Chapter 61: Chapter 61: I Heard You Wanted to Catch Me?
DRIP... DRIP...
Icy water dripped from the dark, vaulted ceiling, landing among a group of whispering figures.
They held flutes made of bone and whips crafted from beast hide and iron nails. Swarms of giant rats milled around them, restless and agitated, as if ready to devour someone at any moment.
"That outsider has reached the Worm Tribe. Those fools who only know how to raise bugs have probably all been slaughtered."
"Perfect. And the outsider has a gun! A gun! If we get our hands on that gun, we Rat Speakers will be able to rule the entire Iron Country!"
"A gun isn’t so scary. In the face of a rat swarm, even a gun is useless! That gun will be ours..."
"The scout rats say the woman seems to be a Night Woman. Shouldn’t we be more careful?"
"So what if she’s a Night Woman? Once we have the gun and the help of our rat swarms, the Night Woman Tribe will be just another ordinary tribe..."
A group of people with pointed, rat-like chins gathered together, their voices as shrill as squeaking mice.
They were short and stooped, like large, humanoid rats.
The rats beside them were also exceptionally large, each one as fat and bulky as a hunting dog.
Just then, the swarm of rats suddenly let out panicked squeals, scrambling back in one direction while staring into the darkness on the other side.
The Rat Speakers immediately cracked their whips and blew on their bone flutes, but they couldn’t control the swarm at all.
The rats were trembling, as if they had just encountered their greatest fear.
Then, from the distant darkness, a tidal wave of hissing sounds rolled in:
"HISS... HISS... HISSS... HISSSSSSS..."
Mixed within was the sound of scales scraping against the ground, as if thousands upon thousands of venomous snakes and giant pythons were slithering through the darkness, ready to devour them!
"It’s... snakes! The sound of snakes! How can there be so many?!" one of the Rat Speakers shouted in panic, unable to believe his ears.
But in the Iron Country, sound was more convincing than sight. He couldn’t help but believe what he was hearing!
Moreover, the hissing of the snakes grew louder and more numerous, interspersed with the cries of birds of prey. It was as if this underground space had transformed into a vast, open hunting ground on the plains!
"TOO-TOO-TLE... TEE-TEE-TEE-TOO..." The Rat Speakers desperately blew their bone flutes, trying to soothe the frantic, panicked rat swarm, but they couldn’t drown out the hissing of snakes and the cries of eagles.
Although the giant rats had lived in this underground space for countless generations, their instinctual fear had been passed down.
Their fear of snakes, in particular, was even more amplified here.
After all, in this gloomy subterranean world, creatures like vipers and Blind Snakes had never been scarce.
Countless rats had met their end in the bellies of snakes!
"HISSSSSSSSSSSSSSS..."
The hissing of the snakes finally merged into a single, continuous roar, as if a vast tide of innumerable venomous snakes was surging toward them!
This was followed by the chaotic sound of frantic running. The Rat Speakers were still cracking their whips when they saw thousands upon thousands of rats stampeding toward them from a certain direction, as if something terrifying was chasing them.
These rats were from the last dead-nest!
The agitation of the swarm immediately threw the giant rats here into a panic as well. In an instant, the entire pack broke, stampeding desperately in the direction opposite to the hissing of the snakes.
"Stop! Stop!"
"It’s just a few little snakes!"
"Chew them to the bone!"
The Rat Speakers shouted things they didn’t even believe themselves, cracking their whips in a futile attempt to stop the swarm’s collapse.
A few Rat Speakers were even torn apart by the frenzied rats, their bodies mauled and reduced to corpses in the blink of an eye.
Soon, the platform that served as the Rat Speaker Tribe’s main base was completely empty. Not a single rat remained, leaving only a few dozen Rat Speakers staring at each other in confusion, wondering what had just happened.
Listening to the sound of the approaching snake tide in the darkness, they too felt a chill of fear.
’Just from the sound, how many venomous snakes are there?’
’When did a snake tide of this magnitude ever appear in the Iron Country?’
’This is a catastrophe for the entire Iron Country!’
No one could stop so many venomous snakes unless they sealed off this space, cutting themselves off from the Iron Country’s system.
Some of the Rat Speakers readied their whips for battle, others prepared to flee, and a few even resigned themselves to being devoured by the swarm of snakes.
The terrifying hissing of the snake tide grew closer. Ahead, in the dark corridor, a flickering shadow became faintly visible.
It was finally about to appear.
Then, a man emerged from the darkness, carrying a backpack and holding a shotgun. He was whistling and strolling casually. Beside him was a woman in a T-shirt with brilliant, shimmering patterns, ready to unleash her own light at a moment’s notice.
The man said nothing, yet the sound of a surging snake tide emanated from his body, as if he were a den of ten thousand serpents, capable of unleashing terrifying vipers at any time.
The Rat Speakers were dumbfounded by the scene, scarcely able to believe their ears. A few of them went slack-jawed, their whips dropping from their hands to the ground.
Shen Feng was also quite surprised. Looking at the now-empty Rat Speaker headquarters and the few dozen seemingly non-combative Rat Speakers before him, he was at a loss for words.
’I didn’t expect the speaker to be this effective!’
’All those nature documentaries weren’t for nothing!’
’Not a single rat stayed behind. They all ran away!’
In a direct confrontation, the Rat Speaker Tribe, capable of commanding tens of millions of giant rats, would have been a formidable foe. But now, without the protection of their swarms, their combat strength was even lower than that of the Worm Shepherds.
Then, Shen Feng suddenly grinned and said:
"I heard you were looking for me?"
The moment the words left his mouth, he pulled the trigger.
The shotgun roared to life, its muzzle flash brightly illuminating the area as it sent a Rat Speaker leader flying.
Until the very moment he died, the Rat Speaker leader was baffled as to how the man could have possibly known their plan.
After all, they had only just begun to consider it!
Firefly, however, was already completely used to this kind of scene.
On their way to the Rat Speaker Tribe, they had already passed through a dozen or so platforms and "persuaded" seven or eight other tribes before arriving here.
The reason he used every time was, "I heard you were looking for me."
As for who he’d heard it from, only Shen Feng and Firefly themselves knew the answer.
A look of grim satisfaction crossed Shen Feng’s face as he smiled coldly.
"Hand over a complete map of the Iron Country. Consider it your apology."
The Rat Speakers looked at each other, suddenly feeling that this outsider was truly a venomous snake, and they were just a bunch of helpless mice.
A Rat Speaker at the front sighed and said in a shrill voice:
"Respected outsider, we meant no offense. As an elder of my tribe, I apologize for our foolish thoughts... As for the map of the Iron Country, I will present it to you with both hands as a token of our apology."
"Please rest assured, our roaming swarms tell us everything. No other tribe in the entire Iron Country has a more detailed ma—"
Before he could finish his sentence, the ground suddenly began to shake as if in an earthquake.
In the next instant, the earth beneath the Rat Speaker’s feet violently ruptured. A cylindrical object three meters in diameter burst upward from below, its high-speed rotating cutterhead tearing the Rat Speaker elder to shreds!
It was a tunnel boring machine!
