101: Chapter 101 The Great Escape

The wind and snow bore down once again.

Lin Ye and Zhao Mengmeng had already left the cliff top, circling around the ridge toward the southwest.

Lin Ye walked very quickly.

Zhao Mengmeng carried the pot, the crossbow, and a bundle of wooden arrows, with that heavy wolf skin draped over her shoulders.

Sweat had barely surfaced on her forehead before it was instantly blown into ice crystals by the cold wind.

She gritted her teeth and followed closely, not daring to call for a stop.

Behind them, in the direction of the cliff bottom, the roars of the giant beast had become fragmented.

That Water Pool, along with the cave they had worked so hard to establish, was all gone.

Zhao Mengmeng stepped on a broken dry branch. "Brother Lin, had you already planned to evacuate earlier?"

"The moment I saw the vines using corpses to fill the fire."

"Then why did you keep the fire burning for so long?"

"To make it remember there was a heat source and flesh there, so its main force would press toward the Water Pool."

"Whet its appetite first, and then we make our run." Zhao Mengmeng wiped the snow dust from her eyebrows. "You're really ruthless."

"As long as we can stay alive."

The bullet chat in the Great Xia Live Stream was still scrolling frantically.

[That cave is such a pity! It was built up bit by bit from nothing.]

[If they didn't leave, they'd die. The vines were already at the doorstep.]

[Brother Eye is really tough, abandoning it the moment he needs to. This is true survival.]

[If it were me, I definitely wouldn't be able to let go. In the end, I'd lose both myself and the pot.]

At the same time, in other areas of the Level 3 Floating Island, Challengers from various countries were falling into desperate situations.

In the rift woodland where Ivan from Russia was located, the extreme cold had just frozen the streams when dense swarms of Poisonous Bees swarmed out of the rock crevices.

Each poisonous bee was the size of a thumb, their stingers glowing with purple light, specifically lunging at firelight and living people.

Ivan, draped in half a bear skin, waved burning branches wildly, his forehead already stung into several blackened lumps.

Russian viewers were frantically spamming the livestream in anxiety.

[Ivan! Roll into the snow!]

[Fire attracts the bees, stop lighting fires!]

[Without fire, he'll freeze to death! This is forcing people to choose how they die!]

The India livestream was even more tragic.

Two Challengers were huddled in the stone crevices of a collapsed temple.

The outside was crawling with fist-sized Iron-armored Beetles.

The beetles couldn't bite through stone, but they could easily crush wood and animal skins.

One of their backpacks was bitten through on the spot, and the last half piece of jerky fell into the swarm of insects.

He subconsciously reached out to grab it.

His hand was instantly bitten by over a dozen beetles!

His screams terrified his companion, who desperately squeezed deeper into the stone crevice.

Lin Ye was quickly making his way through the wind and snow.

From the cave to the Lost Lands, the fastest route was through a hidden crack beneath the mountains.

The snow was too thick, and the original traces had long been smoothed over.

Lin Ye's left eye blinked continuously.

Opening instantly, closing instantly.

The red light to the northeast was advancing irreversibly.

The vines weren't just chasing them; they were also sweeping indiscriminately toward the surroundings along the low-lying areas.

Zhao Mengmeng followed behind, panting heavily.

"Brother Lin, what if that thing doesn't follow us into the ruins?"

"It will."

"Why?"

"That's where the most food is gathered."

"It eats the Pale Species too?"

"Those vines aren't picky eaters."

Zhao Mengmeng felt a surge of stomach acid and forced it down. "Then what if the Pale Species are all eaten and it spawns even more to become larger?"

"That's why we only use the first round of attrition." Lin Ye didn't stop. "Then we evacuate to higher ground."

"The high-rise buildings in the ruins?"

"Yes."

Zhao Mengmeng stared at the figure in front of her.

"From the second you decided to leave the cave, you had it all calculated?"

Lin Ye didn't respond, stopping below a steep slope ahead.

Beneath the snow, half of a black rock wall was revealed.

The Entrenching Tool cut through the snow shell, picking out a narrow gap that only allowed one person to pass through sideways.

Lin Ye took off the wolf skin, retied it tightly with bark rope, and squeezed in sideways.

Zhao Mengmeng held her animal skin bag tightly, protecting the pot and crossbow inside, and squeezed in after him.

It was bone-chillingly cold inside the rock crack.

The cold wind blowing from ahead was mixed with the characteristic smell of decaying dust from the ruins.

The pot on the outside of Zhao Mengmeng's backpack brushed against a stone edge, making a slight scraping sound.

Lin Ye suddenly raised his hand.

Zhao Mengmeng instantly froze in her tracks, holding her breath.

Outside the crack, the sound of limbs dragging mixed with the sound of the wind drifted in.

There were many of them.

Lin Ye's left eye opened instantly.

At the end of his vision, several clusters of deep red light were wandering back and forth outside the exit of the crack, with no sign of approaching the entrance.

He closed his left eye and lowered his voice.

"There are monsters outside."

Zhao Mengmeng nodded heavily, leveling her crossbow.

The two of them pressed against the rock wall, moving bit by bit to the end of the crack.

Outside was a dilapidated street on the edge of the Lost Lands.

Several Pale Species were wandering aimlessly at the street corner.

Their backs were hunched, their limbs abnormally long, and their featureless faces kept twitching toward the air.

Lin Ye didn't look at those low-level buildings.

Low buildings were easily covered by vines and could be surrounded by the Pale Species.

His gaze locked onto a gray-black ten-story building in the center of the district.

The top floor had a partially collapsed metal advertising rack, strong enough to withstand the anchor tension of the Dark Weaver.

His right arm rose.

The Nano-wire crossed the wind and snow, nailing into the window frame of the building six stories above.

Lin Ye grabbed the belt at the back of Zhao Mengmeng's waist.

The engine tightened.

The two of them took off silently, rising rapidly along the building's facade, avoiding the vision of the Pale Species on the street.

The outer wall of the building.

Lin Ye took her through a series of lateral movements, crossing the roofs of two short buildings, and once again used the momentum to swing across the central street.

Zhao Mengmeng was swung until she was dizzy.

The moment her boots touched the tenth-floor windowsill, she leaned against the wall as if drained of strength, her face pale.

"This crappy air-drop experience is going to be the death of me."

Lin Ye ignored her and flipped directly into the top floor.

This was a large, abandoned office.

The floor was covered with broken glass and documents frozen into hard blocks.

Lin Ye scanned the load-bearing walls and the floor with his Eye of Destiny.

After confirming there was no danger of collapse, he waved his hand.

Zhao Mengmeng pulled out a dagger, quickly pushed away the broken glass on the floor, and used two collapsed sheet-metal tables to block the lower part of the window, leaving only an observation slit.

Lin Ye walked toward the stairwell passage, jammed the iron door with a scrap metal frame, and then used the Dark Weaver to set up a nano-cutting line along the floor behind the door.

The density of Pale Species in the ruins was extremely high; lighting a fire would be pure suicide.

Zhao Mengmeng threw the wolf skin in a wind-sheltered corner and sat on it, exhausted.

"Finally, I can catch my breath."

Lin Ye crouched behind the broken window and looked out.

The number of Pale Species in the center of the ruins was even larger than during the Scarlet Hunt.

They clustered into dark colonies on the streets, pushing and biting each other at the slightest movement.

Lin Ye opened his left eye again.

Red light covered the road surface of the entire district.

Just as he was about to cut off his vision, several faint green lights abruptly pierced into his sight.

It wasn't supplies on the ground.

They were all on the middle and upper floors of the surrounding buildings.

On the rooftop of a six-story building to the east, two green dots were huddled behind a water tower.

Behind a broken wall on the seventh floor of an office building to the southwest, three green dots were also hidden.

Living people.

Lin Ye decisively closed his eye.

High-frequency use of his ability caused a needle-like throbbing pain deep within his eyeball.

"There are others in the ruins," Lin Ye spoke.

"Which country?"

"I don't know yet."

"Why did everyone hide in this hellhole?"

Lin Ye turned his head and looked at the mountain ridge outside the basin, obscured by wind and snow.

"The vines drove everyone from the periphery inside."

Zhao Mengmeng stopped talking.

She picked up her crossbow, pulled her sleeve over, and vigorously wiped away the ice crystals and snow water on the mechanism. She pulled out her dagger and tucked it into the side of her boot for easy access.

Lin Ye turned his gaze back to the Pale Species on the street.

Exotic beasts, Pale Species, Blood-colored Vines, and the surviving Challengers from various countries.

Everyone, every monster, had been forced into this giant arena.

Zhao Mengmeng dug out a half-piece of rock-hard frozen jerky from her bag and handed it over.

Lin Ye took it and took a hard bite.

His teeth felt sore from the impact.

Zhao Mengmeng stuffed a piece into her own mouth and chewed twice, her expression pained.

"This jerky is so hard it could stop a bullet."

"Slowly soften it with saliva."

The two of them leaned against the cold wall, silently swallowing the frozen meat, squeezing out the last bit of heat within it.

The shrieks of the Pale Species below were intermittent.

Lin Ye's finger brushed against the trigger of his crossbow.

The vines would definitely come.

It was just a matter of how they would cross that mountain.