Bloodline Suppression

Return Countdown 144:00:00.

Midnight.

"Li Hao, get up here, quick! The gang leader we were tailing was bitten to death by a few rats—I saw it with my own eyes!" Li Chao said urgently over the phone. "Those rats looked vicious, with blood-red eyes. But they should be afraid of people. They ran the moment they saw me."

As he spoke, Li Chao cautiously poked his head into the room. The apartment was lavishly decorated, but the central air-conditioning vent in the ceiling was battered and broken. The rats had probably entered the apartment through there.

Thinking back on what he had just seen, he was certain there was something wrong with those rats. "Are the rats still in the alley? Stay away from them. I have a bad feeling about this."

"You're kidding, right? Rats bit a gang leader to death?" Li Hao replied from the other end of the call. "What rat would have that kind of nerve? Stop joking and get down here. We're going to the bar for drinks."

Li Hao was the new friend Li Chao and the others had made after leaving Sun Chuci. He was a rich kid from the Outer World who usually traded gold bars through sheer talk for living supplies, and he had been living quite comfortably in the Inner World.

"I'm not joking. You need to stay away from the rats," Li Chao said. "I'm leaving first. We'll talk when we meet up."

"You're way too timid. They're just rats," Li Hao said. He glanced at the two rats in the alley and casually strode over, raising his leg to kick them away.

But then something unexpected happened.

Li Hao failed to hit the two rats. Instead, they scurried up his leg.

Their goal was unmistakable: to