Chapter Six: The Hunt

Qi Fangyan lifted her hand to tidy the stray hairs on her forehead, and though she looked a bit weary, a smile still lit up her face.
“Leilei, it’s been a while since you reached out to me first. Is there something you need?”
Because of the original host’s instincts, Lin Lei felt a faint warmth rise in his heart. “Well, I’ve run out of seasonings at home…”
Qi Fangyan answered gently, “I just ordered some takeout. Would you like to join me?”
Lin Lei grinned and shook his head.
“No need. Sister Yan, if you could just lend me some seasonings, that would be more than enough…”
“Wait right here.” Qi Fangyan didn’t insist, but turned and left.
Two minutes later, Lin Lei returned home with an armful of bottles and jars.
He quickly made himself some pan-fried meat, ate his fill, and lay down to rest.
As night fell and the red moon gradually climbed the sky, Lin Lei sat up, glanced at the time, then picked up the bags he had prepared earlier and left the house.
…
According to Li Xueshu’s research,
Ghouls usually haunt graveyards or city underground tunnels.
Lin Lei had already searched the internet for the locations of several large public cemeteries nearby, but most were far out on the city’s edge, remote and distant.
There was no public cemetery near his home.
“Ghouls shun the light. It’s unlikely they’d travel so far just to ambush me…” he mused, shifting his focus to the underground tunnels nearby.
Traffic and municipal tunnels could be ruled out—if ghouls nested where people often passed, they’d be discovered quickly.
The sewers became his primary choice.
If nothing came of it, he would consider venturing farther to suburban graveyards or abandoned mining tunnels.
Lin Lei arrived at a secluded block near his home, chose a sewer, pried open the manhole cover, and slipped inside.
Despite their name, ghouls could eat fresher food and actually enjoyed using it to improve their meals—
Lin Lei took out the large, defrosted chunk of bloody meat he had prepared, sealed in a bag.
It had probably sat too long and now reeked horribly.
Even in the sewer, with its thick miasma of competing odors, the stench of this meat was overpowering.
But Lin Lei believed that with their sensitive noses, ghouls could sniff out this “delicacy” amidst all the other smells.
In fact, if he were just an ordinary Source Adept, wandering about in ghoul territory at midnight, his source energy fluctuations might well draw a ghoul’s attack.

But after “plundering” one ghoul, he now carried the aura of their kind—his own source energy would only be interpreted as that of a fellow ghoul.
Of course, Lin Lei was prepared for the possibility of coming up empty-handed for a while.
The upper city district where he lived had a complex web of underground tunnels, offering plenty of hiding places for these creatures.
Moreover, with their considerable intelligence, it was impossible to trap ghouls like rats with ordinary mousetraps or similar devices…
…
Waiting in the foul stench of the sewer was hardly pleasant, but Lin Lei had one virtue: endurance.
Walking through the darkness, a sudden, loud ringtone broke the silence.
“I can’t believe I forgot to mute my phone.”
He winced, realizing his mind had been so rattled by violent emotions that he’d missed this small but crucial detail…
If his phone rang at the critical moment when he encountered a ghoul, it could bring real trouble!
He checked the screen, saw the name “Liu Ping,” frowned, then decisively hung up and switched the phone to silent.
Since he was no longer the old Lin Lei, there was no need to deal with that kind of scum anymore…
…
Time crept by.
Lin Lei spent most of the night wandering the sewers, searching in vain and nearly getting lost in the labyrinthine waterworks.
He didn’t find any ghouls, but lost count of the rats and cockroaches he ended up dispatching along the way.
When his patience was nearly exhausted and he was about to find the nearest manhole cover to climb out and breathe some fresh air, he suddenly stopped and listened intently.
From a bend in the dark, deep sewer—amid the scurrying of rats—came faint, urgent sounds of weeping.
“That’s not a cat,” he thought after listening for a moment.
Li Xueshu’s notes had clearly described it: the “speech” of a ghoul sounded much like frantic sobbing.
His eyes flashed, and he crept toward the source of the sound.
The deeper Lin Lei moved into the darkness, the closer the urgent weeping seemed to approach him.
He could even sense a trace of eager excitement in the cries.
Soon, he saw a pair of blood-red eyes shining in the dark.
And then—
A dozen meters ahead, a creature appeared: dog-headed, hunched, with black skin.

After consuming a ghoul, Lin Lei had gained a measure of night vision himself.
So he saw it clearly enough.
“A ghoul, just as I thought!”
His eyes lit up as he scanned behind the creature, confirming there were no others nearby. His spirits lifted.
“My luck’s not bad—my very first hunt, and I run into a solitary ghoul…”
Ghouls were social by nature. While they didn’t always hunt in great packs, encountering two or three together was hardly rare.
The moment he saw the ghoul, Lin Lei’s suspicions were confirmed—
There was definitely a ghoul nest somewhere around here!
The creature bared its fangs and crept toward him, eyes fixed greedily on the reeking meat in his other hand.
With a flick, Lin Lei tossed the putrid bait to the ground, gripped his blade in both hands, and charged forward.
As he ran, his eyes turned crimson and a surge of power exploded through him!
Sensing a kin’s aura from Lin Lei, the ghoul hesitated, a flash of human-like uncertainty in its eyes.
“Die!”
Lin Lei, unleashing all his strength, seized the moment of hesitation and pressed the attack.
The saber strike he’d practiced countless times in his mind cleaved directly for the ghoul’s neck with the momentum of his furious charge!
It was a precise, powerful blow.
The keen, well-honed blade sliced cleanly through the ghoul’s rubbery hide and tough bones.
A dog’s head flew from its shoulders, a fountain of blood jetting from the stump as the headless body crashed heavily to the ground.
Lin Lei tumbled to a stop, rose to his feet, and a gleam of excitement flashed in his eyes.