149: Chapter 149 Poison-Repelling Blue-Ground Algae

Lin Ye did not look back.

From the black soil far behind him came the muffled sound of thick fungal roots being snapped by brute force.

The sound was heavy, and the pace was extremely fast.

Zhao Mengmeng leveled her crossbow.

"Is Blake chasing us?"

"Yes."

"He dares to breathe in those deadly things in the air too?"

"He is trying to survive."

Zhao Mengmeng pulled at the corner of her mouth.

"That thought process is so typical of the USA."

Lin Ye raised his hand to lower her crossbow, stopping her from speaking.

The concentration of spores in the air ahead spiked suddenly.

The caps of giant fungi overlapped overhead, blocking out the light.

Gray-white flakes were swept up by the airflow, accumulating thicker and thicker, forming small vortices.

The snow-free safety zone in the gaps between the fungal roots underfoot was getting narrower and narrower.

Lin Ye instantly opened his Left Eye.

His retinas trembled violently.

The mid-to-upper space was already filled with glaring red spots.

In the black soil on the ground, scattered red dots were spinning out threads.

Tiny white threads were spreading upward along the edges of his shoe soles.

If they continued along the original route, they would be swallowed by the spore tide within less than a hundred meters.

Bloodshot streaks burst into Lin Ye's eyes, and he closed his Left Eye.

Zhao Mengmeng moved half a step closer, her voice pressed to her throat.

"Is there no way forward?"

"I'm looking."

"Your eyes..."

"I won't die from it."

Lin Ye interrupted her.

He squatted down, his bone blade probing into the black soil half a foot away.

The soil turned over.

A large amount of white mycelium with gray spots sensed the blade and began to retract rapidly.

In this closed ecosystem, there must be scavengers.

Without natural predators, the entire underground forest would have long been filled into a solid dead zone by spores.

Lin Ye suppressed the needle-like pain in his nerves and forced his Left Eye open again.

Red light covered everything.

The density of gray spots was extremely high.

His vision rapidly sliced through the field of view, passing over giant glowing plants, sweeping over rotten roots, puddles, and black rocks.

Ten meters to the front right, in a depression of withered fungal roots, a trace of clean green appeared.

It was extremely faint, but pure.

The gray spots showed a gap here.

Lin Ye raised his hand and pointed to the sunken area of black soil.

"Over there."

Zhao Mengmeng looked in the direction of his finger.

In her line of sight, there was only a pile of thoroughly rotten black mud and decaying fungi.

"Go dig."

"Okay."

She pulled out her Entrenching Tool and lowered her body.

The two of them had to cross a short slope dense with spores.

Lin Ye placed the broken aluminum pot upside down on top of his backpack to block the vertically falling flakes.

He pulled out half a piece of rock sheep skin and held it over Zhao Mengmeng's left shoulder.

"Keep your head down, stop every three steps."

Zhao Mengmeng nodded.

The two of them crawled forward, almost hugging the mud.

The flying flakes hit the outside of the animal skin, making a rustling sound.

No blades, no fireballs.

But as long as these gray flakes flying all over the sky were inhaled into the lungs, the fate of the Split-Head Beast on the previous floor would be theirs.

Lin Ye shook the animal skin with his left hand at a high frequency, shaking the adhering gray spots onto the mud.

The suppressed atmosphere in the Great Xia Live Stream was ignited.

[The environment on this floor is purely hellish; it can wipe out a whole team without a sound!]

[Brother Eye calculates every step he takes; the attention to detail is maxed out.]

[Mengmeng's cooperation is so steady; when told to dig mud, she just digs. If it were anyone else, they would have been complaining already.]

[Just went to the USA livestream to take a look; Blake didn't even cover his mouth and is swallowing spores raw!]

The camera cut to the outskirts of the Fifth Floor.

Blake was running wildly, following the fresh footprints on the black soil.

His severed wrist was sealed by a thick, gray-white hard shell.

The burns on his left arm had completely scabbed over, and the muscles were abnormally swollen in a way that violated human physiological structure.

A giant fungal root blocking the way lay in front of him.

Blake grabbed out with his left hand.

The thick root was snapped into two pieces by his single hand.

Thick green sap splashed onto his blood-red eyeballs.

He didn't even blink, wiped the mucus off his face, and continued to speed up.

Ivan stood at a safe distance a hundred meters away, holding a broken pickaxe.

"Mad dog."

Martin huddled behind a withered fungal column, covering his mouth and nose with animal skin.

His injured leg had worsened, and he was in no position to face them head-on.

He could only wait for the people ahead to kill each other and gamble on a chance amidst the pile of corpses.

Fungal root collapse zone.

Lin Ye used his bone blade to cut open the outermost layer of rotten soil.

Three fist-sized, completely translucent blue spherical plants were exposed to the air.

Their surfaces were covered with an extremely thin transparent membrane, with pale blue liquid rippling inside.

The light screen on the right popped up.

[Scavenger Blue Algae]

Lin Ye's blade tip traced the surrounding soil, and he carefully pried out the largest one intact.

The moment the Blue Algae left the soil.

Several gray-white flakes drifting in mid-air deviated from their trajectory, repelled to two feet away.

Zhao Mengmeng's pupils shrank sharply.

"Are they avoiding it?"

"Yes."

Lin Ye flipped his bone blade and cut off the thin membrane at the top of the Blue Algae.

The liquid overflowing from the inside was clear and bright, carrying a faint fragrance similar to water plants.

He instantly opened and closed his Left Eye.

Vibrant green, with no trace of gray spots.

He handed the cut opening to her.

"Drink a couple of sips, keep half."

Zhao Mengmeng lifted the hem of her mask and opened her mouth to catch the pale blue liquid.

The liquid was chillingly cold going down her throat, falling straight into her stomach along her esophagus.

The sour, stuffy feeling caused by the gas mask was swept away.

Her chapped lips regained a bit of color.

Lin Ye took a swig.

The pollution index on the light screen stopped accumulating, and the tail number dropped slightly.

He poured the remaining liquid into his palm.

He smeared it evenly on the outer layer of his mask, collar, cuffs, and the zipper gaps of his backpack.

Zhao Mengmeng quickly followed suit.

The scent spread out.

The gray-white flying flakes in the air were forcibly pushed back, creating a sterile vacuum zone half an arm's width wide around the two of them.

Zhao Mengmeng patted her damp collar.

"If this could be mass-produced and brought back to Blue Star, hazmat suits could be directly phased out."

Lin Ye dug out the two remaining Blue Algae from the soil.

He wrapped them tightly with clean inner clothing.

The strategic value of such pure materials far exceeded that of ordinary beast meat.

The Disaster Prevention Administration on Blue Star needed samples like this that could block large-scale pollution even more.

However, the upload permission, which was once a day, was limited to nighttime.

They had to live until then.

With the repellent effect of the Blue Algae, the two stood up straight, and their speed of advance surged.

Lin Ye observed the range of the vacuum zone every time they walked a certain distance.

Once the scent dissipated and the edge shrank, he would immediately reapply it.

Behind them, the sound of Blake trampling the mud appeared and disappeared.

The distance was closing.

"Brother Lin, that guy is about to catch up."

"He is absorbing the pollution source."

"The light screen still recognizes him as a Challenger; the rules haven't erased him."

Zhao Mengmeng's finger locked onto the trigger.

Lin Ye crushed a withered fungal cap.

"Don't rush, let him eat a bit more."

He treated Blake as a living pressure testing machine.

After passing through a dense forest of dwarf fungi.

The air was refreshing.

A black rock stood abruptly ahead.

At the base of the rock grew a patch of milky white, fleshy mushrooms.

The caps were thick, without a single speck of gray flake pollution.

Lin Ye scanned with his Left Eye.

Pure green light.

Safe ingredients.

He drew his bone blade.

Zhao Mengmeng stared at the milky white fungal caps and swallowed her saliva.

"Is the Fifth Floor finally giving us food?"

Lin Ye sliced off a piece of fungal meat and threw it into the aluminum pot, using a little clean water as a base.

He ignited it with the moss charcoal brought from the Fourth Floor.

The steam rolled, and the rich, sweet, and savory aroma violently suppressed the surrounding stench of decay.

Lin Ye ate a piece himself first.

He waited thirty seconds.

The pollution index had no change, and his body had no feedback of pain.

He pushed half a pot of fungal meat over.

Zhao Mengmeng used a bone needle to pick up a piece and stuff it into her mouth; she chewed twice, and light lit up in her eyes.

"A hundred times better than that blind crocodile from the Third Floor."

Lin Ye's hand rose and the blade fell, cutting off large pieces of fungal meat and putting them into the pot.

He added dried rock sheep meat and sprinkled in crushed salt bricks.

The charcoal fire roasted the bottom of the pot.

The juice of the Blue Algae was smeared on the rim of the fire pit, and not a single spore could invade this territory.

The dried meat and fungal slices boiled into a pot of milky white thick soup.

Lin Ye picked up a bone bowl and poured the hot soup down his throat.

The piping hot, high-calorie food entered his stomach, and his physical strength, which had been squeezed to the limit, received a solid replenishment.

Zhao Mengmeng drank a bowl empty and put the remaining thick soup into a sealed bone tube.

She also sliced the uncooked fungal meat into thin slices and packed them up.

Lin Ye, on the other hand, casually dug up a piece of clean, combustible, lignified fungal root.

A violent, muffled sound exploded on the path they had come from.

That was the sound of a heavy object smashing through black rock.

Immediately followed by Blake's distorted, rough roar.

Zhao Mengmeng raised the crossbow, the arrowhead pointing toward the source of the sound.

Lin Ye stood up and picked up the re-sharpened Fire Axe.

The mist to the front right churned rapidly.

Blake smashed through a cluster of withered fungi and rushed over.

Behind him, more than a dozen mutated parasitic beasts covered in red and gray patterns burst out of the soil, following closely like maggots on rotting bones.