Chapter 10: We can't let Ah Qing end up in prison over this, can we?

"Ying-ying-ying—"

A bold, whimpering cry of a fox echoed across the mountainside. The mountain rats, which had been breeding in the tea fields, were startled and scattered, scurrying toward their burrows in a frenzy.

"You Xiadong vermin, watch as An digs your ancestors right out—"

The fox is one of nature’s master burrowers; any fox that cannot construct an underground villa loses all mating rights and reproductive status within the clan. As a fox, Ansheng had inherited this digging talent, but he found it dirty and generally avoided messing with holes. However, given the current complexity of the situation, he had no choice but to activate his hidden talent.

"Die—"

Sniffing the scent left behind by the burrowing rats, Ansheng frantically clawed at the mountainside with his front paws, excavating a passage wide enough for him to slip into the rat den. Though young, Ansheng was strong and agile, and his digging speed was so rapid that he vanished into the tea fields in mere moments.

Yet, he had barely been inside the burrow for ten minutes before he scrambled back out.

"Ugh—"

Ansheng stood on his hind legs, his face pale and sickly as he leaned against a tea tree, vomiting up his entire midnight snack.

The stench... an indescribable, foul odor wafted from the hole he had just dug. It was a rich, pungent smell, like a pair of long-worn, crusty socks soaked in sweat during the heat of summer and then drenched in a torrential downpour—a smell so foul it was practically blinding. That rotting stench nearly suffocated him, and it was even more potent than the dry toilets at the village fishpond. If someone told him there were rotting corpses buried under the lower slope’s tea fields, he would have believed it.

Once Ansheng caught his breath, he cautiously crept back to the entrance. He sniffed, confirming that the intense rot and musky odor had dissipated. He slipped back into the tunnel, following the trail of the fleeing rats.

A meter deep into the earth, he could still see the roots of the tea trees. However, they were covered in jagged, uneven bite marks; some of the roots that the trees used to search for water had been completely gnawed away by the rats.

Two meters... Three meters...

Near the four-meter mark, Ansheng’s paw struck something incredibly hard.

"Hiss—"

A sharp pain shot through his limb, forcing him to gasp. In the pitch-black burrow, the fox’s night vision was of little use; he had been relying almost entirely on his sense of smell and hearing to track his target.

"Did I... hit a rock? Something’s not right."

Ansheng shook his paw, his face full of suspicion as he tapped the impossibly solid object. He could sense that the rats and the rotting, musky stench were hidden just behind this rock. Curious, Ansheng began digging to the side to feel the underground stone. His paw pads brushed against a series of regular, intentional lines carved by human hands.

"This isn't a rock... it's masonry!"

Realizing the true nature of the object, Ansheng flew into a rage. The pain from hitting his paw was no less intense than stubbing a pinky toe on solid wood furniture. If he had hit a rock, he could only curse his luck, but there were clear signs of human craftsmanship here. The injury to his paw wasn't an act of nature, but a man-made disaster!

"Hmph—"

Ansheng held his breath, gathering all his strength into his front paws, and slammed his palm against the "stone."

*Crack, crack, crack—*

With a series of shattering sounds, the stone he had touched crumbled and fell, colliding with the floor tiles below and echoing through the hollow space. Ansheng braced his legs against the walls of the tunnel, hanging in mid-air to avoid falling in.

"..."

Ansheng fell silent for a moment, muttering to himself: "This is clearly a massive tomb! If I keep digging, am I going to land my guardian, Qing, in a women's prison? The criminal law might not care about foxes, but it certainly cares about guardians..."

"I’ll have to consult the legal department at Lin Ying's company about the risks before I go home."

Though his words were cowardly, if there had been light in the tunnel, one would have seen his dark, lustrous, foxy eyes glowing. His expression was filled with anticipation for a grand spectacle and the gossipy joy of watching trouble unfold.

Ansheng quickly turned back, exited the burrow, returned to the tea field, and gave the King Cobra in the snake-skin bag a kick for trying to escape. Then, he hurried down the mountain to the tea farmers' homes to borrow a head-mounted searchlight.

With the searchlight strapped on, he crawled back down the tunnel into the "ancient tomb."

However, as the beam of light illuminated the chamber, all traces of gossip vanished from Ansheng’s face. His foxy eyes nearly popped out of their sockets.

"Holy—a Maxim heavy machine gun on wheels!"

Peering into the tomb from the hole in the ceiling, Ansheng scanned the room. He saw three Maxim heavy machine guns with wheels, along with several cannons of a model he couldn't identify. Against the walls of the chamber lay a large number of moldy wooden crates. From the broken parts of the crates, Ansheng could vaguely see rusty copper bullets inside.

Beyond that, Ansheng finally understood where the stench came from. This ancient tomb hidden beneath the tea fields was actually an old armory.

There were heavy machine guns, cannons, ammunition, unidentified medicine, and some very old cans. Time had corroded these vintage tins, and the meat inside had leaked all over the floor. The mountain rats he had seen earlier were all gathered here, warily surveying their surroundings.

"Good grief! I haven't even had caviar yet, and these rats are already eating potatoes and beef!"

Whether it was the crates of bullets or the rusted cans, they all bore foreign writing. One glance told him they were imported goods. But as Ansheng looked at them, he realized that despite the different English letters, they all seemed to convey the same message:

[Shangpo Mountain Arsenal Storage Room. All goods herein belong to Ansheng.]

Wearing his headlamp, Ansheng jumped into the storage room, facing the swarms of mountain rats.

"So, these cans are the source of the rat plague."

"The cans corroded and leaked, attracting rats from all over the mountain, eventually leading to a plague..."

Ansheng swiped away the aggressive rats that tried to bite him and circled the armory. He found no paper documents or information about the place; everything stockpiled here was military supply from the war era. He even found a dozen crushed aluminum boxes of penicillin. It was clear that the irritable and greedy rats had caused significant damage.

"Now that I know the source, I’ll just disperse them!"

With a strange look on his face, Ansheng went back up the way he came, opened the snake-skin bag containing the King Cobra, and tossed it right into the rats' nest. Then, after busying himself in the mountains for a while, he filled a bag with spicy strips and dumped them in as well.

"That should... kill their appetite."

Ansheng filled in the hole he had dug, grabbed a few of the fattest rats, threw them into his bag, and dragged the sack toward Changxi Town.

[Wish to clear the rat plague fulfilled. In her dreams, Yu Xueqing sees you in Shangpo Mountain, brandishing a halberd to crush the Xiadong vermin. Your form is majestic and extraordinary, the only regret being that you have the head of a fox, and the roar that should have intimidated the vermin instead came out as a coquettish, whimpering sound, which left Yu Xueqing very confused.]

[But the Xiadong vermin were clearly, instinctually terrified by the fox's whimper.]

[Willpower +1]

"To hell with brandishing a halberd and crushing the Xiadong vermin..."

"I'd rather melt the halberd down to make porridge than be a three-surname slave!"

Dragging his bag of fat rats, Ansheng couldn't help but retort after reading the text in his mind.