茶杯狐 -CUPFOX

Chapter 37: A Dead Rat

Xiang Kun has never smelled this scent before. He was certain it wasn’t a cat or a dog, and it definitely wasn’t from any other animal he knew of. But he wasn’t surprised, after all, his olfactory ‘database’ was rather limited, mainly collected in urban areas.

What animal was it?

Xiang Kun was suddenly intrigued and when he got a curiosity itch, he had to scratch it.

He turned around, switched his phone’s flashlight back on, picked up a stick, and began to inspect the rat’s corpse.

There were a lot of bugs on the rat’s body that Xiang Kun was unfamiliar with.

When he stirred them with the stick in the light of his phone, they scattered. Some burrowed into the grass, others into the soil, and many small maggots crawled on the rat’s carcass.

If it were before, seeing this scene would make Xiang Kun nauseous and his scalp prickle. But now, he felt indifferent to it. He could even concentrate on identifying the smells and sounds of these insects.

Upon inspection, this rat must have been dead for some time, but he couldn’t determine the exact time of death based on the level of decay.

Xiang Kun took another whiff. The source of that curious smell was not here anymore, it was very faint and almost gone.

It was highly likely that the source of that smell was the predator that killed this rat.

What did strike him as strange, though, was that despite the gruesome death scene, the dead rat seemed to be mostly intact, its limbs were still attached. Although its belly had been ripped open, it seemed like the organs hadn’t been chewed on. Was the animal that killed it doing so simply out of malice, killing it for sport?

But the smell wasn’t that of a cat or a dog, so what other animals would do that?

Xiang Kun took a few deeper sniffs, trying to determine the direction where the curious smell went, but after a few steps, he realized he couldn’t pinpoint where it came from.

Could it be that it was too long ago?

Xiang Kun, with his phone in hand, examined the ground around the dead rat while illuminating it with the flashlight, hoping to find some leftover footprints or any other sign. But the phone’s battery was nearly drained and he had found no useful information. Apart from his own footprints, there was nothing—the kind of things that he would have been able to recognize, anyway.

Sitting down next to the rat, he turned off his phone’s flashlight, inhaled deeply, relaxes his muscles and closed his eyes, and then let his senses go, to continue his exploration with smell and hearing.

Xiang Kun wasn’t just training. He was searching.

That smell had triggered his curiosity, and even if he couldn’t find its source, he wished to find a similar scent in these woods, then track it to find out what creature it came from.

Each species has a unique smell, just as each group of species carries distinct features.

The peculiar smell he sniffed was mixed with other odors and was actually quite indistinct.

But at the moment he was going to leave, he detected that smell again, very distinctly, and was attracted to it. And this smell was not in his ‘database’. It was a smell he had never encountered before.

This seemed to trigger an instinctive reaction in him, as if his body was telling him—pay attention to that smell.

Xiang Kun sat on the hill till dawn, only about five meters from the dead rat.

An ordinary person, in the pitch dark of the woods at night, would undoubtedly feel uneasy and anxious, at the very least worried about bugs crawling on them, even if they were brave.

However, even though Xiang Kun had his eyes shut and couldn’t see anything, he was well aware of his surroundings within a dozen meters. He knew there was an earthworm burrowing into the soil, an insect preying, a spider spinning its web, some ants marching forward… And a beetle had landed on his shoulder, so he flicked it away.

Fortunately, mosquitoes were not interested in him. Since his mutation, he had not been bitten anymore.

Despite spending the whole night, Xiang Kun didn’t detect that smell again.

Of course, sitting there, as he was, he couldn’t expect to be able to sniff out the entire mountain with his smell and hearing, even though it was a small hill.

So, he stood up and started searching the hill.

The reason he didn’t do so the previous night was that although his auditory and olfactory senses were far beyond ordinary people, he could easily walk blindfolded through familiar streets. However, up here in the mountains with no clear paths, he estimated that he wouldn’t be able to make it a few steps without crashing into a tree or stepping into a void.

By noon, having taken all morning, Xiang Kun had finished searching the small hill.

At one o’clock in the afternoon, he finally left, ran back home, changed his dirty clothes, took a shower, and then went to the city’s largest zoo.

He was unusually persistent with the smell, always taking the “signals” his body sent him very seriously, even if those “signals” were quite faint. This could potentially help him better understand his own body.

That’s why he came to the zoo. Not for pleasure, but to enrich his ‘database’.

He wanted to see if there were any similar samples of the smell in the zoo.

After buying his ticket, Xiang Kun didn’t miss any enclosure or cage, capturing the smell of all the animals.

Even if some animals had stayed inside their enclosures and were not seen in the viewing area, Xiang Kun would still “capture” their smell.

It wasn’t until six o’clock, closing time, that Xiang Kun felt he had accurately distinguished the smell of all the animals in the park.

But disappointingly, he didn’t find anything that smelled like that intriguing scent from the previous night.

This made Xiang Kun even more curious.

After getting home, he picked up a flashlight and returned to the hill to find the dead rat again precisely.

It was already past 8 PM, Xiang Kun held a flashlight in one hand and a small stick in the other, examining the rat’s corpse again.

Although the rate of decay was much worse, Xiang Kun still detected two penetrating wounds. They looked like they were caused by claws? But those claws must have been as thick as his index finger, right?

A large catlike animal?

But that didn’t square with his experience. Today in the zoo, he had detected the smell of tigers, leopards, and lions; none of them matched.

Moreover, this was not a deep jungle or undeveloped land where such beasts would likely be present. There might be stray cats or dogs at most.

Furthermore, if there were such a large carnivorous beast hunting here, there should be more evidence than just a dead rat. There was no way he wouldn’t be able to find it. Besides, there were no footprints around the dead rat; this didn’t make any sense at all.

Xiang Kun spent the whole night searching again around the hill and the lakeside. Still, he found no trace of that scent.

After dawn, he went up the hill once more, searching meticulously around the dead rat again until late afternoon. He found no clues and saw no signs of any beast’s presence on the hill.

Xiang Kun started to think, was he being overly obsessed?

Perhaps that smell was just on the verge of being washed away, and he didn’t judge accurately, and just got it wrong?

Entering the elevator to his apartment, he encountered Miss Yang, the one who kept a husky as she was hurrying out. She had a worried look on her face.

She didn’t acknowledge him, and Xiang Kun didn’t bother initiating a greeting. They passed by each other as if they hadn’t seen each other.

However, once Xiang Kun had pressed the button for his floor in the elevator, Miss Yang suddenly turned around and blocked the elevator door..