Chapter 55 - 47: This Rat, I’m Really...

He spent two hours clearing out all the marked trash sites.

Using his thrown nails, Chen Jue had killed a total of 24 rats.

In a single night, he’d earned 2,410 [Hidden Weapon Throwing] Skill Level points, used 30 nails, and achieved a staggering 83% accuracy.

Even though it was his first time hunting rats, his efficiency was already incredibly high.

However, after wiping out a final den of the foodie fiends, the panel gave him a different set of notifications:

——————

[Ding!]

[You have completed a perfect session of nighttime Hidden Weapon combat. The muscle groups and joint tissues in your hands have been effectively trained, and your hands’ instantaneous burst strength has increased.]

[Strength Attribute +0.01]

——————

[Ding!]

[After a long period of searching for targets in the dark, you are slowly growing accustomed to dim, shadowy environments. Your Night Vision Ability has been slightly enhanced, your Auditory Ability has been faintly improved, and your focus is becoming increasingly sharp.]

[Constitution Attribute +0.01]

[Spirit Attribute +0.01]

——————

[Ding!]

[Through long-term observation of rat activity, your understanding of the physical structure and living habits of this small rodent has deepened. When using Hidden Weapons against them again, you will more easily spot their physical weak points.]

[Title Acquired: Rat Hunter]

[Title Effect: You can now more quickly track small rodents, identify their weaknesses, and capture them.]

[Title Description: Poor little rat me... This is just tragic!]

——————

"Another critical hit!"

"Nice!"

Putting away the round-headed nails, Chen Jue glanced at his panel, a little excited.

Practicing his throws at night was definitely hard on the eyes, especially since he was frequently using a life hack to deliberately change the angle of his glasses.

This trick temporarily altered the lens angle to improve his vision correction, but staring at distant objects for too long tired his eyes and could even worsen his nearsightedness.

But the results were outstanding!

Staring at the moving rats for so long not only allowed Chen Jue to gradually adapt to the dark environments of these backstreets and alleys, but it also got his body accustomed to the high-intensity motion of throwing with all his strength.

Most importantly, this was the first time Chen Jue had seen a notification about an increase in his hearing.

’Is it because I’ve been listening to the faint squeaks of the rats so much?’

’The area is so noisy with cars coming and going. It’s really not easy to hear a rat’s squeak,’ Chen Jue thought.

Previously, by using the [Eye Health Exercises] and the sun’s red light, he had stumbled upon a way to train his eyes, and his vision was improving day by day.

Now that he’d triggered an improvement in his Auditory Ability, Chen Jue was growing more and more interested in—and even expectant of—the panel’s notifications.

...

A glance at the time showed it was already 10 PM. Chen Jue drove back to the talent apartment building.

He stored the remaining nails in the trunk of his car, which would be convenient for future nighttime rat-hunting expeditions.

As for the filming equipment and Face Armor he’d bought earlier, Chen Jue planned to leave them in the car as well, so he could take them out to film when he got the chance.

He had to slowly build up his "Brother of Special Skills" account one way or another and create a side income for himself.

He returned to his room, washed up, and went to bed.

He reviewed the day’s gains and recorded the key information from his attribute grinding and the panel’s notifications into an app.

If an outsider or the app’s operator saw this data, they would most likely assume Chen Jue was playing some kind of MUD text-based game and planning his daily in-game routine.

Only Chen Jue himself knew how much he had changed recently thanks to this panel!

’Night Vision Ability... and Auditory Ability...’

After finishing his notes, Chen Jue muttered to himself as he searched for related information online.

Night Vision Ability was classified as a visual ability, and there were no specific methods for improving it online. As for improving eyesight in general, Chen Jue had already mastered the [Eye Health Exercises] and the three-minute red light therapy.

However, when he saw information about night blindness, a condition related to night vision, his eyes lit up.

Currently, there are three known causes of night blindness: temporary, acquired, and Innate.

The root cause of night blindness is related to retinal rod cells lacking the raw materials to synthesize rhodopsin, or to pathologies of the rod cells themselves.

As for how to treat or improve it, the internet listed several methods.

’Eat more vitamin A and beta-carotene?’

’Animal liver, carrots, fish liver oil... they all work...’ Even though Chen Jue didn’t have night blindness, he knew these things could also improve vision, so naturally, he wouldn’t just sit on his hands.

He searched on Taobao and directly ordered a bottle of cod liver oil from the trending list. It wasn’t expensive, just over 160 yuan for an imported bottle. He planned to try supplementing with it.

He just needed to try it for a while and see if the panel gave him any notifications. Then he could probably figure out if this dietary supplement method of improving vision actually worked.

As for how to train an adult’s Auditory Ability, there were no well-developed programs on the market; most were simple exercises for developing auditory sensitivity in newborns.

’Looks like I’ll have to rely on more combat practice, or find an old master who understands Eye Skill and Ear Skill to learn from,’ Chen Jue thought.

He glanced at the time on his phone; it was almost 10:30 PM.

He had to get up early tomorrow to train at sunrise, and on top of that, he was a bit drained from the night’s activities, so Chen Jue turned off his phone and went to sleep early.

However, less than an hour after he had fallen soundly asleep, a few sanitation workers on the night shift at the Binjiang Centralized Garbage Processing Plant were gathered together, puzzled, discussing the strange events of the evening.

"Old Wu, did you find dead rats on your route too?"

"Yeah! My route was haunted tonight. In one night, I found seven or eight dead rats just next to the trash cans, and all of them were killed with nails! It’s so weird!"

"Huh?"

"You guys found rats killed with nails too? I found a few myself!"

Normally, finding dead rats wasn’t a rare occurrence. As people who dealt with food waste year-round, they were long used to seeing the corpses of all sorts of small animals.

Sometimes, they’d open a trash can and find a few stray cats or dogs that had drowned inside; that was a common sight too.

They’d seen it so much they had long since become numb to it.

But rats killed with nails? This was truly a first!

And when the sanitation workers compared notes, they realized they’d found over twenty rats that had all died the same way in a single night. No matter how they thought about it, something felt wrong.

So, they reported the situation directly to the garbage processing plant’s on-duty manager.

The manager, who was going a bit bald from all the late nights, came over. He took one look at the rat corpses lined up in a row, each pierced through by a nail, and stared, completely stunned.

Unlike the corpses of other stray animals, rat carcasses had to be collected and incinerated upon discovery. If not handled properly, it could easily lead to a major disaster like a plague.

’Could someone be intentionally dumping dead rats?’

His mind raced, and he immediately sensed this was a serious matter. He quickly called the Binjiang District Center for Disease Control, asking them to send someone to take the rats back for testing. At the same time, he also called the local police station to file a report.

After all, the plague was no joke. In Huaxia, it was classified as a Class A infectious disease, on par with cholera. Any discovery had to be reported to the epidemic prevention station within a specified time. It was impossible to be too cautious.