Ferocious Killer Rats

Cheng Qi and Foolish Boy hovered a hundred meters in the air, surveying the scene below.

The ground was dark and eerie, with green mist drifting through the air. Everywhere they looked, there was nothing but dilapidated trash.

Suddenly.

Countless red points of light appeared on the ground. If the ground were a dark sky, those red dots would have been as numerous as the stars, yet they radiated a bloody, terrifying menace.

Cheng Qi narrowed his eyes.

At that very moment, the red dots suddenly vanished, as though they had been extinguished.

Cheng Qi knew they were countless Killer Rats.

They had hidden in the heaps of trash. Once someone landed in their territory, they would wait for an opening, potentially bursting out from anywhere to tear the intruder's throat apart.

He checked the latitude and longitude.

The final location of the Muon Research Center was two hundred meters ahead.

The atmosphere here was even filthier than elsewhere.

In the darkness, the enormous wreck of a Starship loomed. Before it had been discarded, every removable component had been stripped away, leaving only a severely corroded hull, imposing yet forlorn.

Air currents surged.

Cheng Qi and Foolish Boy landed on the ground. The coordinates were right beneath their feet, so they would have to begin searching on the surface.

Cheng Qi stayed on high alert, his eyes shifting inch by inch as he watched everything around him.

As he walked, trash fragments crunched beneath his feet, the sound exceptionally distinct in the silence.

Suddenly.

A foul stench tinged with blood hit him in the face.

Squeak!

A ferocious mutant Killer Rat, a full 1.5 meters long and as large as a calf, sprang from a heap of trash to one side. Its hideous jaws opened wide as it lunged straight for Cheng Qi's neck!

Crunch-!

Crack-!

The Extreme Warrior Armor had sounded a warning half a second earlier. Cheng Qi thrust his arm out in an instant, blocking the attack.

The Killer Rat's fangs pierced his protective suit, but the instant they bit into the Extreme Warrior Armor, its black teeth snapped!

Cheng Qi lifted the Killer Rat into the air, gripping its upper and lower jaws with his hands.

Crack-!

A crimson shower of blood rained down.

Cheng Qi tore the Killer Rat in half with brute force!

Once, this single Killer Rat could have taken Cheng Qi's life.

Now, it could not withstand even one blow from him.

The two halves of its corpse were tossed to the ground.

Cheng Qi slowly turned his head toward the surrounding trash heaps. The armor's visual assistance marked one red circle after another in his field of vision.

He could clearly see at least a dozen Killer Rats shrinking back within the trash. They were living creatures, after all, with an instinctive fear response.

"I'll hold them off."

Cheng Qi straightened. "Foolish Boy, the exact coordinates are inside the Starship wreck. Go in first and dig as fast as you can. Make sure you stay safe."

"Got it!"

Foolish Boy turned and slipped inside the Starship wreck.

Cheng Qi had already studied the terrain. The wreck seemed to have only one entrance, the one behind him. As long as he held this position, he could buy Foolish Boy enough time.

Squeak-!

Ferocity overcame fear. More than a dozen Killer Rats leaped off the ground and hurled themselves straight at Cheng Qi.

Memory metal flowed, forming a blade a full two meters long at Cheng Qi's wrist. His visual display instantly tracked the trajectories of over a dozen Killer Rats and listed the moves needed to kill each with a single strike.

Cheng Qi had no combat experience, but the Extreme Warrior Armor could turn him into a fighting machine.

A dim silver gleam sliced through the darkness.

The sound of hide being cut rang in Cheng Qi's ears as foul-smelling blood splashed onto the ground.

Cheng Qi could clearly tell that every movement he made precisely followed the armor's plan.

Screeches, low growls, and heavy thuds sounded.

Within thirty seconds.

Cheng Qi's movements flowed seamlessly, and he felt only thirteen slight moments of resistance.

Thirteen Killer Rats were sliced in half, their bodies thumping to the ground.

Cheng Qi stepped forward, planted his foot on a Killer Rat's body, and severed its head. Then he raised the rat's head toward the sky on his blade.

Crack!

Lightning suddenly cracked in the distant sky.

The deteriorating environment had also made the weather here erratic. At some point, dark clouds like black cotton had gathered overhead, threatening an imminent storm.

The lightning briefly illuminated the ground.

Cheng Qi's figure was reflected in the blood-red eyes of countless Killer Rats.

Squeak-!

Squeak-!

Thousands of Killer Rats around him let out low, piercing shrieks. They hunched their bodies, every hair on their backs standing on end.

Cheng Qi's reasoning was clear. The Killer Rats had bred for centuries, and their staggering numbers made killing them all impossible.

The most efficient approach was to intimidate them, making them retreat of their own accord out of instinct.

For now, Cheng Qi's plan seemed to be working. Not a single Killer Rat dared actually crawl out of the trash heaps.

Cheng Qi tilted his head.

Deep inside the Starship wreck, he saw Foolish Boy's hands transformed into excavators, running at full power as he frantically dug into the ground.

"Foolish Boy, any progress?"

"Nope! Who knows how long I'll have to dig!"

Just as Cheng Qi was about to help Foolish Boy.

The Killer Rats in front of him did something strange.

Though they did not approach Cheng Qi, they moved around him, forming concentric rings. Every Killer Rat held its body taut as a bowstring, its claws gripping the ground, ready to attack at any moment.

They want to surround me on all sides, then attack in nonstop waves?

Cheng Qi narrowed his eyes. Suddenly, he spotted a strange, pale-red sound wave on the armor's holographic interface. Following it, he pinpointed a small trash heap in the distance.

Cheng Qi instantly understood what was behind this.

Squeak-!

Dozens of Killer Rats in the innermost ring suddenly leaped high into the air, launching the first wave of attacks like soldiers on a suicide mission.

Cheng Qi frowned and abruptly extended his right hand, spreading his fingers toward the air. The Gravitational Field Control Gloves activated, and a pale-yellow force field instantly spread outward.

The Killer Rats shrieked in terror, twisting wildly in midair, but they could not fall to the ground.

At the same time.

Cheng Qi extended his left hand toward the small trash heap in the distance. His other glove also released a pale-yellow force field.

The distant trash shook and rustled. An even sharper squeal rang out as Cheng Qi "plucked" a much smaller, white-furred rat from the heap.

These White-Furred Killer Rats were the rat swarm's "strategists."

They were special creatures that had evolved greater intelligence than the other rats.

The earlier order to surround him had been their scheme. They could emit low-frequency sound waves inaudible to human ears, using them to command the other gray-furred Killer Rats.

Hum-!

The air ahead vibrated as Cheng Qi steadily increased the gloves' gravitational-field output.

Suddenly, an almost human look appeared in the white-furred rat's eyes-a look of terror and surprise.

Cheng Qi's brow abruptly furrowed.

Squeak!

Bang!

The white-furred rat's flesh suddenly burst apart!

A fine spray of blood and pulpy red flesh splattered outward!

When he had obtained the Gravitational Field Adjustment Gloves, the Standard Template Construct's annotation had been very clear: to some extent, the gravitational fields they generated were volatile and uncontrollable!

At that instant.

The other gray-furred rats were stunned by the sudden spectacle. Their legs went numb, and broken squeaks escaped their mouths.

Cheng Qi's gaze was cold.

He turned his left hand again, "plucking" three more white-furred rats from beneath a nearby trash heap.

The humanlike expressions on these white-furred rats were even clearer.

Terror, terror, and more terror!

Though they understood what was happening, they had no idea why this creature could pinpoint them, or how he could control their bodies from a distance.

Bang!

Bang!

Bang!

Blood and gore filled the air as all three white-furred rats exploded into pulp.

The gray-furred Killer Rats not only dared not advance, but even began trembling. Some of the younger ones even wet themselves.

To catch the bandits, capture their leader first!

Kill the strategists instantly and intimidate the ordinary Killer Rats!

Cheng Qi smiled in satisfaction.

But less than half a second later, his smile stiffened slightly.

Was the trash on the ground shaking too?

No, was the ground itself shaking?!

Rumble!

Rumble!

A suffocating, bloody stench washed over him as deafening noise erupted all around.

Cheng Qi looked up into the distance, and his pupils abruptly contracted.

A kilometer away, gray waves rose high enough to blot out the sky!

It was a Rat Tide!

Countless Killer Rats rolled and trampled over one another, forming towering waves more than a hundred meters high as they closed in from every direction.

"The whole species came out?"

Cheng Qi turned and shouted, "Foolish Boy! How's it going?"

"Damn it all!"

"According to my scans, the old Kyoto site is 260 meters down!"

Foolish Boy remained bent over with his rear sticking up, digging frantically. "I can't bloody reach it!"

"Oh, shit!"

The moment Foolish Boy finished speaking.

The ground beneath him collapsed with a thunderous crash, turning into a deep, bottomless hole. Foolish Boy fell with it.

Boom!

After a brief delay, the sound of a huge mass of trash hitting the bottom rose up.

"Damn it all!"

"The ground gave way under me!"

"I nearly broke my damn legs!"

Foolish Boy's voice seemed to come from deep inside a well. His body was probably not seriously damaged.

At the same time.

A set of data appeared on the Extreme Warrior Armor's holographic interface before Cheng Qi's eyes.

-Object fall time: 7.28 seconds. Using the free-fall formula h = 1/2(gt²), with a default gravitational acceleration of 9.8 m/s², the object fell 257.6 meters.

Cheng Qi's expression tightened. "At a time like this, you're still padding the word count?!"

The next instant.

Cheng Qi realized what it meant.

257.6 meters... had Foolish Boy fallen into Kyoto, buried deep underground?

"Whoa!"

"There's a really sturdy alloy door here! It's the entrance to the Muon Research Center!"

"The passcode system's busted! I can't open it!"

Foolish Boy's startled cries rose from below.

Cheng Qi looked into the distance. The enormous Rat Tide was less than two hundred meters away, its countless, densely packed Killer Rats hideous and terrifying.

Individual Killer Rats were easy to kill.

But ultimately, his armor was a support device for a single soldier. It had no large-scale killing capability.

There was no way he could kill that endless mass of Killer Rats. Getting tangled up with them would be a complete waste of time.

"Foolish Boy's already down there."

"And there's an alloy door below with a broken passcode system..."

Cheng Qi's eyes flickered. He glanced at the tiny UFOs lying dormant on his shoulder. "I'm counting on you!"

Something like a plume of smoke suddenly rose from his shoulder. With a clear target, they flew straight into the collapsed hole.

If the Nanorobots could repair the Muon Research Center's door in a very short time.

Then Cheng Qi and Foolish Boy could simply go through the alloy door and avoid getting entangled with the Killer Rat army.

Three seconds after the nanorepair robots entered the hole, Cheng Qi leaned backward and dropped into it in free fall!

The instant after he jumped, densely packed Killer Rats came surging in. They gathered around the edge of the hole, peering down with crimson eyes and shrieking viciously.

But they had no intention of letting Cheng Qi escape.

Instead, they formed a gray waterfall, as spectacular as a torrent plunging thousands of feet, and jumped into the hole without regard for the consequences!