Only the lower three areas remain completely blank.
Now, it will be clear where the rat infestation originated.
"It started in the fifth district. They kept devouring the entire fifth district, turning it into the first granary. The Rat King should be there," Qing Chen said.
"What if it moves away later?" Lu Yuan asked.
“There’s an 80% chance they’re still there. After all, in City 10 yesterday, the fifth district still had the most rats. I now think that this rat swarm has a clear division of labor, and it’s more like it has evolved a power structure like worker ants, soldier ants, and queen ants,” Qing Chen said. “And this kind of ‘queen ant’ will most likely lose many other bodily functions in order to evolve its reproductive ability. Its purpose is to become the intelligence hub of the swarm and then continuously breed new rats.”
Qing Chen: "Of course, there is a chance that it could move to another place, so I need to continue to monitor the surveillance and find more clues."
Qing Chen stood up and walked out: "It's getting late, everyone should get some rest. Tomorrow we'll find the Rat King's location... Thank you all for your cooperation, see you tomorrow."
With that, Qing Chen left the lecture hall without looking back, without any hesitation.
Chapter 690, The Secret Beneath Whale Island
Countdown 144:00:00.
The Agricultural College was brightly lit.
Xiao San's hands were still bandaged, while Xiao Qi was tirelessly leading everyone in a new round of transplants.
Double it, double it, and double it again.
The crop yields on Whale Island have reached an alarming level.
If all goes well, the next time traveler takes place, each of the 10th city's time travelers should be able to consume four Eternal Heaven Fruits.
But then they saw Sun Chuci, Tuanzi and the others carefully picking the Eternal Heaven. What they were dealing with now was not the fruit, but human lives and hopes.
When Qingchen returned to the Agricultural Academy, he saw Zard and Xiaoyu had moved a table out of somewhere, and the two of them were sitting next to it peeling crayfish...
After getting Qingchen's permission, Zard used Qingchen's name to order two servings of crayfish, intending to enjoy them to his heart's content during the free special offer period.
As a result, when the cafeteria chef heard that this was a late-night snack prepared for the dean, he actually made ten servings for them in one go.
However, the two of them weren't peeling shrimp for themselves, but for Li Tongyun and Jinguji Maki sitting at the table...
Xiaoyu patiently peeled the crayfish and placed them on the small plate in front of Jinguji Maki. She peeled them for a long time but didn't get to eat a single one herself, yet she still had a big smile on her face.
The same applies to Zard.
"Xiao Tongyun, Xiao Zhenji, what brings you two here?" Qingchen asked curiously.
“We came to see you,” Li Tongyun said. “We were planning to go back since you weren’t here, but Zard and Xiaoyu wouldn’t let us leave. They insisted on peeling shrimp for us, and Xiaozhenji and I are already stuffed.”
Zard chuckled and said, "So peeling shrimp for others can be this fun."
Qing Chen looked at Li Tongyun: "You must have other things to do, right?"
Li Tongyun got up, wiped her hands, and pulled Qingchen and Xiaozhenji outside.
Upon reaching the edge of the sea cliff, Xiao Tongyun whispered, "I bring Xiao Zhenji here to train in rock climbing every day. One time, we stayed late, and she said that after midnight, it seemed like many friendly voices were calling to her from below Whale Island. Of course, there were not only friendly voices, but also a very evil one."
Qing Chen frowned: "Below Whale Island?"
Before this, even Kunlun had never delved into what the bottom of Whale Island looked like, nor had he ever gone down to check it out.
In everyone's mind, an island is just an island, and there must be rocks underneath it, nothing else.
But now, the bottom of Whale Island doesn't seem to be as simple as it seemed, so Qingchen decided to go down and take a look: "Wait here for a moment, I'll go down and take a look."
"Will there be any danger?" Li Tongyun asked.
“No,” Qingchen said, “No matter what kind of monsters are below Whale Island, if they could come out and frolic, they would have come out long ago, instead of staying on the seabed calling for Maki. The fact that they haven’t come out yet means that they can’t come out on their own and want Maki’s help.”
This is the simplest logic.
Qingchen had Maki materialize a waterproof flashlight, and then jumped off a 20-meter cliff.
The two little girls waited anxiously on the shore until the flashlight's light sank into the depths of the sea and was obscured by the black waves.
Qing Chen circulated his knight's true energy, breathing through his skin.
He originally thought that diving would be a very strenuous task, but he later discovered that when he descended to a depth of about 10 meters, there was a gentle suction that slowly brought him to the bottom of Whale Island.
The base of Whale Island becomes increasingly narrow, resembling an inverted snow-capped mountain.
Qingchen would occasionally assess the strength of the suction to decide whether he should leave this inexplicable vortex.
However, the suction force did not increase with increasing depth.
As he sank, he used his flashlight to examine the rocky cliffs at the bottom of Whale Island, only to find them completely bare, without even a speck of moss or seaweed.
Slowly, Qingchen lost track of how much time had passed. Suddenly, his vision opened up and brightened, and a soft purple light shone through him!
This was already the lowest level of Whale Island, and what suddenly appeared in front of Qing Chen was... an upside-down island village.
The village is filled with cherry trees that stand upside down, and the soft purple light is released by the cherry blossoms that never fade.
Various kinds of fish dart among the cherry blossom canopy, sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly.
The seawater was crystal clear, and the scene before my eyes was breathtaking.
Qingchen stared blankly at this scene. No one had expected that the area beneath Whale Island would be so magnificent.
In the village, rows of triangular wooden houses are nestled upside down at the bottom of Whale Island, with terraced fields stretching out in the distance, all neat and orderly.
In front of the cabin, there is a stone mortar used for pounding rice cakes, inside which an octopus that likes to burrow rests.
In the middle of the village was a well with a diameter of two meters. Qingchen suddenly realized that all the underwater suction came from this well, which was constantly swallowing seawater into the Whale Island.
At this moment, Qingchen saw several red stonefish slowly swimming past the well, and they were accidentally sucked into the well.
He felt a chill run down his spine. If he were sucked into the well, it would be very dangerous.
However, just a few seconds after the red grouper was sucked into the well, the well actually spat the red grouper out on its own.
Qingchen was puzzled. Could it be that this stone well does not swallow living things?
He floated in the water and continued to look around. He saw a huge shrine at the end of the village path, where more than a hundred people dressed in kimonos sat cross-legged with their eyes closed at the entrance. There were men and women, all dressed in gorgeous clothes.
Beside these people were the demons that Qing Chen had seen in the Hundred Ghosts Night Parade Illustrated Manual, all sitting cross-legged at the bottom of Whale Island, their legs bound to the bottom of the island by iron chains.
Qingchen's world was completely opposite to theirs, which made him feel very strange.
Looking further into the temple, one can see an eight-headed giant serpent trapped on a stone pillar in the courtyard, each of its heads mercilessly chained to the pillar with black iron chains.
The next moment, all eight heads of this giant snake, which was tens of meters tall, opened their eyes.
It struggled and trembled on the stone pillar, opening its blood-red maw to reveal its fangs.
The lips of the more than one hundred people outside the temple began to move, silently chanting something. As their lips moved slightly, the iron chains on the giant snake tightened, suppressing the snake tightly.
Qing Chen stared blankly at this scene. Were these all shikigami? Were they the shikigami that the ancestor of the Minamoto clan once controlled?
The shadow once said that after the Genji disappeared at sea, the Onmyoji of the Age of Gods began to decline little by little, and the number of Shikigami decreased instead of increasing.
Zheng Yuandong once said that the Genji once possessed a vast and powerful shikigami, all of whom sank to the bottom of the sea along with the Genji ancestors.
So... if the forbidden object of Whale Island is that ancestor of the Genji clan and the giant whale that were extracted together, then the creatures trapped at the bottom of Whale Island are probably the shikigami that the ancestor of the Genji clan once controlled, right?
Now, the purpose of the shikigami outside the temple is to suppress the giant serpent, and Maki says that there is another evil voice in the sea, which may be this giant serpent.
This village is where Genji once lived.
The wellhead draws in seawater because it aims to convert the seawater's energy into the power on Whale Island that allows Purple Orchid Star to grow rapidly.
Previously, Qingchen had been puzzled. Although Whale Island had a rule that "nothing that grows on Whale Island may leave the island," the Agricultural Academy, although an outsider, actually provided real energy for its growth, genuinely helping cultivators. Moreover, the energy was not taken back by the rules after the cultivators left Whale Island.
This energy... must have a source, right? Energy must be conserved!
But now Qingchen understands that Whale Island, this forbidden place, does not provide energy itself; its energy comes from seawater.
Qing Chen slowly swam towards the surface of the sea. He already had a general idea of what was going on at the bottom of Whale Island. As for those shikigami in the sea... he would probably have to wait until Shinguji Maki herself had gone through several life-or-death situations before she could collect them. He wasn't sure if he would inexplicably release the bound giant snake by rashly coming down with his blood. Who knew how powerful that thing really was?
Having witnessed the wonders of the seabed, Qingchen became even more curious about what kind of creatures lived in the forbidden forest on the surface of Whale Island.
...
...
Countdown 136:00:00.
At 8 a.m. sharp, Qingchen arrived at the lecture hall on time.
Dozens of Kunlun members were already waiting there, each of them clenching their fists nervously.
Lu Yuan said, "The number of operators I assigned to you yesterday was too small, and they couldn't keep up with your pace. Today, I've doubled the number of operators to help you."
Qing Chen looked at the Kunlun members in front of him: "It will be very tiring."
Lu Yuan said, "As long as what you're doing can help Iodine and the others get revenge, we'll work tirelessly without sleep."
Qing Chen solemnly said, "Everyone back to your posts, let's begin. Today, bring up the videos from screens 130-165 and rewind to a month ago. I need to find specific clues!"
The video footage brought back by the iodine solution is surveillance data from the past three months.
But Qingchen only has 7 days. Even if he plays it at 8x speed, he still can't watch all 90 days of video content. If he wants to watch it all, he will need at least 11 days.
This is even with Qingchen not eating, sleeping, or going to the toilet.
At this point, Qingchen had to take a risk and play the video at 16x speed to save more time.
However, this meant that Qing Chen had to narrow down the scope of his analysis first, otherwise the amount of information from the sixteen-times speed and the entire region would be enough to drive him crazy.
Lu Yuan asked curiously, "What are you looking for in this area? I remember you stopped watching yesterday after watching three days before the rat swarm outbreak. If you wanted to find the Rat King, shouldn't you be watching the last few days? Why do you need to watch footage from a month ago?"
“Of course not,” Qingchen explained, “The answers to all questions are already written in the past when they are asked.”
He sat in the last row of the lecture hall, silently watching the screens play the video at sixteen times the speed.
It lasted from morning until noon, from noon until evening, and from evening until midnight.
At that moment, Lu Yuan and the others suddenly saw that Qing Chen was bleeding from his nose.
The Kunlun members truly understood how hard Qingchen worked. If it were them, their eyes would get tired just watching one recording on fast forward, let alone watching dozens of recordings like Qingchen did.
Lu Yuan asked someone to bring him a napkin and silently handed it to Qing Chen.
Qing Chen simply wiped away the blood from his nose, showing no intention of stopping.
The next moment, Qing Chen stood up and shouted, "Rewind the videos 131, 137, 141, and 147 to 30 minutes ago in slow motion!"