Chapter 97
For a moment, Lin Tu held her chopsticks, unsure whether to set them down or keep going. The luosifen in front of her hadn't changed, but her appetite had vanished; forcing herself to eat would be a chore. Yet putting them down felt wasteful—this bowl was perfectly seasoned, loaded with toppings, and clearly delicious. The dilemma, however, was short-lived. The woman's terrified, frantic gaze revealed her face clearly—Malin En? What was she doing out here in the middle of the night?
Lin Tu immediately set down her chopsticks. As she dressed, she had the Butler comb through the phone's surveillance footage to trace how that corpse had ended up there.
By the time she was ready, the Butler had located footage from a few dozen minutes earlier.
A door in the room to her right was suddenly kicked open from inside, and a pair of hands shoved a man out, sending him stumbling. His cheeks were flushed an unnatural red, and his whole body trembled involuntarily—he looked very much like someone infected with the plague.
The people inside shouted at him in anger, while others knelt and kowtowed, begging him to leave. Finally, clutching his water cup, he shuffled out, his head heavy and muddled. He could barely stay upright and felt a strong urge to vomit. When he spotted the stairs leading to the upper and lower decks, he sat down on them—perhaps thinking that sitting on the steps would look more dignified than sitting on the floor.
Lin Tu watched as he dozed off, on the verge of falling asleep. She frowned and fast-forwarded to double speed, seeing him jolt awake from a bout of vomiting, open his cup to drink, and fumble it. The thermos struck his face, and he lost his balance with a thud, tumbling face-first down the stairs. The vomit in his mouth clogged his throat. He tried to scramble up but lacked the strength, paddling feebly like a swimmer before dying a ridiculous, silent death.
Lin Tu could almost imagine the sudden spike in his infection level after death. The smell quickly attracted a diseased rat that had been hiding in a ventilation duct. As Malin En stumbled up the stairs, more rats emerged from every direction.
Malin En wanted desperately to scream, but she was a survivor of the Great Plague era. She knew that these infected rats, once externally stimulated, would become even more frenzied and violent, even biting indiscriminately. So she suppressed her terror, gripping the railing to hoist herself half a meter off the ground.
Just wait, she told herself. No matter how much these rats scurried, they couldn't jump up onto the railing; biting off one of her toes would be a stretch. Once they'd eaten their fill, they'd leave on their own. As long as no mutated rats showed up—the ones with tails as thick as a child's wrist that could bite a person's entire hand clean off—she'd be fine.
Just as that thought crossed her mind, the plastic exhaust vent on the ductwork was blasted off, and an enormous rat burst out.
Oh God... Malin En's scream lodged in her throat. She didn't dare move a muscle, terrified the rat would notice her.
"Are you alright?" A soft voice came from somewhere down the corridor.
Malin En followed the sound and saw, in the gentle evening light, a figure standing far off on the pale yellow hallway carpet. Though the person was bundled up tightly, Malin En recognized her in an instant. Joy surged through her, and she nearly wept with gratitude—but then she realized she mustn't drag her savior into this.
"Go! Go!" Malin En waved as small as she could. "Don't come here! Go to the first deck and find some soldiers—get them to drive these things off!"
"Find them? I don't think they'd bother." Instead of retreating, Lin Tu advanced, drawing the long blade from her back, the Night-Blue Berry already in her hand.
In truth, Lin Tu didn't think the officers wouldn't help—she thought they'd likely, upon learning what had happened, quietly dispose of Malin En and everyone in the rooms next to hers without a trace.
"How could..." Malin En started to urge Lin Tu not to be reckless, but the next second, she saw Lin Tu sprinting toward the largest rat. At the same time, that rat, extremely alert, raised its ruby-red, baby-fist-sized eyes toward her.
"Don't!" Malin En shrieked. "They're afraid of fire!"
Lin Tu: "..." You could've said that earlier.
She skidded to a halt and pulled a box of matches from her pocket.
[Inextinguishable Matches (D-grade): Specially made matches that burn for ten minutes straight. Almost nothing can put them out. Except, of course, water.]
This was one of the two D-grade items Yi Ying had promised her. The box held roughly thirty-odd matches. Lin Tu had planned to use them for emergency lighting or cooking, but here they proved useful in a different way.
She took out three at once, struck them against the striker strip with a sharp whoosh, and bright flames flickered to life in the air.
She hurled them hard into the swarm of rats. Amidst a chorus of squeaks, the spine-chilling horde scattered immediately. Only the cat-sized mutated rat remained, crouching on the ground, agitated and seemingly poised to attack.
Lin Tu lit three more matches, and this time she threw them straight at the mutated rat. It lurched backward a step before vanishing swiftly into the darkness.
Malin En hurriedly climbed down from the railing and ran over to Lin Tu. Fortunately, she was used to hard work; after all that fright and running, she was only a little lightheaded.
"You recognize those rats?" Lin Tu asked.
"Yes," Malin En panted. "Ordinary rats eat human flesh too, but they're nowhere near as frightening. These things eat nothing but people. During the Great Plague era, neighbors often said someone nearby would suddenly be woken up by pain in the middle of the night, only to find half their bed soaked in blood, their feet, palms, even their entire face gnawed off. The culprits were these plague rats. Later, we discovered their eyes couldn't adapt to searing, blinding light. As long as we placed lit candles at cave entrances and doorways at night, they couldn't get in."
Malin En hesitated, then asked, "You didn't know? If you don't mind... I never caught your name."
"My surname is Lin," Lin Tu said. "I suggest you go to the second deck right away and report what happened here to the management. But one piece of advice: don't mention our confrontation with the mutated rat. Say you spotted the mutant rat from a distance, and then report it directly."
Otherwise, we'll both be getting a knock on our doors in the middle of the night and a free bullet, Lin Tu thought, but didn't say aloud.
"You don't want me to mention that you saved me?" Malin En was puzzled, but recalling Lin Tu's earlier undercover work, she figured Lin Tu wanted to keep a low profile lately and nodded in agreement. Then something else occurred to her. "Oh, right! I need to report this quickly, but there's something else—I discovered the ship's water supply is contaminated!"
A sense of dread rose in Lin Tu. "What's wrong?"
"There are plague pathogens in the water!"
Lin Tu immediately thought of the flying insects she'd seen on Qiu Shisha's corpse. In the corners her surveillance couldn't reach, the sources of contamination on this ship were multiplying.