The shadow of the rat plague had spread from the vast pastures to engulf every corner of the Southern Continent.

In just half a month, the rat population, growing at an exponential rate, burst past the boundaries between grasslands and towns. They slipped into home cellars, gnawed through wooden granary planks, bit through workshop pipes, and roamed the streets fearlessly even in daylight. The wheat and oats stored in granaries were eaten to the last grain; the wool kept by herders was torn to shreds; even furniture and clothing inside homes became tools for their gnawing. Stories of livestock being panicked and young animals killed by rats spread endlessly. Panic grew like wildfire among the people across the once-peaceful Southern Continent.

Officials tried bounties, hunting dogs, and anti-rat ditches, but all efforts were in vain. The rats’ burrows crisscrossed the ground, too numerous to dig up. Their reproduction speed far outpaced human killing. Even if a thousand rats died each day, new pups filled the gap within three days. Parliament held an emergency meeting overnight and offered a scientific reward across the continent: anyone who could end the plague would be the savior of the land, rewarded with endless wealth and glory.

In the end, Everett Thorne, a chemist nearly sixty years old, took on the heavy burden.

He lived alone in a suburban laboratory, with messy white hair, scratched eyeglasses, and hands spotted brown from long-term exposure to chemicals. Everett had devoted his life to organic chemistry, quiet but stubbornly persistent. Watching the rats dart past his window and the hopeless eyes of the herders, the old chemist locked himself inside the lab, researching day and night for a solution.

His early work followed the most common approach. Everett mixed low-toxicity plant alkaloids with grain and oil to make attractive poison bait, placing it across pastures and towns. At first, the effect was dramatic. Within days, large numbers of rats died after eating the bait. Dead rats lined the streets, and the people finally saw hope, praising Everett as their savior.

But this joy lasted only ten days.

The rats were far more cunning than anyone expected. They had a strong group survival instinct. Once a rat died from a certain food, the rest would memorize its smell and shape. They would never touch it again, and they warned the entire colony with sounds and scent marks. Soon, all rats across the continent avoided the bait completely. Conventional poison stopped working, and the plague returned worse than before.

Everett stared at the leftover poison in his lab, his forehead tightly furrowed. He knew ordinary poison could not break the rats’ collective defense. He had to find a new way: something that could make rats lower their guard and willingly face death. After countless sleepless nights studying pharmacology and staring at chemical crystals, a clever idea finally appeared in his mind.

He decided to add a tiny amount of cocaine to the poison.

Cocaine is highly addictive, stimulating the nervous system irreversibly and creating powerful dependence. Even knowing danger, the rats would be unable to stop eating. Everett knew this was risky, but with the plague raging, he had no choice. He carefully controlled the dosage, mixed trace cocaine with low-toxic poison, and added sweet grain syrup to create a new addictive bait.

The test results were astonishing.

The rats no longer showed any caution. Even sensing a faint toxicity, they could not resist the addictive pull of cocaine, devouring the bait fearlessly one after another. They became obsessed, circling the bait nonstop. Even as their companions fell dead beside them, they did not stop. In half a month, the rat swarm declined sharply. The endless hordes vanished from the pastures, and the towns returned to peace. Granaries and homes were finally free of rats.

The people cheered. Everett became a hero of the Southern Continent overnight. Slogans praising him covered the streets. The government awarded him medals, and farmers sent gifts to thank him for saving the land. Standing on the stage, Everett looked at the joyful crowd, his heart full of relief. He believed he had finally ended the catastrophe.

But the laws of nature cannot be easily broken. Biological evolution always stays ahead of human interference.

The small number of surviving rats gradually developed drug resistance after long exposure to the low-dose addictive poison. Their immune systems adapted. The new generation of rats was born immune to the poison. They would not die, only grow more addicted. The resistant rats reproduced rapidly. Within a month, the plague returned — this time completely immune to Everett’s poison, and more destructive than ever.

The news struck Everett like lightning. Watching the rats return and the people’s fear reignite, he was overwhelmed by guilt and anxiety. The determined chemist fell into obsession. He wanted to fix his mistake and wipe out the rats completely, but he ignored the bottom line of natural balance.

He made a decision he would regret forever:

he sharply increased the poison’s toxicity while keeping the cocaine addictive formula, creating an ultra-poisonous addictive compound.

He abandoned mild plant alkaloids and used non-degradable inorganic toxic chemicals, boosting the potency dozens of times. This new bait killed instantly with just one bite — causing nerve paralysis and organ failure. And the cocaine made the temptation impossible to resist.

After the new round of placement, the devastating rat plague finally ended.

No matter how cunning or resistant, every rat that ate the bait died immediately. Within a month, rats were nearly extinct across the Southern Continent. Not a single live rat remained in the streets or grasslands. Sunlight shone again, the pastures began to recover, and the people relaxed into long-lost peace. Everett’s name was worshiped like a god.

But tragedy followed triumph. A far more terrible crisis was quietly coming.

The deadly chemical Everett created was extremely stable and could not be broken down by soil or water. Rotting rat corpses released poison deep into the ground, contaminating soil and streams. Scavenging birds, rabbits, and wild dogs that ate the dead rats died in large numbers. Rare native birds and small animals nearly went extinct. The ecological chain suffered catastrophic damage.

Worse still, the toxin moved up the food chain and seeped into the very foundation of human life.

Crops grown in poisoned soil carried deadly traces; poisoned water irrigated the pastures, making sheep, wool, and meat toxic; even stored grain could not be fully cleaned of contamination.

At first, only a few people felt dizzy, nauseated, and stomach pains. No one cared, thinking it was minor discomfort. But within days, more and more people were poisoned — old and young, herders and townsfolk alike. Sheep died in masses; no one dared to take the wool; crops failed; food became poisonous; water was unclean. The once-rich Southern Continent fell into despair again.

In his laboratory, Everett stared at the test reports showing lethal levels in soil, water, and food. He watched the dead birds and animals outside, and the suffering people begging for help. His heart turned to ice. The bait he created had destroyed the rats — but also pushed the continent into an even deeper abyss. He had gone from savior to sinner.

The shadow of the rat plague had not yet lifted,

and the shadow of toxic pollution now hung heavily over the entire continent.

A crisis more fatal and irreversible than the rat plague had fully erupted.

This time, there was no quick cure.

The paradise on the sheep’s back, blinded by reckless science, had fallen into irreversible darkness.

Everett slumped in his laboratory chair, staring at the chemicals on his table, hands trembling, tears streaming down his face.

He finally understood:

redemption that defies the laws of nature will only become a deeper, unforgivable sin.