Chapter Fourteen: Cocktails

That night, Lin Lei did not continue hunting ghouls. With his current combat strength, how many could he kill even if he ran about all night? Besides, now that the Investigation Bureau was already paying attention to the matter, if he wanted a greater harvest, he needed to strike at the ghouls’ lair as soon as possible.

That night, Lin Lei went home and enjoyed a well-deserved rest. The next morning, he spent several hours gathering various raw materials and finally succeeded in crafting his own “weapon.”

After eating his fill at a restaurant near home, Lin Lei set out once more, carrying a heavy backpack. It was mid-afternoon. Ghouls never hunted during the day, so patrols in the area were less frequent. Yet there were more pedestrians about, and it took Lin Lei quite some effort to slip into the sewers without drawing attention.

He headed straight for the location of the ghouls’ nest, which he'd scoped out the day before. Since it was daylight, all the ghouls were resting in their nest, and Lin Lei encountered none outside. This time, he chose a higher pipe near the nest, climbing into it. It was four or five meters above the ground—too high for any ghoul to use as a passage in or out.

He quickly reached the end of the pipe and peered downward. The ghouls were still clustered around the “totem pole,” wailing softly. Lin Lei licked his lips, carefully opened his backpack, and took out several glass bottles, lining them up before him. The bottles contained a colorless, transparent liquid, each stoppered with a cloth rag. These were the fruits of his day’s labor.

In his previous life, these were called Molotov cocktails, also known as firebombs. The bottles did not contain wine, but a blend of fuels. A rag served as the wick. Simple to make, yet devastatingly effective.

Laying out the firebombs, Lin Lei once more peered into the nest below. Because it was daytime, most of the ghouls were resting inside, and their numbers far exceeded what he'd seen the day before—at least double.

There had to be two or three hundred of them. Not all were asleep; many, perhaps serving as sentinels, stood alert in the surrounding area. Among the crowd, a few juvenile ghouls, as playful as puppies, crawled about their elders, emitting low whimpers.

Lin Lei licked his lips, then decisively produced his lighter and swiftly lit each firebomb. At the fastest speed he could manage, he hurled them all down into the densest part of the ghoul horde.

With a crash, the first bomb shattered, and a wave of fire swept across the most crowded section. In an instant, flames soared up, accompanied by a chorus of agonized wails.

Lin Lei's gaze remained cold and unflinching. He kept going until every one of his dozens of firebombs had been thrown, and only then did he stop. With each bomb, the blaze grew fiercer and more intense.

The ghouls descended into chaos. A few noticed the direction from which the bombs were thrown, but Lin Lei was so high above them that none could reach him. Though ghouls were monstrous, they still possessed mortal flesh. Their defenses were formidable, but no match for fire. Nearly half the ghouls here were females or juveniles, wholly unprepared to face the flames.

The weakest and youngest shrieked as they were incinerated, their bodies turning to charred husks in the blaze. The hardier survivors, or those who had evaded the center of the bombardment, fled in panic along every pipe leading out of the nest.

In the blink of an eye, droves of ghouls rushed toward every possible escape route. As the fuel burned away, the flames soon began to die down.

In truth, not many ghouls had perished in the fire—perhaps only thirty or forty, including the juveniles—a small fraction compared to the nest’s two hundred-plus inhabitants. Yet Lin Lei’s eyes gleamed with anticipation. The chaos he had unleashed was far more valuable than the number of kills.

Because of the turmoil, nearly all the ghouls had fled through the surrounding pipes, leaving only a few dozen, battered and broken, remaining in the nest. At this moment, only three or four dozen survived, and each was in a pitiful state. Many still burned with stubborn, smoldering flames.

Their cries echoed ceaselessly. Lin Lei gazed down at them, licked his lips, and drew his newly purchased, freshly sharpened Tang sword.

He would not have stood a chance against so many ghouls in open combat. But now, these ghouls were in disarray, and the charred corpses scattered across the floor could serve as sustenance for his “Gluttony.”

This was the opportunity Lin Lei had painstakingly created.

He fixed his eyes on one ghoul below, and leaped down, blade at the ready!

With a single, cleaving strike, he sliced halfway through his target’s head and immediately invoked “Gluttony” to devour it. Then, he charged at the nearest ghoul, sword raised, not forgetting to consume each roasted, lifeless ghoul he passed.

Very soon, he had accumulated enough energy to activate “Plunder” once more. But he did not rush—instead, he licked his lips and looked at the remaining ghouls charging toward him with desperate howls.

His fighting style was brutal, trading wounds for lives. In the blink of an eye, he slew two more ghouls, though his own body was marked with fresh wounds. One ghoul’s claws raked his waist so deeply that his entrails nearly spilled out. The remaining ghouls converged on him in a frenzy; nearly all who survived the fire now surged toward him.

He could easily kill a single ghoul, but beset by many, even he could be grievously injured. His flesh was tougher than that of ordinary ghouls, but not enough to ignore their claws.

For anyone else, this would have been certain death. But for Lin Lei, things were different. Everything was unfolding just as he had foreseen.

His eyes gleamed crimson. He invoked Gluttony once more, and the body of a ghoul at his feet vanished in an instant. This time, he called upon the power of “Plunder.”

The black tattoo on his chest, hard-won, faded noticeably, and a surge of warmth flooded through his body.