When Others Smelled Sewage, He Smelled Nothing but Money

Li Zhengyang felt something explode in his mind.

He read through the Zone C mission description again.

Second Rank Magic Rats.

Estimated number: nearly one thousand.

Two thousand per rat.

No one had accepted it for forty-seven days.

He glanced to the side. Several recruits who had joined the Bladebreaker Battalion in the same batch were gathered around the Zone C mission board, each wearing a face like his father had died.

"Two thousand per rat? Two thousand just for one trip through the sewers? Who are they trying to fool?"

"Didn't you see the line below? A team tried it last month. After half an hour inside, three out of five had been bitten. Those things move in packs—hundreds of them rush you at once."

"The main thing is the stink. It's a sewage pipe. Do you know what it smells like in there?"

The more the recruits talked, the more disheartened they became.

Li Zhengyang walked over, stopped before the Zone C mission board, and selected "Accept Full Contract."

Full contract.

He had taken the entire Zone C cleanup mission—all twelve square kilometers of underground sewage pipelines.

A system pop-up asked for confirmation.

The recruits beside him were all stunned.

"Brother, are you crazy? You're taking the whole thing alone?"

"Twelve square kilometers! It's packed with Magic Rats down there!"

Li Zhengyang said nothing and turned to leave.

A burst of mocking laughter rose behind him.

It did not come from the recruits.

It came from the Fierce Tiger Squad.

The bald Zhang Mang held a cup of tea, squinting as he watched Li Zhengyang head toward the Zone C registration counter. His mouth split into a grin.

"Well, well. This batch of recruits has got a fool. He's scrambling to take the shit-hauling job."

The squad members beside him laughed along.

"Captain, that kid accepted the full cleanup contract. He took the entire pipe network."

"Good that he took it." Zhang Mang blew across his tea. "This job used to get assigned to recruits, and every one of them would cry for their fathers and mothers. Now someone's volunteering to carry it all. Saves me the trouble of talking them into it."

He raised his voice, deliberately making sure everyone in the hall could hear.

"Brothers, remember this face. Fortress No. 13's chief shit scooper has been born!"

The entire hall burst into laughter.

Li Zhengyang pressed his fingerprint onto the registration counter without even looking back.

Laugh all you want.

Once I come out of those sewers, the one laughing loudest probably won't even be able to afford a pair of pants.

The entrance to the fortress's underground sewage network lay in the basement of a logistics warehouse in the western district.

It was a two-meter-square iron grate door, secured by five locks.

The administrator was a skinny old man. Seeing someone come to accept this mission, he took a long while to react.

"You're sure? Alone?"

"Open the door."

The old man slowly unlocked it. The instant the iron grate was pulled open, a foul stench surged up toward the sky.

The old man stumbled three steps back and covered his nose with his sleeve.

Li Zhengyang took a deep breath.

It stank.

It really did stink.

But behind that stench was nothing but money.

He pulled a strip of cloth from his Space Ring and wrapped it around his nose and mouth. Then he removed the Mountain-Piercing Spear, gripped it in his hand, and jumped inside.

The tunnel was three meters in diameter, with half a foot of sewage pooled along the bottom. Every step sent filthy water splashing over his feet.

Before he had gone fifty meters, movement began stirring in the darkness.

Rustling sounds came from the pipe walls, from ahead, and from above his head.

The first Magic Rat darted out.

It was three times larger than an ordinary rat, covered in coarse grayish-brown fur. Its two front teeth jutted outward, their tips gleaming faintly.

It was a relatively weak Second Rank Magic Beast, individually equivalent in combat strength to a Martial Warrior.

But.

It was not alone.

Li Zhengyang raised his phone and shone its flashlight ahead.

The tunnel was packed solid, a black tide blotting out the view.

Dozens of Magic Rats crowded together, their tiny red eyes reflecting the light like a moving wall of fur.

The sight of the light sent the rat swarm into an uproar.

Screeching, the Magic Rats charged straight toward the light source.

Li Zhengyang stuffed his phone into his pocket and switched off the flashlight.

In the darkness, the senses of a Martial Spirit Rank expert spread outward.

The position, speed, and path of every Magic Rat within fifty meters flooded into his mind.

Blood Qi poured into the Mountain-Piercing Spear.

The spear tip lit up.

The Astral Qi of the Martial Spirit Rank was no longer a thin layer clinging to the spear's surface. Light seeped from the spear shaft itself, illuminating half a meter around him.

"Come."

The tide of rats crashed into him.

Mountain-Splitting Spear Art, sweeping strike.

Astral Qi spread out. Wherever the spear passed, Magic Rats were cleaved in waves, like tofu sliced apart.

Blood and chunks of flesh mixed with sewage and splattered everywhere, rat entrails hanging from the tunnel walls.

Li Zhengyang never stopped moving. His spear momentum flowed without break as he killed while advancing.

He could not fully unleash the footwork of Cloud-Shocking Steps in the tunnels, but the nimble shifts of his steps alone were enough to let him move through the rat swarm as freely as a fish through water.

Every thrust took at least five or six rats with it.

When he encountered a tightly packed corner, one horizontal sweep could clear more than a dozen.

The rat swarm's numbers truly were terrifying.

Kill those in front, and more filled in from behind.

Kill those on the left, and those on the right surged over.

But a Martial Spirit Rank fighter against Second Rank Magic Beasts was not a battle.

It was a harvest.

Astral Qi shielded his body. When Magic Rat teeth bit down, they could not even pierce the outer layer of Astral Qi.

Li Zhengyang slaughtered his way from the main pipe to the branch pipes, then from the branch pipes to the drainage channels.

At every junction, he stopped to cut off tails. The mission proof for Magic Rats was their tails, each worth three thousand.

Cutting tails was even faster than killing rats.

The Short Blade flashed through the air. One slash, one tail; hand rose and blade fell.

Once he had collected a hundred tails, he tossed them into his Space Ring and moved on to kill the next wave.

Hour after hour passed.

The tunnels would fall quiet for a while, then become lively again.

The Magic Rats were unevenly distributed. Some areas were sparse, while others were so densely packed there was nowhere to put one's foot down.

The dense areas were the key.

Li Zhengyang deliberately burrowed toward wherever the rats were thickest.

To others, it was hell.

To him, it was an ATM.

By the sixth hour.

He had cleared down to the third level of the pipe network. This layer was ten meters deeper than the two above it, and the accumulated water reached his waist.

The Magic Rats were also larger and fiercer. Some were nearly the size of small dogs, their front teeth able to score alloy.

But before a Martial Spirit Rank fighter, a larger rat and a smaller rat had no essential difference.

The only difference was that their tails were two inches longer, making them easier to cut.

By the eighth hour, the fourth level of the pipe network had been cleared.

By the tenth hour, he had reached the fifth level.

Li Zhengyang leaned against the pipe wall and rested for five minutes, taking two bites of compressed rations and a sip of water.

He was covered from head to toe in rat blood. His T-shirt no longer showed its original color.

He opened his Space Ring and took inventory.

Number of rat tails: 430.

Four hundred and thirty times two thousand.

Eight hundred and sixty thousand.

Ten hours. Eight hundred and sixty thousand.

Li Zhengyang stuffed the rations away, stood up, and continued deeper inside.

It was still not enough money.

Over the next stretch of time, every level of the pipe network, every branch, and every blind corner was plowed through by his spear tip and Astral Qi.

There were fewer and fewer Magic Rats to kill.

By the end, not even the shadow of a rat could be found anywhere in the entire pipe network.

Early the next morning.

Aboveground.

At the entrance of the logistics warehouse, the old administrator was dozing over his desk, drool pooling across the tabletop.

With a bang, the iron grate door was pushed open, jolting the old man awake.

A person crawled up from below.

He was soaked through, blood grime and sewage mixed together over his body. His hair clung in wet strands, and he dragged three burlap sacks in his hands, every one of them swollen like a small hill.

The sacks scraped across the ground, leaving deep drag marks from their weight.

"Done." Li Zhengyang leaned his spear against the wall and dusted off his hands.

The old man covered his nose and retreated five meters away.

"Y-you... overnight? You cleared the whole thing?"

"All cleared. Didn't even leave you a single rat hair."

The old man's mouth hung open for a long while before it finally closed.

Carrying the three burlap sacks, Li Zhengyang headed toward the Quartermaster Department in the fortress's central district.

The Quartermaster Department had just opened. The officer on duty was a young man wearing glasses.

Li Zhengyang threw the three sacks onto the floor.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

The floor shook three times.

"Zone C cleanup mission. Settle it."

The young officer walked over and opened the first sack.

He looked inside.

It was packed full of gray rat tails, heaped like a small mountain.

The blood had not dried yet, and the fishy stench rushed straight into his face.

He opened the second sack.

Then the third.

All three sacks were full.

The young officer's Adam's apple bobbed twice.

"Th-this is... how many rats?"

"Count them."

There were four people in the Quartermaster Department, and all of them were called over.

The four of them squatted on the floor, counting one tail at a time.

They counted for a full half hour.

The young officer held the counter in his hand, which trembled slightly.

"One thousand one hundred tails."

He looked up at Li Zhengyang.

"Two thousand times one thousand one..."

The calculator displayed the result.

Two million two hundred thousand Great Xia yuan.

The four people in the Quartermaster Department gathered around the calculator and fell collectively silent.

The young officer pushed up his glasses, his voice dry.

"Transfer or cash?"

"Transfer. Thanks."

The phone vibrated. The money had arrived.

Li Zhengyang glanced at the amount received and let out a long breath.

Just then, the door to the Quartermaster Department was pushed open.

Zhang Mang strode in with several members of the Fierce Tiger Squad, carrying a bag of Third-Rank Magic Beast horns.

"Xiao Liu, settlement for the Zone A patrol mission—six Third-Rank Snow Wolves..."

He stopped halfway through.

Three enormous open sacks sat on the floor.

Rat tails covered the ground.

And beside the sacks stood Li Zhengyang, drenched in blood yet wearing a smile.

Zhang Mang's gaze shifted from the sacks to the calculator.

The bag of Third-Rank Snow Wolf horns in his hand—six of them—was worth 480,000 in total.

Set beside that number...

Zhang Mang's expression changed.