The creature had the body of a rat, but on its head it genuinely bore a woman’s face… its features were clear, its expression sorrowful, and it even had sparse hair and eyebrows.
Lu Chuan’s brow twitched almost imperceptibly. He was just about to step forward and grab the rat back when Qin Guan beside him stopped him with a hand.
“Don’t move.”
“What?”
Lu Chuan turned to look at him.
Frowning, Qin Guan stared at the strange-looking rat and handed Lu Chuan the note Fang Yuan had given him.
“House of the White Mountain, there is a woman of wondrous purity, divine and elegant in appearance. Do not approach or touch her…”
Lu Chuan murmured after reading it, then looked at the rat and at Qin Guan, looking like he had something he wanted to say but was holding back. “You don’t mean… the person described in this note… is this rat, do you?”
Qin Guan nodded firmly.
“It’s possible.”
『No, is something wrong with my eyes, or with my ears? The refined lady they’re talking about… is this rat??』
『Honestly, it really might be. This thing is the only female one that has appeared so far.』
『Wait, can this thing even be called female…』
『But the longer I look at it, the more it really does seem kind of delicate and pretty.』
『To the person above, I suspect you’ve been single for so long that you’re starting to hallucinate.』
Qin Guan pointed at the note and continued, “Besides, ‘purity’ and ‘rat’ are homophones. If you interpret the line as ‘there is a wondrous rat-woman,’ that still makes sense.”
“So what are you saying?”
“To be safe, we’d better keep our distance from it.”
“Mm-hm.” Lu Chuan gave an ambiguous hum.
“Then if we don’t catch it, what do you plan to do about today’s skin?”
Qin Guan fell silent, and for once he hesitated.
It was already nearing six o’clock. Under the blizzard’s influence, the sky had visibly grown gloomy. The daylight was fading, and it probably wouldn’t be long before night fell completely.
Forcing himself out into the storm to search for prey at a time like this was clearly unrealistic.
But if he simply let this rat escape… he would still be doomed.
“Want me to help you?”
Lu Chuan suddenly spoke from the side.
Qin Guan turned to look at him.
Lu Chuan stood with his arms folded, half leaning against the wall. The light cast his face in half-shadow, and only a faint red glint in his eyes shone with interest.
“This thing isn’t as simple as it looks. It carries a strong resentment force. If an ordinary person so much as touches it, they’ll either die or go mad.”
“Rats naturally live in groups. I’d say it’s better to deal with it now while there’s only one. If they gather later, I may not even be able to do anything.”
Lu Chuan grinned, finally revealing his true, malicious intent.
“As long as you say, ‘Brother Lu Chuan, please help me,’ I’ll take care of this thing for you. How about it? That’s a pretty good deal, right?”
Qin Guan tilted his head and examined him.
“How long were you in the psychiatric hospital?”
The question came out of nowhere. Lu Chuan raised a brow, but still answered, “About three months. Why?”
“What a pity. You’re still not cured.”
Qin Guan gave his assessment.
Then he went straight around the human-faced mouse on the floor, pulled open the storage room door, and shouted outside.
“Wang Ze… !”
No response.
Qin Guan persisted.
“Wang Ze… ! There’s a rat trying to steal your ingredients… !”
His voice was neither too loud nor too soft, just enough to carry from the storage room into the kitchen. The burly man had originally been busy with his solo task in the kitchen. Hearing the shout, he didn’t want to answer at first. But after Qin Guan mentioned that there was a rat in the storage room, the burly man, worried it might affect his task progress, reluctantly poked his head out of the window.
“What is it?”
Qin Guan stepped aside a little and showed the human-faced mouse on the floor to the burly man.
“I’m afraid of rats. Come here and catch it. Otherwise it’ll definitely jump into the kitchen in a moment, and it might affect your cooking.”
As he spoke, Qin Guan carefully observed the burly man’s reaction. By rights, the distance between them wasn’t far, and Wang Ze was also an experienced veteran who had been through many instances. He should have been able to notice the problem with the human-faced mouse easily.
On the floor, the human-faced mouse still sat there properly. As if sensing something, it followed Qin Guan’s gaze and looked toward the kitchen.
But who would have thought that the burly man only gave the rat a cursory glance before withdrawing his gaze and saying impatiently, “If there’s a rat, then close the door! Don’t bother me with such a small thing, or you’ll regret it!”
Qin Guan kept watching the burly man’s reaction and insisted, “Take a look. This rat looks a little strange.”
“Damn it!”
The burly man cursed under his breath and came storming out of the kitchen with a kitchen knife in hand, his eyes bloodshot, looking almost insane.
“Damn it, you’re the strangest one here! Keep talking! Believe it or not, I’ll really hack you down!”
『Hey, hey, hey! What is he trying to do!』
『What’s wrong with this guy? Can’t he see that the rat has a human head?』
『Honestly, it really does seem like he can’t see it.』
『It’s not just that he can’t see it… don’t you think something is really off with him?!』
Although Qin Guan had already experienced the burly man’s explosive temper, he faintly felt that the man now seemed different from how he had been when they first entered the instance.
Different how, exactly?
Qin Guan narrowed his eyes and quickly looked him up and down.
…Was it his imagination? Did he seem… thinner?
Not only thinner.
He also seemed shorter.
His chin seemed longer too, jutting out sharply. His eyes were wide open, bloodshot with dense red veins…
If he had to describe it, he looked a bit like a rat.
This was starting to look bad.
The burly man swung the kitchen knife wildly, looking as if he had completely lost his mind, and roared as he strode toward Qin Guan.
As the bright blade was about to split into him, Qin Guan swiftly sidestepped. The blade sliced past his ear and came crashing down with a clang into the floor!
That strike was unbelievably precise. It cleanly chopped off the human-faced mouse’s head!
The woman’s head rolled off the rat’s body and tumbled across the floor several times. Then, as if it had suddenly gained self-awareness, the face that had once been calm and composed twisted violently. Its mouth opened to an almost impossible angle, and it let out a shrill, piercing scream.
At that moment, the kitchen knife slipped from the burly man’s hand. He also screamed as he fell to the ground, two lines of blood streaming from his ears. After convulsing a few times, he lost consciousness.
The ear-splitting scream erupted like an explosion, layers of sound waves so powerful they almost became tangible, battering everyone’s eardrums.
Qin Guan instinctively raised a hand to cover his ears, but it had no effect at all. The terrifying sound waves seemed to explode directly inside his mind, assaulting every nerve in his body.
“Ugh… !”
It felt like his brain was about to burst.
He forced himself upright and staggered backward, but accidentally crashed into something hard.
In his daze, he seemed to hear a faint sigh amid the howls that felt powerful enough to overturn the entire world.
A pair of large hands gently covered his own. Lu Chuan wrapped his arms around him from behind and rested his head on top of Qin Guan’s hair.
“Don’t let it happen again.”