Gao Ming did not trust the voice inside the millstone, but he was not about to trust a donkey either.
He rushed into the inner room and was hit by a foul stench. The hides of pigs, dogs, cattle, and sheep had been stripped off whole and hung by the window to dry. Perhaps because such things had been dried here for years, the drops of blood sliding down the hides had worn a small pit in the floor—another kind of proof that dripping water could wear through stone.
"Someone lives in a place like this?"
Covering his nose and mouth, Gao Ming blinked through the tears the stench brought to his eyes. On the stone floor, he spotted ropes and leather harnesses used to bind livestock, adjustable and in various sizes.
Lifting a sheepskin, Gao Ming heard a child crying. He listened several times before confirming that the crying came from inside the skin.
He looked toward the relatively intact sheep's head. The lamb's eyes had been gouged out and its nose clamped shut. Water streamed endlessly from its empty sockets.
The warning on the Stone Bridge at the town entrance told outsiders not to speak to beasts. Gao Ming kept his mouth shut. After a moment's thought, he took the sheepskin down.
Behind it stood a broad, solid wooden table. He could not tell what wood it was made from, but deep knife marks covered its surface. This seemed to be where bones were chopped.
Clatter, clatter...
The sheep's head hung upside down and bumped against a wooden bucket beneath the table. It was filled with bones stripped so clean that not a shred of flesh remained.
Gao Ming lightly ran his fingers over the chopping block and found scraps of thread and half a broken needle in