Puzzle Madness

Chapter 174 Autumn is the Hunting Season (Part 10)

Sour Soup Bak Kut Teh picked up the lighter that had fallen to her feet and held it blankly in her hand. She stared at Ai Xi, her gaze moving up and down, then down to her legs, finally stopping at her shoes.

She was trembling, her eyes almost squinting; but suddenly she froze and frowned.

Sour Soup Bak Kut Teh carefully examined Ai Xi's running shoes, then suddenly spoke:
"Ai Xi, why are you wearing men's shoes?"

Those New Balance running shoes were splashed with tiny red dots after stepping into the puddles of bodily fluids on Big Head Hong's feet. The only distinguishing features were the wider last and the larger forefoot and heel.

Ai Xi glanced at her, then turned her gaze back to the cross-section of Da Tou Hong's corpse:

"You have sharp eyes."

Sour Soup Bak Kut Teh was still slumped on the ground, pointing a finger at Ai Xi's running shoes, as if he had discovered something unbelievable:

"And—how come your feet are so big? These shoes are at least size 43. Who are you anyway?"

Ai Xi walked over to the sour soup bak kut teh, took the lighter from the woman's hand, and lit the cigarette in her mouth; then she put the lighter back in her pocket and walked back to the body.
“I told them: I’m a student, and I’m here to do a weekend part-time job.”

She suddenly looked up again, as if she had remembered something:
"Ah. You're overthinking it, I'm not a boy."

He took a couple of puffs of his cigarette, put it on the ground, and rubbed his face with both hands. But his brows were still furrowed so deeply they could trap a fly.

She stared at Ai Xi with suspicion in her eyes, then her gaze swept over Mu Jingzai and Huang Youtian. The suspicion in her eyes grew stronger, almost tangible:

"Wait—wait, I have an idea. No offense, but I just want to say, is it possible—and I'm just saying possible—that the monster is your father?"

Upon hearing these abrupt words, the man with the glasses still covering his face with his hands froze, his trembling ceasing.

"You mean that guy who disappeared when you were little? He disappeared in the air-raid shelter, right?"

"Maybe he's actually...maybe he's still alive? Maybe he's out there—"

The man with the glasses suddenly lowered his hand from his face and spoke. Without his glasses, his vision seemed somewhat blurry:

"He's dead. I died when I was nine or ten. I'm sorry, I lied before."

"It's just cirrhosis, nothing special. It's not as fun as disappearing into an air-raid shelter."

The sour soup bak kut teh seemed to choke, and it reluctantly shut its mouth.
"Oh. I was just thinking: maybe I could provide some information."

The guy with the eyepiece was still talking to himself:

"That way we can at least have something to talk about. Right? After all, we just met, and we're both fans of 'Psychological Exploration,' so if I talk about something like this, you'll think more highly of me; it sounds quite legendary."

He touched the back of his head, his tear-streaked face showing a mixture of embarrassment and shame.
"Besides, I don't have a good relationship with my father. The more I say this, the better the image of him in my memory becomes."

"But the assassin outside is real, and he's terrifying."

For a moment, the atmosphere became somewhat awkward. Then Ai Xi took over the conversation:
“The person outside is probably not his father. Rumors about people eating people in the air-raid shelter have only started to appear in the last two months, and a number of people have only started going missing here in the last month.”

“If he disappeared as a child and turned into a monster, it’s impossible that the legend only started recently.”

She seemed to have finally finished her inspection and stood up with satisfaction:

"Sour soup bak kut teh, I think I understand what you mean. You mean that the monster outside is actually looking for its son, the one with glasses over there, which is why it's been chasing after it."

"Is that what you mean?" Sour Soup Bak Kut Teh struggled to her feet, standing on tiptoe. The wound on the sole of her foot was clearly very painful, and now that she had relaxed a little, she was unsteady on her feet.

She exaggeratedly pried open her eyelids, looked around—then took a deep breath and spoke:
"Wait. I haven't finished speaking yet."

"I should say I think this is a trap. Right here, in this air-raid shelter. You see, I heard it on the audio forum of the readers' club; who submitted it? Nobody knows except the editorial department."

"Could it be that this information was deliberately leaked?"

"It's to lure people here to the monster! Like bait used in hunting! Right? Right?"

She turned to Mujingzai and Huang Youtian, her face flushed red, which even her foundation couldn't hide.

Huang Youtian didn't stop walking at all. The flashlight in his hand cast huge, swaying shadows on everyone. It was unclear whether he was listening to what the sour soup bak kut teh was saying.

The man in the sour soup bak kut teh scratched his dyed hair furiously, strands of hair peeking out from between his fingers:
"Think about it! When we were hiding in that little room earlier—that monster suddenly came back! At that time, there was no sound of footsteps or anything, and it had gone far away!"

"We quieted down, but it just happened to come back, as if it knew where we were; and it walked without making a sound."

"And the door wasn't there at first, it just suddenly appeared! This is a trap to kill us, a way to trap us here."

"Are we meant to be used as food for this monster?"

Ai Xi waved her hand, a grin spreading across her face, almost punctuated by a sneer:
"Impossible, that would be too inefficient. Judging from that size, even if it could feed one person every three to five days, it wouldn't be enough to meet their nutritional needs."

"The nutritional value of human flesh is about the same as that of lean beef, and it's not like compressed rations."

"And if you want to eat it..."

She pointed to the corpse of Big Head Hong in the very center—flies gradually appeared from nowhere and began to swarm around it:

"Then why did you dump the body here? Are you inviting us to eat? That seems a bit too much."

The boy with glasses, who was hugging his knees, looked up, his eyes filled with confusion:
"We were using flashlights and talking at the time. It's not surprising that they heard us."

The sour soup bak kut teh shook its head violently, as if trying to sever the invisible bond in the air:

"No! No! There's a monster among us! It might be some kind of symbiotic relationship, like that bird that picks at the teeth of a crocodile, the kind you use as a toothpick!"

"They must have deliberately lured us here to feed the monster—as a treat. Or worse, we might be toys, cat toys, given to the monster to play with!"

"But... just like in horror movies, the victims might accidentally turn around and kill the monster! So we need to blend in with us and keep an eye on us!"

Her voice became hoarse, her throat perhaps raw from her heated speech; the room echoed with the heavy breathing of her sour soup and bak kut teh.

Eyepiece Boy shook his head like a rattle-drum:
"It definitely wasn't me. I was hospitalized after a work injury and didn't come to the air-raid shelter at all—"

"You! It's you! It should be you!"

Huang Youtian, who had been gesticulating wildly in circles, suddenly stopped, pointed at Mujingzai, and his eyes burned with a strange rage.
"Fuck you, Glasses! Why aren't you dead?! Big Head Hong was instantly grabbed and slashed to death, that monster just threw a dried-up corpse at you!"

No sooner had he finished speaking than he turned his hand and pointed to the sour soup bak kut teh; it made a crackling sound.
"You! And you too! You're a prime suspect—damn, maybe it's a monster that can smell things or has super hearing and sensory abilities! Why are you suddenly saying there's an inside man among us?!"

"This logic is utterly absurd. How could you even make this connection? Just because someone is manipulating things from the outside doesn't mean there's a mole among us! Are you deliberately creating conflict so the monster can take advantage of the situation?!"

(End of this chapter)