The middle-aged man was also somewhat helpless. He had been selling pork for half his lifetime, but this was the first time he had encountered a situation like Chen Ge's. "If you don't have any other business, then leave. I don't have a pig-slaughtering knife here."
"Then do you sell any of these knives you normally use?" Chen Ge was dead set on it. He was going to start livestreaming tonight no matter what, and whether it was useful or not, he would buy one to have on him first.
"If I sell to you, how am I supposed to do business?" The middle-aged man had barely finished speaking when a young man with dyed hair squeezed through the crowd from behind. He looked no more than eighteen or nineteen, with a jacket tied around his waist, yawning as he approached.
Seeing the young man come over, the middle-aged man slammed the bone-chopping cleaver into the cutting board, wiped his greasy hands on his apron, and strode toward the young man. "You actually remember to come back? Where did you run off to last night!"
"Singing with a few friends, then browsed the internet for a bit." The young man put on his earphones, clearly not wanting to listen to the middle-aged man's nonsense.
"Why didn't you pick up the phone?" Having spent years chopping bones and cutting meat, the middle-aged man looked far sturdier than the young man. He stepped forward and yanked the earphones right off the young man's head. "I'm talking to you!"
The earphones were forcibly ripped away. The young man clamped a hand over his ear and stood in front of the middle-aged man without saying a single word, staring him down.
"Cat got your tongue? I'm asking you — why didn't you come home last night? You didn't even answer my calls. What exactly are you trying to pull?" The middle-aged man's voice was so loud that the old men and women buying vegetables nearby started trying to calm him down. The young man, standing on the other side, glared at the middle-aged man, snatched his earphones off the ground, and bolted out of the market.
"Get back here!" The middle-aged man was too busy with business to leave the stall. He stamped his foot in frustration, snatched up the kitchen knife from the cutting board, and began chopping viciously into the bones.
Watching his fierce demeanor, Chen Ge sensibly collected the money from beside the cutting board and left with his rooster.
Walking out of the farmer's market, Chen Ge was looking for his bicycle when the dyed-haired young man suddenly approached him on his own.
"Heard you want to buy a pig-slaughtering knife?"
"I don't want a new one. What I need is the kind of butcher's knife that's been used for a long time."
"My family has one. Come with me, and don't let my dad see." The young man led Chen Ge to a residential building near the farmer's market and told him to wait outside the door. After a moment, he emerged from the apartment carrying an elongated object wrapped in red cloth.
"My grandpa was a pig slaughterer. He originally planned to take this knife into his coffin, said no one in the family should ever do this line of work again, but my dad insisted on keeping this old thing. Ever since then, everything in the family has gone wrong. He lost our entire savings in business, my mom is gone too, and in the end he's stuck at the farmer's market chopping pork for a living." The young man shoved the red-cloth-wrapped object into Chen Ge's hands. "This knife is bad luck. I'm not trying to scam you — just give me a hundred bucks and take it."
Hearing the young man say that, Chen Ge grew curious. He peeled back the red cloth and looked down.
His Yin Eyes flickered, as if pricked by a needle. Two or three seconds passed before they returned to normal.
Inside the red cloth was a single-edged pointed knife nearly forty centimeters long. Perhaps because it had been soaked in so much blood over the years, the blade had taken on a dark reddish-black color.
A blood groove ran down the center of the blade, and the wooden handle's surface was laced with threadlike red lines, like traces of dried blood.
Chen Ge gave it two experimental swings. It was heavier than he had expected.
"This knife feels rather vicious."
Having been wrapped in red cloth for who knew how long, the edge was no longer sharp, but the aura it emitted had not changed one bit.
"When I was a kid, I watched with my own eyes as my grandpa took this knife and walked into the pigpen. Not a single pig dared to make a sound." The young man glanced at the red cloth and extended his hand toward Chen Ge. "If you're satisfied, pay up."
"Perfect. This is exactly the pig-slaughterer's knife I was looking for." Chen Ge handed the young man a hundred-yuan bill, then also gave him his phone number. "If your father asks you about the knife, you can have him call me."
"What does this have to do with him?" The young man kept a cold expression, took the money, and went back inside.
"Your father comes across as a bit short-tempered, looks like he's got a fierce streak. But he really doesn't have it easy. As far as I know, there aren't any slaughterhouses anywhere near Jiujiang. If he wants to get fresh pork to sell in the morning, he has to get up past three in the dawn to head out to the suburbs and stock up, just to make it back in time for the morning market."