23: Chapter 23 What others find smelly, he finds absolutely delicious – the stench of money.

Li Zhengyang's mind exploded.

He re-read the description of the C-Zone mission.

Rank 2 Magic Rats.

Estimated number: nearly one thousand.

Two thousand per rat.

No one had accepted it for forty-seven days.

He glanced to the side; several recruits who had entered the Po Feng Battalion with him were gathered in front of the C-Zone mission board, each looking as if their father had died.

"Two thousand per rat? Make two thousand just by running through the sewer? Who are they trying to fool?"

"Didn't you see the line below? A team tried it last month; when they came out after half an hour, three out of the five members had been bitten. Those things swarm; hundreds of them jump on you at once."

"The key is the stench. It's a sewage pipe; do you have any idea what it smells like in there?"

The recruits grew more discouraged as they talked.

Li Zhengyang walked over, stood in front of the C-Zone mission board, and clicked "Accept Full Amount."

Full amount.

The entire C-Zone cleanup mission, twelve square kilometers of underground sewage network, all covered.

The system popped up a confirmation window.

The recruits nearby were all stunned.

"Brother, are you crazy? Taking it all on by yourself?"

"That's twelve square kilometers! The place is full of Magic Rats!"

Li Zhengyang said nothing and turned to leave.

A burst of laughter came from behind him.

It wasn't the recruits laughing.

It was the Fierce Tiger Squad.

The bald-headed Zhang Mang held a cup of tea, eyeing Li Zhengyang as he walked toward the C-Zone registration window, his mouth curling into a grin.

"Yo, we've got a real idiot in this batch of recruits. He's so eager to snatch up the shit-shoveling job."

Several team members nearby laughed along.

"Captain, that kid accepted the full cleanup. He took the entire network."

"Taking it all is good," Zhang Mang blew on his tea. "In the past, when we assigned this job to recruits, they'd all whine and cry about it. Now that someone is volunteering to shoulder it, it saves me the trouble of nagging them to split it up."

He raised his voice, intentionally letting everyone in the hall hear.

"Brothers, remember this guy's face. The Chief Shit-Shoveler of Fortress No. 13 has been born!"

A roar of laughter erupted in the hall.

Li Zhengyang pressed his fingerprint at the registration window without turning his head.

Laugh all you want.

By the time I come out of the sewer, the one laughing the loudest probably won't even be able to afford a pair of pants.

The entrance to the fortress's underground sewage network was in the basement of the West District logistics warehouse.

It was a two-meter-square iron gate secured with five locks.

The administrator was a scrawny old man; seeing someone come to accept this job, he didn't react for a long time.

"Are you sure? By yourself?"

"Open the door."

The old man fumbled to unlock it. The moment the iron gate pulled open, a sky-high stench of rot rushed up.

The old man stepped back three paces and covered his nose with his sleeve.

Li Zhengyang took a deep breath.

Stinking.

Truly stinking.

But behind the stench, it was all money.

He pulled a cloth from his space ring to wrap around his nose and mouth, took his mountain-piercing spear in his hand, and jumped in.

The pipe was three meters in diameter, with half a foot of sewage pooled at the bottom. Every step splashed.

After walking less than fifty meters, there was movement in the darkness.

Rustling sounds came from the pipe walls, from the front, and from overhead.

The first Magic Rat darted out.

It was three times larger than a normal rat, covered in a layer of grayish-brown coarse fur, with two protruding incisors that glimmered with a sinister light at the tips.

It belonged to the lower end of Rank 2 magic beasts; a single one had combat power equivalent to a Martial Artist.

But.

It wasn't just one.

Li Zhengyang raised his phone's flashlight to shine it forward.

Inside the pipe, it was densely packed, covering everything.

Dozens of Magic Rats were squeezed together, their tiny red eyes reflecting the light like a moving wall of fur.

Seeing the light, the rat swarm exploded.

The Magic Rat swarm screamed and charged toward the light source.

Li Zhengyang shoved his phone into his pocket and turned off the light.

In the darkness, his Martial Spirit Rank perception expanded.

The position, speed, and movement trajectory of every single Magic Rat within a fifty-meter radius flooded into his mind.

He infused his mountain-piercing spear with blood energy.

The spear tip lit up.

The Martial Spirit Rank aura was no longer a thin layer clinging to the spear surface; it was a radiance seeping out from within the spear body, illuminating the surrounding half-meter.

"Come."

The rat tide crashed into him.

Mountain-Splitting Spear Arts, horizontal sweep.

The aura spread out. Wherever the spear passed, the Magic Rats were sliced in half in droves, like cutting tofu.

Blood and minced meat mixed with sewage splashed everywhere, and the pipe walls were hung with rat entrails.

Li Zhengyang didn't stop; his spear momentum was constant, killing as he walked.

Startling Cloud Step couldn't fully unfold in the pipe, but the flexible switching of his footwork was enough to let him move freely through the rat swarm.

Every strike of his spear took out at least five or six.

When he encountered a corner where they were bunched up, a single horizontal sweep could clear over a dozen.

The number of Magic Rats was indeed terrifying.

He killed the ones in front, and the ones behind filled the gap.

He killed the ones on the left, and the ones on the right surged over.

But for a Martial Spirit Rank against Rank 2 magic beasts, this wasn't a battle.

This was a harvest.

With his aura protecting his body, the Magic Rats' teeth couldn't even pierce the outer layer of his aura when they bit down.

Li Zhengyang killed from the main pipe to the branch pipes, and from the branch pipes to the diversion channels.

Every time he reached a junction, he stopped to cut off the tails. The proof of mission for Magic Rats was the tail, worth three thousand each.

The speed of cutting tails was even faster than killing the rats.

His short blade went swish-swish-swish, one cut per tail, his hand rising and falling.

He cut a hundred, tossed them into his space ring, and killed the next wave.

Hour after hour passed.

The pipe would be quiet for a stretch, then lively again for another.

The distribution of Magic Rats was uneven; some areas were sparse, while others were so dense that he couldn't even place his feet.

The dense areas were the priority.

Li Zhengyang specifically sought out the places where the rats were thickest.

For others, it was hell; for him, it was an ATM.

The sixth hour.

He cleaned down to the third level of the pipe network, which was ten meters deeper than the two levels above, with water reaching his waist.

The Magic Rats were also larger and fiercer; some were the size of small dogs, with incisors that could slice through alloy.

However, in front of a Martial Spirit Rank, there was no essential difference between a slightly larger rat and a slightly smaller one.

The only difference was that the tails were two inches longer, making them easier to cut.

By the eighth hour, the fourth level of the network was cleared.

The tenth hour, the fifth level.

Li Zhengyang leaned against the pipe wall to rest for five minutes, chewed on two bites of compressed rations, and drank some water.

He was covered head to toe in rat blood; his T-shirt was no longer its original color.

He opened his space ring to take stock.

Number of rat tails: four hundred and thirty.

Four hundred and thirty multiplied by two thousand.

Eight hundred and sixty thousand.

Ten hours, eight hundred and sixty thousand.

Li Zhengyang stuffed the rations back, stood up, and continued walking deeper.

The money still wasn't enough.

In the time that followed, every level, every branch, and every dead end of the pipe network was plowed through by his spear tip and aura.

The Magic Rats were killed off more and more.

In the end, not a single shadow of a rat could be found in the entire pipe network.

The next morning.

On the surface.

At the entrance to the logistics warehouse, the old administrator was dozing off at his desk, drool covering the table.

The iron gate was pushed open with a clang, and the old man woke up with a start.

A person climbed up from below.

He was soaked through, blood and sewage mixed together, his hair matted into strands. He dragged three burlap sacks in his hands, each bulging like a small hill.

The sacks dragged on the ground, heavy enough to leave scratches.

"Done," Li Zhengyang leaned his spear against the wall and brushed the dust off his hands.

The old man covered his nose and retreated five meters away.

"You, you, you... one night? You cleared it all?"

"Cleared it all. Didn't even leave you a rat hair."

The old man's mouth hung open, unable to close for a long time.

Li Zhengyang shouldered the three sacks and walked toward the Quartermasters Office in the central area of the fortress.

The Quartermasters Office had just opened; the person on duty was a young officer wearing glasses.

Li Zhengyang slammed the three sacks onto the floor.

Thud, thud, thud.

The floor shook three times.

"C-Zone cleanup mission, settlement."

The young officer walked over and opened the mouth of the first sack.

He looked inside.

It was packed full of gray rat tails, piled up like a small mountain.

The blood hadn't dried, and the stench rushed straight to his brain.

He opened the second one.

And the third.

Three bags, all of them.

The young officer's Adam's apple bobbed twice.

"This... how many is this?"

"You count."

There were four people in the Quartermasters Office in total; he called them all over.

The four of them squatted on the ground, counting one by one.

They counted for a full half hour.

The young officer held the counter, his hand trembling slightly.

"One thousand one hundred."

He looked up at Li Zhengyang.

"Two thousand times one thousand one hundred..."

He pressed the calculator.

Two million two hundred thousand great xia currency.

The four people in the Quartermasters Office gathered around the calculator, collectively silent.

The young officer pushed up his glasses, his voice dry.

"Transfer or cash?"

"Transfer. Thank you."

His phone vibrated; the money had arrived.

Li Zhengyang glanced at the transferred amount and took a deep breath.

Just at that moment, the door to the Quartermasters Office was pushed open.

Zhang Mang strode in with several members of the Fierce Tiger Squad, carrying a bag of Rank 3 magic beast horns.

"Little Liu, settlement for the A-Zone patrol mission, six Rank 3 Snow Wolves..."

He stopped halfway through his sentence.

Three huge open sacks were laid on the floor.

Rat tails all over the floor.

And Li Zhengyang, standing next to the sacks, covered in blood but wearing a smile.

Zhang Mang's gaze shifted from the sacks to the calculator.

The bag of six Rank 3 Snow Wolf horns in his hand had a total value of four hundred and eighty thousand.

Looking at it alongside that number.

Zhang Mang's expression changed.