with a folding multi-functional Swiss Army knife, a magnesium rod for combustion, and a ignition stick.

Magnesium rod...

I'm afraid of deep-fried oil.

A glint appeared in Zhou Yan's eyes.

Take out the magnesium rod and the Swiss Army knife.

………………

"Hey, what's wrong with that guy? I've never smelled anything so delicious before. I'm so hungry! If I could actually get a bite of this meat, I'd die happy." The big-bellied skinny gatekeeper stuffed a cornbread into his mouth, drooling uncontrollably.

He thought of the arm meat he had eaten many years ago from a three-year-old child.

I only ate one piece.

Fragrant, really scented!

He tried to grab attention, but failed.

Finally, the eyes of the entire family were strung together with bamboo skewers, resembling a candied hawthorn skewer.

So beautiful!

He also knew that a lowly demon of his level could only do menial tasks like emptying chamber pots and guarding the gate; he would never get to eat such good meat, so he could only satisfy his craving here.

It was the middle of the night, and I was just dozing off when I suddenly heard shouts coming from inside.

He woke up with a start and rushed inside in a daze.

Then she saw the person lying there, holding something in their arms, screaming in agony. The little demon broke out in a cold sweat, cried out "Grandma!" and hurriedly opened the cage and pulled apart the flesh.

But to my surprise, I only reached out and pulled.

The person, however, followed his momentum, spun and lunged, and bumped into his arms.

Oh my god, it smells fucking good!
It made my head spin.

The little demon thought, "Even if I die from eating a bite of this kind of meat, it would be worth it!"
Then something rushed into my eyes.

The little demon screamed, "Who?!"

Zhou Yan placed a piece of clothing on his hand, which had a large amount of magnesium powder scraped off, and pressed it hard into the eyes of the monster that had just woken up.

Magnesium powder reacts with water.

With his right hand, he used a ignition stick to strike the fire. With a sudden thrust, a burst of heat erupted from the open flame, magnesium powder, and water.

"your dad!"

(End of this chapter)