104: Chapter 104 The Clock Tower Settles In

A finger-wide crack split open on the floor of the ten-story building.

The crack instantly ran through the entire office.

Shattered glass and documents were vibrated into jumping up and down.

Zhao Mengmeng gripped her backpack straps tightly.

Lin Ye's left eye snapped open.

Within his retina, the load-bearing walls, floors, exterior walls, and stairwells were all swallowed by red.

A red so deep it looked like dripping blood.

Zhao Mengmeng didn't waste a word, securing her bags of jerky and coarse salt tightly to her belt.

An Aluminum Pot hung outside her backpack, letting out a clatter as it bumped.

Lin Ye grabbed the wolf king hide and tightened it across his back with a backhand motion.

An Entrenching Tool and the Fire Axe hung at his waist.

The crossbow was pressed against his chest.

The building tilted to the left.

The sheet-metal desk slid toward the broken window, crushing the remaining glass shards into powder.

Zhao Mengmeng lost her footing and slid toward the corner of the wall.

Lin Ye took a step forward.

His left hand hooked onto her back belt.

His right foot stomped down hard on the edge of the warped floorboards.

The ceiling split open with a roar.

Several concrete slabs mixed with rebar and light fixtures crashed down, grazing Zhao Mengmeng's shoulder as they fell through to the floor below.

The entire building let out a piercing structural groan.

Toward the stairwell, scrap iron frames were squeezed flat.

The iron door frames deformed.

From the cracks in the exterior walls, Blood Vines were still frantically burrowing into the foundation.

They dug as they ate, hollowing out the soil and grinding the concrete to bits.

The building's final bit of support was torn away.

Lin Ye fixed his eyes on the designated escape window.

A half-collapsed metal advertising rack hung outside the window, its mounting bolts letting out a piercing screech of friction.

This path could only hold for a second.

"Hold on tight."

Zhao Mengmeng reached back and gripped the hide rope on Lin Ye's back with all her might.

Lin Ye raised his foot and violently kicked the remains of the escape window frame.

Bang!

The frozen window frame shattered and buckled outward.

Cold wind from ten stories up, laden with snow powder, came rushing in.

Lin Ye grabbed Zhao Mengmeng and, using the weightlessness from the building's tilt, charged straight out the window.

The moment his soles hit the advertising rack.

The metal support below let out a sharp crack.

From the corner of her eye, Zhao Mengmeng caught a glimpse of the street below.

The Red Tide, Pale Species, mangled corpses, and snow dust were churned together like a meat grinder, seemingly bottomless.

"Jump?"

"Jump."

The two of them leaped out into the air.

Behind them, the ten-story building finally snapped.

The foundation had been hollowed out by the main vines; the building was severed at the third floor, and the entire exterior wall collapsed with a roar.

Hundreds of tons of concrete and rebar poured down.

In mid-air.

Lin Ye raised his right arm.

The Dark Weaver simultaneously fired six anchors!

The Nano-wires sliced through the wind and snow, heading straight for the ruins of a skyscraper two hundred meters away.

The six metal grappling hooks accurately bit into the exposed rebar of the upper floors.

The bracer engine retracted to its limit.

The falling trajectory of the two suddenly angled off, their bodies forcibly pulled toward the distant sky.

Zhao Mengmeng felt her vision go dark from the pull of the weightless inertia.

"Holy shit!"

Lin Ye's left arm locked around her lower back while his right hand fine-tuned the tension.

Debris from the collapsing building crashed past them frantically from behind.

A half-meter-long concrete slab grazed the sole of Zhao Mengmeng's boot as it fell, the air pressure making her calves go numb.

The Great Xia Live Stream exploded with activity.

[They're flying! They're actually fucking flying!]

[A human Spider-Man! This physics cheat is too insane!]

[Where are the overseas dogs who were popping champagne just now? Does your face hurt yet?]

[I could watch this ten times and still have to stand up in awe!]

In mid-air, the six Nano-wires stretched into straight lines.

The thick rebar let out a twisted groaning sound.

Lin Ye flicked his right wrist.

Three Nano-wires were actively severed!

Their bodies continued to hurtle forward, propelled by the massive swinging force.

The engine hummed.

A second set of anchors shot from his sleeve, biting into the crossbeam of a leaning TV Tower to their front left.

The two of them forcibly changed direction a hundred meters in the air.

The cold wind rushed in.

Zhao Mengmeng's stomach was churning, and she clenched her teeth with all her might.

They whistled past above the collapsing building.

Below them, the severed building crashed solidly into the street.

A large number of Pale Species were flattened into pulp, and the advancing Blood Vines were briefly buried.

But in less than a few seconds.

The Red Tide frantically burrowed out from the cracks in the debris, continuing to swallow the warm remains of flesh and blood.

On the ruined walls of the skyscraper.

Several Pale Species that had climbed to the sixteenth floor heard the wind and looked up, hissing.

Lin Ye whipped out an extremely thin Nano-filament in the air.

A horizontal slash.

The foremost Pale Species was sliced clean in half at the waist.

Grayish-black internal organs spilled toward the bottom of the building.

The two of them swung rapidly across the skyscraper's facade.

Half of the floor at the first landing spot had collapsed; there was no footing to be had.

Lin Ye didn't land.

He switched anchors for the third time, firing toward the top of a giant Clock Tower further in.

That was the central area of the Lost Lands.

The Clock Tower was twelve stories high.

Half of the massive black clock face was shattered, the spire at the top was tilted, and steel beams were crisscrossed.

The Eye of Destiny snapped open and shut.

There were no large areas of red lines on the Clock Tower's main beams.

Lin Ye pressed his wrist down, forcibly lowering their parabolic trajectory.

"Prepare for landing."

Zhao Mengmeng immediately released her right hand to protect the crossbow at her chest.

The Dark Weaver retracted with one final burst of power.

The two of them cleared several broken walls and crashed heavily onto the outer eaves of the Clock Tower's top floor.

Lin Ye touched down first.

His soles crushed the snow as his knees bent to absorb the massive impact.

He swung his left hand to the side with the momentum.

Zhao Mengmeng rolled twice along the snow-covered slope, her back slamming hard against a steel beam.

The Aluminum Pot hanging outside her bag went flying and ended up clapped firmly onto the back of her head.

She lay in the snow, panting heavily, before raising a hand to lift the pot off.

Lin Ye knelt on one knee and gave his right arm a jolt.

All the fired anchors retracted back into his sleeve.

Zhao Mengmeng climbed out of the snowdrift, rubbing her aching skull where the pot had hit, her eyes bloodshot.

The two of them climbed into the top floor of the Clock Tower.

The original mechanical clock room was surrounded by stone walls.

The interior was filled with rusted, fallen gears and drive shafts.

An old copper bell hung in the center, its body marred by a large crack.

Lin Ye did not relax.

His gaze swept across the four corners like a blade.

No footprints.

No bloodstains.

No unusual sounds.

He pulled out his Entrenching Tool and pried open a loose stone slab in the corner.

There were no narrow cracks below where vines had burrowed through.

Zhao Mengmeng leaned against the base of the stone wall, exhausted, her chest heaving as a hint of color finally returned to her pale face.

"This place is a bit better than that office."

She reached into her bag for the jerky.

"Brother Lin, are we heading further and further into the very center of the ruins?"

"Yeah."

"Is that a good thing?"

Lin Ye walked behind the damaged clock face and looked down.

The outer blocks had been completely partitioned.

The red was the tide of vines.

The white was the Pale Species swarms.

The Red Tide was continuously pressing inward along the streets and underground pipe networks.

The encirclement was shrinking.

"It's a bad thing."

Zhao Mengmeng pulled the hard jerky away from her mouth.

"So there's not a single good thing about it?"

"There are more high-rises in the center and the terrain is complex; it can buy us more time," Lin Ye said, his tone extremely cold.

He turned, his gaze directed deeper into the Clock Tower.

A stone staircase leading down.

An iron door was left ajar, and a foul stench wafted up from the pitch-black depths.

Lin Ye strode over.

His right arm moved slightly, pulling out an invisible Nano-cutting Wire and stretching it horizontally across the entrance at the very top of the stone stairs.

Zhao Mengmeng leveled her crossbow.

"Is there movement down there?"

"No."

"Then who is the wire for?"

Lin Ye didn't look at her.

"I don't like waiting for an accident to happen before trying to fix it."

He turned back to the edge of the shattered clock face.

The stinging pain deep in his left eye was intensifying; he grabbed a handful of clean snow and pressed it against his brow bone.

Out in the heart of the ruins.

At the very center, surrounded by countless high-rises, lay a vast dead zone so dark that light could not penetrate it.

A massive number of Pale Species were frantically crowding toward that center.

Yet, as they neared the edge, they were frightened into a frantic retreat by some muffled sound.

They were afraid.

They feared not only the Red Tide but also that darkness.

Lin Ye's fingers pressed slightly harder against his brow bone.

"They are fighting over something."

Zhao Mengmeng gripped the stock of her crossbow, a chill running down her spine.

"There are so many Pale Species; how could they all be driven away by just the vines outside?"

Lin Ye stared at that central district.

"The vines are outsiders."

"In this city, there are even fiercer locals entrenched."

He dropped the crushed snow in his hand.

His left eyelid opened slightly.