178: Chapter 178 Crossing the Abyss

The sound of chains grinding beneath the platform drew closer and closer.

Driven by the strange wind, the broken chains, draped in skeletal remains, crashed straight toward the Black Stone Platform.

The remains of those Challengers had been ground dry and withered by the wind and sand.

Tattered backpacks hung between ribs, and broken grappling hooks were still firmly wedged into iron rings.

Zhao Mengmeng gripped the stock of her crossbow tightly.

"How many people died in front of this door?"

Lin Ye did not answer.

He opened his Left Eye for half a breath.

Within the True Vision, red light from the bottom of the abyss surged and rose.

The broken chains draped in skeletons were not living things.

The turbulent currents at the bottom of the valley forced the iron chains to swing, and the trajectory of each toss perfectly blocked the platform's only exit.

The wind was fierce, cutting off all paths to survival.

"Retreat to the inner side."

Lin Ye unsheathed his horizontal saber, lowering the tip of the blade.

Just as Zhao Mengmeng took two steps back, the first broken chain slammed heavily against the edge of the platform.

Boom!

Massive cracks spiderwebbed across the Black Stone Platform.

Over a dozen skeletons were flung from the iron chain, shattered bone fragments rolling wildly across the ground.

The hand bones of one of the corpses were still hooked around half of a metal slide buckle.

The surface of the slide buckle was polished bright, while its inner wall was stuck with charred, air-dried flesh.

The bullet screen of the Great Xia Live Stream froze for a moment.

[Did someone use this thing to cross the chains before?]

[But they all died! This method doesn't work at all!]

[Don't touch it! That slide buckle looks like bad luck!]

Zhao Mengmeng raised her foot and kicked away the broken bones that had rolled to the edge of her boot.

"Those mouths out there are really asking for it. Though I can't hear them, I bet they aren't saying anything good."

Lin Ye squatted and picked up the slide buckle.

"The sooner they talk smack, the faster they'll get slapped in the face."

He extended his horizontal saber and cleanly scraped away the remaining flesh on the inside of the slide buckle.

Lin Ye looked up toward the front of the platform.

In the brief moment the wind died down, three thick iron chains spanning the abyss emerged from the darkness.

They were as thick as water buckets and covered in rust.

They ran horizontally across the two-hundred-meter-wide black grand canyon.

The ends of the chains connected to an extremely narrow black rock gateway platform on the opposite bank.

Aside from these three chains, there was only void all around.

There were no stalagmites, no rocky ridges, and the chains were separated by several Zhang, making it absolutely impossible to switch chains mid-air.

Zhao Mengmeng stared at the three iron chains.

"Which one do we take?"

Lin Ye's Left Eye suddenly snapped open.

Red trajectories instantly filled his retina.

The wind direction in the latter half of the canyon had completely changed.

There was no pattern; it was entirely composed of chaotic, directional whirlwinds.

Red lines crossed, swept backward, surged upward, and pressed down, intertwining with no discernible pattern.

There was no fixed safe zone.

However, within the dense red wind-net, an extremely brief green window of opportunity was drifting rapidly along the middle iron chain.

It widened and narrowed, existing for at shortest only half a breath.

Lin Ye closed his eyes, the muscles at the corners of his eyes twitching slightly.

"The middle chain."

Zhao Mengmeng glanced at the middle line, which was draped with the most corpses.

"The dead made the same choice."

"They didn't wait for the wind."

Lin Ye spread out the tattered wings of the Wind Bat.

The fleshy wings of this exotic beast were extremely tough; even after being sliced by wind blades, they remained attached to the thick hide.

Spinning his horizontal saber, he shaved off the brittle bones and peeled away the two thickest parts of the wing membrane.

He then pulled out several main threads from the sand spider tendon bundle.

Zhao Mengmeng saw through his plan at a glance.

"Using Wind Bat wings as padding for the slide buckles?"

"Yeah. To reduce friction and prevent flipping."

Using the old slide buckle as a mold, Lin Ye folded the Wind Bat tattered wings tightly into double-layered ring pads.

The outer layer was tightly wrapped with beast hide, while the inner side was sewn with translucent blind ear-bone plates.

The bone plates vibrated slightly in the airflow, allowing them to capture minor shifts in wind direction ahead of time.

In an instant, two makeshift slide buckles were formed.

They were rough, ugly, and violently stitched.

But they would definitely work.

Zhao Mengmeng hooked a slide buckle onto the front end of her Wind-Chasing Claw and pulled hard.

The wing membrane scraped against the rusty iron, emitting a dry, grating sound.

"How long can they last?"

"Until we reach the other side."

"That answer really tests my trust."

"Trust me, and you'll die fewer times."

Zhao Mengmeng snorted coldly and retightened the sand spider tendon bundle around her waist.

Lin Ye pulled their belts together and retied them.

The distance between them was strictly controlled to two arm-lengths.

If it was too short, the person behind wouldn't have enough time to use their grappling hook to correct their course when hit by crosswinds from the front.

If it was too long, the tearing force when the iron chain plummeted would snap their spines on the spot.

Applying force in opposite directions with both hands, he compressed his damaged backpack to the limit.

The dragon bone nails, valley seeds, and fragments of the frost-patterned stone box were all inside.

This was where Great Xia's final hope lay.

Not a single bit could be lost.

Zhao Mengmeng patted the inner pocket on her chest; the purifying crystal core pressed hard against her ribs.

With her modified crossbow slung back over her shoulder, only two bent arrows remained in the empty slot.

She no longer complained about the lack of ammunition.

Complaining wouldn't change the current situation.

Lin Ye stepped onto the edge of the platform and pressed the slide buckle onto the middle iron chain.

The iron chain vibrated frantically in the wild wind.

The moment the slide buckle entered the track, the ear-bone plates burst into a rapid, trembling hum.

He briefly opened his Left Eye.

A red whirlwind was rising from the bottom right, and would completely engulf the chain's surface in three breaths.

The green window was still ten Zhang away.

"Wait."

Zhao Mengmeng hooked on the second slide buckle and lowered her stance.

Behind the platform, the broken chain draped in corpses came whistling down once again.

This time, the impact point was even further in.

A massive chunk of black stone was shattered at its base, the cracks spreading all the way to her boot heels.

"Still waiting?"

"Wait."

The broken chain swept up for a third time.

A skeleton slammed directly at Zhao Mengmeng's feet, its withered skull rolling twice until its dark, hollow eye sockets stared straight at her.

Zhao Mengmeng raised her foot and kicked it, sending it back into the abyss.

"Don't look at me, sister hasn't joined the table yet."

The Wind Bat ear-bone on Lin Ye's wrist suddenly stopped vibrating.

Within his line of sight,

in front of the middle iron chain, a green window less than half a Zhang wide quietly emerged.

It was sliding rapidly toward the opposite bank.

"Get on the chain!"

Lin Ye threw himself violently off the platform.

The slide buckle bit hard into the iron chain, dragging him as he slid at high speed over the abyss.

Zhao Mengmeng leaped into the air to follow.

The instant they left the ground, a corner of the Black Stone Platform behind them was smashed to pieces by the broken chain.

A hundred tons of shattered rock plummeted into the cliff.

Suspended in mid-air.

Weightless.

The dark abyss seemed to press directly against their chests, suffocating them.

Zhao Mengmeng's breathing grew erratic, and she locked her gaze entirely on Lin Ye's backpack.

"Brother Lin, this height is really terrifying."

"Look at me."

"I am looking. If I look any longer, I'm going to stare a hole right through your pack."

The wind shrieked past their ears.

Their sliding speed grew faster and faster.

The Wind Bat wing membrane rubbed violently against the rusty iron, the heat searing through skin and bone to turn the backs of their hands red.

Lin Ye pressed down hard on the slide buckle with his right hand, while his left hand drove his horizontal saber into the side of the iron chain, relying entirely on the slight friction of the blade's spine to force-control their direction.

Zhao Mengmeng hooked her wrist down, using the short line of her Wind-Chasing Claw to catch the lower edge of the iron chain, fighting with all her might against the left-and-right swaying caused by the wild winds.

The first whirlwind surged upward from beneath their feet.

The ear-bone plates inside the slide buckle buzzed frantically.

"Lean left!"

Zhao Mengmeng threw her entire body weight violently to the left.

The red whirlwind scraped past her right arm guard, instantly pulling the iron chain into a terrifying arc.

The slide buckle nearly flipped over.

Veins bulged on Lin Ye's wrist as he forcefully wedged the wing membrane into a deep groove in the rust.

Bullet messages instantly flooded the screen of the Great Xia Live Stream.

[Walking a tightrope at high altitude, and they have to guard against directional wind shears!]

[I don't even dare to look at the bottom of the screen anymore!]

[Did the foreign streams just say they were at a dead end? Watch closely! Even with just a few tattered wings, Great Xia can forge a dragon to cross the river!]

They were more than halfway across.

The cliff walls narrowed rapidly, and the wind pressure grew increasingly sharp.

Lin Ye's Left Eye was approaching its limit.

He could only blink rapidly to toggle it on and off, calculating the deadly red-line paths three Zhang ahead.

The green window was speeding up ahead.

They had to stick to it like glue.

A fraction of an inch too slow, and the red net behind them would mince them to pieces.

Half a step too fast, and they would crash headfirst into the headwind.

Zhao Mengmeng's windproof mask was already soaked, but her hands held the slide buckle firmly, without the slightest tremor.

"The wind ahead isn't right."

"Yeah."

Lin Ye heard it too.

"It wasn't the howling of the wind."

It was a dull tearing sound coming from deep within the rock strata.

Crack.

Crack, crack.

High up on the left cliff face, the rocky crust, hollowed out by wind blades over the years, collapsed entirely without warning.

Hundreds of falling rocks whistled down with destructive kinetic energy.

Lin Ye forced his Left Eye wide open to its absolute limit.

The trajectories of the red light, the green window, and the falling rocks formed a clear three-dimensional image in his mind.

That largest boulder was unavoidable.

Its point of impact was directly on the load-bearing rivet mount of the iron chain thirty meters ahead.

"It's going to break!" Zhao Mengmeng's voice was hoarse and distorted.

Boom!

The falling rock smashed heavily through the connection point.

Sparks filled the air, blasting outward along with shattered iron fragments.

The front section of the iron chain snapped and broke free from its base.

The middle iron chain lost all tension.

Carrying both the living and the bones of the dead, the entire iron chain plummeted like a cliff-drop into the bottomless abyss.

The slide buckles lost their forward track.

Their internal organs surged upward in the sudden weightlessness.

Zhao Mengmeng's Wind-Chasing Claw scraped a two-meter-long trail of sparks along the falling iron chain, but to no avail.

"Lin Ye!"

At the end of the abyss where they were falling through the wind,

in Lin Ye's Left Eye, a massive red eye of the wind was surging skyward from the bottom of the valley against all odds.

An updraft.

It was a death trap of strangulation,

yet also the only springboard that could sustain a half-breath of life.

The iron chain was falling to its limit, and the two were about to smash into the opposite cliff face, breaking every bone in their bodies.

Hanging onto the slide buckles meant certain death.

Lin Ye flipped his fingers, pressing his thumb tightly against the main locking plate of the slide buckle.

Zhao Mengmeng's boot soles were still frantically trying to find a foothold.

Lin Ye's roar drowned out the sound of the wind.

"Let go! Step on the wind!"