85: Chapter 85 The Ingenious Use of the Dark Weaver

The sound of the snow forest collapsing ahead grew heavier.

Just as Zhao Mengmeng was about to poke her head out to look, Lin Ye caught her by the shoulder and yanked her towards the side and back.

"Retreat!"

Zhao Mengmeng's feet slipped as she was pulled, and she nearly tumbled into a snowdrift.

Just as she was about to curse, the white snow curtain ahead suddenly exploded.

Dozens of medium-sized herbivorous exotic beasts stampeded out from beneath the slope.

They were generally the size of oxen.

Their backs were covered in thick gray fur, and their curved horns were hung with fragments of snow.

A prompt popped up on the right eye's light screen.

[Cold Ridge Antelope]

[Snow-Backed Moose]

[Spine-Horned Mountain Muntjac]

These exotic beasts were not migrating at all.

They were running for their lives.

Three massive carnivorous exotic beasts charged out from behind.

Their shoulder height was nearly two meters, and their forelimbs were thick and sturdy.

Two saber-teeth protruded downwards from their mouths, and their fur was stained with blood.

As they ran, they sent snow flying everywhere.

[Saber-Toothed Snow Ghoul]

Zhao Mengmeng took a half-step back.

"Brother Lin, we can't mess with these things!"

"We won't."

Lin Ye pulled her along as they continued to move sideways.

The snow was too deep; they couldn't pick up any speed.

The beast tide spread out from the slope, and both sides were completely filled with fleeing exotic beasts.

The ground shook constantly, and the snow on the branches was shaken off, crashing down with a patter.

There was no room to dodge on the flat ground.

They couldn't outrun them, and they definitely couldn't withstand them.

The Great Xia Live Stream was flooded with barrage comments.

[It's over! The range of this beast tide is too big!]

[You can't run in this snow; it's hard enough just to pull your feet out!]

[Don't climb the trees; they're frozen brittle!]

[Holy crap, what are those three saber-toothed monsters in the back?!]

Just as Zhao Mengmeng drew her Wind-Chasing Claw, her wrist was pinned down by Lin Ye.

"Don't shoot randomly."

"Then what do we do? Wait for death?"

Lin Ye didn't answer.

He suddenly wrapped his left arm around Zhao Mengmeng's waist, tucking her against his side.

Zhao Mengmeng felt as if her ribs were locked in an iron band.

Just as she opened her mouth, the Dark Weaver on Lin Ye's right arm activated.

The matte bracer emitted a very faint mechanical click.

Several Nano-wires, barely visible to the naked eye, shot through the air.

They precisely embedded themselves into the high trunk of a giant tree ten meters away.

The retraction engine tightened abruptly.

Lin Ye lifted off from the snow with Zhao Mengmeng.

Their bodies surged upwards at an angle, grazing the gale.

Beneath their feet, a Cold Ridge Antelope sprinted past the spot they had just occupied.

Its thick hooves crushed the ice crust, spraying slush half a person's height into the air.

Zhao Mengmeng was pinned in mid-air, and the curses in her mouth were blown back into her stomach by the cold wind.

The two flew to a branch eight meters off the ground.

Lin Ye used the momentum to flip over, landed on the branch with both feet, and swung Zhao Mengmeng behind him.

As soon as Zhao Mengmeng steadied her footing, a harsh cracking sound came from beneath them.

She looked down.

This branch, as thick as a thigh, was covered in an ice crust on the surface, but its interior had long been frozen brittle by the extreme cold.

As the weight of two people pressed down on it, cracks spread along the branch.

The beast tide was still flowing below.

A Snow-Backed Moose collided with the tree roots, scraping off a large patch of bark.

Zhao Mengmeng grabbed the tree trunk tightly.

"Brother Lin, this tree can't hold up."

"It's about to clock out."

The branch emitted another cracking sound.

The crack widened, and the support beneath them suddenly sank.

The Dark Weaver activated for the second time.

A dozen Nano-wires shot out from the bracer simultaneously.

They split into different angles, embedding themselves into the trunks of several giant trees nearby.

The micro-anchors bit deep into the bark.

The wires crisscrossed, pulling taut into a dense load-bearing structure in mid-air.

A net-bed, invisible to the naked eye, spread out between the tree trunks.

The branch snapped completely.

Zhao Mengmeng's footing vanished, and she fell.

Her back struck a layer of taut, flexible support.

The Nano-wire net-bed sank a bit, then caught the two of them steadily.

The broken branch crashed down from the side.

It slammed into the edge of the beast tide with a boom, startling several Cold Ridge Antelopes into changing direction.

Lin Ye knelt halfway on the net-bed.

His right arm bracer adjusted the tension, keeping the entire net-bed in balance.

Zhao Mengmeng lay on it, her hands clutching Lin Ye's thigh tightly.

"I'm not panicked at all! This is center-of-gravity training!"

Lin Ye looked down at her.

"Then let go first."

Zhao Mengmeng immediately let go.

"I was just afraid you'd fall, protecting a teammate!"

The style of the Great Xia Live Stream shifted abruptly.

[Mengmeng's mouth is harder than a bone needle!]

[That thigh-hugging move was too practiced; I suggest adding it to the standard survival moves.]

[Brother Eye's Dark Weaver is absurd; he just built a bed in mid-air!]

[Fully automatic hammock, apocalypse luxury edition!]

[Other Challengers are hiding in trees and leaving it to fate, while Brother Eye has already turned the trees into a hammock stand.]

The beast tide continued below for half a minute.

The snow was trampled into slush, and broken branches and ice fragments flew everywhere.

The three Saber-Toothed Snow Ghouls pursued closely behind, pouncing on two lagging Spine-Horned Mountain Muntjacs.

Ripping sounds came from beneath the tree.

The smell of blood was swept up by the cold wind and scattered in all directions.

Zhao Mengmeng lay on the edge of the net-bed and glanced down.

She immediately pulled her head back.

"These three things, fighting them head-on would be lethal."

"That's why we don't fight."

Lin Ye's gaze swept across the area below.

The main body of the beast tide had already gone far away.

One of the Saber-Toothed Snow Ghouls stopped in place.

It dragged half a carcass, its nostrils twitching.

It raised its head and looked in the direction where the two were.

Zhao Mengmeng had a few Snow Chickens hanging from her waist.

The frozen dead chickens still carried the smell of blood.

The Saber-Toothed Snow Ghoul dropped the carcass in its mouth and paced around the giant tree.

Its claws dug through the snow, revealing the frozen black soil.

It charged at the tree trunk.

Bang!

The entire giant tree shook.

The Nano-wire net-bed trembled along with it.

"Did it smell the chicken blood?"

"Yeah."

"Are we throwing the chicken or throwing me now?"

Lin Ye untied a Snow Chicken from her waist.

"You have too little meat; it's not worth it."

The Saber-Toothed Snow Ghoul under the tree rammed the tree for the second time.

The giant tree's trunk didn't break.

Several nearby branches fixed by the Nano-wires emitted cracking sounds.

[It knows how to ram trees!]

[No matter how stable the net-bed is, it won't hold if the tree gets knocked down!]

[Should we use the Dark Weaver to slice it directly?]

[That won't work; that thing down there has too thick skin, and there are two others nearby that haven't gone far!]

Lin Ye did not draw his crossbow.

He weighed the Snow Chicken in his hand and checked the wind direction.

The wind was blowing from the northwest to the southeast.

The Saber-Toothed Snow Ghoul was under the tree, and its sense of smell was interfered with by the smell of blood and tree bark fragments.

As long as the bait was thrown far enough downwind, it would prioritize chasing the clearer scent source.

Lin Ye raised his right arm.

A Nano-wire wrapped around the Snow Chicken's neck.

The bracer's retraction and projection forces worked simultaneously.

The Snow Chicken was flung away.

It flew over bushes more than ten meters away and crashed into a snow pit.

The frozen chicken carcass cracked upon impact.

The smell of blood spread through the snow.

The Saber-Toothed Snow Ghoul turned its head.

A hungry roar emanated from its throat.

Its tail lashed, and it abandoned ramming the tree, pouncing toward where the Snow Chicken had landed.

Lin Ye immediately retracted a few non-load-bearing Nano-wires.

He lowered the net-bed at an angle.

"Let's go."

Zhao Mengmeng crawled to his side.

"Going down now?"

"Once it finishes eating, it'll come back to sniff for the second one."

Zhao Mengmeng shut her mouth.

Lin Ye grabbed the cloak on her back with one hand.

The other hand controlled the Dark Weaver for a multi-point descent.

The two slid down along the shadow of the tree trunk.

After landing, they lowered their bodies and passed through a patch of snow-buried bushes.

In the distance, that Saber-Toothed Snow Ghoul was tearing into the Snow Chicken.

Lin Ye led Zhao Mengmeng to bypass their original route and re-entered the leeward forest belt.

After walking a hundred meters, Zhao Mengmeng finally dared to take a deep breath.

She patted her chest.

"Actually, I could have come down by myself just now."

"Oh? By hugging my leg?"

"If you bring that up again, you're roasting the meat yourself tonight."

Lin Ye glanced at her.

"Then I apologize."

Zhao Mengmeng was stunned for half a second.

"You really are pragmatic!"

The snow forest quieted down again.

The beast tide left behind large patches of chaotic hoof prints and broken bones on the ground.

The snow continued to fall, soon covering everything again.

Lin Ye looked toward the northeast.

That massive green light source was still there.

Zhao Mengmeng looked in the direction of his gaze.

"Still going?"

"Going to the periphery."

"We just slipped out from the jaws of a beast tide, are you really not afraid?"

Lin Ye stepped over a dead branch snapped by the snow.

"That's why we'll just look, not touch."

Zhao Mengmeng withdrew the teasing words on her lips and said nothing more.

The two wrapped their fur cloaks tighter and continued to sneak toward the northeast.

The snow was getting deeper.

The wind was starting to get cold again.

And behind that ordinary-looking, unremarkable snow forest ahead, hid a massive amount of green light that even Lin Ye dared not easily bite into.