72: Chapter 72 The Last Night

Hearing Lin Ye say they were going to spend the night in the ruins, Zhao Mengmeng's eyes widened.

"At night, the ruins are crawling with Pale Species!"

"Are we staying here just to be their midnight snack delivery?!"

Lin Ye leveled the crossbow in his hand, his finger brushing across the bowstring to confirm the tension was normal.

"Tonight is the last night of the Scarlet Hunt."

"Everyone desperate for the top fifteen rewards will be going crazy right now."

"Those whose scores aren't high enough and are facing the baseline penalty will be even more desperate."

Lin Ye looked up at the darkening skyline.

"To maintain our current advantage, every second must be spent wisely."

Zhao Mengmeng swallowed hard.

Her gaze lingered for a second on Lin Ye's blood-stained coat.

"Alright! I'll listen to you!"

She slapped her thigh hard.

"We've survived the worst of it; tonight, I'll join you for one big gamble!"

The sunlight was quickly stripped away by the horizon.

The temperature plummeted, and the stench of decay and charred burning began to permeate everywhere.

The night wind whistled sharply through the crumbling buildings.

Lin Ye walked at the front, crossbow in hand.

"Keep your footsteps light. Avoid the broken glass and empty cans on the ground."

He lowered his voice to remind her.

Zhao Mengmeng followed behind, even slowing her breathing as much as possible.

As the night deepened, the roars within the ruins grew more frequent.

Zhao Mengmeng suddenly stopped.

She reached out to grab Lin Ye's sleeve and pointed toward the front right.

Dozens of meters away stood a semi-collapsed office building.

Connected to the side of the building was an open entrance to an underground garage.

"Brother Lin, let's go to that underground garage!"

She leaned in and suggested in a whisper.

"A closed reinforced concrete environment is the sturdiest. As long as we block the shutter door, we can definitely survive the night!"

Lin Ye looked in the direction she was pointing.

His left eye snapped open.

The originally dark and quiet garage entrance, through the vision of the Eye of Destiny, was filled with a dense mass of glaring red dots.

The red light merged into a sea of blood.

The interior was packed with a swarm of highly polluted Pale Species.

Not only that.

The semi-collapsed office building next to it was also a deadly trap.

On several exposed main load-bearing walls, the red lines representing a severe risk of collapse were bright to the extreme.

"Go!"

Lin Ye grabbed Zhao Mengmeng by the back of her collar.

"That way is a dead end!"

He exerted force, pulling Zhao Mengmeng off course to bypass that death zone.

They had just run a hundred meters.

Two deafening roars suddenly erupted from the street in front of the office building.

Two medium-sized mutated beasts crashed through a barricade and began tearing into each other right on the street.

One of the beasts, covered in hard armor, was knocked back repeatedly, its massive body tumbling out of control.

Its back slammed into a stone pillar on the first floor of the office building.

"Boom!"

The main load-bearing wall snapped on the spot.

The already precarious office building lost its balance.

Tens of thousands of tons of concrete fragments and rebar crashed down, and part of the building collapsed.

Dust filled the air like a tsunami, swallowing several streets.

The underground garage entrance was buried instantly by countless concrete blocks.

Amidst the dull sound of the collapse, the screams of Pale Species being crushed alive were faintly audible.

Zhao Mengmeng looked back.

Cold sweat instantly soaked her back.

Just a minute ago, she had suggested spending the night there.

If they had actually gone in, she and Lin Ye would now be two meat patties embedded in a load-bearing wall.

Her eyes widened as she stared blankly at Lin Ye ahead.

"Do you... do your eyes have built-in radar navigation?"

"From so far away, how did you know it was about to collapse?"

Lin Ye continued to lead the way with his Fire Axe, not even looking back.

"Experience."

It was that same perfunctory excuse again.

Using the short-frequency scan of the Eye of Destiny, Lin Ye locked onto an excellent stronghold behind a blind spot in the ruins blocked by construction debris.

A semi-underground commercial warehouse.

The floors above ground had long been leveled, but the main body of the underground structure remained intact.

Lin Ye stepped forward quickly.

He hooked his hands into the grooves at the bottom of the heavy fireproof shutter door.

The muscles in his arms bulged as he suddenly exerted force to lift it.

Rust flaked off, and with a piercing screech of metal friction, the shutter door was pulled up half a meter.

The two of them quickly ducked inside.

The interior of the warehouse was very spacious.

It was surrounded by solid concrete partition walls with no extra doors or windows, forcibly cutting off the possibility of being attacked from multiple directions.

High up on the wall, there was a ventilation duct with its iron grating intact, which ensured oxygen while blocking off any high-altitude ambush routes.

Inside the Great Xia exclusive livestream room, the comments were flooding the screen.

"Holy crap! This location choice is god-tier!"

"That garage collapse just now gave me goosebumps! Brother Eye's danger prediction is maxed out!"

"Contestants from other countries are being chased through the streets by monsters, and the new number one from India was just cornered in a dead end and eaten by five monsters!"

"Look at our Brother Eye! He picked a super luxury shelter right out of the wasteland trash!"

"Is this even survival? It's like he came on vacation with a tour map!"

"Brother Eye is as steady as a rock! I'm a fan now!"

After entering the warehouse, Lin Ye began setting up defenses.

He walked to a discarded metal shelf and swung the Fire Axe twice.

"Clang, clang!"

Thick metal bars were snapped off by the force.

Lin Ye picked up three bars of suitable length and walked quickly to the inside of the shutter door.

One end of a bar was wedged into a crack in the floor, and the other end braced against the door's crossbeam.

A triangular support structure was formed, physically locking the door from the inside.

Next, he pulled a bundle of thin iron wire from his backpack.

He slipped out through a crack in the wall and, on the mandatory path ten meters outside the entrance, stretched the wire taut and tied it to stones on both sides.

He strung several broken glass jars in the middle.

The simple sound-alarm trap was complete; if any monster tripped the wire, the crisp sound of breaking glass would serve as a warning.

Inside, Zhao Mengmeng wasn't idle either.

She got right to work, picking up scattered cargo boxes and concrete blocks with her bare hands.

She dragged them to both sides of the entrance passage.

Two barricades rose from the ground, forcibly narrowing the enemy's charge path.

Even if the door was breached, the monsters coming in would have to line up one by one to meet their deaths.

After clearing the floor, Zhao Mengmeng used wood scraps to light a campfire in a sheltered corner.

The open flame flickered to life, dispelling the damp, cold air of the underground ruins.

Lin Ye unzipped his backpack and pulled out two pieces of smoked mutton jerky wrapped in leaves, tossing a large piece to Zhao Mengmeng.

He then took out a small pot, poured in some water, and set it over the fire to boil.

The two sat around the fire, taking large bites of the smoked mutton and washing it down with hot water.

The warm meat went down their throats and into their stomachs, and their strength slowly began to return.

Zhao Mengmeng swallowed the mutton in her mouth and looked up at Lin Ye across from her.

The firelight reflected on the young man's cold, resolute profile.

Recalling the night before last, she had been trapped on the roof of an office building, shivering with hunger, afraid to even breathe for fear of attracting monsters, and had nearly died at the hands of those USA thugs.

But tonight.

She could sit safely by a fire, eating meat and drinking water.

She had even followed this man into the top ten of the global leaderboard.

She straightened her back and wiped the grease from the corner of her mouth.

"Brother Lin, thanks."

"My life was basically picked up by you."

Lin Ye took a sip of hot water from the iron pot.

"No need to thank me."

"Your points were earned by you, one kill at a time with your own blade."

"If you were a piece of useless trash, no matter how much I helped, it would have been for nothing."

He set down the iron pot and checked the Fire Axe at his side.

The fire crackled as the wood popped.

The two sat quietly before the fire, preparing to face the bloodiest battle for points on this final night.