The sewer was dark, smelly, and covered in all kinds of moss and moist vegetation. All one could hear was the sound of sewage flowing.
Ji An and Ping An carefully avoided the drainage ditch and walked along the damp paths on both sides.
Even so, from time to time, sewage would slide down from the stone walls or splash up from the sewage channels onto Ji An and the winter bear cub.
Fortunately, before he came into the sewers to hunt for the gray-spotted rats, Ji An had already mentally prepared himself for a long battle in such a filthy environment.
He had also prepared Ping An's mental state in advance.
As such, this was not too unbearable for the two of them.
After walking a few hundred meters along the main sewer, a fork in the road appeared.
The fork diverted the sewage from the main drainage canal.
In addition to the extension of the main sewer, there were two narrow ditches on the left and right.
One had sewage while the other one was sealed by a gate so that the sewage couldn't flow.
Ji An scanned the three roads, then chose the leftmost ditch, which had been sealed off by the gate and had no sewage flowing through it.
After all, the rats needed space to move around.
The other two sewage channels could only accommodate two or three people at most, which was obviously not enough for large-scale rat groups to move.
The leftmost ditch was five to six meters wide and had no sewage flowing in it was undoubtedly very suitable for the activities of the rats.
In that direction, the possibility of encountering a gray-spotted rat was naturally much higher.
Sure enough, he had not gone far in that direction before Ji An saw a gray and black, fat figure flash past.
Ji An and Ping An exchanged a look.
"Ping An (Ji An), you saw it too?" The meaning in their eyes was self-evident.
"Chase!" After staring at each other for less than 0.5 seconds, the man and bear immediately ran after the rat in tacit understanding.
They sped and followed closely behind the black shadow.
Unfortunately, the black shadow was clearly very familiar with the terrain.
After a few moments, it entered a dark hole and disappeared.
The dark hole was on the stone wall of an underground tunnel.
The cut surface of the hole wasn't smooth. Instead, it looked like it was gnawed by a dog, uneven and very rough.
It was obvious that the rats had dug it out with their claws.
The hole was less than a meter in diameter, and it was difficult for Ji An and the bear cub to pass through.
After watching the entrance of the hole for a while, he found that there was no sign of the gray-spotted rat reappearing.
Ji An could only helplessly take Ping An in another direction.
The sewers in the western district had just been cleaned up by the 10th special gorces team and bounty hunters.
The rats suffered heavy casualties.
Even the rats that were lucky enough to escape would try to hide or even escape from the sewers in the west.
While it was safe, the number of gray-spotted rats naturally decreased.
Ji An, who had been prepared for this, did not expect that he would be able to hunt down a single gray-spotted rat in such a short time anyway.
Either way, he had come down this time as a test.
After all, there was no time limit for the bounty.
Moreover, the conditions to complete the bounty were not too harsh.
The Association's reward for clearing the rat group was counted in units of ten gray-spotted rats.
As long as he could hunt ten gray-spotted rats and collect ten fresh poisonous glands, the mission would be considered complete.
Of course, if the number exceeded ten, there would be additional benefits.
When the number of gray-spotted rats cleared exceeded this number, there would be an additional bounty reward for each additional rat.
Ji An took Ping An around the sewers.
However, every time they walked a certain distance, he would always take out the sewer map of the town that he had prepared beforehand and compare his position with it.
Of course, the map here was not the one when the sewer system was first built.
Instead, it was the latest blueprint of the sewers that the garrison, beastmaster army, and bounty hunters had worked together to draw while hunting the rats in the sewers.
Due to the existence of the rat group, the original structure of the sewer in Encircle Town had long been changed, completely turning into a huge rat nest with complicated terrain.
This labyrinth-like rat's nest was like a maze. If one didn't have a special map, one would most likely get lost here unless they had a familiar with special tracking skills.
Just like that, Ji An and the winter bear cub safely wandered in the sewers for more than half an hour.
However, other than the black shadow of the gray-spotted rat that flashed past them at the beginning, they did not encounter any other gray-spotted rats.
They didn't even see a ghost or a shadow.
The sewers had just been cleaned up, so there were not many bounty hunters visiting recently.
"It seems that I can't continue searching like this," Ji An felt a little helpless.
The situation where he couldn't find his target even after such a long time was almost the complete opposite of what he had expected.
Ji An didn't want to waste too much time here.
For him, completing the mission, gaining actual combat experience, and safely mastering skills through actual combat training were all secondary. The most important thing to ensure was that the winter bear cub could get at least 14 hours of quality sleep a day.
Ping An's mastery of Hibernation was already ridiculously high, and that was its foundation for becoming stronger.
At the very least, before it grew to the limits of its race, he must not neglect the essentials and pursue the trivialities.
Helpless, Ji An could only decide to let the winter bear cub suffer.
"Ping An, don't wear the mask for now. Use your nose to see if you can smell the stench from the rat you just met," Ji An said to Ping An.
As he spoke, he set an example and took off the mask on his face, "It's okay, Ping An. I'll do the same."
Even though Ping An was a little reluctant, seeing that Ji An had already taken off his mask, it could only remove the mask that was very small on its face.
"Roar!" The world was not easy, the bear sighed.
Then, with a pained expression, it took a deep breath of the surrounding stench.
Even though the winter bear race's sense of smell was not as good as the wind-chasing dog's, it was still far stronger than that of ordinary hunting dogs.
It was easy for it to distinguish the different smells in the air.
Soon, Ping An made a discovery.
It turned its head to Ji An and growled, indicating that it had discovered something.
Then, it twisted its round body and ran in a certain direction.
In the sewers, which were connected in all directions and had all sorts of complicated routes, Ping An and Ji An finally found their target after making quite a few turns.
This was also a sewage drain that did not have any sewage flowing in it.
A rather slender rat was gnawing on something there.
As gluttonous as it was, it didn't notice the uninvited guests, Ji An and Ping An, who were slowly approaching it.
Ji An reached out to stop Ping An from rushing over.
At the same time, he crept closer to the rat with Ping An.
When they were about twenty to thirty meters away, Ji An said to Ping An, "Ping An, Cold Air!"
After Ji An's training over the past few days, Ping An's Cold Air had expanded from a maximum range of 20 meters to 30 meters.
However, the further the range, the weaker the power of the Cold Air.
Still, even at a distance of 30 meters, Cold Air was more than enough to deal with a gray-spotted rat that was only an evolved creature.
The invisible Cold Air slowly expanded.
Like a thin mist, it appeared behind the gray-spotted rat.
By the time the gray-spotted rat realized that something was wrong, its body was covered in a thin layer of frost in the blink of an eye.
Even though the cold air had not made it completely lose its ability to move, its speed had been slowed to the extreme.
By the time the gray-spotted rat decided to give up on the half-eaten rotten body of the unknown creature in front of it and escape, the winter bear cub had already pounced on it.
Bang!
The Ice-breaking Palm that contained Monstrous Strength smacked the head of the gray-spotted rat, whose speed had been greatly reduced.
With that, the gray-spotted rat's head exploded like a ripe watermelon.
As for the blood that spurted out from the gray-spotted rat's brain, the moment it spurted out, it was frozen by the ice attribute energy contained in the Ice-breaking Palm, as well as Cold Air.
The pitiful grey-spotted rat was naturally dead.
"We've won the first battle," Ji An walked over slowly with a smile on his face.