106: Chapter 106 Three Beasts Clash

The Clock Tower was shaking.

Zhao Mengmeng had just buckled her backpack when the stone slab beneath her feet lifted.

She slammed uncontrollably into the wall.

"Brother Lin, this damn Clock Tower is falling apart!"

Lin Ye didn't answer.

He stared intently at the middle section of the main Blood Vine below.

Within that bulging, dark red nodule, a faint golden light was hidden.

A Luck Item.

Veins bulged on the back of Lin Ye's hand as he suppressed the urge to leap down and seize the treasure immediately.

Going down now would be pure suicide.

A Ten-meter-class Giant Pale Species was going berserk in the western district.

The main Blood Vine had just entered the fray.

The entire ruined ground was being torn to shreds by these several inhuman forces.

Forget seizing the treasure; within three seconds of landing, he and Zhao Mengmeng would be crushed simultaneously by the Pale Species, the vines, and the collapsing ruins.

"Go."

Zhao Mengmeng raised her left arm.

The grappling hook of the Wind-Chasing Claw shot out, latching onto an exterior stone pillar of a ruined building to the southeast.

The engine retracted.

Her body was forcibly pulled toward the opposite building.

A fierce crosswind howled mid-air.

Zhao Mengmeng slammed sideways into a broken wall; swallowing half a curse, she kicked hard against the wall and used the momentum to flip onto the outer ledge of the seventh floor.

In the same second.

Lin Ye raised his right arm.

The Dark Weaver fired multiple anchors at once, pinning into stone pillars, exterior wall rebars, and a collapsed advertising beam.

Another crack exploded at the top of the Clock Tower.

A Blood Vine as thick as a thigh whipped up from the street below, smashing into the Clock Tower's ground-floor exterior wall.

The stone wall collapsed.

The tower's tilt accelerated sharply.

The stone slab under Lin Ye's feet fractured.

He stepped off the crumbling edge and threw himself out of the Clock Tower.

The Dark Weaver retracted violently!

The Nano-wires dragged him, forcibly crossing a hundred meters through the air.

Behind him.

The Clock Tower collapsed.

The iconic tower standing in the center of the ruins snapped at its waist, and the top-floor bell chamber plummeted at an angle.

The massive bronze bell smashed through the street.

The dull thud drowned out the roars of monsters throughout the city.

Swaths of Small Pale Ones were crushed into grayish-white pulp.

A large portion of the Blood Vine's vanguard was also pulverized.

But soon.

The Red Tide surged out from the gaps in the rubble, entangling the bronze bell and the ruined walls, dragging the bloody remains beneath into the darkness.

In mid-air.

Lin Ye cut two of the deviating anchors and yanked his right arm back.

His body angled in the air, precisely avoiding a broken steel beam.

The soles of his boots scraped against the exterior wall of the southeast building.

Shattered ice exploded.

Zhao Mengmeng lunged to the edge, reaching out to grab his cloak.

Lin Ye's Dark Weaver tightened first.

It pulled him through the opening on the seventh floor, landing heavily beside Zhao Mengmeng.

"This landing service gets a one-star review!"

Zhao Mengmeng panted heavily as she grabbed his arm and pulled him further inside.

"If you didn't fall to your death, don't complain."

The two retreated from the edge.

Zhao Mengmeng leaned behind the wall, breaking into a cold sweat at the sight.

"They won't even let a broken bell go?"

"There are corpses covered under the bell."

"I'm declaring right now that these vines are definitely the most disgusting gluttons in the Void Sea."

Lin Ye didn't respond further, quickly inspecting this new stronghold.

This building was likely originally a bank or an archive.

The space on the seventh floor was extremely wide, with stone pillars a circle thicker than those in an ordinary office building.

The western exterior wall had been blown open.

Three intact load-bearing walls remained on the eastern side.

Half of the stairwell had collapsed, and the downward passage was tightly blocked by rubble.

There were two more ruined floors above available for climbing.

It would do for now.

Lin Ye used an Entrenching Tool to pry open a crack in the floor.

His left eye opened and closed briefly.

There were no large areas of red lines beneath his feet.

At least it wouldn't collapse in the short term.

"We can hold out here for a while."

Zhao Mengmeng dropped her backpack in the corner, quickly raised her crossbow, and braced it against a broken stone pillar.

"How long?"

"Depends on who dies first down there."

She looked down through the ruined wall.

The western district was completely trashed.

The first Ten-meter-class Giant Pale Species charged at the front, its thick grayish-white exoskeleton stained with dark red sap.

Earlier, it could still withstand the thick vines using its sheer weight.

Now, its movements were clearly sluggish.

Dozens of Blood Vines were tightly coiled around its forelimbs and shoulders.

More slender vines were forcing their way into the gaps of its exoskeleton.

The Giant Pale Species slammed into a ruined building like it was mad.

Half a wall was shattered by its shoulder armor.

Falling stones snapped many vines.

But its own back armor was also being corroded by acid, forming black pits that emitted white smoke.

Zhao Mengmeng narrowed her eyes.

"This big guy's shell is breaking."

Lin Ye stared at the joints of the giant beast.

No matter how thick the exoskeleton was, it wasn't a solid steel plate.

The Blood Vine sap was highly corrosive; while a single vine couldn't break through, dozens grinding and drilling together would pry open even the hardest armor.

"It won't last long."

"So the Blood Vines win?"

"Not necessarily."

Just as he finished speaking.

A more terrifying tremor came from the northern side of the ruins.

A five-story ruined building bulged outward unnaturally.

It wasn't a natural collapse.

Something was pushing out from the inside!

Boom!

The bottom three floors of the ruined building exploded.

A second Giant Pale Species smashed through the load-bearing wall, cutting into the flank of the Red Tide from an angle.

This one was leaner, with spinal bone spurs protruding outward and two-meter-long bone blades on its forelimbs.

It completely ignored its first kin being besieged.

It crashed directly into the densest area of vines.

The bone blades swept across!

Large swathes of thick vines were shredded into tumbling segments.

Zhao Mengmeng gripped the crossbow's trigger mechanism tightly.

"A second one!"

Before she could even catch her breath.

The entire entrance to the underground garage on the south side collapsed.

A third, even more bloated and massive Giant Pale Species burst out from the ground!

It was covered in rubble and rebar, with a massive bone crest atop its head.

The moment it emerged, its thick forelimbs grabbed three thick vines.

It forcibly tore a gap in the entire vine formation.

Three giants.

All entered the fray at once.

The battle in the center of the ruins was completely ignited.

Countless Pale Species, driven by the giants' ferocity, abandoned any thought of retreat and launched a counter-charge behind them.

Small monsters sprinted along the walls.

Medium-sized monsters slashed with bone blades, their tail spurs firing continuously to pin down the Blood Vines.

The Red Tide's advance was forcibly interrupted.

The bulging nodule in the middle of the main Blood Vine was forced to turn aside.

The outer thick vines began to retract, shielding the main body tightly.

The Great Xia Live Stream went completely wild.

[Three of them! What level of monster nest is this ruin?!]

[Weren't the vines just crushing everything? Now they've run into three full-armored demolition machines!]

[Brother Eye's retreat was legendary; there's not even a scrap left of the Clock Tower now.]

[Is that a bulge in the middle of the main vine? Feels like something's hidden there!]

[Don't guess blindly; the stream is blurry, but Brother Eye is definitely watching.]

Zhao Mengmeng felt like the scene before her was about to tear her optic nerves apart.

"Brother Lin, should we take advantage of the chaos and keep retreating to higher ground?"

Lin Ye's gaze swept across the buildings to the southeast.

There was higher ground.

But it would be further and further away from the main Blood Vine.

He absolutely couldn't go far now.

"We stay put."

Zhao Mengmeng snapped her head toward him.

"You want to wait?"

"Yeah."

"Wait for what? For them to finish eating each other?"

"Wait for the main vine to be heavily injured."

Lin Ye placed the crossbow flat by his side.

The three spare anchors of the Dark Weaver were preset and ready to fire at any moment.

"There's something inside that section of the main vine."

Zhao Mengmeng immediately shut up.

She didn't ask what it was.

If Lin Ye said there was, then there was no need for nonsense.

The loud explosions below erupted once more.

The first Giant Pale Species had half its body entangled by Blood Vines, its exoskeleton pitted and bleeding.

The lean giant from the north charged over, its bone blades hacking through half the vines binding its kin.

The bloated giant from the south took the opportunity to close in, slamming headfirst into the side of the main vine.

The massive main vine was knocked several meters sideways.

The surrounding protective thick vines were pulled taut.

Several snapped on the spot.

Dark red sap sprayed over ten meters away.

Just as Lin Ye was staring at the gap in the battlefield.

Inside the half-collapsed stairwell behind them.

The faint sound of gravel rubbing suddenly came through.

Click.

The sound was tiny.

Most of it was covered by the loud noise outside.

But Lin Ye heard it.

Crack.

A second sound.

Lin Ye didn't look back.

His right wrist tilted downward ever so slightly.

The Dark Weaver's mechanism engaged.

A Nano-wire slid silently across the dust-covered concrete floor.

It locked down the only path through the stairwell entrance horizontally.

Zhao Mengmeng noticed his movement and hooked her finger around the trigger.

"Behind us?"

Lin Ye stared into the pitch-black stairwell, his voice lowered to a whisper.

"Something's coming up."