As Ke Xun passed the bull, he mustered his courage and glanced up at it.
This bull was unlike any in real life; it was much larger and more robust, its proportions to a human like a human to a cat or dog. Ke Xun had to crane his neck to see its chin.
The bull glanced down at him, but clearly didn't take his gaze seriously, merely tapping him on the back with the stick on its hoof—a light tap, not too hard, but slightly painful. Ke Xun quickened his pace and followed the others into the houses.
The interior of these houses resembled a prison, with cubicles on both sides separated by brick walls, and iron bars facing the central passageway.
At this moment, all the iron bars were opened to the size of a door, and the naked men filed in. However, some were dragged out by the giant bull that followed them in and thrown into another room. Ke Xun walked behind and observed carefully for a while, discovering that the rooms seemed to be arranged according to the people's ages.
The older people were grouped together in one room, while the middle-aged, young adults, and teenagers were separated.
Just as Qin Ci, who was walking ahead, was about to choose a room, the giant bull suddenly bent down and grabbed him with its hooves. The three newcomers were so frightened that they scattered and ran away. Ke Xun quickly grabbed Wei Dong with one hand and Mu Yiran with the other, and dodged into the nearest cubicle.
The giant bull ignored the three running newcomers, simply picked up Qin Ci, carefully looked him over from head to toe, and then turned its head and barked loudly at the outside: "Moo, moo moo moo, moo?"
"Holy crap, it can even make interrogative sentences?" Wei Dong muttered, trembling.
Soon, another giant bull dressed in the same manner ran in from outside the house. Reaching the bull, Qin Ci was taken from its hands, looked at it from head to toe, and communicated with it:
"Moo, moo moo moo, moo moo."
"Moo, moo moo, moo moo moo, moo. Hmph hmph hoh."
"Hmph hmph hoh, moo moo moo."
Ke Xunwei Dong: "..." Is this... teasing? These two—could these two bulls be childhood friends...?
After their exchange, one bull, holding Qin Ci, locked him in an empty compartment and went to catch the three newcomers who were still running around wildly. The other bull left, returning a while later with a round stamp in its hand.
At this moment, the three newcomers were locked in Qin Ci's cubicle. The first giant bull was still carefully searching through the groups of naked men in the various cubicles, which Ke Xun guessed was them.
Another bull, holding a round stamp, grabbed Qin Ci and the three newcomers, stamping each of them on their lower back. Ke Xun remembered that the other naked men also seemed to have a blue round stamp on their bodies, some faded, some still quite obvious, but he hadn't paid attention and therefore ignored it.
Now that he thought about it, these stamps seemed to be...
"Looks like the kind of stamps you put on pigs' butts in a pig farm." Wei Dong was dragged out by the giant bull, and while being stamped on his lower back, he loudly complained, feeling extremely humiliated.
In the end, none of the outsiders could escape the fate of being stamped, and after being stamped, they were all locked in the cubicle where Qin Ci was. Besides them, there were seven or eight naked men of the same age in this cubicle as well.
"Excuse my ignorance, but I want to ask what the blue stamps on pigs' butts usually mean?" Ke Xun rubbed his lower back, trying to erase the stamps.
"It means boar." Qin Ci's expression was indescribable. "The red stamp means sow."
Everyone: "..."
"A scholar can be killed but not humiliated!" Wei Dong rubbed his lower back and shouted loudly, then asked Qin Ci, "What stamp does a breeding pig have?"
Everyone: "..."
"You lot, stop arguing," one of the humans in the painting said impatiently, "Getting a stamp is just getting a stamp, isn't that normal?! Behave yourselves, or don't blame us for being impolite!"
Hearing this, everyone quieted down and looked at the seven or eight humans in the painting. Seeing that they were all around the same age, and that the men still had a youthful arrogance on their faces, looking at the people outside the painting with unfriendly eyes, one or two even had a provocative look in their eyes, especially targeting Mu Yiran, Ke Xun, and the 1.9-meter-tall strong man Dong Dong.
In the world of men, they either admire the strong or hate the strong.
"What are you looking at!" Dong Dong, with his fiery temper and the tension, fear, and confusion that had gripped him since entering the studio, suddenly exploded, glaring like a fighting cock at the two people with provocative eyes.
"What's it to you?!" The two were equally defiant, retorting as their companions joined in, all glaring back at Dong Dong.
"Dongzi, don't cause trouble." Yuan Yuan quickly stopped Dong Dong.
Wei Dong: "Hmm?"
Ke Xun: "Don't be so sensitive, he has an extra 'wood' radical in his name."
Wei Dong muttered in a low voice, "It feels like the discomfort of encountering a counterfeit when you have the real thing."
As the two groups were glaring at each other, they suddenly heard cheers from another cubicle. Ke Xun, standing by the iron gate, went over and peered through the gap in the fence. He saw two giant bulls and one person... one bull carrying a huge basin, throwing food into each cubicle.
This was... feeding them.
Ke Xun exchanged a complicated look with Qin Ci, who also looked complicated.
This feeling of being treated like livestock was even worse than the feeling in the previous paintings.
After all, in the previous paintings, even death was a death of dignity for a human being, while in this painting… the self-respect of humans, the only higher animals on Earth, was utterly trampled into dust.
This feeling was both shameful and infuriating.
When the food was distributed to this room, the people in the painting no longer cared about confronting Dong Dong, cheering and looking up at the giant bull distributing the food. Ke Xun swore he saw stars shining in their eyes.
A large amount of food was scattered down.
These compartments had no roofs, and the brick walls on both sides were high enough that the upper part of the gate was also made of brick, making it impossible for humans to climb up by hand. The giant bull threw food from above the room, and the food rained down on the brick floor. Many of the food items even came with packaging bags and boxes, some even containing cola.
Wei Dong was stunned when a bottle of cola fell on him: "This treatment is too good! Do they eat this every day?"
Ke Xun also picked up the food that had fallen to the ground: "Whole milk, butter buns, cheese, French fries, cream puffs, cream biscuits, cream cakes, chocolate, nuts, candied fruit, canned fruit... I can't say whether the treatment is good or not, but these things are definitely forbidden foods for us sports students." "
Why?" Bi Jing asked.
"They will accumulate fat and increase the burden on the liver and kidneys," Ke Xun threw down the food in his hand and pointed at Yuan Yuan, "Ask him, there must be something he likes in here."
Yuan Yuan was a little embarrassed and silently threw away the cola and French fries he was holding.
The other members of the group were still frantically grabbing the food, each holding a full armful, and each huddled in a corner of the room, eagerly stuffing themselves.
"Are these things edible?" Yuan Yuan asked Qin Ci in a low voice.
"I think... they should be edible." Qin Ci said.
"Then... shall we eat?" Wei Dong looked at the old members.
Qin Ci nodded slightly: "Eat a little, who knows what will happen later."
Hearing this, everyone silently picked up a few items of food from the ground.
Ke Xun, having developed a habit during his school days, felt somewhat averse to such food, so he only picked a few nuts and a can of fruit, and sat down next to Wei Dong and Zhu Haowen.
Wei Dong, having developed a habit from his long years as a grueling graphic designer, was not picky about food, randomly picking up a few items. Some of the packaging wasn't transparent, with strange writing printed on it, and he had no idea what was inside.
After taking a bite of cake, he glanced at Ke Xun, then looked up at Mu Yiran sitting opposite him, and couldn't help but wonder. He nudged Ke Xun with his elbow and whispered, "What's wrong with you? Why don't you sit with your crush? I feel like you've been avoiding him ever since you saw him. What happened? Did you get violently rejected?"
"Shut up and eat. Without clothes on, you can't hide your curiosity anymore, right?" Ke Xun lowered his eyelids and picked at the fruit in the can, being very careful not to drink the fruit juice inside.
"You like him?" Zhu Haowen, who hadn't spoken until now, suddenly asked.
Ke Xun jumped in surprise and turned to look at him: "What the hell is wrong with you guys? You always have to worry about others when you're eating, right? What kind of weird physiological structure and nerve reflex is this? Shut up and focus on eating, okay?"
Zhu Haowen looked at him and put a piece of chocolate in his mouth.
"Hey, look what this is," Wei Dong called to Ke Xun again, "Looks like meat?"
He saw that Ke Xun was holding an open package containing fragrant processed meat.
"It's probably beef." Ke Xun smiled mischievously and pointed to the giant cow that had reached the end of the two rows of cubicles.
Wei Dong was speechless: "...What kind of noble and great sentiment is this, raising us just to feed us their own meat?"
"I think it's best not to eat meat." Mu Yiran's voice came from across the table.
Wei Dong glanced at Ke Xun and saw that the guy had lowered his head again and continued picking fruit from his can.
"Boss, you mean... this meat isn't safe?" Wei Dong asked, putting down the meat in his hand.
"I'm not sure what kind of meat it is," Mu Yiran said calmly, looking over, "but it's definitely not beef, or even pork, lamb, or chicken."
"And try not to eat too much of the other food either," Qin Ci added, "I have a feeling that something strange has been added to these foods."
"How strange?" Wei Dong asked, putting down the cake in his hand.
"I have a friend who studies Traditional Chinese Medicine," Qin Ci said slowly, "I once saw his medical records for treating a patient with anorexia, and I recognized the taste of some of the herbs, and these foods seem to have a similar taste."
"In other words," Mu Yiran interjected, "these foods may very well contain growth-promoting ingredients."
"...Holy crap." Wei Dong put down all the food in his hand.
"Let's eat some dried fruit," Ke Xun finally raised his eyelids, as if speaking to everyone, but also as if speaking to Mu Yiran across from him. "These dried fruits all have shells on, and I checked them; there are no seams in the middle. They should be all-natural and unprocessed. Dried fruit can also increase body heat, so even if we eat less of other things, we can still keep warm."
"These two cows…" Dong Dong hesitated before speaking, "Why are they feeding us things that fatten us up?"
Mu Yiran's voice sounded very cold: "You can think about it; why do pig farms use fattening agents to fatten up their pigs?"