Chapter 86: The Infant-Eating Horror

To confirm whether the Ma Jinhui that Master Tang mentioned was the same person we were after, Huang Xiaotao asked the police to send a photo of Ma Jinhui to her phone and then showed it to Master Tang.

Master Tang nodded vigorously. "Yeah, that's the kid."

I asked, "Do you have a recent photo of him?"

Master Tang chuckled, "I don't have one of those fancy phones with cameras like you all." He then pulled out an ancient-looking old Nokia phone and flashed it in front of us.

I asked again, "Did you know Ma Jinhui before?"

He hesitated for a moment, scratched his nose, and said, "No, I didn't."

I sneered, finally catching his lie. I stared straight at him and said, "You're lying!"

"No, no, officer, I swear on my life I'm not lying!" Master Tang said nervously.

"Swearing won't help. You're coming to the police station with us!"

...

...

Under my intimidation, Master Tang quickly confessed. He didn't seem like a man of strong will. He hung his head and said, "Alright, I admit it. Ma Jinhui and I come from the same hometown."

Huang Xiaotao was surprised. "Why didn't you tell us this important clue before?"

"Well, the thing is, this guy has a weird habit. I always looked down on him..."

Master Tang explained that Ma Jinhui started working away from home when he was a teenager. The construction sites were all men, a bunch of single bachelors. When the lights went out, what else could they talk about but women? Ma Jinhui was young and fiery, and under the influence of his coworkers, he developed an uncontrollable habit of masturbating every day — he couldn't sleep without it.

Over time, Ma Jinhui grew pale and thin, dark circles under his eyes, and by his twenties, he had premature white hair.

Later, he saved up some money and brought back a stunningly beautiful woman from the city. Everyone said Ma Jinhui was lucky in love, marrying such a dazzling wife.

But some whispered that this woman was actually a prostitute, marrying Ma Jinhui only for the small patch of land his family owned.

The couple often fought, and some idlers in the village spread rumors that Ma Jinhui was impotent and couldn't satisfy his wife.

His wife was said to have a ravenous appetite, like a hungry beast, and since her husband couldn't fulfill her, she started flirting with young men in the village. Soon, she was cheating on Ma Jinhui, putting several green hats on him.

Ma Jinhui was miserable. He'd walk around the village with his head down, silent. Master Tang even felt sorry for him.

But then something happened that made Master Tang not pity him at all—instead, it made him disgusted and shiver to the bone.

One morning, Master Tang saw Ma Jinhui digging for something on the back mountain. When Tang greeted him, Ma Jinhui hurriedly hid whatever it was under his clothes, looking like a thief.

Tang found it strange. After Ma Jinhui left, he checked carefully and discovered the "debt-collecting ghost" that old Li's family had buried a few days before was dug up.

I interrupted, "What's a 'debt-collecting ghost'?"

"It's... it's..." Tang hesitated, "a dead infant."

Both Huang Xiaotao and I were shocked. Tang explained that infant mortality was common in the countryside. Villagers called the dead babies "debt-collecting ghosts." These infants weren't even buried in coffins; they were tossed in with pig or cattle dung and covered with a big stone to prevent the ghost from coming back.

If a family lost several babies in a row, it was believed they were haunted by these ghosts. They would hire a Taoist priest to perform rituals—cutting up the infant's remains with a ritual knife, using chicken blood, black dog blood, and talismans to suppress the ghost and stop it from returning.

I thought silently that not all these dead infants were natural deaths. There were cases of close-relative marriages and persistent son preference in some rural areas, with rumors of deformities or unwanted baby girls being drowned in toilets.

I didn't interrupt Tang as he continued. He said he checked several grave mounds and found all the infants missing. Then, recalling Ma Jinhui's strange smile earlier, Tang felt a chill run down his spine. Apparently, this guy was eating dead babies!

Tang wasn't one to gossip, but he confronted Ma Jinhui at home. Ma Jinhui begged him not to tell anyone and admitted to eating the dead infants.

He had heard from somewhere that eating dead babies could cure illnesses. Initially, he just wanted to heal his stubborn disease, but after tasting human flesh once, he became addicted. He said the taste of human meat was the best flavor on earth.

The more he ate, the more he wanted. Whenever a baby died, he'd dig it up the next day, cook it, chew even the bones, and drink every last drop of the soup.

When Tang told me this, he wore a twisted smile, his eyes glowing green, drooling — truly terrifying.

Tang cursed him and told him to get out of the village immediately or he'd expose him to everyone. If the villagers knew their children were being eaten, Ma Jinhui would have no place to hide!

That night, Ma Jinhui left. Tang had buried this secret for years, but every time he thought of it, he felt disgusted and creeped out.

I watched Tang closely. Everything he said was the truth.

At this point, Tang lit a cigarette and took a deep drag. "I've seen dogs go mad after eating other dogs. Some unscrupulous cattle farmers mix cow blood with feed. The cows drink water nonstop and fatten up like balloons, but they all end up mad in the end. I think people eating people will also go insane."

I said, "Cannibalism violates natural law, probably to protect the survival of the species. Eating one's own kind produces a toxin, a kind of rejection substance that's poisonous."

Tang nodded. "You know your science. I don't. All I know is people who eat people will be struck by lightning!"

I asked, "If you knew Ma Jinhui's background, why did you still buy pork from him? Weren't you afraid he mixed other things in?"

"Ah..." Tang sighed deeply, "I had no choice. Ma Jinhui owed me 100,000 yuan. He couldn't pay, so he offered meat instead…"

Tang said he later found out Ma Jinhui also worked in Nanjing city. After leaving the village, he sank into drinking and gambling, piling up a debt of 100,000 yuan. Tang, blinded by sympathy, lent him money from what he'd saved to build a house back home.

100,000 yuan was a huge sum for Tang. Ma Jinhui delayed repayment for three years. Tang's wife and kids still lived in a mud house, and Tang was desperate.

Several times he asked for the money back, but Ma Jinhui said he couldn't save any and offered to pay with meat instead. At the time, he worked at a meat processing plant and promised to deliver ten jin (about five kilos) of pork to Tang every day, priced at 20 yuan per jin.

The pork market price was 25 yuan per jin, so it seemed like a good deal. The meat came fresh from the plant. Tang agreed immediately.

Sometimes the meat was in chunks, sometimes minced. Over time, the minced meat increased. Tang never suspected it could be human meat!

Huang Xiaotao asked, "Couldn't you tell the difference between human meat and pork?"

Tang made a miserable face. "At times, I thought the meat tasted a little off, but I didn't think much of it. I never imagined that rotten kid could be a murderer!"