137: Chapter 137 Sound Location

Lin Ye and Zhao Mengmeng ventured dozens of meters deep into the array.

The mechanical sounds changed abruptly.

Amidst the heavy rumbling, the shrill sound of metal grinding began to tear at their eardrums.

The gears beneath their feet shuddered twice in succession.

Zhao Mengmeng immediately crouched low.

The flame danced wildly in the wind pressure.

"This thing can even change speed?"

"It can."

A first blast of high-pressure steam erupted from the darkness below.

A pillar of white mist shot skyward from the gaps between the gears.

A piercing whistle instantly engulfed the surroundings.

A large area of space was filled with white mist.

The flame was pressed until it turned blue, on the verge of being extinguished.

Zhao Mengmeng raised her bear-skin cuff to block the wind desperately.

The scalding moisture grazed the back of her hand, leaving a patch of red swelling.

"It's hot!"

"Don't touch the steam vents."

Lin Ye scanned his surroundings.

As the steam sprayed, the entire gear array shifted out of alignment.

A set of giant wheels ahead that had been rising sank without warning.

Another set of reversing gears accelerated to nearly double their speed.

A horizontal drive shaft veered off its original track.

The shaft shifted outward several meters, crashing into and shattering a section of the metal platform nearby.

Clang!

Broken metal fragments flew in all directions.

The two from the United Kingdom happened to be stuck in a blind spot where the fragments were flying.

The person in front was using a rope to drag their companion.

The gear beneath the two suddenly reversed.

The rope instantly pulled taut and jammed.

"Let go!"

The companion shouted, their facial features twisted and distorted.

The high-temperature steam rushed directly into their faces.

Both were forced to draw short knives simultaneously, cutting the lifeline.

One person lunged toward the transmission chain on the left.

The other rolled on the ground toward the center of the gear on the right.

The tight two-person team fell apart on the spot.

Blake was also forced to a halt by the change in speed.

He stood on the edge of a rising gear.

Blood dripped from the open wound on his right shoulder.

The metal beam in front that served as a foothold had been snapped by the sweeping transmission rod.

Charging forward would surely result in being crushed between two sets of gears.

He slammed his bone spear heavily into a metal crack, steadying his stance firmly.

He turned his head, staring at Lin Ye's position.

The Great Xia man hadn't faltered a single step.

The fierce glint in Blake's eyes intensified.

He could accept Ivan's cold resistance.

He could accept the Gaul's rope skills.

But he could not tolerate Lin Ye avoiding the fatal dead zones every single time.

This was absolutely not luck.

If the Great Xia people made it to the second level alive, the USA's national fortune score would be completely crushed.

He had to find an opportunity to stuff these two into the pile of gears below.

Ivan's roar came from within the white steam.

"Get lost!"

A piece of metal wreckage with a chain smashed toward the gear ring where he was standing.

His retreat was cut off.

Ivan gripped his heavy bone pick with both hands.

Aiming at the gap where two giant teeth were about to mesh, he forcibly jammed the pick tip in.

The heavy bone pick was instantly jammed by the immense mechanical force.

The bone handle bent to its limit.

The moment the giant teeth forcibly closed, the reaction force sent the bone pick shooting upward.

Ivan gripped the handle tightly, using this violent recoil to surge toward the upper level.

His massive body somersaulted in mid-air.

He crashed heavily onto the platform above.

The metal edge of the platform crumbled and cracked.

He dug one hand into the crack, dragging his two-hundred-pound frame up with sheer force.

Zhao Mengmeng felt her scalp tingle watching from below.

"That Russian is really risking his life playing tug-of-war with a machine."

Lin Ye didn't turn his head.

He was listening.

The high-pressure steam blocked his vision.

The range illuminated by the firelight was reduced to two or three meters.

His Left Eye's mental energy was nearing overload, unable to maintain continuous clairvoyance.

He could only rely on sound localization.

The large gears meshed with a deep sound; twelve mechanical frictions were followed by one heavy thud.

The small gears shifted with a sharp sound; three consecutive light chimes meant a reversal was certain.

Before a drive shaft shifted, it was accompanied by a half-second of extremely slight idling vibration.

Lin Ye closed his right eye.

He opened his Left Eye instantly.

Deep within his retina, large swaths of red linear trajectories were swirling violently behind the steam.

Red light filled his vision.

Killing intent filled the entire space.

Only in the gaps between the crisscrossing red lines remained a few fleeting safe nodes.

He closed his eyes.

"Mengmeng, put out the fire."

"Huh?"

"Smoke will leave a trail, and the firelight will disrupt my judgment of the sounds."

Zhao Mengmeng acted decisively.

She directly pressed the burning branch hard against the cold, damp metal surface.

The flame went out.

Dense, high-temperature steam and bottomless darkness engulfed them both.

Lin Ye raised his right arm.

The Dark Weaver fired in rapid succession.

Three anchor points shot into the darkness.

The first precisely pierced through a hollow hole in the back of the high-speed gear above.

The second hit and locked onto the slow-speed shaft on the left horizontally.

The third pulled diagonally in reverse, pinning itself into the iron pillar to the rear right.

Three Nano-wires were pulled taut between the gears, forming a triangular suspended leverage net.

"Step on the line."

Zhao Mengmeng's voice was tight.

"It's as black as the bottom of a coffin around here, where is the line?"

"I'll hold you as we go."

"Okay, don't let your hand slip."

Lin Ye gripped the leather strap at her waist tightly.

His tactical boots stepped onto the first Nano-wire.

There was only the wire beneath his feet.

Below were nothing but giant, deadly gears meshing in reverse.

Zhao Mengmeng was forced to step onto the line, her legs trembling uncontrollably.

"Don't look down."

"I can barely even see where you are, let alone look down!"

Using the tension of the triangular net, Lin Ye pulled her and leaped violently upward and to the side.

The mechanical array roared violently.

High-pressure steam erupted one after another, chasing at their heels.

The scalding heat wave swept across Zhao Mengmeng's shoulders and back.

Her bear-skin gear hissed, emitting damp white mist from the heat.

She gritted her teeth, not letting out a single sound.

Lin Ye pressed the mechanism with his fingers, forcibly retracting the line a second time.

Using the tension, the two slid sideways, approaching the horizontal shaft above.

Before they could stand steady.

A set of strange gears loaded with cutting blades swept out violently from the darkness to the side.

They were no more than five meters in diameter.

But the rotation speed was so fast it created a wind belt.

The edges of the discs were lined with thin, barbed alloy blades.

The sharp metal pieces sliced through the steam, heading straight for the stepping board Lin Ye had calculated.

Zhao Mengmeng's hair stood on end.

"Blade wheel! On the right!"

Lin Ye had already heard that extremely piercing, high-frequency screech.

He absolutely could not pull upward.

Above his head, another shifting drive shaft was pushing horizontally with the force of several tons.

If they collided, both they and their bones would be turned into pulp.

Lin Ye decisively released the main line mechanism.

The tension of the triangular net was instantly lost.

The two fell directly into the bottomless abyss below, following gravity.

This time, Zhao Mengmeng couldn't hold back.

"Lin Ye, screw you!"

The deadly blades grazed over their heads, grinding at high speed.

The outermost blade caught Zhao Mengmeng's backpack.

The bark binding rope snapped on the spot.

Several pieces of dried meat fell out, were swept into the blade wheel, and were instantly pulverized into meat powder.

Lin Ye flipped his right arm while in freefall.

The short anchor shot out of the barrel.

The anchor claw cut along the inner wall of the high-speed gear ring below, precisely pinning into the center of the slow-speed wheel at the bottom.

The winch spun and retracted like crazy.

The kinetic energy of the fall was forcefully offset by more than half by the metal wire.

Bang!

The two slammed heavily into the central groove of the wheel below.

The surface of the slow-speed wheel was very wide, and the rotation speed was slow.

The central area perfectly avoided all the gear meshing points on the outside.

Zhao Mengmeng lay flat on the cold metal surface, clutching it tightly.

Her legs were so weak she couldn't get up at all.

She raised her head, her voice weak.

"Next time you want to play bungee jumping without a cord, can you file a report in advance?"

Lin Ye braced his knees to stand steady; the old wound on the web of his hand split open, bleeding non-stop.

"If I file a report, will you approve it?"

"I'll slap red mud on your forehead."

The Great Xia Live Stream chat was flooded with messages.

"Ahhhh! Help! My heart actually stopped just now!"

"Is this even a human operation? Free-falling to dodge a blade array!"

"Brother Eye isn't surviving here; he's drifting wildly while riding on Death's neck!"

"Mengmeng lost a few pieces of her dried meat, and I was so angry I slapped my thigh!"

The steam concentration in the surroundings dropped.

The high-speed operation of the gear array entered a temporary lull.

Lin Ye raised his hand to wipe the white frost from his eyelashes and looked up, staring at the high space inside the tower.

On the tower wall at the highest point of the array, a black platform hung abruptly.

Deep within the platform, it connected to a staircase spiraling upward.

That led to the second level of the Giant Tower.

The platform was at least sixty meters away from their current foothold.

The height difference was nearly twenty meters.

There were no stairs or iron chains in between.

There was only a bridge of gears suspended in mid-air.

Seven giant gears of various sizes were connected end to end.

But they were not locked together.

The distance between them constantly lengthened and shortened as they rose, fell, and rotated.

Sometimes they closed to form a path.

Sometimes they tore open a bottomless abyss.

Stepping onto any of the gears, one could not stay for more than three seconds.

If the rhythm was slightly off, one would either fall and turn into mush or be crushed into meat paste by a wheel cutting across.

Zhao Mengmeng saw the path clearly, her face as dark as charcoal.

"Whoever designed this damn bridge must have had their ancestral grave dug up by all of humanity, right?"

Lin Ye flexed his stiff, bleeding right hand.

"Cross those gears, and we can go up to the second floor."

"What are the clearance requirements?"

"The bridge is alive; it will change its footholds at any time."

"Can you speak like a human?"

"The second before it's about to eat someone, step on its edge and jump across."

Zhao Mengmeng stared at those seven rotating killing machines.

"That sounds no different from committing suicide."