291: Only mice would climb up there.

Chapter 291: Only Rats Climb Upwards. The world fell silent.

Before him was a vertical shaft so vast it was suffocating.

There was no end to it, neither above nor below.

Only countless thick cables clung to the shaft walls like giant black pythons, stretching into an abyss beyond sight.

This was the spine of the "Sky Ladder."

The main artery responsible for transporting supplies to this skyscraper.

"This is the path you have to climb."

The voice in his head whistled. "Eight hundred meters. No safety measures. One slip of the hand, and you can go have tea with king yama at the center of the earth."

Chen Mo looked up.

At the very top, a faint, pale light source was visible.

That was the 80th-floor Freight Platform.

"This hand."

Chen Mo flexed the fingers of his left hand. The feeling of abundant power was somewhat addictive. "Can it hold up?"

"The hand can hold, the question is whether the wall can."

the green text scrolled. "Also, a reminder. There are more than just rats in this shaft."

Chen Mo reached out and grabbed a thick steel I-beam.

The cold sensation of metal was transmitted back through his nerves.

He leaped.

Pull-up.

Like an agile ape, he moved quickly through this steel jungle.

The strength in his left hand was astonishing.

With every grip, he left deep finger marks on the steel beams.

Twenty floors.

Thirty floors.

Chen Mo was fast, but he didn't feel at ease.

The heart in his chest was growing hot.

As the altitude increased, the sense of oppression grew stronger, as if something was waking up.

"Ruan Qiushui."

Chen Mo suddenly spoke, his voice echoing in the empty shaft. "The Magician said she saw this name in the code."

"Focus on climbing your wall."

The voice in his head became somewhat irritable. "Now is not the time to discuss dead people."

"Aren't you an omniscient and omnipotent green text?"

Chen Mo hung from a beam with one hand, taking a brief breath. "Why is her signature at the bottom layer of my heart? Is this also part of your plan?"

"I am a Support Personality, not an encyclopedia."

the green text flashed rapidly. "And that's an Encrypted Sector; even I can't get in. Maybe it's an Easter egg left by that old pervert Li Chunfeng. Who knows?"

Chen Mo narrowed his eyes.

He was lying.

This ghost parasitic in his head definitely knew something.

Squeak—

A strange scraping sound interrupted his thoughts.

The sound came from below.

It was dense, like countless metal claws scratching against the walls.

Chen Mo looked down.

In night vision mode, dozens of red dots lit up in the shadows below.

Those red dots were moving fast, fanning out to surround him from below.

"I told you there were more than just rats here."

the green text instantly turned red. "Those are 'Scavengers.' Automatic Maintenance Combat Engineers responsible for clearing foreign objects from the shaft. In their programming, you are currently a large piece of mobile trash."

"How large?"

"Large enough to feed them well."

Just as the words were spoken, a silvery-white mechanical creature lunged out of the shadows.

It looked like an oversized spider, with eight sharp mechanical legs and a high-speed rotating sawtooth disc on its abdomen.

Its target was Chen Mo's right leg.

Without any hesitation.

Chen Mo let go with his right hand, his body suspended in the air, hanging onto the steel beam only by his golden left arm.

At the same time, he kicked out violently with his right leg.

Bang!

The hard sole of his military combat boot slammed into the "spider's" abdomen.

The thing let out a piercing screech and was kicked flying, crashing into the opposite wall and exploding in a burst of sparks.

But more red dots swarmed up.

They were extremely agile, using those eight legs to move across the vertical walls as if on flat ground.

"Don't get into a prolonged fight with them!"

the green text warned. "These things have built-in welding torches and cutters. If they cut your hydraulic lines, we'll be stuck here like hanging cured meat!"

Chen Mo gritted his teeth and exerted force to leap upward again.

A "spider" predicted his landing point and pounced directly from a cable on the side.

Its two front claws were high-temperature plasma welding torches, spitting out blue flames.

Chen Mo had nowhere to hide.

He made an incredibly reckless move.

Instead of retreating, he advanced, letting go of the steel beam with his left hand, turning in mid-air, and grabbing directly at the pouncing mechanical spider.

Sizzle—!

The welding torch scorched the golden arm armor, leaving a charred mark.

But the next second.

Crack.

Chen Mo's palm crushed its core processor directly.

"Lend me a light."

He grabbed the still-twitching mechanical corpse and, using it as a bomb, hurled it fiercely at the dense crowd of pursuers below.

Boom!

The battery inside the spider exploded.

The shockwave of the explosion was amplified in the narrow shaft, and the fire instantly engulfed a dozen "Scavengers" climbing up.

Debris fell like rain.

Using the blast's air current, Chen Mo surged upward another five meters and grabbed a new support.

"Good arm strength."

The voice in his head praised. "Seems those eight million weren't spent in vain. But don't celebrate too early; look up."

Chen Mo looked up.

His scalp instantly went numb.

The originally distant white light source had grown larger.

Not only had it grown larger, but it was also rapidly approaching.

Accompanied by a booming roar, a powerful air pressure pushed down from above, making his clothes flap wildly.

"That's..."

"The freight elevator."

the green text became massive. "It's coming down! Speed is fifteen meters per second! If you don't want to be crushed into meat paste, find a hole to crawl into!"

"Where the hell is a hole in this place?!"

Chen Mo looked around.

There were only bare concrete walls and steel beams.

The shadow overhead grew larger and larger, the massive car like a falling mountain, crashing down with the momentum to crush everything.

There were even a few "Scavengers" hanging underneath that didn't have time to escape, instantly crushed into powder.

"Right! Three o'clock direction!"

the green text flashed frantically. "That air vent! Fast!"

About four meters away from Chen Mo, there was a narrow Louvered Air Vent.

Four meters.

On this cliff with no foothold, this was the distance between life and death.

The roar of the elevator was already deafening.

Chen Mo could even see the thick bolts and oil stains on the bottom of the car.

Take a gamble.

He took a deep breath, the hydraulic pipes on his left arm outputting at full power, emitting a hum that neared its limit.

Bang!

The steel beam beneath his feet was deformed by his kick.

His whole body shot out horizontally like a cannonball.

The one second in the air was stretched infinitely.

Chen Mo reached out with his right hand and tightly gripped the edge of the air vent.

Momentum carried his body to slam heavily against the wall, a sharp pain coming from his ribs.

Whoosh—!!!

The moment he grabbed the edge.

A massive shadow grazed past his back.

The violent airflow almost blew him away, his clothes flapping wildly, his skin stinging.

Following that was the ear-piercing sound of an emergency brake.

Screeeech—

Sparks flew everywhere.

That hundred-ton behemoth actually came to a dead stop right in front of him.

It was less than ten centimeters from his nose.

Chen Mo held his breath.

He looked at the thick steel plate in front of him, covered in scratches and oil stains, his heart pounding.

If the elevator had descended just one more meter, or if he had jumped 0.1 seconds slower, he would be a smear of mosaic on the wall by now.

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