Before long, the Red Weasels appeared one after another, clustering on both sides of the road.
"Creak... creak..."
One of the Red Weasels began making a sound like grinding teeth. Within half a second, the others followed suit.
In an instant, both sides of the road filled with that creaking sound.
It was utterly grating, like countless sticks of cheap chalk scraping hard against a blackboard at once.
Mu Yi immediately frowned, then raised a hand to dig at his ear. Even the roots of his ears felt sore.
He couldn't help asking Du Jing behind him, "You put up with this every time you come and go?"
"Why don't you just wipe out their whole nest?"
Du Jing scratched his head sheepishly. He had asked their captain the same question the first time he left the Ruined City.
His captain had replied, "We use the Ruined City as a regular rest stop. With ready-made guardians watching the gate for us, we should be delighted. Why wipe them out?"
After a moment's consideration, Du Jing decided to repeat his captain's words to Mu Yi.
Before he could, however, a contemptuous scoff cut in.
Du Jing and Mu Yi both turned toward the sound. It was Team 403's support specialist.
Like Mu Yi, Team 403's support specialist and healer were being protected in the middle of the two teams.
He had been behaving himself until he heard Mu Yi's questions. Then, looking as though he had finally found his opening, the support specialist began to sneer.
"Oh dear. People who've spent too long sheltered in a greenhouse really do think differently. Exceptionally naive."
Oh?
Mu Yi raised his brows slightly, slowly swept his gaze over the man's head, then slowly swept it back before asking Du Jing with perfect sincerity, "Who's talking?"
"Pfft..."
Straightforward as he was, Du Jing couldn't hold it in. "Hahahahaha!"
That utterly infuriated Team 403's support specialist. As a grown man approaching thirty, being under 165 centimeters tall was his eternal sore spot.
He pointed at Mu Yi, beside himself with rage. "What the fuck is that supposed to mean?!"
"Ohhh." Mu Yi lowered his head with exaggerated flair and even "considerately" bent at the waist a little. "It's you."
Then he added, "Sorry. People at low altitudes really are different. Exceptionally hard to find."
That was downright vicious. One sentence had stabbed someone's sore spot full of holes.
"You-you...!" The support specialist's language faculties went haywire. He couldn't string together a single comeback.
Where someone provided entertainment, someone else would enjoy it. Du Jing threw his head back and laughed again, until tears welled in his eyes.
So satisfying.
His captain wouldn't let him clash head-on with Team 403, leaving him with a bellyful of anger and nowhere to vent it.
Leave it to Mu Yi to send two people into a rage all by himself.
The enraged support specialist couldn't speak. He clenched his fists through gritted teeth, blue energy flickering over them.
Just then, Zhong Xuezhi, walking at the very front, suddenly called back, "What's going on in the middle? Do you have to start trouble on this stretch of road?"
His tone was stern, but inwardly, Zhong Xuezhi was thoroughly enjoying himself.
He was asking a question he already knew the answer to. With his keen hearing, he could even distinguish how many breaths each person nearby took in a minute.
Mu Yi's retorts had been music to his ears.
Unfortunately, now wasn't the time to let the conflict escalate. Something could easily go wrong.
Once he spoke, Qi Tianhe, Team 403's captain, also made a token attempt to stop it. "Zhao Qing, focus on moving."
The support specialist named Zhao Qing flushed crimson, the veins in his neck throbbing.
In the end, though, he loosened his clenched fists, turned, and strode briskly ahead.
Mu Yi scoffed without saying anything else. He ambled along, trailing behind him at a moderate distance.
Actually, Mu Yi was quite interested in Team 403's support specialist, though only in his innate ability.
Earlier, Qiu Cai and the others had told him that Zhao Qing possessed a special-type talent, with the innate skill Pain Transfer.
Thanks to this talent, Zhao Qing had an extraordinary tolerance for pain.
When necessary, he would transfer all his teammates' pain to himself, ensuring that the team's core damage dealers or healers could perform at maximum effectiveness without interference.
Conversely, he could also transfer all his own pain away.
However, that was only one of Pain Transfer's offensive applications. There was another, and it was the one that interested Mu Yi most.
The transfer of remembered pain, which ignored the target's defenses.
Zhao Qing could replicate and store every kind of pain he had experienced, then retrieve it from his library when needed and transfer it to the target he wanted to attack.
Mu Yi narrowed his eyes. That was fascinating. He would have to experience it personally sometime.
I'll provoke him a little more next time. Get him angry enough to attack me.
As he thought, Mu Yi turned to look at the Red Weasels packed along both sides of the road.
They had stopped grinding their teeth. Now they stared at the group with their mouths open, drooling, their two bean-sized eyes gleaming.
The little creatures had no ambition. They had been salivating for ages without making a move, leaving Mu Yi no chance to test the protective strength of his shield.
So he cheerfully rolled up his shirt sleeve and extended his fairly pale arm toward one side of the road.
"Hey, want a bite?"
"Squeak, squeak, squeak... squeak, squeak...!"
His blatant temptation stirred a small commotion among the Red Weasels, and they let out thin, soft cries.
Yet they still didn't dare come any closer. Though Mu Yi had no Mutant scent, he carried an even more powerful oppressive presence.
The Red Weasels had felt that presence many times and knew it well: it belonged to that big, flappy Snow Leopard!
They stamped their feet in indecision, looking rather comical.
Amused, Mu Yi stepped straight toward the roadside, patting his arm as he continued tempting them. "Come on. Bite right here."
He leaned his whole body forward and walked sideways like a crab, keeping pace while making mischief.
He was still enjoying himself when a sudden burst of agony struck his back, as though something enormous had slammed into him. The force sent his entire body pitching forward.
Mu Yi: "?!"
Fuck, I'm airborne.
Mu Yi immediately circulated the pheromones inside him, electricity straining to burst out.
"Mu Yi!!"
Zhong Xuezhi's shout snapped him back to his senses.
He smoothly tucked the pheromones that were about to spill out back inside, then closed his eyes and gave up, falling straight into the swarm of Red Weasels.
He had already tempted the Red Weasels to their limit. Now that he had delivered himself to their doorstep, the last scraps of reason in their tiny brains snapped.
"Squeak, squeak, squeak! Squeak!!"
The nearby Red Weasels swarmed over him at once, nearly pinning him down.
Only nearly, though. Scrabbling and kicking with all four limbs, Mu Yi managed to carve out an opening.
After wriggling through it, he slowly broke into a smile. These red rodents didn't seem able to bite through his protection.
Wenren Jin's Eggshell really did work pretty well.
But the next moment, Wenren Jin called out a warning. "Hey! Get back here! The shield's about to break!"
"All right." Mu Yi abandoned his plans to play, kicked away the red rodents beneath him, and prepared to return to the middle of the road.
Unexpectedly, he had only taken a few steps when he felt a sharp rush of air strike from the side. Then came a crack, and the blue effect covering his body shattered.
At the same time, a sudden stab of pain shot through his right arm. A Red Weasel had seized the chance to bite him.
Mu Yi immediately reached out with his left hand, clamping down on its neck and throat and forcing it to release him.
"Filthy rat. Pretty good teeth, huh?"
He smiled, but his fingers abruptly tightened. With a crunch, he crushed the neck bones beneath the Red Weasel's flesh.
Then he tossed the dead Red Weasel aside, flinging away the bloody froth running down his arm along with it.
Just then, the Red Weasels suddenly shrieked in unison, the entire colony becoming abnormally agitated.
They clawed incessantly at the ground, their glittering yellow eyes bulging like brass bells.
Alarm bells went off in Mu Yi's head. Something felt wrong.
Sure enough, the next moment, every Red Weasel turned toward him at once and surged at him like a crimson tide.
"Squeak, squeak, squeak-!!"
The crimson tide surged fiercely, but the pheromones inside Mu Yi churned even more violently.
Fuck, this is kind of thrilling. I really want to break our agreement.
At the critical moment, Zhong Xuezhi descended from above, slaughtering the entire first wave of approaching Red Weasels with a single sweep of his scythe.
But as he drew back his weapon and turned around, Zhong Xuezhi suddenly wrinkled his nose, then involuntarily took a step back.
Mu Yi's blood...
Before you continue