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墨書 Inktalez
Then, in an instant, everyone turned their heads to the side, unable to suppress the nausea rising within them, and they began to vomit uncontrollably. I found it hard to describe my feelings at that moment; if I had to put it into words, I would rather take a bite of something revolting than touch this thing.
Suddenly, several people were throwing up in unison, as if they had all been poisoned.
The man saw that he had bitten off half of a dumpling filled with meat, and his face turned green in an instant. He bent over the table, likely about to expel his insides. The mixture of various odors in the air made it unbearable to breathe. Finally, I managed to regain my composure and focused again on that piece of meat filling.
It was meat filling, or rather, it should be called a chunk of meat instead. In the center of the dumpling was a piece of meat roughly the size of the upper half of a thumb. And on this chunk of meat stood a nipple. Analyzing the size and shape of this nipple, we could easily draw a conclusion.
This was indeed a nipple—a human nipple.
Even though we could see what this thing was at first glance, I still held onto a sliver of hope and trembled as I asked, "This thing can't be... it can't be a human nipple, right?"
But the world is cruel like that; Murphy's Law tells us that when you worry about something terrible happening, it inevitably will. After Guan Zengbin wiped away the vomit from his mouth, he said with lingering fear, "That's right; you guessed correctly. This is indeed a human nipple."
The Police Brother had just straightened up when he heard Guan Zengbin's words and immediately threw up again.
Seeing this scene, the Old Village Chief cursed loudly, "You wasteful woman! I've never seen you make such a mistake before. At such a critical moment, you mess things up! Where did you get these dumplings? You dare serve these dubious dumplings to us? Are you trying to kill us all?"
The Old Village Chief's wife was already over fifty years old, but upon hearing her husband's outburst, she started tearing up as well. "What a calamity! When I got up this morning, I saw a bowl of dumplings on the windowsill. I thought they were sent by Cuihua and her friends. Who would have thought they were human flesh dumplings? How could I have imagined that..."
As she cried out, she continued shouting, "You scoundrel! When you married me, you treated me well and always pampered me. Now look at you! I'm over fifty years old now, and you're nitpicking everything! Are you trying to divorce me? Ever since you became village chief, you've been bossing everyone around; this life is unbearable..."
With those words, the Old Village Chief found himself at a loss for words and could only keep apologizing.
I quickly intervened to stop this farce and hurriedly asked, "Old Lady, when did you receive these dumplings?"
The Old Lady glanced at the Old Village Chief and said, "Young man, I truly don't know what’s going on with these dumplings. I got up around five this morning because I wanted to see if the snow had stopped. When I looked out the window, I saw a basin of dumplings sitting on the windowsill."
I patted the back of the nearby police officer while suppressing my nausea and asked, "Could you describe to me what you saw when you first noticed this basin of dumplings?"
The Old Lady seemed quite embarrassed, her hands nervously twisting the hem of her clothes as she slowly replied, "I just saw a basin on the windowsill with a plastic lid on top. This isn’t something from my house; I didn’t see it before going to bed last night."
She continued, looking at me, "I thought about going over to see what it was. When I lifted the lid, I found it was a basin of dumplings. You know how our weather is; leaving dumplings outside makes them freeze. At first, I thought someone had delivered them, so I brought them back inside."
Fearing that I wouldn’t believe her, the Old Lady added, "Sometimes Cuihua and the others do things like this too; you can ask the village chief."
The Old Village Chief nodded in agreement.
I asked again, "Old Lady, did you see any footprints when you went outside?"
Suddenly alarmed, the Old Lady exclaimed, "Oh my goodness! There were no footprints in the yard! Right, when I went out, there were no footprints at all. Could it be that it wasn’t a person who left us these dumplings but a ghost that put them on the windowsill? My heavens, my husband and I haven’t done anything wrong!"
The Old Village Chief slammed his hand on the table and scolded her, "What nonsense! You’re the village chief’s wife; how can you be so superstitious?"
I felt both helpless and amused and quickly explained, "It’s not a ghost. The heavy snow last night likely covered up any footprints. The dumplings must have been placed on the windowsill last night, and by the time you woke up, that person was already gone."
"But!" The Old Lady still looked worried and seemed frightened. "What could this person want? Why would they bring us human meat dumplings? This... this isn’t something that perverted murderer would do, is it? What a sin! Who could do such a thing? Our Tou Gou Zi Village might not be safe anymore!"
Her words struck a chord; indeed, Tou Gou Zi Village might not be safe anymore.
I closed my eyes, tugging at my hair with one hand while deeply contemplating several Body Dump Cases. At first, the Murderer casually discarded a large leg by the roadside. Then, the Murderer inserted an arm into the snow. Following that were last night's Blood Characters and today's Human Dumplings.
It seemed that from the very beginning, the Murderer wanted to draw the police's attention to this matter. By throwing the first leg on the roadside, the Murderer intended for us to see it. If the Murderer truly wanted to hide the body, they could have thrown it deep into the fields, but they did not do so.
However, since the Murderer did not seem to enjoy the thrill of torturing others, why would they deliberately present themselves as a remorseless killer? Why would they intentionally disguise themselves as a twisted pervert? What could be their motive for attracting the police's attention?
A faint voice in my mind was trying to tell me something, but a crucial piece of evidence was missing, preventing me from connecting all the dots in this case.
“Let’s pick out all this filling!” I said to everyone as I looked at the bowl full of dumplings. “We need to figure out how much meat is here and how it relates to the entire body. What parts of the body do these chunks come from, and who is the deceased?”
Several people nodded in agreement.
The Police Brother didn’t want to stay here any longer; he needed to hurry back to the City Bureau with the evidence. Even when Old Village Chief offered him a meal, he refused. After what had just happened, he probably felt like he might throw up. Unable to persuade him otherwise, the village chief packed some buns for him to eat on his way.
Meanwhile, we squatted in the yard, starting to pick out the meat filling from each dumpling into a bowl. Judging by the number of dumplings, there were enough for seven or eight people. A rough count suggested there were about two hundred.
The Old Lady didn’t waste any time; knowing that we young folks eat a lot, she boiled all two hundred dumplings.
The meat we extracted wasn’t chopped very finely; it was more appropriate to call it chunks of meat. However, if the Murderer had intended to grind human flesh into filling, there would have been noise from chopping that neighbors would surely hear.
But if these pieces were meant to be chunks of meat, then it wouldn’t require such force. Looking at the quantity of dumplings, it seemed that the Murderer must have started cutting meat into chunks yesterday afternoon before making dumplings. Given their size, if it was all done by one person, it would likely take several hours.
I had previously suspected Old Xia because he was a butcher and fit the Criminal Profiling. But after encountering the dog, I began to think that the Murderer might not be Old Xia but rather Er. The German Shepherd is very obedient; even if used by someone else, it wouldn’t conveniently bite off just one arm of the deceased while leaving other parts untouched.
Thus, I felt that there shouldn’t be just one Murderer but two. I had suspected that Er and Old Xia collaborated in committing murder. My calm demeanor was meant to prevent either of them from becoming suspicious. However, now it was clear that neither Old Xia nor Er had enough time to carry out such actions together.
The dumpling wrappers were thin and fresh, clearly indicating that they hadn't been sitting around for long. If dumplings are left out for too long, the wrappers tend to break easily after thawing, but among all these dumplings, only a few had broken wrappers.
So, who exactly is this Murderer? Why is it that every time I suspect someone, new evidence appears to disrupt my train of thought?
A few people continued to pick through the chunks of meat inside the dumplings. Gu Chen remarked, "There are so many dumplings; how many pounds of meat could this be?"
We placed the meat into another large bowl, and at this point, it was already half full. From the appearance of these chunks, once cooked, it was difficult to tell whether they were human flesh or some other kind of meat.
Thinking about this, I addressed everyone: "You can laugh all you want; I've only eaten one. If that Police Brother isn't so lucky and ends up being the last one to discover the meat with a nipple, then all these dumplings will end up in our stomachs. I remember everyone loves to eat..."
Upon hearing my words, several people turned pale, and Guan Zengbin cursed, "Get lost!"
But before he could finish his sentence, Guan Zengbin turned his head and started retching violently.
Before long, we finally extracted all the filling. From the appearance of the chunks, only one had distinct human features; the rest were unrecognizable. Aside from the larger chunk with a nipple, the others were relatively small. It seemed that the Murderer had done this on purpose. Little did he know that after just eating the second dumpling, we would discover what was inside.
We could imagine the scene the Murderer wanted: when we had eaten more than half and someone found a human nipple in their dumpling, we would all wear expressions of utter embarrassment.
"Let's weigh it and see how much it weighs," I said as I stood up and turned to Old Village Chief.
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