Chapter 151 You Killed an Insect You Shouldn't Have

The scene before him completely shattered his worldview.

For a human to have a rat burrow directly inside their body—the level of agony in that process was simply unimaginable.

Under such circumstances, an ordinary person would likely have been hurt to death. To have survived it like Brother Tatar was nothing short of miraculous.

Yet what kind of person would torture Brother Tatar in such a horrifying manner, and use such an absurd method to force him into attempting murder?

While Li Tianque was lost in thought, Chu had already slowly straddled Brother Tatar’s body, using the knife in her hand to slowly cut around the glass box that was fused with the flesh.

The tip of the blade pierced the skin at just the right depth.

Disgusting-colored fluids oozed from the incision. Because of their proximity to the digestive tract, the stench was unbearable, and Li Tianque hurriedly covered his nose and retreated to the side.

Chu’s movements were swift. In less than two minutes, she had removed the box.

The moment the box was completely unsealed, she actually plunged her bare hand directly into the hollowed-out abdomen, gave a fierce yank, and dragged out something bloody.

The entire motion was too fast for the naked eye to capture. Li Tianque only saw a shadow flash by, and the next second, something new appeared in Chu’s hand.

Li Tianque’s eyes widened as he confirmed that this must be the rat that had burrowed into Brother Tatar’s body.

This rat looked extremely strange: its ears were long and large, its front paws were sharp, and its hind legs were slender. As it was pulled out, it kept twitching and jumping, somewhat like a locust preparing for takeoff.

"It really is him."

Chu’s wide-open eyes were terrifying. Li Tianque even felt that the whites of her eyes in her peripheral vision carried killing intent.

"Who is he?" Li Tianque knew this question would likely sink into the abyss without a trace, but he still couldn't help asking.

True to form, Chu cooperated by not answering.

She violently slammed the bloody, long-eared rat in her hand onto the floor. The rat let out a few painful squeaks and completely kicked the bucket.

Unexpectedly, Chu slowly turned her head and, in a rare display of initiative, spoke:

"You've never seen such a strange rat before, have you?"

Li Tianque immediately nodded and said, "This rat's ears are too long. It looks a bit like an ordinary sewer rat, but a normal rat's teeth and claws shouldn't be this sharp."

"This is a mutated hybrid, possessing both the extraordinary hearing of the long-eared jerboa and the sharp teeth and fangs of the Paraguayan long-clawed mouse and the plateau marmot.

A rat's hearing is already extremely acute in the animal kingdom. When that person placed the mutant rat inside his body, the rat quickly chewed its way through the human flesh.

Because it is very sensitive to sound, it can be coaxed and lured out of the human body through specific methods."

Chu didn't sound like she was explaining; she sounded more like she was angrily muttering to herself in front of an enemy.

As she spoke, Chu wiped the sticky blood onto Li Tianque’s clothes, treating his outfit directly like a rag.

"In other words, that person threatened Brother Tatar, telling him to kill me, and promised that as long as he succeeded, they would lure the rat out?" Li Tianque said, a bitter smile plastered on his face.

He couldn't help muttering inwardly: *Older sister, talk all you want, but must you always treat me as a tool, using even my clothes as a cleaning rag?*

After wiping away the blood, Chu stumbled to her feet and pushed open the rickety room door.

Li Tianque gazed at Chu’s back, then looked back at Brother Tatar, a complex mixture of emotions churning in his chest.

Brother Tatar was heavily wounded and would likely find it hard to survive.

Still, he was supposed to be with Wu Miaoran. If Wu Miaoran managed to find him later, she might just save his life.

In any case, expecting Chu to save him was out of the question. The fact that she had dug the rat out of his body could already be considered a form of mercy.

"Where are we going now?" Li Tianque asked, hurrying after her.

"Down."

Chu answered indifferently, dragging her legs forward with difficulty. Due to the injury on her leg, her speed going downstairs was still much slower than normal.

Following behind her, a sudden hypothesis formed in Li Tianque's mind:

Aside from that bizarre core-insect in this nursing home, there must be another person lingering here.

This person wanted to kill him and also seemed to be an enemy of Chu.

If so, this might explain why Chu had taken him hostage!

Li Tianque was well aware that he currently possessed no combat capability and following along beside Chu would only make him dead weight.

The primary reason she brought him along was likely because his life was crucial, and she had to protect him.

By doing so, she could use him to threaten that mysterious "him," or perhaps even use him to strike some kind of bargain.

Thinking of this, Li Tianque felt even more uneasy.

From Chu’s expression, it wasn't hard to tell that she was filled with resentment toward the mysterious person hiding in the nursing home, with a faint trace of lingering fear as well.

Given this, if Chu was taking him to meet that person, this trip was bound to be fraught with danger and virtually devoid of hope.

Even so, Li Tianque didn't dare to run away. Chu had already demonstrated more than enough strength, and he was certainly not naive enough to think she would be easy to deal with just because her leg was lame.

The two of them silently continued downward until they reached the first underground level.

In the hall on the first underground level, the ceiling still emitted a ghastly red light, casting an eerie chill over the entire hall, making it look like the halls of the underworld.

The high-powered flashlight had been on for too long and was now growing hot to the touch.

Seeing the ambient light here, Li Tianque dimmed the flashlight and moved forward, aided by the red glow of the basement level.

Li Tianque noticed that after coming down, Chu walked straight toward the collapsed stairwell.

Thinking about it now, it was strange. Initially, Li Tianque had assumed that the dark shadow he saw at the very beginning must be some massive creature.

That massive creature had walked up these stairs together with Fatty Bi, which was why the stairs couldn't bear their combined weight and had suddenly collapsed.

Yet that dark shadow was actually a corpse nearly hollowed out by rats, and its own weight should have been extremely light.

No matter how fat Fatty Bi was, he shouldn't have been able to shatter the stairs...

However, ever since entering the nursing home, not a single normal thing had happened, and Li Tianque had long since grown accustomed to the bizarre.

He just didn't understand why Chu could have simply walked past on the floor above instead of descending to the basement level just to turn back.

"The path ahead has collapsed. It caved in right after Fatty Bi went up that way," Li Tianque reminded her.

Chu ignored Li Tianque and kept walking in that direction.

In the dim light, swarms of woodlice scurried about once more.

The *da-da-da* sound of their arthropods scuttling made one's scalp tingle.

Even a single one of these disgusting bugs was enough to evoke revulsion; seeing them gathered in such swarms within an already oppressive environment made it all the more deeply unsettling.

Upon seeing these woodlice, Chu paused for a moment, then turned back to ask Li Tianque:

"Pest-insects? Were these pest-insects here just now?"

Li Tianque looked at the bugs below, failing to understand why Chu was making such a fuss.

"We usually call them woodlice. These bugs were here just now; as soon as I opened that door, they all came pouring out.

To be honest, it's my first time seeing bugs this big, too."

Before his voice faded, Chu’s pale face grew even paler, and she actually looked somewhat panicked.

She stood there in a daze, squatted down, gently pressed two fingers onto the shell of a large woodlouse, stroked it slowly, and then lowered her head to sniff it. Her expression turned even more solemn.

Suddenly, she asked Li Tianque with tense urgency:

"Have you killed any of them?"