Chapter 43: Skinning

The three people, including Boss Zhu, were dragged into a room on the side. During the few seconds the door was open and closing, a thick smell of blood wafted out from inside.

"Bang!"

The sounds of a knife chopping rang out in succession, and the voices of those three people also disappeared.

The red-nosed man opened the door and walked out again. Looking at the fat pigs huddled together and trembling, he smiled with satisfaction and continued to drive them outward.

A few minutes later, everyone was locked inside the pigsty, coming face to face with the people next door who were also in pig form.

While pouring a bucket of pig feed, Red Nose cheerfully muttered to himself: "Eat well, eat your fill, grow more meat. If you grow well, the meat will taste good."

"It's a pity there are no piglets. The old pigs have to be picked out too. If the meat is tough, we'll just chop it up and make dumplings."

The pigs squeezed together, trembling, and the smell of incontinence filled the air.

Red Nose sniffed and laughed heartily. Suddenly, as if hearing something, he tilted his head to look to the left, slammed the fence shut with force, and walked away cursing.

Xu Huo heard him say "Here they come again," and "These people are so annoying." Between words, he smashed an empty pigsty to pieces, his violence and mania on full display.

Once the sound of his footsteps faded, Xu Huo turned back to look at the situation around him.

The people in the adjacent pen should be the ones who were taken away earlier. The numbers matched, and including the ones on his side, there were exactly forty-one.

Besides them, in the far-off nursery pen lay several piglets, and the sow pen wasn't empty either. Inside, three large pigs had bellies bulging high.

However, unlike the panic here, the piglets and sows looked as if they were dead, completely indifferent to the newcomers.

Without a doubt, they were also human.

Xu Huo's eyes darkened. He stepped back and squeezed into the middle of the pig herd.

Every person turned into a pig had a stitched line on their belly. For those around him, the rough stitching was obvious—it looked like the skin had just been pinned together with a few random stitches. But the piglets were different; their stitches had completely fused with the pigskin, as if they had grown into the flesh.

And since the eye openings had been cut, the pigskin on his body was getting tighter and tighter, seeming to want to merge with his skin. If too much time passed, the pigskin probably couldn't be removed.

Moving his fingers, Xu Huo manipulated the "Omnipresent Strings" to hook the fragment of the Headchopper's axe out of his pants pocket.

After successfully retrieving the fragment, he cut the pigskin on the side of his wrist, reached his hand out, severed the stitches on his abdomen, pulled with both hands, and successfully peeled off the pigskin.

The moment he shed the pigskin, the game notification lit up:

[Player Passerby A has entered the "Good Flavor Fresh Meat Supply Factory," default participation in this D-rank Random Instance.]

[Background Introduction: No buying, no killing. With the increasing daily demand from customers nowadays, more and more underground meat supply factories are emerging. To ensure a sufficient supply of goods, these factories often appear randomly in various worlds.]

[The Good Flavor Fresh Meat Supply Factory is one of them.]

[As a meat supply factory popular among underground restaurants, the factory owner, Red Nose Carl, can not only provide customers with delicious red meat at the first opportunity but also allow diners to openly serve it on the table. In the underground restaurant scene, the name Red Nose is somewhat famous.]

[It is said that he was once a top-notch Skinner. Since starting his career, he has skinned no less than ninety-nine thousand skins out of a hundred thousand. He possesses a delicate heart that belies his rough exterior, able to smell from an animal's fur whether it is pregnant or sick. His skill is exquisite.]

[However, business at the Good Flavor Fresh Meat Supply Factory is getting better and better, and Carl is a bit overwhelmed. Forced to do so, he posted a recruitment ad, hoping to hire a few quick-handed people to work.]

[A few young people have already come to apply.]

[Instance Tasks: ① The more precious something is, the easier it is to lose—Steal a treasure from Skinner Carl;
② Piglets flying to freedom—Rescue three or more children;
③ The diligent and hardworking worker—Complete the task assigned by factory owner Carl.]

[Instance Time: Unlimited]

[Players can leave the instance upon completing any one task.]

The instance location was the factory itself. The people who came to apply were either players or had players mixed in among them. Although there was no time limit, none of these three tasks were simple...

"Oink! Oink!" The large pig beside him frantically nudged him. The ones in the adjacent pen also tried to jump over, their eyes filled with hope and pleading.

Xu Huo noticed one pig that was particularly energetic in its jumping, but he only glanced at it before looking away. He threw the peeled pigskin into a corner and lowered his voice, saying, "I'm going to find a way out. As long as you don't let that guy just now find out I've slipped away, I'll find a way to come back and save you."

The large pigs quickly nodded. Two of them ran to the corner and lay directly on the pigskin, covering it with their bodies. The others also crowded over, scrambling with their limbs, and managed to pile themselves into a small hill.

The people in the adjacent pen did the same, crowding together into a pile. Only one pig persistently and angrily squealed.

Xu Huo pushed it back, then crouched low and climbed out of the pigsty.

He came to the nearby piglet pen. Inside, six piglets were lying quietly. When they saw him, their eyes only brightened a little. They didn't come closer, nor did they squeal.

He waved at the piglets, but they backed away in fear instead. A large pregnant pig from the next pen came over and, with difficulty, used its front hoof to tap its own belly. The stitches on it had completely fused into the skin.

"You can't just cut this open with a knife?"

"Have you and the pigskin grown together?"

"Would forcibly peeling the skin kill you?"

With each question he asked, the large pig nodded once.

"How long does it take for the skin and flesh to grow together?"

"Three hours? Five hours?"

The large pig chose five hours.

"Do you know any way to save you?" he asked again.

This time, the large pig shook its head.

The second task had no leads for now, so Xu Huo could only try the other two. Skinner Carl should be interviewing applicants right now and wouldn't be back so soon.

He walked through the pigsty, heading in the direction Red Nose had left earlier.

The pigsty should be at the very back of the factory. The light was still fairly bright, and through the windows, he could see a large expanse of forest surrounding the area. Past the pigsty was the main part of the factory—a slaughtering, dehairing, and cleaning assembly line.

However, this place was the complete opposite of the clean pigsty in the back. Not only was the ground covered in black mud and slurry, but even the machines were stained with blood and grime. Flies, cockroaches, and rats were everywhere. The mop in the corner had dried into a flat cake—this wasn't a case of being too busy to clean; it had never been cleaned at all.

Xu Huo tried to walk on the dry spots as much as possible.

There were two rooms nearby. One was the place where he and the others had fallen down. A conspicuous pipe outlet was welded into the center of the wall, a pitch-black pipe leading to who knows where.

He paused for a few seconds before backing out. Glancing at the two rotten pig heads hanging upside down on an iron hook nearby, he then opened the other room, which exuded a fishy smell.