170: Chapter 170 Rock Vein Collapse

The grey sand ebbed and flowed.

An ear-piercing rustling pressed in from all directions.

One after another, Bone-Crushing Sand Spiders crawled out from underground.

Their abdomens trailed mucus behind them.

The bone fragments on their carapaces gleamed a ghastly white under the cold light.

The frontmost spiders stopped thirty meters away, their long legs tapping the sandy surface repeatedly.

Behind them, even more dark silhouettes clambered over the far side of the dunes.

Their numbers quickly surpassed a hundred.

Zhao Mengmeng's fingers tightly gripped the stock of her crossbow.

She pressed a bronze arrowhead into the crossbow's groove.

"With these numbers, I could shoot until the string snaps and still not kill them all."

Lin Ye held his horizontal saber in one hand, its tip pointing diagonally toward the ground.

Killing those three sand spiders earlier had relied entirely on striking their weak points for instant kills.

Ten or twenty could still be handled in close combat.

But with over a hundred surging forward together, it would be enough to completely drain their stamina, ammunition, and repaired mechanisms.

Zhao Mengmeng backed up against a weathered boulder.

To her left was the massive quicksand crater that had just swallowed a person.

To the far right, in front of a few withered trees, the sand spiders had already occupied half of their only way out.

There was no Bronze Door behind them.

There was no retreat.

The tide of bullet comments in the Great Xia Live Stream suddenly shifted.

[This is real trouble this time, there are just too many of them!]

[No matter how strong the horizontal saber is, there's only one of it, and Mengmeng doesn't have many arrows left.]

[Don't charge! Find a way out first!]

The Foreign Live Stream immediately followed suit with mockery.

[The Great Xia players have finally run into a numbers disadvantage.]

[No matter how powerful the blade, it can't stop a hundred monsters.]

[They're going to be buried alive in the sea of sand.]

Lin Ye ignored the approaching arthropod limbs.

Trying to fight them head-on was certain death.

There was no path for retreat.

He looked up at the pitch-black dome.

A few fractured astral rocks rotated slowly.

Cold white beams of light struck the grey sand, forming shifting patches of light and shadow.

Lin Ye's Left Eye opened silently.

Within the True Vision, the light beams cast by the star rocks interwove beneath the sandy surface into a massive energy grid.

Its outer edges glowed with a faint green.

Its core was a dark red.

Forty-five meters ahead to the right, there was an extremely flat patch of sand.

It was situated right at the edge where several beams of starlight converged.

Hidden underground was a slender rock vein that firmly supported the upper layer of grey sand.

Suspended beneath the rock vein were densely packed gravitational cutting lines.

Since the heavy pressure had not yet arrived, the trap remained dormant.

Lin Ye closed his Left Eye.

His optic nerve felt only a slight soreness.

Forty-five meters.

Two swarms of sand spiders stood in the way.

The path was extremely narrow.

"Which way?" Zhao Mengmeng lowered her voice.

Lin Ye raised his blade and pointed toward the flat patch of sand. "Go over there."

Zhao Mengmeng looked in that direction.

There was no cover, the surface was completely flat, and there wasn't even a single black stone to use as leverage.

"That place looks more like a spot to dig a grave and bury someone."

"Which is exactly why they'll think so too."

Zhao Mengmeng's finger returned to the trigger.

There was definitely something fishy about that patch of sand.

And they needed the sand spiders to step into the trap.

A dozen sand spiders in the front row lowered their abdomens simultaneously.

Their long legs kicked off the sand, and they lunged forward.

Zhao Mengmeng raised her crossbow.

*Thrum!*

A violent sonic boom rang out.

The bronze bolt instantly blew apart the carapace on the first sand spider's head.

Its momentum undiminished, it pierced straight into the abdomen of the second sand spider.

"Two with one shot. Pretty efficient."

Lin Ye had already rushed out from the leeward side of the boulder.

Sliding to the side, he cut diagonally to the right.

His horizontal saber swept past the base of the sand spider's legs on the left.

Two hairy forelimbs were sliced clean off at the base.

The sand spider collapsed to the ground and was instantly trampled to pieces by its own kind behind it.

Lin Ye raised his right arm.

The repaired Dark Weaver aimed at a half-withered tree in the distance.

It glowed with a faint green light, just enough to support a single person's pull.

*Zzip!*

The nano-auxiliary wire tightly wrapped around a tree branch.

The gears spun madly.

Lin Ye's body was forcibly yanked toward the front right.

Zhao Mengmeng didn't fall half a step behind.

The Wind-Chasing Claw shot out, its three-pronged hook clamping tightly onto another broken branch.

The pulling force erupted.

The swarm of sand spiders pounced on the spot where the two had just been, kicking up a massive cloud of grey sand.

Zhao Mengmeng forcibly twisted her waist in mid-air.

She raised her crossbow and fired.

Her second bolt pierced straight through the mouthparts of a sand spider that had leaped after them in mid-air.

Green fluid splattered.

The scent of blood instantly drove the swarm of sand spiders behind them into a frenzy.

The sole of Lin Ye's boot landed on the edge of a black stone.

His Left Eye opened and closed in an instant.

The landing points were etched into his mind.

"Keep close."

"My legs are moving so fast they're leaving afterimages!" Zhao Mengmeng replied through gritted teeth.

Swarms of black sand spiders surged forward in sheets.

On the sand ridges on both sides, over twenty sand spiders quickly flanked them.

In front of them, the grey sand bulged in rapid, straight lines.

Burrowing Sand Spiders were forcibly cutting off their path from below.

Lin Ye stared at the churning sand ahead.

The dark red feedback in his Left Eye was approaching at high speed.

Three meters ahead, the sandy surface broke open.

Three sand spiders burst from the ground, their venomous limbs thrusting straight at Lin Ye's chest.

Lin Ye stomped his right foot heavily onto the sand.

Instead of retreating, he pressed forward, sliding briefly to the left right past the venomous stingers.

His horizontal saber swept horizontally.

The limbs of the sand spider on the left flew into the air.

With a twist of his wrist, he pressed the blade downward.

It pierced accurately through the faint green dot on the abdomen of the middle sand spider.

As he withdrew the blade, the back of his sword slammed hard into the mouthparts of the sand spider on the right, forcibly deflecting its attack.

Zhao Mengmeng stepped out from behind him.

Her crossbow pressed directly against the face of the third sand spider.

*Thrum!*

The bronze bolt shattered its head.

"Clear the way!"

Lin Ye raised his blade and continued to charge forward.

The bullet comments in the Foreign Live Stream grew increasingly dense.

[The Great Xia players are panicking. They're rushing into open ground.]

[There's no cover, no high ground, and both flanks have already closed in.]

[This is a desperate, foolish move after running out of stamina!]

Inside the Great Xia Live Stream.

[Don't panic, Brother Eye always has a reason for taking weird paths.]

[But the numbers this time are just ridiculous. There isn't even a rock to stand on, how are they supposed to fight?]

[They're still burrowing out of the ground. My heart can't take this!]

On the right flank, over twenty sand spiders scrambled over the dunes, firmly blocking their path.

Underground on the left, waves of sand churned furiously, keeping pace with their footsteps.

The flat sand was close at hand.

Lin Ye's boots planted firmly into the sand.

Zhao Mengmeng braked hard, her shoulder brushing against his backpack.

"Are we there?"

"One step short."

Lin Ye looked up and stared at the dome.

The star rocks were still rotating.

The cold light they projected was gradually moving toward the center of the flat sand.

Before the light converged, the trap would not trigger.

They needed to wait.

Three breaths.

Zhao Mengmeng looked at the dense mass of approaching limbs behind them.

"Waiting for this step is a bit too thrilling."

Lin Ye switched his horizontal saber to his left hand, freeing up his right arm equipped with the Dark Weaver.

"Lure them all here."

Zhao Mengmeng turned around immediately.

Three broken bolts tipped with bronze arrowheads were placed into the crossbow's groove.

The first bolt shot directly at the feet of the frontmost sand spiders.

Sand exploded upward.

The pace of the sand spider swarm's attack suddenly accelerated.

The second bolt forcibly pierced through the eye socket of the leading giant spider on the right flank.

Foul fluid splattered.

The third bolt slammed heavily into the frantically bulging sand mound on the left.

A shrill shriek erupted from beneath the sand layer.

Zhao Mengmeng backed away while holding her crossbow.

"Come on! You think having more legs makes you special?!"

The aggro of all the sand spiders was instantly maxed out.

Their flanking formation completely collapsed.

Over a hundred dark silhouettes merged into a single tide, sweeping directly toward the flat sand where the two stood.

Lin Ye kept his eyes fixed on the starlight above.

The cold white patches of light crossed the edge of the area, completely covering the center of the flat sand.

Within the vision of his Left Eye.

An extremely fragile, dark green line emerged on the slender rock vein underground.

The load-bearing node was completely exposed.

As long as this thin layer of rock was shattered, the surface sand would definitely collapse.

Below was not quicksand.

Instead, it was a gravitational cutting grid completely locked down by starlight.

The Dark Weaver on Lin Ye's right arm restarted.

Its auxiliary wire nailed into the last withered tree to the front right.

The contracting pulling force erupted.

Grabbing the shoulder strap of Zhao Mengmeng's backpack with one hand, he swung out to the side to his absolute limit.

The sand spider swarm rushed past where they had just stood, stepping onto the flat sand.

"Where do I shoot?" Zhao Mengmeng twisted her body mid-air.

Lin Ye raised his hand and pointed slightly to the left of the sand's center.

"The rock vein at the bottom!"

Zhao Mengmeng had no complete bolts left.

She directly pried out the last solid copper arrowhead and forced it into the modified crossbow groove.

Without the weight of a shaft, the range and accuracy would take a nosedive.

"This thing won't fly far!"

"It's enough."

The two of them swept high past the edge of the sand.

A large number of sand spiders had completely stepped into the area covered by the starlight.

Zhao Mengmeng tightly squeezed the trigger mechanism.

*Thrum!*

The crossbow string boomed.

The solid copper arrowhead flew out of the groove.

Lacking the stability of fletching, the arrowhead tumbled violently in mid-air, veering straight off the target node.

Lin Ye's left hand had already drawn the beast-hide rope from his waist.

He flicked his wrist downward with force.

The end of the rope whipped out rapidly, striking the rear end of the arrowhead with pin-point accuracy.

The force wasn't great, but it managed to correct the skewed trajectory by half a foot.

*Thud!*

The bronze arrowhead plunged diagonally into the sand, nailing firmly into the dark green rock vein node underground.

Cracks spread rapidly from the bottom of the sand layer.

The extremely faint sound of fracturing was barely audible amidst the rustling of arthropod limbs.

Immediately after.

*Crack.*

The subterranean rock vein snapped completely.

The entire flat patch of sand collapsed, turning into an open trap.

The footing of the dozens of sand spiders in the lead suddenly vanished, and their massive bodies plunged downward with the flowing sand.

The sand spiders behind them could not stop due to their momentum, tumbling into the deep pit one after another.

As the grey sand settled.

The intersecting cold white beams of light at the bottom of the pit flared up blindingly.

This wasn't light.

It was energy cutting lines condensed from the gravitational force of the star rocks.

The massive weight of hundreds of tons of grey sand and over a hundred sand spiders completely awakened the dormant gravitational grid.

Blood-curdling shrieks soared into the sky from the bottom of the pit.

The giant meat grinder had begun to operate.