After pushing aside the millstone and driving away the donkey, Lin Feng found a so-called Secret Passage beneath the village chief's livestock pen. He entered the Secret Passage and discovered a rather "unique" "slaughterhouse."
Red candles as thick as human arms lit the place with a crimson glow.
Digging a cellar on the Loess Plateau was easy. Excavating a "slaughterhouse" this large was anything but.
Even setting aside the danger of collapse, ventilation alone required skill and technical expertise.
The ground was covered in blood. Large numbers of dogs raised for meat had been cut open, their blood drained onto the loess. Judging by the bloodstains, they had only recently died.
In front of a table, the old woman he had seen that day had been cut open and hung from an iron hook.
Left there to air-dry.
All her internal organs had been removed, and even her bones had been separated from her flesh.
Her eyes stared at Lin Feng, and Lin Feng stared back at her.
The old woman was not dead.
This was not murder.
Because she was not human. Nor was this some ancient sacrificial rite.
This was an attempt to save a life, to prolong it, using a method similar to mummification. Someone had preserved all the old woman's internal organs in Evil Soil, evenly coating the inside of her body and her bones with red earth. Great quantities of soil covered her body, sustaining her life.
Her soul had long since left her body. From what Lin Feng could observe, it should have been sealed beneath the ground.
This ensured that while her flesh was being preserved against decay, her soul would not be snatched away and ruin everything.
Lin Feng had seen methods like this before.
Such practices were commonplace in primitive religions,