Lord of the Myriad Worlds

Chapter 198: The Choice to Stay or Go

"Rumble—"

The thunderous crash of the collapse gradually faded, and the center of the ruined town grew quiet again. From start to finish, Li Wei had never actually seen the so-called Four-Star Mutant Rat King. It was clearly a powerful mutated creature — enormous in size, yet still possessing the instincts of a rat.

For all its power, it was also deeply timid. If Li Guilin, Li Jiao, and Li Yue hadn't hunted so many of its descendants today, and hadn't pushed all the way into the center of the town to dig around, the Mutant Rat King probably wouldn't have attacked at all.

And so Li Guilin and Li Jiao — father and son — had died just like that.

Li Yue had been on her way back to the temporary camp carrying a load of dead mutated rats at the exact right moment, which was the only reason she'd escaped. Pure luck.

After that, Li Wei didn't dare move a muscle. He waited outside the town for a full half hour, making absolutely certain the Mutant Rat King wasn't going to emerge, before he crept back to the temporary camp.

There, Liang Yuzhi and Li Yue — both white as sheets — looked at him as though he were their savior. They were practically ready to throw their arms around him and cry.

In the past, neither of them had been strangers to the Chaotic Killing Battlefield. They were both genuine Three-Star Lords — who among them hadn't completed five or more conscription missions? Add in all the Title Tasks and gold-farming missions, and they'd seen plenty. By any measure, they were seasoned veterans.

And yet this Pioneering Mission was throwing the rulebook straight out the window.

A Four-Star Rat King. An actual boss. They'd been running around making all that noise, and the boss hadn't budged — until some specific condition was met, and then it ambushed them out of nowhere."Little Wei, Little Wei, what do we do now? Your Second Uncle, your older cousin — wah..."

Liang Yuzhi choked back tears, raw emotion breaking through. She was genuinely terrified.

"Big brother, is it not safe here anymore? Should we get out while it's still light?" Li Yue's face was pale with fright. She'd nearly been scared to death.

"Don't panic. Don't cry. Second Aunt, Little Sister — it's not as bad as it seems. We can't go hunting mutated rats anymore; that was a trap. Tonight we stay here. You two rest — I'll go take a look downstairs."

Li Wei kept his voice low and reassuring. It was already past five in the afternoon, early spring, with the sun about to set. Whatever dangers lurked in this unfamiliar night, the only option was to stay put for now and figure things out in the morning.

Whatever good it did, his words managed to calm the two women for the time being. Li Wei took advantage of the remaining daylight to climb from the fourth floor down to the third, then checked the passages on the first and second floors.

Not bad. The ground floor was still wide open in all directions, but the staircase leading to the second floor had been completely blocked with concrete chunks — sealed tight, with a certain structural elegance to it.

What a shame about Li Jiao the craftsman.

The staircase from the second floor to the third was similarly blocked. Short of the Mutant Rat King transforming into a tank, it shouldn't be able to break through this building.

Li Wei had examined everything carefully and was fairly confident: the massive hole in the third floor hadn't been made by the Mutant Rat King. Something the size of a large truck would have been needed to punch through like that.

As for the Rat King's actual size — Li Wei stared at the dark pit at the center of town. The diameter looked to be about ten meters, but that was the result of the collapse, not the creature itself.

After all, Li Guilin and Li Jiao had died from an ambush underground.

Li Wei used the remaining daylight to check the third, fourth, and fifth floors and the rooftop as well. Nothing concerning for now.

The rooftop was also a decent size — roughly a sixth of a hectare. The waterproofing layer and the perimeter safety walls were mostly intact.

So — should he plant crops up here?

The thought flashed through his mind. He couldn't think of anywhere else in this town that offered a structurally sound, mostly reinforced-concrete shelter like this one.

Yes, the Mutant Rat King at the center of town was a serious threat. But Li Wei was fairly confident it wouldn't go berserk unless the magical radiation surged — something like a blood moon rising. And after six months, he refused to believe they still couldn't kill it.

But farming couldn't wait. This was the right season for planting, and if they missed it, it would affect the entire year's food supply.

The problem was: if they cleared farmland outside the town, the mutated rats would destroy it. Kill the rats, and you'd risk drawing the Mutant Rat King. Don't kill the rats, and the crops would be eaten alive.

With that thought, Li Wei stopped hesitating. He wasn't leaving. He was going to farm on the building's rooftop.

But that meant solving three problems.

First: how to get enough soil up there.

Second: irrigation. Were they supposed to rely entirely on rain?

Third: the building's load-bearing capacity. In practice, a sixth of a hectare could only support about a twentieth of a hectare of actual planting. And wheat had a very extensive root system — it needed at least thirty to forty centimeters of soil depth. That was almost laughable.

If he followed traditional planting methods, the rooftop could realistically only support about a thirtieth of a hectare of crops. Even with plentiful rain, the yield would be around seventy-five kilograms.

That didn't seem workable at all.

He was still sitting on the rooftop, turning the problem over in his mind, when Li Yue crept up like a thief, the lingering shock of a near-death experience still buried in her eyes.

"Big brother, are you hungry? I've got some food."

She handed Li Wei two white bread rolls and a bottle of water. Wait — just giving them to him?

Li Wei was mildly surprised, but kept it off his face. He put on the expression of two siblings sharing hardship together, forced a smile, and handed one of the rolls back to Li Yue.

"I'm not that hungry yet. Let's eat together."

"Okay."

Li Yue nodded obediently and sat down beside him, like a frightened little kitten... Oh, please. She was playing this game? He wasn't a newcomer — this routine wouldn't work on him.

Li Wei kept the thought to himself. This was the standard playbook for building up closeness and goodwill between family members in the storyline. He'd already seen it from Hathaway. Once you knew what it was, it had no effect.

So he had no objection to letting her buy him a bread roll.

Honestly, given the family's current situation, they'd probably be eating dried rat jerky before long. He could stomach it, but he really didn't want to.

He quietly finished one bread roll, shared a bottle of water, and ended up about twenty percent full. Enough.

Worth noting: the family already had a large supply of dried rat jerky. Any further food donations from Li Yue would be diminishing returns.

"Big brother, I actually think this building is pretty good. I caught a glimpse of that Mutant Rat King today — it's about the size of a cow. As long as we keep the first and second floors sealed, it can't get up here. And I doubt it could shake the foundation of a building like this."

Li Yue suddenly spoke up in a low voice. Hm. She was calmer than she'd seemed.

"Yeah. Little Sister, you're thinking more clearly than before. Good. I was thinking the same thing."

Li Wei smiled slightly and casually ruffled her hair. Building goodwill — he could play that game too.

"Big brother!"

Li Yue gave him a mock glare, then immediately fell into a long silence. She was probably weighing whether to keep up the devoted-sibling act. After all, mutually building goodwill was the most tedious thing imaginable — because violations of the storyline usually only happened when one side was doing it unilaterally. If both sides were at roughly the same goodwill level, the negatives cancelled out.

Several minutes passed. A cool night breeze drifted in. Li Wei was just about to pull off his lice-ridden shirt to drape over her shoulders when Li Yue finally yawned.

"Big brother, why don't you sleep first? I'll take the first half of the night watch."

"No need. Little Sister, you and Second Aunt have been working hard all day. I was practically idle. You two sleep — don't worry about me. Go on, don't be stubborn!"

Li Wei delivered his lines with exaggerated indulgence. In the darkness, he could just make out the faint expression of genuine discomfort on Li Yue's face. In the end, she could only manage a quiet "mm" before fleeing.

Ha.

But before he could even turn around, Second Aunt Liang Yuzhi had silently climbed up onto the rooftop. What was this — trying to exploit a loophole?

Liang Yuzhi quickly produced what looked like a stack of tarpaulins.

"Little Wei, come help me with this. These are tarps for catching rainwater and dew. We're running low on water — we need to do something about it. Oh, and did you see any rivers near the town today?"

"No." Li Wei shook his head, but inwardly he was impressed. Second Aunt had come well prepared — he hadn't even thought about the water problem, because he'd known someone else would. Though was that really fair of him?

He helped Liang Yuzhi set up the large dew-collection device, and a notification appeared naturally.

[Family member Liang Yuzhi has donated a one-star quality Dew Filter Collector to the family. Based on the family's current environment and situation, her donation has received a 50% bonus. She receives 15 Family Contribution points. Current total: 57 points.]

Impressive. And Li Yue's Family Contribution had already reached 71 points — and this was only the first day of the month. Genuinely exciting.

"Little Wei, I think we should stay here. As long as we can figure out a way to kill that Mutant Rat King eventually, this town will make an excellent camp. We could even farm on the rooftop — cleaned up properly, there's got to be a sixth of a hectare up here. More than enough to feed our family."

Well, great minds think alike.

"Second Aunt, I was thinking the same thing. But we can't plant a full sixth of a hectare — maybe a twentieth at most. Any more than that and we'd collapse the roof."

Li Wei said it quickly. Liang Yuzhi clearly hadn't considered this, and paused.

"That's not enough, is it? Ah, I'm getting old — my thinking just can't keep up with you young people. So Little Wei, what do you think we should do? That big rat outside is no joke. Little Yue said it was about the size of a cow. Your uncle, your cousin — two perfectly healthy grown men, and once they were buried and couldn't move, it bit their heads clean off. Wah... my poor boy, he never even got married. What a cruel fate..."

Liang Yuzhi broke down crying again, suppressing her sobs — and it fit perfectly within the logic of the storyline.