Lu Yuan stuck his head out of the car window.
He realized that the taxi had already driven two streets away from his home.
Looking to the left, a dark, narrow alley lay almost parallel to the car.
Lu Yuan took a sniff. The air seemed to carry a faint, disgusting smell, like sewage.
An alarm went off in Lu Yuan’s head.
After thinking for a moment, he took out his mobile phone and spoke to the driver, who was muttering curses in the front seat, "Sir, I’ll get off here. How much is it? I’ll pay you."
Once he had paid the fare, Lu Yuan, feigning curiosity, asked the driver as he was about to get out.
"Sir, that thing you said streaked past—where did it go?"
"There!" The driver casually pointed to the adjacent alley. "Probably a stray dog. Good thing I hit the brakes quickly, or I would’ve run into it..."
Lu Yuan, however, secretly felt it was a pity.
If the taxi had run over that giant rat, it would have been a good riddance for the neighborhood, saving me this constant worry.
He watched as the taxi turned around and drove away.
Lu Yuan walked briskly towards the alley.
The alley remained pitch-black. Even with his vision enhanced beyond that of an ordinary person by his 11-point physique, he couldn’t make out anything clearly.
The stench was stronger now, and he was almost certain that the giant rat he had encountered once before was hiding inside.
On one hand, he genuinely wanted to rid the area of this menace.
After all, he had seen the giant rat’s ferocity with his own eyes; it was even fiercer than an ordinary wild beast.
Any ordinary person encountering it would most likely be in for a terrible misfortune, and Lu Yuan didn’t want to witness any fatalities.
Such a notion of ridding the public of a menace would have been unthinkable for the Lu Yuan of a few months ago.
But times had changed.
Now, he felt his martial arts training had reached a decent level.
Facing this kind of physical challenge, an inexplicable urge to test himself welled up inside him.
In reality, such opportunities were incredibly rare. There were very few situations where martial arts could actually be used.
Scenarios common in novels—like encountering hooligans harassing women, robbers holding up banks, or terrorists bombing buildings just by taking a stroll—were practically impossible in real life.
The last kidnapping incident had been a stroke of "amazing luck" for Lu Yuan, happening to be in the right place at the right time.
"With great power comes great responsibility"... that’s probably this kind of feeling.
—The stronger a person’s abilities, the stronger their underlying desire to use and display them.
At least, that’s what Lu Yuan believed.
On the other hand, Lu Yuan also felt it was too dark inside, and rushing in seemed too risky.
That giant rat reeks. It’s probably covered in bacteria and viruses. If I accidentally get scratched or bitten, and the wound gets infected, I’ll be in serious trouble... Should I go home and get some protective gear first?
Lu Yuan considered going home to change into long-sleeved clothes and pants, find a suitable weapon, and then call the police.
If he could just stall the giant rat until the police and fire department arrived, he was confident they could subdue it.
With this in mind, Lu Yuan turned to head home.
But just as he turned, a sharp CLICK echoed from the dark alley. It sounded like something had fallen to the ground.
Lu Yuan spun his head around.
He stared into the darkness before him, his expression a mixture of alarm and doubt.
He took his phone from his pocket and tapped the flashlight icon. A beam of white light shot out from it.
Lu Yuan shone the light ahead.
The ground of the narrow alley was littered with trash like fruit peels and plastic bags, most likely dragged there by the giant rat from a sewer or trash can.
As the light moved, something suddenly entered Lu Yuan’s field of vision, and his pupils contracted slightly. Thɪs chapter is updatᴇd by novelꞁire.net
After a moment’s consideration, he took two steps into the alley.
Holding the light carefully, he walked up to the object and nudged it with his foot.
It was a chic-looking hairpin, its color either pink or bright red.
The hairpin was completely wet, as if it had just been fished out of somewhere.
Ever since that kidnapping incident, Lu Yuan had become particularly sensitive to women’s hairpins.
Seeing the same kind of object in the same alley, an inexplicable sense of unease slowly grew from the pit of his stomach.
Was that hairpin what made the sound earlier? he wondered.
A flurry of soft sounds suddenly came from further ahead. Lu Yuan’s expression tensed, and he quickly shone his phone’s flashlight further into the alley.
The alley grew narrower the deeper one went, its sides piled high with all sorts of jumbled debris. Lu Yuan wasn’t sure if it was always or if it had been left by tenants who had recently moved out.
The light from his phone’s flashlight was rapidly swallowed by the darkness beyond two meters.
Lu Yuan couldn’t make out any details.
He could only see a dark shape shifting beneath a messy pile of junk up ahead.
The stench wafted over on the wind.
Lu Yuan covered his nose, his brow deeply furrowed.
After a moment’s hesitation, he decided to retreat and stick to his original plan.
The stench from that thing is overpowering. Long clothes probably wouldn’t be enough; I’d likely need a mask, or even a gas mask.
So as not to startle the giant rat, Lu Yuan began to retreat slowly from the alley, step by step.
But before he could take two steps back, the RUSTLING sound from ahead grew louder and louder.
Eventually, it escalated into a series of loud THUMPS and CLATTERS. It sounded as if something was desperately struggling within the pile of junk, its frantic movements slapping against the debris and creating a cacophony.
Lu Yuan stopped retreating.
His expression turned grim, and holding his phone light high, he strode quickly forward.
After advancing about ten steps, the beam of his phone’s flashlight finally allowed him to clearly see the source of the violent commotion.
A giant rat, over a meter long and as plump as a dog, was hunched over a woman with disheveled black hair.
It appeared to be continuously gnawing at her face.
The woman’s body trembled violently, her limbs flailing, striking the surrounding junk and producing a series of sharp CLATTERING sounds...
Lu Yuan’s mind went blank at the sight, a dull ROAR filling his ears. An indescribable surge of emotion flooded him.
A rat eating a person?!
Lu Yuan had no time to think. He quickly looked down, snatched a discarded beer bottle from the ground, and hurled it violently at the giant rat.
He used all his strength.
The swing, powered by his 12-point Strength, launched the beer bottle with cannonball-like velocity.
The moment he completed the motion, the beer bottle SMASHED against the ground beside the giant rat with a loud CRASH.
His aim was off; he missed.
But it did startle the rat.
The giant rat, engrossed in its chewing, let out a SQUEAK and darted sideways, then turned to glare malevolently at Lu Yuan.
Under the phone’s light, the beast’s two eyes seemed to glow.
Gritting his teeth, Lu Yuan scanned the ground for a suitable weapon.
He was in luck. Near his foot lay a rusty steel bar about a meter long.
He snatched it up, ready to deal with the giant rat.
However, he hadn’t expected that in the brief moment he bent to pick up the bar, the giant rat would seize the struggling woman in its jaws and dart deeper into the alley.
It can drag a whole living person? Has it really become some kind of monster?!
Shocked and terrified, Lu Yuan didn’t hesitate and immediately gave chase.
At this moment, any thought of returning home to prepare vanished. The words, I have to save her! were hammered into his mind.
The giant rat, dragging a person in its mouth, was still unbelievably fast.
Its long, fleshy tail slithered across the ground like a snake.
Lu Yuan wanted to throw the steel bar at it, but he was worried about hitting the woman in its jaws.
Just as his anxiety and frustration peaked, the alley ahead suddenly narrowed.
The giant rat WHOOSHED through the narrow passage. However, the woman it was dragging, hindered by her size, got caught and was left sprawling on the ground.