Chapter 37 - Chapter 37: Chapter 37 A Dead Rat (1/2)

Chapter 37: Chapter 37 A Dead Rat

Translator: Atlas Studios Editor: Atlas Studios

Chapter 37: A Dead Rat

Xiang Kun has never smelled this scent before. He was certain it wasn’t a cat or a dog, and it definitely wasn’t from any other animal he knew of. But he wasn’t surprised, after all, his olfactory ‘database’ was rather limited, mainly collected in urban areas.

What animal was it?

Xiang Kun was suddenly intrigued and when he got a curiosity itch, he had to scratch it.

He turned around, switched his phone’s flashlight back on, picked up a stick, and began to inspect the rat’s corpse.

There were a lot of bugs on the rat’s body that Xiang Kun was unfamiliar with.

When he stirred them with the stick in the light of his phone, they scattered. Some burrowed into the grass, others into the soil, and many small maggots crawled on the rat’s carcass.

If it were before, seeing this scene would make Xiang Kun nauseous and his scalp prickle. But now, he felt indifferent to it. He could even concentrate on identifying the smells and sounds of these insects.

Upon inspection, this rat must have been dead for some time, but he couldn’t determine the exact time of death based on the level of decay.

Xiang Kun took another whiff. The source of that curious smell was not here anymore, it was very faint and almost gone.

It was highly likely that the source of that smell was the predator that killed this rat.

What did strike him as strange, though, was that despite the gruesome death scene, the dead rat seemed to be mostly intact, its limbs were still attached. Although its belly had been ripped open, it seemed like the organs hadn’t been chewed on. Was the animal that killed it doing so simply out of malice, killing it for sport?

But the smell wasn’t that of a cat or a dog, so what other animals would do that?

Xiang Kun took a few deeper sniffs, trying to determine the direction where the curious smell went, but after a few steps, he realized he couldn’t pinpoint where it came from.

Could it be that it was too long ago?

Xiang Kun, with his phone in hand, examined the ground around the dead rat while illuminating it with the flashlight, hoping to find some leftover footprints or any other sign. But the phone’s battery was nearly drained and he had found no useful information. Apart from his own footprints, there was nothing—the kind of things that he would have been able to recognize, anyway.

Sitting down next to the rat, he turned off his phone’s flashlight, inhaled deeply, relaxes his muscles and closed his eyes, and then let his senses go, to continue his exploration with smell and hearing.

Xiang Kun wasn’t just training. He was searching.

That smell had triggered his curiosity, and even if he couldn’t find its source, he wished to find a similar scent in these woods, then track it to find out what creature it came from.

Each species has a unique smell, just as each group of species carries distinct features.

The peculiar smell he sniffed was mixed with other odors and was actually quite indistinct.

But at the moment he was going to leave, he detected that smell again, very distinctly, and was attracted to it. And this smell was not in his ‘database’. It was a smell he had never encountered before.

This seemed to trigger an instinctive reaction in him, as if his body was telling him—pay attention to that smell.

Xiang Kun sat on the hill till dawn, only about five meters from the dead rat.

An ordinary person, in the pitch dark of the woods at night, would undoubtedly feel uneasy and anxious, at the very least worried about bugs crawling on them, even if they were brave.

However, even though Xiang Kun had his eyes shut and couldn’t see anything, he was well aware of his surroundings within a dozen meters. He knew there was an earthworm burrowing into the soil, an insect preying, a spider spinning its web, some ants marching forward… And a beetle had landed on his shoulder, so he flicked it away.

Fortunately, mosquitoes were not interested in him. Since his mutation, he had not been bitten anymore.