He held up the blood-stained jar, examining it closely in his hand, then brought it before Ge Mei and asked, "Ge Mei, do you know why there are bloodstains on this jar?"

Ge Mei appeared quite startled, knitting his brow tightly. "What? Bloodstains? Impossible. How could there be bloodstains here? You must be mistaken."

Seeing Ge Mei’s disbelief, Lu Zong merely held up the jar. Ge Mei took the jar, and his brow furrowed even deeper, for he recognized the painting on it. This should have been the largest jar, but why was it so small now? Had it lost weight? That couldn't be right either; it was plump just a moment ago, impossible to have shrunk so much so suddenly. Besides, what about the bloodstains on it?

Ma Xiong suddenly interjected, "Wait, wait, wait, I think I've grasped a clue." His gaze lingered on the bloodstains on the jar before he looked at Ge Mei and said, "Ge Mei, think about it. Under what circumstances can a girl lose weight the fastest and bleed profusely?"

Ge Mei pondered deeply, and Lu Zong nodded in thought, but in the end, they couldn't come up with anything conclusive. They had to ask Ma Xiong for guidance. Ma Xiong cleared his throat with a feigned air of seriousness and said, "The only way to get a woman from her heaviest to her leanest state, while simultaneously losing a large amount of blood, is if a piece of flesh falls off her body." Lu Zong scoffed contemptuously and cursed, "What kind of weight loss is that? That’s blatant murder. You call that an answer?"

Ma Xiong explained calmly, "Wait until you hear me out. There are several ways a piece of flesh can fall from a woman. It can be murder, or it can be giving birth. Have you forgotten that childbirth involves a piece of flesh falling away from a woman? According to my line of thinking, this jar must have given birth to a child. Haha." As he said this, Ma Xiong burst into loud laughter, perhaps feeling his idea was utterly ridiculous. He looked at the other two with a roguish expression, seemingly realizing he had crossed a line, feeling that ever since entering the tent, he had indulged only in adult jokes, letting his rascally nature run wild.

He stopped smiling, instead adopting a solemn expression as he looked at the pair.

Unexpectedly, Lu Zong suddenly slapped his forehead and exclaimed, "Ah! Ma Xiong is indeed unusually clever! To come up with such an absurd answer! You know, no matter how many answers we conjure up, only this one explains the current phenomenon. Isn't that strange, Ge Mei?"

Ge Mei’s small face flushed, and he nodded shyly. Ma Xiong seemed to have stepped outside the realm of common sense, looking Lu Zong up and down with an impossible gaze, as if trying to see right through him to check if a nerve was crossed somewhere to believe his own joke, and such an absurd one at that. But he wasn't gifted with X-ray vision to see Lu Zong's internal organs. Still, he felt certain that Lu Zong must have taken the wrong medicine today, and the effect was now fully manifest.

However, he couldn't take back what he said; words, once spoken, were like spilled water. There was no point in telling Lu Zong he retracted his statement. Since they had nothing else to do, they might as well research this question of childbirth. He didn't argue against himself, feeling that since antiquity, no great figure had ever stated an idea only to immediately have it refuted.

Lu Zong continued to examine the childbirth theory. He said, "I feel that while Ma Xiong's words are somewhat absurd, they do hold a kernel of truth. For now, let's count it as one possibility. Everyone, think—is there another possibility?"

Ma Xiong’s thinking immediately opened up, and he began describing the various scenarios of childbirth with excited gestures: "This business of childbirth is profound knowledge! You have to carefully consider which day is best for conception and which days are unsuitable for intimacy. These are all deduced through meticulous calculations based on Feng Shui ethics and the Eight Trigrams. One must accumulate experience through countless hands-on practices to gain this knowledge. Ah, Lu Zong, you have no idea! This craft was summarized only after the sect's founder, Zhang Sanfeng, endured countless arduous days and nights. From this, you can see that the ancients never shirked personal sacrifice in their pursuit of truth. The ancients were truly magnificent!"

Lu Zong nodded in agreement. "Indeed. Don't scoff at it; I truly admire that about the ancients. Imagine, a single man being able to marry several wives—that must have been such happiness. Every day, you wouldn't have to worry about one saying no or another refusing you. The competition back then must have been fierce, unlike now. Damn it, it’s hard enough to find one wife now; I'm still a bachelor."

Zhi Xi also looked at Lu Zong with sympathy, a feeling of kinship blooming between them. Though they had known each other for over a decade, they felt as if they had met too late. Ge Mei was certain that if these two had met twenty years earlier, the two figures standing before him today would have been textbook hooligans.

To ensure his personal safety, Ge Mei changed the subject. "Let's discuss something serious. There is no way this jar resembles what Ma Xiong described. This isn't some animal or anything; look, they are always motionless, dead, without life. How could they reproduce? Let's think of something else. Perhaps this jar is a replacement, maybe it was accidentally brought over from that corner of the wall. We should stop worrying about these jars for now; retreating is the best strategy—the Thirty-Six Stratagems, you know."

But the two seemed utterly fixated on the objects before them, refusing to leave, simply staring blankly at the jars. Ma Xiong suddenly thought he saw the positions of the jars shift slightly, but wasn't entirely sure, so he ignored it, turning instead to look at the equally troubled Lu Zong. To his surprise, Lu Zong was also staring intently at the jars. Feeling helpless, Ma Xiong turned his gaze back to the collection.

This time, however, when he looked again, he nearly cried out in fright. To his astonishment, the jars had clearly shifted positions. This change in arrangement certainly wasn't caused by any of them, as Ge Mei and Lu Zong were behind him, and he himself hadn't touched the jars. This time, trusting his own eyes, he turned back to Lu Zong and asked in amazement, "Lu Zong, have you noticed? The positions of these jars are actually changing?"

What shocked him even more was that Lu Zong replied in an equally astonished tone: "You noticed too? Really, these jars are moving. Look, the jar that was at the very bottom just now—when did it move to the second row? And the one that was in the second row has suddenly vanished." Lu Zong quickly placed the jar he was holding back in its original spot, but when they counted them again, one was missing. In the bottom right corner of the third row, there was no jar. They recounted, and there were only seventeen.

"What is happening?" Ma Xiong’s voice trembled slightly, as he felt he could not accept these changes. They happened stealthily; if someone with weaker nerves had been present, they would surely have been terrified into a nervous breakdown.

Ge Mei, standing behind them, also started turning pale, his complexion deepening to purple. He couldn't imagine how many days he had lived alongside these strange-looking jars, even using them as chamber pots—how dangerous that had been! A chill ran down his spine. Fortunately, having two grown men beside him kept him from crying out, but he watched the jars with a heart full of dread, the fear inside him growing rapidly, threatening to overwhelm his reason.

Seeing Ge Mei's face turn purple with fright, Ma Xiong, worried he might collapse from fear, quickly comforted him: "It's fine, it's fine. Maybe we are just hallucinating, like what we saw at the cave entrance. Besides, look, you have us two accompanying you. You'll be safe." Ge Mei finally felt a bit more secure and looked at Ma Xiong with deep gratitude.

Lu Zong said, "I don't see it that way. Look at these jars; they appear dead, but perhaps they are some sort of animal. Hey, Ma Xiong, pick one up and look inside. Are there any organs inside?"

Ma Xiong shot Lu Zong a look of contempt and cursed, "Damn it, you are so selfish! Why don't you pick one up and look inside? You know how small the openings of these jars are. What if I stick my eye in there to look, and something bites it? Getting injured is the least of it; I'm afraid something inside might blind me, and then things would get complicated."

Lu Zong returned the scornful look. "Didn't you just say these jars pose no danger? If there's no danger, why not take a small risk for once?"

Hearing this, Ma Xiong became slightly embarrassed and angry in return, shouting back, "Are you an idiot? I only said these jars weren't dangerous to comfort Ge Mei! Those were just reassuring words. In truth, I’m even more scared than you are, I just didn't show it. I can guarantee these jars are genuinely strange, not just our illusion. If I had to stay with these jars for a few more days, I’d surely go insane."

As he spoke, he suddenly seemed to realize something. He looked at Ge Mei, whose already flushed face had turned purple again, staring at the jars with an expression of sheer terror.