The Gentleman at the End

Chapter 104: Chapter 103: Escape from the Factory

“How did I come to be here? I only remember Jin being taken away by the Village Chief’s tumor sack, then I rushed to rescue her right away, and after that, my memory gets very blurry.”

“Did I lose? Why am I not dead?”

Dangling upside down, Yi Chen buried his head to inspect his physical body and immediately noticed the huge cavity in his chest, where the blood had long since clotted.

“My heart!”

“Hey, what’s the panic? It’s just your heart taken by someone else. You’re lucky; as long as the brain hasn’t been destroyed, I can act as a temporary replacement.”

The voice of Little Grape came at this time, and a faint vibration from the right side of the chest could also be felt,

Yi Chen immediately controlled the plants inside his body to check the situation in the right chest,

Little Grape had transformed into a heart structure covered with black hairs, adjoining the core blood vessels and perfectly taking over the function of the original heart.

It even felt stronger than the original heart, and his body was incredibly light.

Little Grape continued to speak:

“It’s lucky the Village Chief was fast enough to bring you here within ‘five minutes’, otherwise if the delay was too long, your brain would have died from lack of oxygen… Then I would have to tearfully eat your grapes and turn you into a controllable undead, and send you off to Easton Cemetery to bury yourself.”

Yi Chen controlled the plant roots to gently slide over the surface of the black-haired heart, as if caressing Little Grape.

Of course, such actions were utterly distasteful to Little Grape, who responded by giving Yi Chen a one-second heart stoppage.

“Whoa! Don’t mess around… If I really died, I suppose you would take care of the burial.”

“Stop blabbering, any moment now they’ll come for your corpse to cut it up, find a way to escape! With so many corpses hanging here, you likely won’t be noticed if one less is missing.”

But Yi Chen didn’t care in the least whether it was his turn, “Why leave? Isn’t it quite comfortable hanging here?”

Little Grape immediately understood Yi Chen’s intention, but still retorted with displeasure, “If you speak to me in that tone again, I’ll stop this heart right now!”

Yi Chen, however, appeared unconcerned, while switching to another important topic, chatting while waiting in line to be taken to the slaughter.

“Little Grape, how was my heart taken out?”

“You really don’t remember that last part, huh? Aside from the Village Chief and you, there was a third person… the first one who spied on you in the woods, probably related to the Church.

That person had strong concealment, directly took out the heart from behind.”

“A suspected Church intervention? If the intruder is indeed the first one who observed us… it seems they were very interested in Jin, while having quite the opposite attitude towards me, otherwise I wouldn’t be hanging here.

So, the moment Jin gets captured, they would promptly finish me off.

As for what they want with Jin, it likely has a close connection to some internal affairs of the Church.

It’s even possible that from the moment we set foot in the forest, the Church was assessing the quality of our bodies, with intentions of training us to become instructors or used for sacrifices or such.

The details will only be clear upon contact with Church personnel, and killing the Village Chief might also shed some light on the situation.”

As Yi Chen was thinking this through, the Pig Head Butcher had already approached him.

The huge hand easily grabbed both shins and lifted him off the hook with an upward motion.

Turning around, he threw,

directly landing Yi Chen stably onto a blood-smeared processing table from several meters away, smack!

While walking towards the table, the Butcher casually spun the slaughter knife in his hand, and through the eyes of the pig head mask, he seemed to already visualize the perfect ‘decomposition line’ based on Yi Chen’s body proportions.

The slaughter knife was raised,

aimed at the waist,

and was about to chop down when,

the corpse on the table suddenly raised its left arm, smack! A palm strike hit the underside of the pig’s jaw, visibly rippling a layer of meaty waves.

The impact to the jaw sent shocks directly to the brain ventricles, as the pig brain continued to collide violently with the cranial walls,

The intense dizziness nearly caused the butcher to stumble and fall.

“Root Piercing”

The palm strike was merely an appetizer,

the hand that was against the jaw instantly grew sharp root spikes, piercing through the pig snout and stitching it shut.

At the same time, a net of plants blocked the esophagus and nasal passages to restrict any sounds that could bring trouble.

Not just that,

the plant burrowed down the pig’s throat, rapidly searching the body for the ‘Pathogen Core’.

However, as a high-quality entity filtered out for catalyst illness, the butcher who could work here was naturally no simpleton.

Even though he was dizzy and unable to breathe,

he relied on the butcher’s instinct, sensing the breath of life, and instinctively swung out a knife.

This strike was incredibly swift and predictive~ whoosh!

It cut into the shoulder, slicing open a terrifying ten-plus centimeter wound… ultimately stopped by the net of plants inside Yi Chen’s body.

“Found it!”

At that moment, the roots had located the pathological tumor nestled between the stomach chambers.

Crossing through!

Whoosh!

The pig head’s eyes swiftly dimmed, and its corpulent body fell straight to the ground.

Sitting naked with a hole through his chest at the edge of the workbench, Yi Chen held his hand over the slit in his shoulder and let out a wry, self-mocking chuckle:

“Without gentle man’s clothes and weapons, my strength is greatly reduced; even utilizing such stealthy assault methods still results in injury.

If that butcher’s breathing hadn’t been impeded, causing his brain to feel dizzy, the knife he swung just now might have severed my entire left side. Do I really have a certain dependency on weapons and clothing?

Just as well, this serves as a chance to train my own abilities.”

Yi Chen showed no emotional turbulence of a narrow escape; he simply accepted the situation calmly, thinking about how to continue the investigation alone.

One hand pressed against the wound on his shoulder, tender sprouts like threads burrowed into the wound to stitch it up,

While the other hand reached for the butcher’s head, sucking the essence from the brains among the pig’s brain flowers.

As he absorbed nutrients, he also gained information about the “meat factory” crucial for Yi Chen, who was trapped within it.

“Layered control, a factory with a perfect supervisory system… trying to slip away unnoticed, there’s a high chance of discovery. No choice but to do this.”

Yi Chen hoisted the butcher’s corpse onto the workbench, turning the tables.

He hollowed out all unnecessary organs and tissues, retaining just enough muscle layer to craft a thick, plush, real leather coat.

He donned the skin,

Sewed on the pig head,

Put on a black leather apron along with the slaughter knife,

And after everything was ready, he even deliberately grunted twice,

Following the memories in the butcher’s brain, he attempted to escape the meat factory,

The factory was extensive, located at the northern part of the village; much of its “meat” came from deceased FertilityPatients.

The FertilityPatients, due to their rapid growth, aged just as quickly.

Typically after completing 3 to 5 patrol missions, they would voluntarily come to the factory to realize their final worth.

The flesh obtained mainly had two uses:

One was to make compressed food, distributed to every household in the village to replenish nutrients and improve fertility efficiency.

The other was to make a soup easy for plants to absorb, used to irrigate the outermost tree walls, accelerating expansion and providing life, blocking outsiders from entering.

One could say the factory was the most crucial place in the village, with the Village Chief often taking time to inspect and ensure the normal operation of each link. But recently, he hadn’t been coming by as often, seemingly preoccupied with other matters.

At present, he formulated three escape plans: @@novelbin@@

1. Boldly stick out the butcher’s big belly, and walk from the “slaughtering workshop” → “Rest Area Corridor” → “Production Workshop (Number One)” → “inspection point”, covering over a thousand meters to leave through the factory’s main gate.

If intercepted by a higher-ranking workshop foreman, or even the Factory Director en route, he would have to fabricate excuses to get by; if exposed, he would have to shout the workers’ chants and force his way out.

2. Stay here and continue the butcher’s work, processing all the corpses and clocking out normally.

This was the safest method, but would delay him by at least four hours. Not to mention, with the situation in the village and the Church continually worsening, Jin, who was taken away, could be in life-threatening danger at any moment.

3. Bulging belly and all, advance from the “slaughtering workshop” → “Rest Area Corridor” → “Production Workshop (Number Two)”.

Workshop Number Two was in charge of producing ‘Meat Slurry’; according to his memory, there was an overflow drain for excess meat slurry leading to an underground area that collected waste fluid.

Due to the absence of any memory regarding the underground area, this escape plan carried a certain level of unpredictability.

[Ten minutes later]

Bulging belly and all, Yi Chen stood at the vile-smelling outfall, each inch of writhing, flesh-like wall testing his threshold for endurance.

Clenching his teeth,

He leapt down, timed with the shift change of the assembly line workers.

If one were to describe this process,

It was like an obese recluse who, after engaging in a binge eating session one day, died from overeating at home. Due to living alone, the body was left undiscovered for three days.

Unexpectedly, a cockroach that blundered in crawled into the deceased’s mouth, enjoying an unforgettable intestinal waterslide through the body filled with food remnants.

Splat!

Yi Chen crashed into an indescribable pit of mud.

He swam to the shore area at full speed, immediately shedding the filth-caked pig skin coat, trying his best to suppress the physiological disgust.

“Finally escaped, hmm hmm~”

As he spoke with the pig head mask still sewn onto his neck, pig noises accompanied his voice.

After some thought, Yi Chen decided not to remove the pig head, continuing to keep it attached to his head.

One, because it felt quite amusing; he himself quite enjoyed such role-playing games,

Two, should he encounter any villagers or similar beings down there, he could still try to make an excuse, claiming he accidentally slid down from the factory while dumping the Meat Slurry.