181: Chapter 181 Boiling Waterfall Blocks the Way

The massive bronze door locked shut behind them.

A heatwave rolled back along the dark red stone path.

The edges of the animal skins worn by Lin Ye and Zhao Mengmeng quickly hardened and curled.

The right eye light screen flickered in the scorching air.

[Tenth Layer: Blood-Weeping Amber Forest]

Zhao Mengmeng raised her hand to block the steaming red mist before her, her voice raspy from the heat: "The ninth layer was just announced, and behind this door it's already the tenth?"

Lin Ye tore the tattered animal skin into two pieces.

He pressed one piece over his own nose and mouth, then tossed the other to her.

"The Void Sea makes the rules; we're just responsible for staying alive."

Zhao Mengmeng caught the animal skin and quickly covered her nose and mouth.

A hot forest spread out before them.

Dozens-of-meters-tall tree stumps were scattered across the red-and-black ground, with viscous, blood-red resin flowing from their cross-sections.

As soon as the resin left the trunk, it quickly congealed into boiling hot amber in the high temperature, hanging on the bark, bulging and glistening.

The ground wasn't soil.

Everywhere was a hard layer of mixed congealed resin and black rock crust.

It looked smooth on the surface, but inside, high-temperature white steam constantly roamed.

Lin Ye's Left Eye opened silently.

In his retina, the entire hot forest was filled with dense red spots.

Those red spots varied in depth.

Some were just pale red, others had already turned blackish-red, swelling violently underground.

The green light paths representing safe footing were extremely rare.

They were twisted and hidden in the gaps between the red spots.

The widest part was no more than two steps, and the narrowest could only accommodate one foot.

Lin Ye's eye twitched slightly, and he decisively closed his eye.

"Follow my footprints, don't take even half a step more."

Zhao Mengmeng tightened the strap of her crossbow and squeezed the scorching crossbow arm: "What happens if I take half a step more?"

"You'll be cooked."

"That answer puts a lot of pressure on me during mealtime."

Lin Ye used his horizontal saber tip to flick a black stone toward a reddish-brown open space ten meters ahead.

The stone landed and rolled twice.

The next instant, the ground exploded with a roar.

A milky white high-temperature hot spring erupted five or six meters high.

The spring water, mixed with shards of red resin, instantly pulverized the black stone.

Zhao Mengmeng's eyelids twitched wildly: "Is the stuff buried under this forest all hot pot base?"

"And it's pressurized."

Lin Ye stepped out.

His boot sole landed precisely on a narrow, half-green, half-black stone on the left.

Zhao Mengmeng followed closely.

Just as the two left the spot, a crimson bulge swelled up on the ground behind them.

The bulge expanded to the size of a washbasin before abruptly bursting.

Boiling hot spring water splashed into the air, and the heat mist scraped across their back armor, leaving behind a pungent, scorched smell.

The Great Xia Live Stream exploded.

[Can humans even enter this temperature? My lungs hurt just watching through the screen!]

[If Brother Eye had been a second slower just now, he would've been thrown straight into the pot!]

[Where are those people from the foreign internet who said Brother Eye was just relying on luck? Come out and try walking a few steps!]

Deep in the hot forest, the two quickly wove through.

Lin Ye briefly opened his Left Eye every two or three breaths to scan the area.

Every time he opened it, the red spots would sear deep into his retina, and the stinging pain would spread backward along his left temple.

The heat mist refracted a large number of false images.

He had to distinguish the real eruption points from the optical illusions within half a breath.

Zhao Mengmeng followed behind, her eyes fixed solely on the footprints.

Her breathing grew heavier and heavier.

The tattered animal skin could block the stench of the resin, but it couldn't block the boiling air.

Every breath she inhaled scraped her throat painfully.

"Water." Lin Ye stopped behind a black rock.

Zhao Mengmeng took the water skin from her waist, moistened the stopper with her lips, and handed it directly to him.

There was only a thin layer left in the water skin.

Lin Ye took it, only moistened his dry lips, and pressed the water skin back into her hand.

Zhao Mengmeng looked at the corners of his mouth, which had split open into two bloody wounds.

"You have to lead the way."

"You have to hold the crossbow." Lin Ye turned and continued walking toward the heat mist, "Don't die."

A leaning giant red amber tree blocked their path ahead.

Half the trunk was buried in the ground, and viscous red resin was flowing out from the thick, broken end.

Below the resin, a huge, bulging lump of amber had congealed.

When Zhao Mengmeng bypassed the bulge, her footsteps suddenly stopped.

Lin Ye stopped and turned around.

Zhao Mengmeng raised the crossbow, pointing behind the amber.

A semi-melted skeleton was embedded there.

The upper half of the skeleton was in a crawling posture, while the lower half had already fused with the resin.

A tattered backpack was stuck to the edge of the sternum, and the dagger, small pot, and rope inside were all crushed and deformed.

The light screen didn't pop up any nationality information.

The face of the corpse had long been melted away by the heat, and only a charred fragment of the wrist terminal remained.

"A Challenger?" Zhao Mengmeng asked.

Lin Ye nodded.

They hadn't seen through the hot spring eruption points, or perhaps they had been forced to the point of dehydration and collapse by the heatwave, and could only crawl behind the amber to hide.

When the resin flowed down, they hadn't even finished their final struggle.

Zhao Mengmeng stared for two breaths, then raised her hand to pick at the piece of broken rope next to the skeleton.

"Don't touch any amber that has sealed something inside here," Lin Ye said.

Zhao Mengmeng quickly withdrew her blade tip.

Just now, when Lin Ye's Left Eye scanned it, the red light inside that piece of amber was still flickering.

"Is there something alive inside?"

Lin Ye looked toward the more massive red amber trees in the distance.

"Some aren't completely dead."

The two continued to venture deeper.

The further they went, the more amber there was.

Some amber encased beast claws, with tips half a meter long, still maintaining a posture of tearing outward.

Some encased coiled exotic bone snakes, their scales slightly fluttering in the red light.

On the right, a piece of crimson amber seven or eight meters high even sealed half of a humanoid giant beast.

At the beast's chest position.

A mass of dark red light was contracting and expanding extremely slowly.

Zhao Mengmeng lowered her voice: "Is its heart still beating?"

Lin Ye used his horizontal saber to press down on the crossbow arm in her hand.

"Don't shoot, don't knock, don't get close."

The Great Xia Live Stream chat collectively got goosebumps.

[Did I just see that thing's heart beat?]

[Is this damn forest sealing nothing but ancient monsters?]

[This isn't amber, it's a natural monster blind box! You'll die if you crack it open!]

A loud explosion came from the side of the hot forest.

A small piece of amber was shattered on the spot by debris erupted from the hot spring.

The crack had just spread.

The black insect body inside, only as thick as an arm, suddenly twitched.

The insect body broke out of its shell, and after landing, it expanded to half a person's length due to the high temperature.

It ignored Lin Ye and the other, crashing straight into a nearby hot spring eruption point.

Boiling water erupted.

The insect body was scalded, curling and twitching.

Its sharp mouthparts bit down, forcefully chewing half a black rock into smithereens.

Three breaths later, it finally stopped struggling after being cooked through in the boiling water.

Zhao Mengmeng's fingers gripped the crossbow stock tightly: "It can still chew rocks while half-dead. If it were really let out, the two of us wouldn't even be enough to fill its teeth gaps."

"So don't cause any trouble in this forest."

The heatwave grew heavier and heavier.

Sweat would evaporate from their foreheads as soon as it appeared, leaving only salt stains stuck to their skin.

Lin Ye's pace began to slow.

The stinging pain in his Left Eye had completely pierced through to the back of his head.

He had to find an exit, or find supplies that could forcefully suppress the high temperature and cool them down.

After bypassing a dense area of hot springs, the space ahead suddenly opened up.

Lin Ye stopped in his tracks.

A boiling waterfall fifty meters wide blocked their path.

The waterfall poured down from a crack in the rock wall above, crashing heavily into a crimson gully on the ground.

Boiling spring water mixed with melted resin.

Crimson, milky white, and blackish-brown colors churned.

Every droplet of water that splashed up burned harsh sizzling sounds and scorched pits onto the rock surface.

On the opposite bank, there was a faint, thick, massive door.

Zhao Mengmeng looked at the boiling waterfall.

"Swim across, or stew across?"

Lin Ye's Left Eye opened again.

The interference from the heat mist was pushed to its peak.

The red waterfall almost filled his field of vision, and the blinding, bright red light pressed down until the bottom of his eyes went black.

He forced his gaze to raise, quickly scanning the remnant trees above the waterfall.

A broken giant tree lay horizontally diagonally above the waterfall.

At the tip of a branch.

A green amber the size of a fist was hanging there.

It was completely different from those dangerous blood-red ambers around it.

The green light it emitted was extremely pure, with almost imperceptible gray spots.

The right eye light screen popped up on time.

[Ice Spring Tree Gum]

Lin Ye stared at the green amber: "Found the way."

"That one?"

"Shoot it down. Aim for the base, don't shatter the outer shell."

Zhao Mengmeng immediately took off her crossbow and loaded a black bamboo arrow that had been bent and corrected.

She knelt halfway on a black rock.

The crossbow muzzle was raised steadily.

The heatwave was crazily distorting the line of sight.

The crosshair swayed between the branches for a full three breaths before her finger slowly pressed onto the trigger.

Just at the moment the crossbow was about to fire.

The "withered vine" coiled above the green amber moved.

The withered vine raised up.

A triangular snake head poked out from the shadows of the branches.

The scarlet snake scales rubbed against each other in the steam with a rustling sound, and its cold, vertical pupils stared straight at the two below.

The right eye light screen popped up.

[Red-Scaled Venomous Snake]