The trek from the Nanjian early market toward Eryuan County was a long, jagged run through the mountain passes, a calculated detour to avoid those glass eyes that never blink—the CCTV cameras of the big cities. The journey took over three and a half hours, but Lao Zhang, a fifty-year-old piece of human wreckage who had spent his prime hauling freight, felt a cold certainty that this route was safe from the prying eyes of the law or any grieving parents.
At first, the leader of this charnel house operation was in a fine mood; the gears of the machine were grinding more smoothly than he had dared to hope. But after thirty minutes, a cold lead of certainty settled in his gut. Something was fundamentally wrong with the world inside that van.
It was the silence. It was a heavy blanket, a void of logic that shouldn't have been there. A brute like Da-Li, a massive wall of meat who usually bellowed like a bull and filled the air with crude, filthy talk, was as silent as a stone. Ah-Ling, the decoy who usually chattered enough to strip a man's gears, sat in a private, faraway static.
Zhang checked the rearview mirror. The twins were there, sitting as still as a washed blackboard, leaning their small, fragile frames against that blind goat. No tantrums. No sobbing. Just a silence so absolute it made the hair on Zhang's neck stand up like frozen soldiers.
After ten more minutes of that suffocating quiet, Zhang finally bellowed to break the spell. "What's the matter with you all? You so hungry you've lost the use of your tongues?".
Ah-Ling offered a one-word reply, her voice as thin as a sliver of ice: "No.". Da-Li merely shook his head, his eyes rolling like trapped rabbits toward the window. Xiao Fei remained buried in his phone, a tech grunt lost in a digital fog.
But the real kicker, the thing that made Zhang's pulse start to red-line, was the twins. They were staring at him with fixed, radiant smiles. It was a look that should have been cute on such pretty faces, but instead, it sent a jagged jolt of terror straight into the meat of his soul.
"What kind of devil-spawn are we hauling here?" Zhang hissed to himself, gritting his teeth to kill the shivering rattle in his voice.
He forced himself to focus on the asphalt until he spied the sign: Eryuan County Boundary (洱源县边界:Èryuán Xiàn Biānjiè). They had crossed the line. Zhang felt a pouting balloon of relief and reached for a cigarette. He took a huge, lung-stabbing drag and exhaled a plume of smoke out the window.
But the relief was a short dream. It vanished in a single, final snap when a sound erupted from the back—a high, brittle laughter that sounded like it was being expelled from a slaughterhouse. Zhang's hand jerked, and he dropped his cigarette as the twins began to laugh in a way that defied every instructional manual of logic.
"What's the matter, kiddos?" Ah-Ling asked, her voice painted on with a nursery-rhyme sweetness that couldn't quite hide the cold lead of certainty settling in her gut. The air inside the van had become a void of logic, a stagnant pool where every breath felt like a mistake.
The twins—that matched set of porcelain nightmares—turned to each other and offered a fixed, radiant smile before the boy looked back at the crew.
"Bo says he likes you guys," the boy whispered, his voice as thin as a sliver of ice. "Especially that bald auntie over there. Heh-heh."
The words struck Da-Li like a physical blow. A massive wall of meat with a shaved skull, he felt a humiliating warmth of fear bloom across his groin. It was a jagged jolt of shame—being terrified of a blind beast and two small-fry—and it ignited a hard scrawl of fury in his eyes.
Gears of the Machine
Da-Li lunged for the kids, his hands hooked into skeletal talons, but Ah-Ling threw herself into his path. For a heartbeat, it looked like the machine was going to strip its own gears as the two partners turned on each other.
"Hey! Shut your traps!" Lao Zhang bellowed from the front, his pulse starting to red-line. "We're almost there! Da-Li, sit your ass down! Don't you dare damage the merchandise or I'll carve it out of your hide!".
The roar of the boss worked like a chemical curse, turning the cabin into a choking emptiness. The twins didn't flinch; they just sat there with those black chips of coal for eyes, letting out a high, brittle giggle that sounded like it belonged in an insane asylum. To the kidnappers, the air suddenly felt thick as meat, a heavy blanket that made the simple act of breathing feel like a world of pain.
After ten more minutes of rattling down a dirt rut that was more weed-choked potholes than road, a shape materialized out of the growing gloom. It was a tombstone of a sign, a massive wooden carcass with letters that were a cracked and dirty patchwork of faded paint.
In both Chinese and English, the sign promised:
快樂農莊 (Kuàilè Nóngzhuāng)
Happy Farmstead
The name was a cosmic joke, a lie as big as the swampy reek of the forest around them. But as Lao Zhang steered the rust-caked shell of the van into the yard, they all knew one thing for certain: they had reached the end of the line, and the machinery of a nightmare was only just starting to turn.
Originally, "Happy Farmstead" wasn't meant to be a charnel house operation. Back in 2017, it was built as a glossy dream of agrotourism, part of the state's "Rural Revitalization Strategy" (乡村振兴战略 : Xiāngcūn Zhènxīng Zhànlüè). A grey-market investor from Kaifeng—a man named Deng Liangcai, known in the dark galleries of the underground as "Bao Zheng Deng"—had moved in to renovate an old cow-farm in Eryuan. He turned that spent shell of a farm into a farmstay, a bustling sanctuary for tourists who craved the sweet air of the countryside. For the first few years, the gears of the machine ground smoothly; tourists squeezed milk from cows, processed it into cheese and butter for sale, and bought grass to feed the sheep and rabbits. There was an organic restaurant and a small playground where children could caper in a childhood daydream.
But then came 2022. The COVID outbreak hit like a liquid whipcrack, and the "Zero-COVID" policy was a door-slam that left the business a ghost of a building in a jungle that didn't care if it lived or died.
But Boss Deng was no ordinary shark. When the legitimate business stripped its gears, he pivoted into a rat warren of illicit trade. Lao Zhang, a fifty-year-old piece of human wreckage who had spent his prime hauling freight until gambling dragged him under, found himself back in the machine. After Deng reached out, Zhang moved in to manage this new slaughterhouse operation: a ring for kidnapping children for ransom and the black-market butchers.
The name "Happy Farmstead" had become a cosmic joke, a lie as big as the swampy reek of the forest around it. The laughter of children was a washed-out memory, replaced by tears and high-voltage shrieks of sheer, unholy dread.
As they reached the entrance, Xiao Fei—a tech grunt lost in a digital fog of gambling debts—leapt from the rust-caked shell of the van to haul open the massive gates of wood and iron. The place was a perfect sarcophagus-like monolith of doom, tucked far away from the glass eyes that never blink, left to rot in a profound, choking emptiness…
Past the gates, a fountain sat in a purgatory of neglect, its stone cow once a cheerful water-spouter, now a grotesque effigy. Its mouth, long dry, was caked with a black slime that looked as if the beast were vomiting up old corruption. Beyond the fountain stood a single-story concrete slab, its front windows glass eyes that had gone blind with dust and cracks. Once a place of greeting and hot meals, it was now a rat warren for the snatchers, its main hall serving as a vantage point to watch for any soul wandering into this monolith of doom.
To the left stood a massive barn, a rust-caked shell of steel and wood that still exhaled the iron stink of old animals. It was a swampy reek of sheep and dairy cows that had long since been processed through the gears of the machine. Now, it served as a dark gallery to hide the gang's vehicles and the tools of their trade.
To the right, the ghost of a playground remained. Swings and a small carousel sat in a cracked and dirty patchwork of rust and faded paint. It was a childhood daydream that had turned into a void of logic, providing perfect camouflage for these predators of the night.
But the real slaughterhouse sat at the back—a massive concrete sarcophagus, once used for processing dairy. The walls were unnaturally thick, designed to hold the cold; now they held the high-voltage shrieks inside. The machinery had been stripped and sold for scratch, leaving only a choking emptiness and iron bars. The old cheese lockers had become cells where children slept on old, rank mats, their tears falling into the dark. The difficult ones were thrown into airless pits of solitary confinement, a world of pain where no scream—not a whimper or a prayer—could ever hope to leak through the concrete and reach the light of day.
At the far edge of "Happy Farmstead," what used to be a lush organic garden had surrendered to a weed-choked jungle, a rotting landscape where the dream of agrotourism had gone to die. Tucked away in that overgrowth was a monolith of doom: an old, massive well, its mouth capped and silent. This wasn't a source of water, but a dark gallery for the merchandise that didn't move—a slaughterhouse dump for the children who couldn't be sold, whose parents couldn't pay the freight, or who simply gave up the ghost from a world of pain and systematic neglect. The "Happy Farmstead" was a cosmic joke, a spent shell modified into a charnel house operation that was as efficient as it was hideous.
Lao Zhang, a fifty-year-old piece of human wreckage, barked a few words into his phone before steering the rust-caked shell of the van to a halt in front of the innermost building—the one that held the cages. After a moment, the heavy iron door, originally built for sterile cold storage, rumbled open like the lid of a sarcophagus.
A man with a cleft lip stepped into the sallow light, wearing a faded military vest that looked like a cracked and dirty patchwork of old service. This was Chen Aiguo (陈爱国), the resident wall of meat who served as the keeper of this rat warren. Before the COVID-era door-slam had dragged him under, he'd been a wrench-turner in Zhang's old hauling line in Yunnan. Now, with a face that was a grotesque effigy of ill-temper, he was the boogeyman that kept the small-fry in a state of constant, high-voltage shriek.
"Hurry up and process this haul, Aiguo (爱国)!" Zhang bellowed as he stepped from the cab.
"You're back, Zhang? What's in the machine today?" The question came in a voice as thin and raspy as a sliver of ice, drifting out from the shadows of the warehouse. It was Aunt Lian (莲姨), her words carrying the same nursery-rhyme sweetness used to lure marks into the gears.
"A matched set of treasures, Auntie!" Zhang let out a jagged, brittle laugh of pure greed, though the tail end of his voice held a cold lead of certainty that sounded like a rattle in the throat of a dying man.
An elderly woman, somewhere past sixty, stepped out of the shadows. In her hand, she gripped a switch—a thin, wicked strip of wood designed to break the spirits of the small-fry. This was Pan Guilian (潘桂莲), a piece of human wreckage from Guizhou. Her job in this charnel house operation was to process the merchandise, managing the feeding and the discipline of the stolen souls. She walked with a slight hunch, a permanent bend in her spine, yet her hair was a washed blackboard of jet-black dye.
Guilian was an old hand in the child-snatching trade, her face a mask of defeat and deep, cold knowledge. After handling hundreds of children, she no longer saw them as human beings; to her, they were simply meat for the machine. Boss Deng—the man they called Bao Zheng Deng—had specifically installed her to bird-dog the goods.
Her methods were a cracked and dirty patchwork of systematic abuse. Sometimes it was a sharp threat, sometimes a stroke of the switch, but often she relied on a chemical curse—mixing sleeping pills into their rice to drag the children down into a soupy semi-consciousness. She was also the one responsible for bathing and dressing them, ensuring the merchandise looked its best before being delivered to the black-market butchers. She was a vital gear in the gang's machinery.
As the van's rear doors opened, Ah-Ling and Xiao Fei led the matched set—Ying and Huo—and that blind beast onto the gravel. When Aunt Lian spied the twins, her eyes went wide, and her mouth performed a greedy little dance.
"Dragon-Phoenix twins! Zhang, you old bastid, that's a king's ransom!" she shrieked, her voice thin as a sliver of ice. She started toward them, her pulse starting to red-line, but as she drew close, a cold lead of certainty settled in her gut. Something was fundamentally wrong with the world. She stopped mid-stride, her spine locking up.
"These children... they're smiling," she whispered.
It was the truth. As they stepped from the rust-caked shell of the van, the twins offered a fixed, radiant smile. It was a sight that defied every instructional manual of logic. Aunt Lian was used to high-voltage shrieks and tears of sheer, unholy dread. Usually, the kids went into a shivering rattle just looking at Aiguo's grotesque effigy of a face. But these two were a void of logic. Their silence was a heavy blanket, and their smiles sent a jagged jolt of terror straight into the meat of her soul.
Still, the gears of the machine had to turn. Duty was duty. The old woman beckoned them with a trembling hand. Deep inside, Ah-Ling felt a clammy sliver of guilt, but she was already caught in the machine. She took the girl twin's hand and followed the old woman and the man with the cleft lip into the sarcophagus-like monolith of the building.
Da-Li, that massive wall of meat with the shaved skull, had been dreaming of goat stew since he first spied the beast. But now, a cold lead of certainty had settled in his gut, and he found himself unsure of how to handle the creature. He simply watched, his pulse starting to red-line, as the twin boy led the blind beast by its rope into the maw of the building.
CRACK!
A sound like a liquid whipcrack suddenly detonated near them, shattering the stagnant morning air. The crew jumped as if they'd been goosed by a high-voltage probe. A set of electric incense sticks at the spirit shrine beside the door had exploded without warning. The porcelain figures of the Earth God and Goddess—the Tǔdì Gōng Pó (土地公婆 )—were now nothing but a cracked and dirty patchwork of shards on the gravel. Aunt Lian stared, her eyes wide and glassy, looking toward Aiguo, but Lao Zhang—that fifty-year-old piece of human wreckage—cut the moment short.
"Move it! Get the kids inside!" Zhang barked, his voice like grinding glass. "Aiguo, you old bastid, you bought that bargain-basement shit again. Next time, buy equipment that doesn't give up the ghost if the wind blows!" He didn't wait for an answer; he just turned and walked away, with Xiao Fei and a very subdued Da-Li following in a blind, rat-like scramble.
With the leader's command, the gears of the machine began to turn once more. Aunt Lian led the way, and Ah-Ling guided the matched set of porcelain nightmares and their goat into the shadows. Aiguo, the man with the cleft lip, slammed the heavy iron door behind them—CHUNNK!—a final, metallic sound that sealed the world out.
"You've got friends in here, kiddos," Ah-Ling whispered, her voice painted on with a nursery-rhyme sweetness. She tried to soothe them, but she knew in her soul it was a void of logic. The twins didn't have a single shivering rattle of fear in their frames. They only offered those fixed, radiant smiles—a look that should have been cute but instead sent a jagged jolt of terror straight into the meat of Ah-Ling's soul.
And then there was Bo. The blind beast let out a sound from deep in its throat—"Heh… heh… haccch!"—a dry, brittle noise that sounded less like a bleat and more like the soul-freezing laughter of a demon watching from the dark.
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