Ominous Things

The battered pickup sped along before stopping in front of an old wooden house.

This must be the old man's residence.

After getting out, he skillfully took out his keys, unlocked the door, and entered the house. In the kitchen by the window, he began preparing lunch, looking just like an ordinary elderly man living alone.

Behind the old house stood a lush white-barked beech tree, its greenery swaying gently.

The white pigeon monitoring the old man landed on it, only for several crows to emerge from the leaves and let out harsh, hoarse caws at it.

One crow was even more vicious, flying straight at the pigeon to peck it.

Startled, the white pigeon hurriedly flapped its wings and flew away.

"Crows?"

This inconspicuous detail made Ning Xiuyuan narrow his eyes as he recalled a legend from his homeland.

His heart stirred, and he released Heart of the Beast.

After waiting for around ten minutes, he caught a raven nearby, its feathers black as ink and shimmering with a blue sheen. (A corvid bird resembling a crow.)

The raven flapped its wings and flew into Ning Xiuyuan's guest room, then darted out again in the blink of an eye. Spreading wings far broader than a pigeon's, it flew toward the old man's residence.

Before it even drew near, Ning Xiuyuan's expression changed slightly as he shared the raven's six senses.

—A faint, almost imperceptible stench of decay rushed into the raven's nostrils, assaulting its sense of smell.

The raven clearly grew excited. It even charged toward the old man's house on its own, without needing Ning Xiuyuan's control.

To Ning Xiuyuan, that stench was foul. To it, however, it was the enticing fragrance of delicious food.

"Caw—caw—caw—"

The raven's arrival made the crows on the beech tree's branches somewhat restless, and they kept cawing.

Yet when faced with a creature a full circle larger than themselves, one that dared to fight eagles, they were no longer as fierce as they had been toward the white pigeon.

The raven ignored its loudly cawing relatives on the branches. Bold beyond reason, it landed on the ground and tilted its head as it examined the wooden house's attached shed.

—That faint yet persistent stench, as if some filthy thing had been rotting for centuries, was drifting from the shed.

It was nauseating to smell and sent chills through the soul!

"An ominous thing, a bird of ill omen?"

Murmuring the crow's nickname, Ning Xiuyuan's expression grew increasingly grim.

He subconsciously glanced at the backpack beside the bed. Its thick polyester fabric blocked the light of the oil lamp.

When he had returned that morning, he had checked the lamp oil. There was probably enough left to last about a day.

He still had two bottles of lamp oil on him.

One bottle could last a day and a half, so two bottles could theoretically last three days.

But he had to keep half a bottle to walk through the darkness known as the "Door Opening."

Therefore, at most, he had three days left.

Of course, all of this depended on whether crossing between the two worlds was indeed affected by the oil lamp.

Three days?

Ning Xiuyuan drew a deep breath, rose, and began pacing back and forth around the guest room.

He had originally planned to use those three days to first select a suitable plague, then conduct experiments on some samples, suppressing its destructive power to the smallest possible range before finally carrying out a large-scale infection shortly before leaving.

By then, he could not guarantee how far it would spread, but infecting this town should be no problem.

Given the population density here, it would be enough for him to assimilate part of Plague Disciple and reduce the risk of losing control to a minimum.

But the sudden appearance of the mysterious watcher filled him with a deep sense of urgency.

He needed strength now!

Yet the damn Church's spiritual imprint restricted him from directly releasing his plague abilities. This was equivalent to sealing his active attack skills, leaving him especially passive!

"I have to speed up the fusion!"

Once his thoughts settled, several rats crawled out from the corners and gathered around Ning Xiuyuan. Several seconds later, they left one after another.

—Ning Xiuyuan had strengthened the plague activity and concentration within the rats' bodies.

This gave them an extremely powerful ability to infect for a short period.

Under Ning Xiuyuan's control, the rats ran toward the main municipal water pipeline he had scouted long ago.

After a dangerous but uneventful journey, the group reached the pipeline and began gnawing at it in shifts.

Whether it was because the countryside paid too little in taxes,

or because the water pipes had never been upgraded, the main municipal water pipeline here was primarily made of iron and badly rusted. Several rats took turns and easily gnawed a hole in it, then urinated into it one after another.

The plague Ning Xiuyuan had strengthened within their urine would flow through the crisscrossing water pipes to households throughout the town.

It might even follow the water network to still more towns.

To be honest, this method of attack would have been completely useless in Ning Xiuyuan's homeland.

It could only work in this foreign land.

The reason was simple: the people in Ning Xiuyuan's homeland loved drinking hot water far too damn much!

This had happened before. When water-purification filters failed and Cryptosporidium ran rampant, infecting an entire city, only the Chinese survived. The reason, ultimately, was that they boiled their water before drinking it.

After completing the task of spreading the plague, Ning Xiuyuan quietly waited for it to spread while monitoring the old man who was monitoring him.

At four in the afternoon, Plague Disciple began to stir faintly. Even the air seemed to carry a trace of strange sweetness, captivating and alluring.

At six in the afternoon, the old man who had stood guard beneath the inn all afternoon drove away.

As expected, another vintage car appeared not far away. This time, however, the person inside was much younger, probably in his forties or fifties.

At seven in the evening, beneath the dim twilight, the raven stood on a branch and elegantly preened its feathers.

Below its feet, the pickup-driving old man, who had not left his house all afternoon, opened the shed door and pushed out a long, soft object wrapped layer upon layer in black garbage bags with a wheelbarrow.

The old man was in poor physical condition. He spent a long time struggling before finally hauling the object onto the pickup, panting heavily, then driving away.

Watching the vehicle's taillights nearly fade along the winding country road, the raven finally let out two loud caws and took off after it.

All that remained at the scene were the branches, buzzing and trembling wildly;

and a flock of crows squatting uselessly on the branches, greedy for the last lingering sweetness of food.

The pickup drove farther and farther away.

Ning Xiuyuan's expression grew increasingly ugly as well.

That was because after another kilometer, the pickup would leave the range of his control over Heart of the Beast.

Just as he decided to use flying birds to distract the watcher and rush out of the inn to shorten the distance, the pickup stopped.

It was a villa built in the middle of an open field.

The villa was enormous, with beeches and plane trees planted all around it.

When the pickup arrived, Ning Xiuyuan was surprised to discover that a large crowd had already gathered outside the villa.

Most of them were over fifty, with only a very small number of young adults among them.

When the pickup arrived, those young adults volunteered to rush over and carry the long object wrapped in black garbage bags.

In fact, the pickup-driving old man's long object was not the only one at the scene.

Counting carefully, there were four in total.

They were hoisted above the crowd's heads, looking like maggots being carried by a colony of ants.

The group waited outside the villa for around ten minutes. After the final three or five people arrived, a young man stepped forward.

He walked to the front of the crowd and spoke passionately about something.

Partway through, he called the pickup-driving old man and several others to the front of the crowd to receive applause and cheers.

After the applause, the group began chanting hymns together.

There was no mistake—they were definitely hymns.

Having become half a religious charlatan within the Church of Dawn, Ning Xiuyuan could not understand their language, but he could still hear the character of hymns in their rising and falling tones.

After the chanting ended, the group, led by the young man at the head, filed into the villa in a long line.

Ning Xiuyuan's heart stirred. The raven flapped its wings and flew toward a second-floor window of the villa.

"Bang!"

A loud crash rang out!

The raven had slammed headfirst into something.

Glass?

No!

The raven was still three feet from the window. Besides, the window was open. Where would the glass have come from?

While Ning Xiuyuan was still stunned, the raven's shared vision abruptly cut off.

It was dead.