When we reached the workshop, we saw a guy dancing in disheveled clothes. He shouted at us, “You’re all going to turn into pigs! And then you’ll get slaughtered like an animal!”

“Why is he so affected by this?” asked Xiaotao.

Old Li sighed and replied, “Xiaosheng was dating a girl a while ago, but when she found out that he worked at a slaughterhouse, she called him cruel and inhumane and dumped him. He’s been unhappy ever since. Seeing what he did this morning probably broke him because he was already vulnerable in the first place.”

“Silly girl,” scoffed Xiaotao. “Doesn’t she eat meat?”

“There was a monk in my hometown,” said Dali, “who’d hand out these pamphlets that said those who slaughter pigs would reincarnate as pigs themselves in their next life!”

Slaughtering pigs might be seen as a dirty and cruel job by many, but it was...