Chapter 10: Can

“Ying ying ying——”

In the hills, a fox’s loud whimpering echoed; the mountain mice that had been breeding in the tea fields scattered in panic, fleeing into their burrows.

“Xia Dong, you scoundrel—watch as I, An, dig up your ancestors!”

Foxes are among nature’s top diggers; a fox who cannot build an underground villa loses all mating rights within the clan.

As a fox, An Sheng naturally inherited the digging talent, but he found it dirty and generally avoided digging burrows.

But given the current complex situation, An Sheng had no choice but to activate his hidden talent.

“Die—”

An Sheng sniffed the scent left by the mountain mice as they tunneled, frantically scratching the hillside with his front paws, carving out a passage wide enough for him to slip into their burrows.

Though small in stature, An Sheng was young and strong, digging at incredible speed; in moments, he vanished into the tea fields.

But barely ten minutes after entering the burrow, he shot back out.

“Puke—”

An Sheng stood upright, his face pale and green, clutching a tea tree as he vomited up his recent snack.

A stench—unimaginably foul—drifted from the freshly dug burrow.

That thick, reeking odor was like a sock coated in patina, worn in sneakers on a summer day, then soaked by a downpour—solidified into a blinding, eye-watering stink.

The rotting stench nearly knocked An Sheng out cold; it was even worse than the village pond’s latrine!

If someone told him a corpse was buried beneath the downhill tea fields, he’d believe it.

After catching his breath,

he cautiously approached the burrow’s mouth, sniffed again, confirmed the putrid and fishy stench had dissipated, then re-entered the tunnel, following the mountain mice’s escape route.

More than a meter underground, An Sheng could still see the tea tree roots.

But the roots were covered in uneven tooth marks; some water-seeking roots had been completely gnawed away by the mountain mice.

Two meters

Three meters

Near four meters underground, An Sheng’s paw struck a rock of extreme hardness.

“Ssshh—”

Intense pain shot through him, forcing him to gasp.

In the pitch-black burrow, the fox’s night vision was useless; An Sheng had relied entirely on smell and hearing to track his target.

“I hit a rock? That’s not right.”

An Sheng shook his paw, eyeing the unyielding stone with suspicion, tapping it with his nose as he’d followed the scent of mice and rot.

He could feel the mice and the rotting stench lay just behind this rock.

As he pondered, An Sheng dug sideways, pawing at the underground stone—then his paw pads brushed against clean, man-made grooves.

“This isn’t rock—it’s brick!”

Recognizing the object’s shape, An Sheng flew into a rage; the pain from his paw strike was no less than kicking his little toe into solid wood furniture.

If he’d hit a natural rock, he’d have cursed his bad luck—but here, underground, the evidence of human excavation was clear.

His injured paw wasn’t the result of nature—it was sabotage.

“Hah—”

An Sheng held his breath, channeling all his strength into his front paw pads, then slammed them against the “rock.”

“Crack crack crack—”

Amid a chorus of crumbling brick, the stone he’d struck shattered and fell, clattering against the underground tiles with a hollow echo.

An Sheng spread his legs, bracing himself against the tunnel walls, suspended midair as debris tumbled away.

“.”

An Sheng fell silent for a moment, muttering to himself: “This is clearly a grand tomb! Did I just dig my way into a women’s prison for Yu Xueqing? The law doesn’t govern foxes—but it does govern guardians.”

“Before heading home, I need to consult Lin Ying’s legal department about liability.”

An Sheng’s voice sounded timid, but if there’d been light in the tunnel, you’d have seen his dark, glossy fox eyes glowing brightly.

His gaze burned with anticipation for a grand spectacle—and the gleeful curiosity of a gossipmonger.

An Sheng spun around, exited the tunnel, returned to the tea fields, kicked the king cobra in the snake-skin sack—still struggling to escape—then

hurried down the hill, borrowed a headlamp from a local tea farmer.

An Sheng strapped on the headlamp, crawled back down the tunnel into the tomb.

But as the light illuminated the “ancient tomb,”

all the gossiping gleam vanished from An Sheng’s face; his fox eyes nearly popped from their sockets.

“Holy shit—a wheeled Maxim heavy machine gun!”

Peering down from a hole in the ceiling, An Sheng scanned the chamber and saw three wheeled Maxim heavy machine guns placed inside, along with several artillery pieces he couldn’t name, also on wheels.

Along the chamber walls stood stacks of mildewed wooden crates.

Through the broken lids, An Sheng glimpsed rusted copper bullets inside.

Now he understood the source of the stench: this hidden tomb beneath the tea fields was an ancient arms depot.

It held heavy machine guns, artillery, ammunition, unknown drugs, and some very old canned goods.

The ancient cans, worn by time, had corroded; their meat contents had spilled across the floor, and the mountain mice he’d seen earlier had all gathered here, warily watching their surroundings.

“Damn! I haven’t even had caviar, but the rats already got potato stewed beef!”

Whether the bullet crates or the corroded cans, all bore foreign script—he knew they were imported goods.

But the moment An Sheng saw them, he realized: every different set of English letters spelled the same phrase:

【Upward Hill Arms Depot Storage Room: All goods herein belong to An Sheng.】

Wearing the headlamp, An Sheng leapt into the storage room, facing the swarm of mountain mice.

“So the source of the rodent plague is these cans.”

“The cans corroded and leaked, drawing every mountain mouse in the hill here—creating a full-blown infestation.”

An Sheng swatted at the aggressive mice trying to bite him, circling the arms depot.

But he found no paper documents or records about this place; everything stored here was wartime supplies.

He even discovered a dozen broken aluminum boxes of penicillin.

Clearly, the aggressive, greedy mountain mice had caused massive damage.

“Now that I know the source of the plague, let’s scatter them!”

An Sheng wore a strange expression, retraced his path back to the tea fields, untied the snake-skin sack, and tossed the king cobra straight into the mice’s nest.

Then he scoured the hills, filled another sack with spicy strips, and hurled them in too.

“Now… those little rodents won’t dare stay.”

An Sheng filled in the hole he’d dug, grabbed several fat mountain mice, stuffed them into the sack, and dragged the full sack toward Zhangxizhen.

【Rodent plague eradicated. In Yu Xueqing’s dream, you wielded a Fangtian Huaji, crushing Xia Dong’s vermin; your posture was majestic—except your fox head and the whimpering ying ying ying instead of a fearsome roar made Yu Xueqing feel utterly out of character.】

【But Xia Dong’s vermin clearly feared the fox’s whimpering on instinct.】

【Power +1】

“What the hell—wielding a Fangtian Huaji, crushing Xia Dong’s vermin?”

“I’d rather melt the Fangtian Huaji into porridge—I’m no servant of three surnames!”

Dragging the sack of fat mountain mice, An Sheng muttered at the text in his mind.

(End of chapter)