156: Chapter 156 Feint to the East, Attack in the West

The two moved along the black stone road toward the depths of the Frost Armor Graveyard.

Behind them, the Sakura Country Challenger had already been ground into a dark red stain on the ice.

But the chaos they had created was still spreading.

In the distance, more ice sculptures were being awakened by the delayed echoes; the crisp sound of cracking ice rolled back and forth under the dome of the plaza, one after another.

Zhao Mengmeng's eyelids were trembling violently, and her vision was so blurred she could barely hold on.

Every time she had to blink, she had to issue a warning out loud beforehand.

"I'm blinking on the left."

"I've got it."

Lin Ye stared intently at the sword-wielding knight on the left.

Zhao Mengmeng quickly closed and opened her eyes. The knight's shoulder armor had just twitched half an inch before Lin Ye forcibly stared it back into place.

"You blink on the right."

"Keep watching."

Zhao Mengmeng rolled her aching eyeballs to lock onto the hammer-wielding knight on the right.

Lin Ye took the opportunity to close his Left Eye, using only his right eye's vision to alleviate the excruciating pain in his brain.

His right eye could only see the light screen and could not see through the danger level of the ice sculptures.

The Left Eye was the only way to survive, but his available time was near its limit; forcing it open would only result in being blinded on the spot by mental backlash.

To go blind in this place was certain death.

This was a linked killing formation with no blind spots.

Run, and the sound would awaken the surrounding grim reapers;

Stop, and the extreme cold would drain their body heat.

This place didn't give the living even half a second to catch their breath.

"We need to speed up," Zhao Mengmeng said, her voice tight. "If we keep staring like this, our eyes will be ruined."

"Use the reflection."

Lin Ye reached up and felt for the battered aluminum pot on the outside of his backpack.

The pot, which he had used to block spores on the Fifth Floor, had large pits burned into its bottom by acid, but there were still a few patches along the edge that retained a silvery, reflective surface.

He pulled the aluminum pot off with one hand and used his bone blade to forcibly pry open the frozen, brittle rim.

Snap. Two palm-sized shards were forcibly broken off the metal.

Lin Ye handed one piece to Zhao Mengmeng and inserted the other directly into a gap in his tactical shoulder armor, using his fingertips to press it into an angled position.

Zhao Mengmeng immediately understood his intention: "Using it as a rearview mirror?"

"Let's go."

With the reflective mirror, the two didn't need to keep turning their heads.

Although the image reflected by the curved surface was distorted and covered in frost, it was enough to capture the approaching trajectory of the eerie green cold light.

The Great Xia Live Stream barrage was flooded again because of this extreme maneuver.

[This pot is incredible! From making meat soup to an anti-air umbrella, and now it's even guest-starring as a tactical rearview mirror?]

[Who on the foreign web was just mocking the Great Xia contestant for carrying a broken pot and getting in the way? Does your face hurt yet!]

[This is the ultimate use of junk! Brother Eye's local area network vision has been forcibly expanded into a panoramic view by him!]

With the assistance of the reflective shards, Lin Ye forced their progress speed to increase from moving one meter at a time to stopping every three meters.

Passing through the area of collapsed statues, the two entered a more open ice plain zone.

There were fewer dead statues, but the moment Lin Ye opened his Left Eye, the density of red light soared.

Within fifty meters ahead, thirteen living entities were lying in wait.

Six of them were blocking a straight path leading into the depths.

At the end of the path, a high platform covered in thick frost was faintly visible.

"Thirteen moving ones." Lin Ye closed his eyes.

Zhao Mengmeng didn't reply, her fingers tightly gripping the trigger of her crossbow.

Lin Ye's gaze landed on the spear held by a dead statue on the right.

The spear was stuck horizontally between two ice sculptures, at chest height.

If he broke it, the sound of it hitting the ground would definitely awaken the three ice sculptures in the right area.

"Mengmeng, lock onto the second axe-wielder on the right."

"Got it." Zhao Mengmeng didn't even blink.

Lin Ye half-knelt on the ice, his right arm slightly raised.

The Dark Weaver emitted an extremely faint mechanical click, and the anchor point slid silently along the ice, precisely bypassing the base of the dead statue and hovering fifteen meters away.

He hooked the Nano-wire with his fingertip and gave it a sharp tug.

The metal buckle in the distance swung up and lightly tapped against a broken ice shield.

Clang.

A slight, crisp sound rang out in the silence.

The helmets of the three living ice sculptures on the right turned eerily at the same time, and eerie green cold lights suddenly flared up.

Zhao Mengmeng and Lin Ye each pinned one down, but the third one, having lost visual lock, dragged its heavy footsteps and charged directly toward the source of the sound.

Its massive heavy armor collided with the dead statues that were originally blocking the path, forcibly smashing open a gap of survival in the passage.

"Go!" Lin Ye retracted the line and stood up.

The two moved rapidly, weaving through with stealthy steps, keeping their centers of gravity low.

Every step landed on old cracks in the ice, forcibly keeping the friction sound to a minimum.

Just as they were about to rush out of the middle section, a spear-wielding knight ahead awakened without warning.

The frost spear swept horizontally, only four meters away from Zhao Mengmeng's cheek.

She caught the green light in the reflective shard and immediately turned her head to stare at it. But another sword-wielding knight directly in front was also raising its head!

Lin Ye's Left Eye was in excruciating pain and going black; he couldn't suppress two directions at once.

He backhanded his bone blade from his waist and snapped his wrist, shooting the bone blade out at high speed, embedding it into a crack above the ice wall on the left.

Snap! The ice crack shattered.

The giant icicle hanging in mid-air was dislodged by the vibration and crashed onto the shoulder armor of a dead statue on the left, sending shattered ice flying everywhere.

The roaring sound drew the sword-wielding knight's attention to the left.

Its helmet had just turned half an inch when Lin Ye stepped across the ice fissure, his gaze firmly locked onto its eye socket.

"Go!"

Zhao Mengmeng brushed past his back, the tip of the frost spear less than three feet from the back of her head.

Rushing out of the blockade, the two arrived beneath the high platform.

In the center of the platform was a tattered bronze battle flag, and beneath the base of the flagpole was a rectangular stone box.

The light screen popped up:

[Frost-Patterned Stone Box]

Lin Ye opened and closed his Left Eye in an instant. The surface of the stone box glowed with a soft, dark golden luster, with almost no gray spots.

But in the ice layer at the bottom of the stone box, it was densely covered with a layer of tiny red lines.

A weight-sensitive mechanism.

Once the stone box was removed directly, all thirteen living ice sculptures around the high platform would enter a berserk state.

Lin Ye rummaged through his backpack and pulled out a piece of petrified fungal root he had brought from the Fifth Floor; its weight was almost the same as the stone box.

He used his bone blade to silently scrape away the frost layer on the edge of the stone box and looped the Nano-wire around one end of it.

He held the fungal root in his left hand, pressing it against the gap at the bottom of the stone box.

Zhao Mengmeng's eyes were bloodshot as she stared intently at the two restless knights on the right.

"Hurry, something on the right is turning its neck."

Lin Ye's fingertips remained perfectly still.

The stone box was lifted extremely slowly by a finger's width, and the red line mechanism at the bottom began to tremble slightly.

The fungal root was inserted simultaneously.

The weight was perfectly transferred. The red line fluctuations calmed down.

The stone box was completely detached from the high platform. Not a single ice sculpture awakened.

Lin Ye casually stuffed the stone box into the shock-absorbing layer inside his backpack and tied it tight with animal tendon.

Now was not the time to open the box; any sound would invite a fatal disaster.

Behind the high platform was a massive, half-open ice door.

Behind the door was not a staircase leading to the Seventh Floor, but a suspended ice bridge extending into endless darkness.

At the end of the ice bridge stood a giant iceberg dozens of meters high.

Its surface was frozen with countless broken, ancient armors and the remains of strange beasts, forming a solidified mass grave.

Lin Ye forced his Left Eye open for a split second.

Deep within the iceberg, a massive and oppressive scarlet light almost pierced his retinas.

He immediately closed his eyes, the nerves at the corners of his eyes twitching violently and uncontrollably.

"There's a big one."

The ice plain beneath their feet suddenly shook.

Thump.

It was very light, yet carried an oppressive feeling that made their hearts constrict.

Thump.

The second time. The accumulated frost on the edge of the high platform was shaken so hard it jumped.

The thousands of statues that had originally been silent on the ice plain actually began to emit faint, trembling sounds one after another.

Zhao Mengmeng quickly raised her crossbow, the arrowhead pointing directly at the end of the ice bridge.

Thump!

With the third thump, countless web-like cracks burst open on the surface of the iceberg.

From the dome to the waist, the deep blue, millennia-old ice shattered inch by inch.

Large chunks of ice rock peeled off, crashing onto the plaza below with a deafening roar.

Amidst the sky full of frost and ice mist, a behemoth six meters tall, dragging a huge frost battle-axe, was slowly rising from its slumber.