The silt swept up from the riverbed, drawn in by his Life Magnetic Field, clung to the Totem Armor like a second skin, completely concealing its gleam and killing intent. It allowed Meng Chao to perfectly merge with the foul, reeking sludge beneath the sewage pipe.
Within a radius of ten meters, four guards and staff members were facing a formidable enemy, run ragged by the emergency, yet not a single pair of eyes swept over Meng Chao.
Only when several two-headed Water Rats fled blindly toward the underside of the sewage pipe did everyone's gaze follow.
Meng Chao had long been prepared.
He lightly flicked out a shard of bone picked up from the riverbed.
The rice-grain-sized fragment skimmed close to the ground and silently struck the seam between the Water Rat's two heads.
The Water Rat yelped in pain, squeaking wildly as it leaped up.
Seeming to sense that some terrifying presence it could not afford to provoke lay dormant in the darkness ahead, it changed direction under the compulsion of survival instinct and burrowed toward another sewage pipe.
The attention of the four guards and staff members shifted with it.
And the next "dim period," when two-thirds of the emergency lights went out, had arrived.
At the instant darkness swallowed the cavern.
Meng Chao sprang up from beneath the sewage pipe.
Like a bolt of black lightning, he shot toward the center of the sewage treatment system, where the reaction kettles and metal tanks stood thickest.
That was also where the guards were most densely stationed.
The gazes of seven or eight guards clung tightly to the reaction kettles and metal tanks like thorny vines.
Before Meng Chao even arrived, several metal flakes wreathed in Spiritual Energy—thin as cicada wings and incomparably sharp—had already shot from his