126: Chapter 126 Crossing the Abyss

The snowfield was eerily quiet.

Lin Ye walked in front, with Zhao Mengmeng following three paces behind.

She held her crossbow, stepping into every deep footprint Lin Ye left behind.

The chill that followed the wind's cessation seeped deep into the marrow of her bones.

The white light reflecting off the snow's crust stung her eyes.

In the distance, stands of giant withered trees were half-buried under the snow, the icicles on their branches reflecting the sunlight.

Zhao Mengmeng stared at the flat expanse of white ahead and spoke in a low voice.

"Brother Lin, I feel like this snowfield is much more treacherous than the ruins. At least the ruins have walls; here, you can't even be sure if the ground beneath your feet is solid."

Lin Ye didn't stop his pace.

"So don't step blindly."

"I've been staring at your footprints the whole time."

"If I step wrong, you'll fall down with me."

Zhao Mengmeng felt a lump in her throat, and her grip on the crossbow tightened slightly.

Lin Ye suddenly raised his hand.

This was the signal to stop.

Zhao Mengmeng lowered her body, pressing herself against a protruding black rock nearby.

Lin Ye lowered his eyelids, the vision in his left eye opening and closing.

Within his retina, the originally dead-white snow was rapidly stripped away.

Beneath a large patch of snow directly ahead, a blinding dark red was churning.

The red light spread out in a radial pattern, interlaced with dense black fracture lines.

A hidden collapse trench.

It was an ice crevice forcibly filled by snowstorms; if even a hundred pounds of weight pressed down on it, the entire crust would collapse into the hundred-meter-deep permafrost layer.

Lin Ye closed his left eye and picked up a clod of earth frozen hard as stone from the snow with his right hand.

He flicked his wrist and threw it out.

The snow-clod traced an arc and hit the ground over a dozen meters away.

Thud.

The snow surface didn't budge.

Zhao Mengmeng held her breath.

Lin Ye pulled out an even heavier stone and threw it with more force toward a further point.

Crack!

The crisp sound of ice fracturing was exceptionally jarring in the silent snowfield.

Immediately after, the snow crust within a twenty-meter radius collapsed entirely, as if its foundation had been hollowed out.

Accumulated snow wrapped in frozen earth plunged into the abyss, revealing a dark, bottomless chasm below.

A chill ran down Zhao Mengmeng's spine.

That was the path she had just envisioned taking.

"Change routes. Follow the tree roots and only step on the exposed parts of the black rock."

Lin Ye adjusted his direction and continued leading the team toward the center point.

Within three hours, Lin Ye stopped nine times.

Sometimes it was to avoid ice crevices, other times to bypass toxic miasma pits covered by snow.

His left eye became the only navigation in this silent world.

Zhao Mengmeng didn't dare say another word afterward.

When Lin Ye walked, she walked.

When Lin Ye detoured, she detoured.

She even replicated the exact length of Lin Ye's strides.

At noon, the two of them climbed over a snow slope leveled by strong winds.

Lin Ye stopped at the top of the slope; a fault line appeared at the end of his vision.

Zhao Mengmeng caught up, and after seeing the scene before her, the corner of her eye couldn't help but twitch.

Ahead was a hundred-meter-wide ice valley trench.

The cliffs on both sides were as if carved by blades and axes, plunging straight down into the blue-black mist below.

The bottom of the valley was unfathomable.

Wind surged up from the bottom of the abyss, whipping up snow crystals and making a whistling sound like the wailing of vengeful ghosts.

With such a natural barrier, detouring would mean walking dozens more kilometers in the snowfield, with a high risk of veering off course.

"We can't go around it," Lin Ye said in a low voice.

Zhao Mengmeng looked at his right hand, which was wrapped in blood-stained cloth.

"Are you planning to jump across with me on your back?"

"At this distance, jumping would just be a one-way trip to reincarnation."

Lin Ye took five steps back and stood beside a black rock deeply embedded in the earth.

He raised his right arm.

The crisp sound of a mechanical mechanism snapping open sounded exceptionally cold amidst the wind.

Whoosh!

The first anchor point shot out, piercing through the white mist and biting into a stone pillar on the opposite bank.

That was the only weight-bearing point a hundred meters away.

Lin Ye pressed his right hand onto the Nano-wire.

The vibration feedback from the Dark Weaver was extremely stable.

The anchor held firm; it hadn't loosened.

Immediately after, the second and third anchor points were fired in a fan shape, weaving a set of steel wire cables across the abyss that were difficult to see with the naked eye.

Zhao Mengmeng looked at those Nano-wires, which were as thin as silk, and her teeth began to chatter slightly.

"Brother Lin, if one of these things breaks, we'll become two photographs in the snowfield."

"The speed at which you'd fall is faster than a camera shutter."

Lin Ye put the heavy pack onto a zipline hook and pushed it out first.

The backpack slid rapidly along the main line.

When it reached the center point, a crosswind from the valley floor slammed into it.

The several-hundred-pound pack swung wildly in mid-air, nearly tearing the anchor points right out.

Lin Ye's expression remained indifferent as his right thumb toggled the mechanism, forcibly tightening the secondary lines to pull the backpack back to the center axis.

Thump!

The backpack landed steadily on the opposite bank, kicking up a ring of snow.

Great Xia Live Stream.

[Holy crap! Is this something a human can actually do?]

[To the person above, he's rigging steel wires over a hundred-meter abyss! Just looking at it triggers my acrophobia!]

[Didn't those bastards on the foreign sites say Brother Eye wouldn't dare enter the center circle? Open your dog eyes and watch closely!]

[Lin Ye is a complete maniac; he actually plans to slide across himself!]

"You go first."

Lin Ye looked at Zhao Mengmeng.

Zhao Mengmeng's lips were pale, but she didn't waste any words.

She strapped the crossbow to her back, locked the Wind-Chasing Claw to her bracer, and gripped the zipline buckle with both hands.

"Once I'm across, remember to keep the lines tight."

"Departing."

Lin Ye released the mechanical lock.

Zhao Mengmeng plunged into the white mist above the ice valley along the Nano-wire.

The fierce wind tore at her bearskin coat.

Looking at the churning abyss beneath her feet, her mind went blank.

"Right side!"

Lin Ye's low roar pierced through the wind and waves.

Zhao Mengmeng instinctively raised her hand.

The Wind-Chasing Claw shot out just before she was about to slam into the ice wall.

The grappling hook caught a rocky corner on the opposite bank, forcibly correcting her descent path.

Landing.

Zhao Mengmeng rolled to her feet, her first reaction being to aim her crossbow at her surroundings.

After confirming it was safe, she gave an OK gesture to the other side.

Lin Ye retracted the zipline.

He hooked onto the main line with one hand and kicked off the rock face.

His figure was like a falcon, crossing the abyss.

His movements were much more composed than Zhao Mengmeng's, his eyes fixed on the falling ice from the cliff walls on both sides.

A safe landing.

After crossing this deathly platform, the terrain became increasingly fragmented.

Lin Ye walked at the very front.

Suddenly.

He stopped in his tracks.

In the snowy crevice ahead lay a massive corpse.

It was an armored beast about five meters long, the bone armor on its back harder than stone.

But now, its abdominal cavity had been sliced open by a sharp blade; the steaming liver and the tenderest hind leg meat had already been carved out.

Zhao Mengmeng's expression grew tense.

"Someone's here?"

Lin Ye knelt down, his fingers tracing the wound at the corpse's neck.

A puncture hole left by a spear—a single lethal blow.

The wound was extremely clean, and the skinning technique was even more skillful than Zhao Mengmeng's.

"It's Challengers, at least two of them."

Lin Ye stood up, the coldness in his eyes deeper than the ice and snow.

"To kill a monster of this level with such surgical precision, the opponent must have at least one top-tier hunter."

Zhao Mengmeng gripped her crossbow, aiming it at the surrounding jagged rocks.

"Friend or foe?"

"In the Void Sea, there is no 'friend' option between strangers."

Just as Lin Ye finished speaking.

The snow layer beside Zhao Mengmeng exploded without warning!

There was no roar from any beast.

From beneath the snow crust, a snow-white White-Armored Beast lunged out abruptly, shreds of meat from the previous giant beast still hanging from its fangs.

It had been lying in ambush under the snow.

Waiting for the next predator to come along.

Zhao Mengmeng tried to pull the trigger.

It was too close!

The length of the crossbow made it impossible to maneuver in close-quarters combat!

Lin Ye's right arm moved faster than thought.

Three anchor points from the Dark Weaver fired simultaneously at a distance of less than a meter.

The Nano-wires formed a woven meat-grinding net, obstructing the path between the White-Armored Beast and Zhao Mengmeng.

The White-Armored Beast's head, weighing several hundred pounds, slammed squarely into those nearly transparent lines.