Although they had made every possible preparation, something still happened to the giant cats in the end. Jiang Han could only wear a gloating expression as she watched the giant cats flee from the basement with their fur miserably on fire.
After laughing at them, she set up the heavy umbrellas and stepped aside, letting the morale-shattered giant cats head up to the second floor. They would probably keep running all the way to the sixth.
Flames boiled in the basement, accompanied by a roar. Yet rather than an angry roar, it sounded more mournful, desolate. Those flames, filled with sorrowful stillness, were neither frightening nor explosive. They burned as quietly as though they were dead, like a single spark in the darkness, crackling softly.
Loneliness.
Blazing fiercely, yet with no firewood to feed it.
Sorrow and loneliness washed over Jiang Han's heart like a heavy fist striking the bridge of her nose. She separated out a thread of thought to savor that emotion, then assessed it from a cold perspective:
"Some kind of evolved ability that can affect the mind?"
Xiya wore that faint smile, her eyes fixed on the sparks drifting out from the basement entrance.
She gave an affirmative answer:
"Special pheromones. They deceive our senses, making us feel grief and thereby lose our ability to act. This is probably the flame monster's primary hunting method. But once the Giant Cat Lamps' morale collapses, their emotions overwhelm everything else. And giant cats are naturally so carefree that they just ran out instead of being left behind."
What a cutting mouth.
Jiang Han thought.
A wave of scorching heat rushed over. Jiang Han watched the droplets on the ground evaporate in an instant. Unaccustomed to it, she swayed her cat tail, only to see eleven tails—including Xiya's and