Chapter 64 - 63: Symbiosis

Chapter 64: Chapter 63: Symbiosis

Around ten o’clock at night.

By this time, Hogan City had already fallen into a deep slumber. Aside from a few drunkards and certain professionals who only operated at night, most people were already fast asleep in their homes rather than wandering the streets. The night was incredibly quiet, broken only by the occasional chirping of birds and insects, or the raucous noises made by drunks.

Slipping out of the Medicinal Garden’s backyard, Gaode moved with extremely light and swift footsteps toward the center of the city. He passed through the filthy and chaotic slums, occasionally spotting a few silhouettes along the way. There was no shortage of restless people in the slums at night.

Soon, Gaode arrived at the relatively safer and cleaner commoner district. After every time he sold medicine previously, he would stroll around Hogan City. Because of this, compared to when he first arrived in this world, Gaode was now quite familiar with Hogan City. Thus, he quickly located the objective of his trip: a sewer entrance situated in the commoner district.

Gaode’s gaze swept his surroundings, and he soon found a suitable spot. Directly opposite the sewer entrance stood a street tree with lush foliage. He quickly approached it and, drawing on his childhood tree-climbing experience, scrambled up into the branches in a few swift moves, hiding his figure within the dense shadows of the canopy.

Only after confirming that the leaves completely concealed him—without even a sliver of a shadow giving him away—did Gaode carefully part the branches to stare fixedly at the sewer entrance.

The purpose of his trip was obvious: to conduct a final verification of his theory and attempt to uncover the true identity of the "behind-the-scenes culprit" responsible for the strange occurrences in the city.

There weren’t an exceptionally large number of sewer entrances in the city, but there weren’t few of them, either. Therefore, playing the waiting game like this relied somewhat on luck. It was just that Gaode couldn’t think of a better method.

He crouched in the tree for over an hour as the moon climbed high into the night sky.

Just as Gaode began to feel a faint drowsiness, a subtle RUSTLE reached his ears. This roused his Spirit, and all his sleepiness vanished without a trace. His eyes widened as he looked toward the source of the sound: the sewer entrance.

Under Gaode’s astonished gaze, a black swarm of rats surged out of that dark entrance, which was only wide enough for a single person to pass through. These rats were completely normal in size. They were absolutely not terrifying creatures on the level of the Wolf Rats that had night-raided the Medicinal Garden; they looked no different from the most common street rats. However, for so many rats to appear in a swarm in the dead of night was an extremely bizarre occurrence in itself.

Upon leaving the sewer entrance, the rats flooded in a single direction like a tidal wave. In just a short while, this massive horde vanished from Gaode’s line of sight, melting into the night. Having witnessed this shocking scene with his own eyes, Gaode waited in silence. 𝑓𝑟ℯℴ𝓂

About half a two-hour period later.

Under the moonlight, a dense cluster of black spots appeared once more, surging toward this sewer entrance. As the black spots grew larger in Gaode’s vision until he could clearly make out the appearances of those rats, he couldn’t help but suck in a sharp breath with a HISS. The moonlight pierced through the sparse clouds, illuminating the eerie scene before him.

These rats had lined up in neat rows, their movements perfectly synchronized, actually working together to carry several humans who appeared to be either unconscious or fast asleep.

"One, two, three," Gaode muttered, sweeping his gaze over them to tally the number of humans carried by this bizarre rat swarm. Despite being moved so vigorously, these three people showed not the slightest sign of waking up. With a clear objective, the swarm carried the three individuals right up to the sewer entrance.

He thought, "And then what?" Gaode was completely unable to imagine what this pack of rats would do next. Would they take these three into the sewer? And what was the purpose of doing so?

In the next moment, his doubts were answered.

WHOOSH!

A streak of bloody light shot out from the dark sewer entrance. By the moonlight, Gaode saw the true face of that bloody light. It was a blood-red vine.

The blood-red vine extended from the sewer and coiled around one of the three humans brought by the rat swarm. The vine was covered in sharp thorns, which now acted like teeth, piercing into the human’s skin. Then, the blood in the human’s body flowed out like a rushing stream, rapidly absorbed by the vine. Correspondingly, that person’s body was shriveling up at a visible rate.

A chill shot up from the soles of Gaode’s feet, quickly spreading throughout his entire body as his breathing grew heavy. In just a few minutes, a living, breathing person had been reduced to a pale, shriveled husk right under Gaode’s nose. After drinking the blood, the vine stretched its leaves and branches. It was clearly just a plant, yet Gaode felt as though he could sense it releasing an emotion of joy and contentment at this moment.

At the same time, a faint cluster of red mist rose from the vine’s leaves, spreading out and surging into the bodies of the rat swarm. The next moment, a familiar and horrifying scene unfolded before Gaode’s eyes. Nourished by the red mist, the rats’ eyes shifted into an eerie deep red, flashing with an ominous glow in the night like burning Rubies. It was exactly the same as those two specks of deep red he had caught a fleeting glimpse of when he left the sewer last time.

In the dark night, the sight of so many densely packed deep red eyes gleaming with spectral light was enough to make anyone’s scalp tingle with dread.

He thought, "Symbiosis..."

Evidently, the rat swarm and this bizarre plant had a classic symbiotic relationship. The bizarre plant must possess the characteristics of flora—unable to move, it required the rat swarm to hunt for it. The rat swarm, in turn, needed the strange red mist released by the plant after it consumed its food. Though he didn’t know its exact function, it undoubtedly benefited them.

Seeing that the vine was temporarily "fed and watered," and that the red-eyed monster rats had finished enjoying the red mist, a small segment of the swarm broke off to bite into the dried corpse’s clothing, dragging it down into the sewer. Soon, the dried corpse plummeted straight down the sewer entrance, disappearing from sight.

The culprit, the modus operandi, the disposal of the bodies... At this moment, Gaode had uncovered the truth behind everything related to the strange string of missing persons. He had even corrected his previous assumption. Why had the city’s bigwigs delayed so long in solving the missing persons case?

It wasn’t necessarily that they hadn’t considered the sewers as a possibility at all. But unless someone just so happened to witness the swarm’s red-eyed form... Otherwise, under normal circumstances, even if the City Guards investigated the sewers and saw these rats with their own eyes, why would they connect such non-threatening, normal-looking rats to the culprits? After all, the presence of rats in the sewers was the most normal thing in the world. This disguise was far too natural.

Meanwhile, in the clearing below, this "feeding" was not yet over. After a brief pause, the vine began to move again, as if it had finished digesting. Its target, without a doubt, was one of the two remaining humans.

WHOOSH!

At the exact moment the vine moved, a blazing light erupted in the night, tearing through the stifling air and plunging into the rat swarm gathered around the vine. It was an arrow of flame.

The instant the Flaming Arrow struck its target rat, it erupted with an explosion and blinding light. The flames spread rapidly, engulfing a small cluster of red-eyed monster rats at the epicenter of the blast. Under this sudden barrage of flames, the red-eyed rat swarm scattered and fled in all directions. Their shrieks intertwined with the CRACKLE of the fire as the pungent stench of scorched fur filled the air.

"What was that sound?!"

"It came from over there! Hurry, let’s go check it out!"

CLACK CLACK CLACK!

The sound of hurried, disorganized, yet forceful footsteps approached. The exceptionally Tuwu, startling explosion and flash of light in the silent night had quickly attracted the attention of a patrol squad of City Guards just one street away.

Seemingly hearing the commotion caused by the City Guards, the red-eyed rat swarm abandoned all else. Amid a panicked chorus of SQUEAKS, they swiftly dove into the sewer entrance and vanished. Even the scorched corpses of the dead rats were snatched up by the surviving red-eyed monster rats and dragged back down into the sewers.

The bizarre vine moved even faster. With a SWISH, it slithered back down the sewer passage. At the same time, from the street tree opposite the entrance, a figure also leapt down and rapidly disappeared into the night.

They scattered to the winds.