Feng Yang took his eyes off the scene and turned a deaf ear to the wails of the wounded. He supported Helan Sheng's body with his arms, and led a wounded soldier into the shadows of an alley, where he rested for a while, leaning the wounded man against a low wall covered with stucco, while he himself sat on the ground and simply healed his wounds.

Han Cheng's troops will soon come to look for them, the survivors, and Feng Yang, who is already unable to protect himself, can only pray that Xue Ju, who has also successfully broken through, will be safe at this moment. In this case, there is only one way to thwart these professional trackers. Feng Yang sat on his knees, dusting off the snow, he knew that there were several drainage passages in every street in Nanyu, and he was lucky to find one on his first attempt.

Feng Yang lifted the stone cover on the sewer, and at this moment, the sound of Han Cheng's team searching not far away was getting closer and closer to them, so Feng Yang hurriedly put He Lansheng and the others into the stinking gutter, and after a while, Feng Yang also followed, and pulled the lid back into place.

"Captain! Was there any movement there? ”

After hearing the words of the team members, the team leader said impatiently, "Is there one? I didn't hear it. ”

The team member wanted to continue to insist on his opinion, but when he saw the captain's vicious eyes, he held back his words, "Obviously, there is a ......."

.......

Yangning.

"We live in an age of science and reason, not stupid superstition!"

The old pedant made this statement. He was a wrinkled old man, bald and unconvincingly obscured by a horsehair wig, and a smudge on the buttons of his wide coat. He put on a pretentious look, as if one was so sure of his authority that he had no time to do anything that did not correspond to the world described in his books and documents.

Mo Jie discovered this depressing fact. The old scholar was the third scholar he succeeded in luring to Qifenglou, and the third scholar to publicly mock the story of the rat catcher. He glanced at Hu Junling in despair, but she just shook her head and disappeared into the kitchen. If Tang Lian hadn't been busy teaching those three rats how to sit up and beg, he might have been more sympathetic.

The bearded shopkeeper had a big smile on his face, and happily filled the old pedant with wine at every opportunity. Every time he saw the shopkeeper grab the old pedant's cup, Mo Jie would frown. As an old man, the old pedant drank an astonishing amount of alcohol, especially when Mo Jie paid, as if a noble title was not enough to stop some people from gulping down another person's beer.

"What you say is simply impossible!" The old pedant said as he wiped the foam from his beard with the back of his hand. "This is an enlightened time! We now know that spontaneous generation is regular. Salamanders are produced by fire, flies are produced from unburied carcasses, but higher forms, such as cows and pigs, must be created in a proper manner.

We know that it is the impression of the mother that causes the deformity of the offspring, not the mother's diet or habits, as in the case of a simple herbal wife. We know that a phoenix is hatched from the egg of a rooster in the light of Maurice Lieb, and that it is not the result of a gathering of snakes and hens, as our less educated ancestors made us believe. ”

Mo Xing felt the blood vessels on his forehead beating violently. The scholar went on and on for more than an hour, on topics that he neither understood nor wanted to talk about. "You're right, honorable scholar, but about that rat......"

"Such a creature is impossible," said the old pedant, knocking on the wooden counter for emphasis. The bearded shopkeeper decided to take the incident as a request for refilling. "A rat as big as you describe would be crushed to death by its own weight! It can't even move, let alone rush at an adult and bite his throat!"

"I've been catching rats all my life." Mo Jie replied with a roar. He held out his hand so that the rigid old pedant could see the scars on his body. "I know what a rat bite looks like."

The old pedant smiled and shook his head. "I know you think you know what you're seeing," he explained, his voice carrying the condescending tolerance that parents have when educating their children. "Still, I'm afraid you don't know how to make that judgment. Isn't it more likely that those who maintain law and order are right? Someone slit his throat, and the rest is your imagination. You're so used to watching the violence of pests that you unconsciously think that a similar creature is responsible for the cobbler's murder. ”

The old man took a big breath, apparently a little short of breath from the long list of words just now, and then saw the old scholar get up from his chair. "I admit that the mob impulsively blamed the plague victims, but I can guarantee that it was the human criminals who did it, and that the death of the cobbler was a murder, not a monster."

The old pedant chuckled under his breath and staggered away. Watching the pompous old man leave, Mo Jie felt his stomach churning. The scholars triumphantly dismissed what he had seen, and he had to entertain them, which cost the ratcatcher more than half of his twelve taels of silver, and it would take him weeks to recoup the loss.

The bearded shopkeeper reached out to clean the scholar's glass, and squinted as he raised it, "Sir," he said, turning to Mo Jie and handing him the glass.

"Drink it yourself," Mo Jie said, clenching his fists in frustration. The bearded shopkeeper shrugged in bewilderment, and drank down the old pedant's remaining wine.

"They're idiots," Mo Jie growled. "Blind idiots, they don't believe anything except in the books of their sages! They won't believe this monster is real unless it climbs up and bites them—"

"Then why bother with them all the time?" Hu Junling asked, her cheeks flushed and her lips trembling with anger. She knew as well as Mo Jie how much he had bet on these scholars. It's one thing to lose money, but she knows that losing hope is something the ratcatcher can't afford. "The Rat Cat Trap isn't the only one trying to buy this beast."

Mo Jie stood there, glaring at Hu Junling, all the pain from his shattered dreams welling up on the tip of his tongue. "Who else is going to buy this? That rat trafficker? Three hundred dollars and ten?"

Fox Junling also glared at the rat catcher, and her anger was rising. It's not just Mo Jie who relies on the monster's windfall. Despite her poor judgment, she cared about him. His failure is her failure. She wouldn't allow that to happen.

"Why don't you sell him those rats?" She asked, pointing to the bearded shopkeeper behind the bar. The bearded tavern keeper took a few steps back, a look of horror on his face.

"You two can argue as much as you want, but don't pull me in,"

Hu Junling would not let her employer make such an elegant concession. "You always say you want something new to attract more business," Hu Junling said to him reproachfully. "What could be more perfect? A real monster that makes people come in and stunned!"

The bearded man rolled his eyes, "I'm talking about dancing girls, not giant pests." Who likes to stare at a big mouse on the fireplace to eat?"

"I thought our idea was to sell drinks," Mo Jie retorted, feeling fond of Hu Junling's idea. "The thought of that giant rat makes me want a drink or two to calm my nerves."

The tavernkeeper stepped forward, resting his elbows on the counter and scratching his beard with one hand. "It makes sense," he admitted. "Seeing something like this makes a person want to have a drink. A glimmer of blindness flashed in his eyes, and then he took a few steps back, turning his gaze from Mo Jie to Hu Junling, and back again. "I didn't make any commitments, understand? But if Mo Energy saves this monster, I'll make it into a specimen and stand on the bar. If it brings in any business, I'll make a profit. ”

"Five-five," Mo Jie objected. "Remember, I'm the one who actually went down and got something."

The bearded man spat in the palm of his hand. "Okay!" He shouted, then extended his hand to the rat catcher. Mo Jie spat on his hand, shook the tavernkeeper's hand, and completed the transaction in the ancient Yangning way. And Hu Junling had already returned to the kitchen, leaving the two partners to discuss the details of the agreement.

"Teacher," Tang Lian's calm voice interrupted everyone's discussion. The ratcatcher turned and saw his apprentice sitting by the fire. He managed to get all three beagles to stand on their hind legs, waving their front paws at him like street beggars. Mo Jie was annoyed by his interruption, especially since Tang Lian seemed to want to show off a trick that even the dumbest mongrel could learn.

However, Tang Lian interrupted him for another reason. He pointed to the begging hound and said something, and for a moment Mo Jie's heart seemed to be tightly grasped by a pair of cold hands.

"If we're going to hunt down that monster," said Tang Lian, "don't we need a bigger dog?"