Chapter 179: Rat Raid
“Of course you can eat. Do you want it roasted or stewed? Brother Xiong will make it for you, and I guarantee it will taste amazing,” Xiong Jie laughed.
“Hehe, I want both!” Dean tugged at Antonio’s arm.
Antonio kissed Dean’s forehead, his voice gentle. “Let’s pack it all up, and you can decide how to eat it.”
“With this much, we can really have a proper feast,” Xu Sa said as he and Liu Rui burned several snakeheads to ashes before inspecting the bodies. He then turned to Lu Weiyi and said, “Lu Weiyi, come take it. We’ll make snake meat soup tonight.”
Lu Weiyi shrugged. “My space is full, not even a single piece will fit. Unless you want to carry something yourselves, we can check the snakeheads for crystal cores.”
Liu Rui used a stick to carefully sift through the ashes, pulling out a few crystal cores, the size of a fingernail.
“No way! Upgrade already, there’s so much mutated meat!” Xu Sa exclaimed, almost feeling the loss.
“Store it in my space,” Zhuang Mingxu suggested quietly, and secretly handed Lu Weiyi a jade pendant—the one from the trading hall.
Lu Weiyi quietly checked it, pushing the supplies into Zhuang Mingxu’s space, managing to squeeze a pile of snake meat in.
“We should move quickly. Snakes are social creatures in the winter; a few of them isn’t too many,” Li Zhuang said after organizing things, then spoke up.
“Mm, I’ll follow you,” Li Zhuang said as he looked for the path. He could use his mental powers to scout ahead and ensure there were no more surprises.
With Lu Weiyi’s mental protection, they encountered a few more mutated snakes that were dealt with before they could get close. The group was reluctant to waste the mutated meat and each packed some into their backpacks.
*
By 8:30 PM, they arrived at the planned village in the dark.
The village was empty, and in the dim light, it had a deserted, haunted-house-like atmosphere. The group carried their lamps and chose the nearest house to rest in.
Lu Weiyi and Li Zhuang went to scout the area, leaving the necessary supplies behind while the others tidied up.
“Luckily, this area wasn’t flooded. The ground is much easier to walk on. Otherwise, we’d probably reach here in the middle of the night,” Gu Qingyue said as he swept the dusty floor of the house and laid out bedding.
“We should be able to drive tomorrow. Brother Xi, are you alright?” Lu Xi asked as he helped Xi Shi sit on the bed, offering him a basin of water that Ning Yuan had just prepared for him to wash up.
“…I’m getting old.” With Brother Xiong helping along the way, Xi Shi was exhausted. After a day’s journey, he felt utterly drained and couldn’t get up after sitting down.
“Rest for a bit, we’ll take care of it,” Lu Xi replied, then brought another basin of water for Zhuang Mingxu to wash up with, before helping to clean Zhuang Ai Yi as well.
The group divided the tasks and got to work. By the time Lu Weiyi and Li Zhuang returned, dinner was already ready and the fragrant aroma filled the air, causing the two of them to feel their stomachs rumbling.
They ate a spicy and flavorful meal, and then Lu Weiyi assigned the night watch. “Li Zhuang and Gu Qingyue, you’re on from 10 PM to 1 AM; Antonio, Liu Rui, and Li Dongsheng, you’re on from 1 AM to 4 AM; Ning Yuan and I will take the 4 to 6 AM shift. During the night, we need to guard against zombies, but we also need to watch out for mutated animals. If anything seems off, call me immediately. The rest of you should try to get some rest.”
“I’ll take the 10 PM to 1 AM shift, since I need to deal with these and carrying them could ruin them,” Xiong Jie said, pointing to the bags full of snake meat.
“I know how to do it too. I’ll help,” Lin Yimu added.
“I’ll handle it,” Ning Yuan said.
“I can also do it,” Wu Yue said.
Lu Weiyi glanced at them and then said, “Brother Mu, take a rest today. You’ll be driving tomorrow. Ning Yuan, you take over. You two, get some rest.” He then looked at the Gu brothers and said, “Who else can handle this? Let’s clean up the snake meat together.”
“I can,” Li Dongsheng volunteered, grabbing a knife and joining Brother Xiong to clean the meat.
“Roast or stew?” Li Zhuang asked as he walked over.
“Let’s have both! I’ll help,” Antonio said, still thinking about Dean’s comment about how good the food smelled, wanting him to try it all.
“I’ll make the roasted flavor, so you can see that I have some skills too,” Ning Yuan said with a smile, pulling out spices from a nearby box.
“There’s a wood shed over there with plenty of firewood. We can grab some later. Don’t use the lights tonight, just start a fire. Animals usually avoid fire,” Li Zhuang said, hauling a neatly stacked pile of firewood from somewhere and placing it by the door.
“Perfect. The wood-fired flavor is the best,” Ning Yuan said as he looked for something to start the fire. Liu Rui threw a fireball at the pile of dry wood, and it instantly ignited. He silently gave a thumbs-up.
The group gathered in one room to sleep on the floor. It was very cold outside, but the thick bedding and cotton quilts made it feel warm.
In the middle of the night, Lu Weiyi, surrounded by small green branches keeping watch around the room, suddenly woke up with a jolt. His mental connection to the branches immediately revealed a swarm of black rats, as big as basketballs, silently creeping toward the room from all directions.
He leapt out of bed, waking up Zhuang Mingxu, who had been sleeping beside him. Before Zhuang Mingxu could ask what was wrong, Lu Weiyi urgently whispered, “Alert! Wake up!”
“What’s going on?” Antonio, who was on watch, asked, looking around. He couldn’t sense anything unusual, but upon closer listening, there was indeed some faint noise.
“Rats. A lot of rats!” Lu Weiyi said, quickly moving to the door. He waved his small green branches, activating several high-power light bulbs around the yard. The area lit up brightly, revealing a swarm of rats charging toward them from all directions.
The sight was overwhelming—dark, moving masses of rats, their little eyes reflecting the light, making the scene eerie.
“We’re surrounded. Protect the people inside and clear them out first,” Lu Weiyi ordered. Meanwhile, Antonio was already sending his throwing knives flying into the rat swarm, and Lu Weiyi’s green branches repeated the process of wrapping and strangling the rats before tossing them away.
The earth-based abilities of Li Dongsheng created walls of earth, while the water-based powers of the others kept the rats at bay. Liu Rui’s fire abilities were the most impressive, sending fireballs toward the rats, their sizzling sound accompanied by the smell of cooked meat.
In the midst of this chaotic battle, Zhuang Ai Yi screamed, followed by a series of gunshots. Then came the sounds of panicked footsteps and muffled groans from the people inside.
Lu Weiyi was about to ask what had happened when Zhuang Mingxu’s calm voice reached them from within the room. “The rats are digging tunnels. They’ve started gnawing at the walls.”
“Gu Qingji, go help,” Lu Weiyi ordered. Only the mutated vines of Gu Qingji could handle the rats without harming anyone. Gu Qingji nodded, looking quickly at Gu Qingyue to confirm he was fine before turning and heading toward the room.
Inside, the situation wasn’t as bad as expected. Lu Xi had created a one-meter mental barrier around the immobile Zhuang Mingxu, Zhuang Ai Yi, Xi Shi, and Dean, protecting them.
The rats were circling around the barrier, climbing up and down, their sharp teeth gnawing at the air, but they couldn’t breach the invisible force field.
Inside the “barrier,” Zhuang Mingxu and Dean remained calm, holding their guns. After a series of “bangs,” the mutated rats fell to the ground.
“Brother Qingji, hurry and help, I’m scared of this thing, and I can’t hold on much longer,” Lu Xi’s voice trembled, though his face couldn’t be seen in the dim light. His mental power wasn’t very strong, and at this point, it was below B-class. The mental barrier could only hold for a while.
Gu Qingji, raised in the city, felt unnerved by the sight. He had seen regular rats in textbooks, but these were several times larger, with a fierce and wild murderous aura.
At this point, there was no time for him to think—surrounded by these creatures, not fighting back would mean the same fate as those devoured in the base: becoming a pile of bones.
And he… didn’t want to die.
The mutated Ivy vine shot out from his wrist, wrapping around a cluster of mutated rats. His mutated plant wasn’t as flexible as Lu Weiyi’s small green twig and couldn’t directly strangle them. He could only use the large knife in his hand to split the rats in half.
With his help, Zhuang Mingxu and Dean shot at two places where the rats had dug holes. Soon, the rats in the room were all taken care of.
“We’ve solved it,” Zhuang Mingxu called out, the safety of the inside team naturally being reported first.
With the situation inside under control, the outside team grew more aggressive. After most of the rats had been taken down, it seemed like they received some kind of command and quickly began retreating from the yard. It was so fast that if it weren’t for the pile of bodies outside, one might have thought it was all a hallucination.
“Is… it afraid?” Xu Sa wondered.
“It retreated in an orderly fashion,” Zhuang Mingxu remarked.
“Could there be a high-intelligence leader?” Wu Yue asked, his face turning pale as he said it.
“Who knows?” Antonio answered calmly, then turned to Dean, asking, “Dean, are you hurt?”
“No,” Dean replied.
Lu Weiyi remembered the scream from Zhuang Ai Yi and looked over. Zhuang Mingxu, understanding, said, “No one was hurt, just startled. But Brother Xi was bitten.”
“Does he need a vaccine?” Xiong Jie asked, concerned.
“…There’s no vaccine for mutated rats…” Gu Qingyue replied, uncertain. After thinking for a moment, he asked Lu Weiyi for a tetanus shot. Xi Shi had dodged, so only two deep bite marks remained.
No one knew if a mutated animal bite would lead to anything else, and Xiong Jie regretted that Xi Shi had left the base. If he were still there, they wouldn’t be facing such dangers.
“I’m not sure if it will help, we’ll just have to observe. Brother Xi, let me know if you feel unwell,” Gu Qingyue said as he administered the shot, disinfected, and bandaged the wound.
