Chapter 240 - 239: Enduring in Silence

Chapter 240: Chapter 239: Enduring in Silence

On the way to the city center, Ye Zheng was schooling Feng Ling on the basics of demolition.

To achieve the best explosive effect, she suggested first detonating a small charge to create a crater on the mountain’s surface. Then, they would pack more explosives into that crater to further expand the wound inside the mountain, getting the explosives as close to its core as possible.

This would be much more effective than just detonating a bomb on the surface.

While Ye Zheng couldn’t be called a demolitions expert, she certainly had more experience in this area than Feng Ling.

Feng Ling listened and nodded along the way, saying, "Before we blow it up, let’s stop by the mahjong parlor up ahead to get a buff. There’s a Divine Statue of Guan Gong in there."

Ye Zheng glanced at her. "You remember all that?"

"Of course. The beauty salon diagonally across from the mahjong parlor has a shrine to He Xian Gu. We can pay our respects there, too," Feng Ling said. "No need to bother with the others; I doubt they’d be much help. Oh, right..."

Feng Ling turned her head and said to Huangfu Miaomiao, "We’ll find a Lucky Cat for you on the way. I remember there’s one on the street ahead. Your Luck Value will come in handy when we blow up another treasure box."

"Your memory is pretty sharp," Ye Zheng murmured under her breath. "Mine used to be good, too."

But now, it would fall into chaos from time to time.

Feng Ling’s memory was hit or miss; it all depended on whether she was paying attention.

She quickened her pace and was the first to enter the mahjong parlor. The Wandering God event had likely ended, because the previously empty parlor now had four Mouse Monsters scurrying inside.

Feng Ling immediately unleashed her Spiritual Suppression. Then, with a swift slash of her blade, she cleanly lopped off the heads of three of them.

As she prepared to kill the fourth, the image of the rosewood table she’d seen before flashed through her mind. Her Bone Blade froze in mid-air—

After a moment of thought, Feng Ling retracted her Bone Blade and withdrew her Spiritual Suppression.

The surviving Mouse Monster was dazed at first. Two seconds later, it realized it was free and shot up from its spot! Then it grabbed one of the headless rat corpses from the floor, leaped out the back window, and fled for its life!

Ye Zheng walked in just in time to see this and raised an eyebrow. "Why’d you let one go?"

Feng Ling looked back at her and said with a grin, "Spend enough time in the Maze, and even a mouse starts to look good-looking."

Ye Zheng’s face instantly turned frosty, her glare so cold it seemed to be forged from ice.

"I was just kidding!" Feng Ling gave up, raising her voice. "Can’t you take a joke?"

Ye Zheng’s face remained cold. "It wasn’t funny."

Feng Ling pressed her lips into a thin line, forcing a helpless but polite smile. "...I marked that Mouse Monster. I want to know where it’s taking the corpse."

Ye Zheng frowned. "Isn’t it just taking it to eat?"

Ye Zheng also assumed the mouse was taking the corpse to eat it. After all, they had been wandering the Maze for so long without seeing any edible food.

To put it dramatically, even the green belts in the city had been gnawed bare by the rats.

Feng Ling knelt before the Divine Statue and paid her respects, then looked back at Ye Zheng. "I just used my tracking ability on my mark. Last night, a Mouse Monster carried a corpse to a T-junction. The intersection was completely desolate—nothing there but a long rosewood table. So I want to see if every mouse does the same thing."

She stood up, making way for Ye Zheng to worship the deity.

After Ye Zheng finished, she asked, "When do you plan on checking?"

"Let’s blow up the mountain first, then we’ll see." Feng Ling reached out, pulled Huangfu Miaomiao to the prayer cushion, and gave her a gentle push. Huangfu Miaomiao went with the momentum, knelt, and bowed three times with her palms pressed together.

All three received a +0.3x Strength buff.

Next, they went to the beauty salon across the street to worship He Xian Gu, then to the corner up ahead to worship a Lucky Cat, and then, loaded with buffs, they went to blow up the mountain.

「...」

Huangfu Miaomiao was traumatized by the mountain, cowering behind Feng Ling and Ye Zheng, not daring to go any closer.

Feng Ling had originally planned to start blasting from the spot where Huangfu Miaomiao had gotten stuck before. But after circling around, she couldn’t find the opening she remembered. The mountain had probably healed itself.

"How about we start by blowing up a mouth?" she asked, consulting Ye Zheng.

The mountain’s surface, besides being covered in countless limbs, also had eyeballs and mouths.

The mouths didn’t look like real mouths, since they had no teeth—just a mouth-like shape that slowly opened and closed, as if breathing.

"Will it... spit it back out?" Huangfu Miaomiao was very worried. "What if we throw the bomb in and it just spits it out like a watermelon seed and blows us up?" she asked anxiously.

"It can’t be *that* talented, can it?" Feng Ling pulled out a grenade and looked up at the opening and closing mouths, picking a target. "You two, stand back. I’m going to test it."

"Aim well," Ye Zheng said, grabbing Huangfu Miaomiao and pulling her back a dozen or so meters.

On the mountain’s surface, a few of the nearest eyeballs swiveled over, seemingly curious about the grenade in her hand.

Feng Ling held up the grenade and walked to the left; the eyeballs swiveled to the left.

Feng Ling held up the grenade and walked to the right; the eyeballs swiveled to the right.

Feng Ling pulled the pin, quickly tossed the grenade into one of the open mouths, and ran.

A few eyeballs watched her run away.

BOOM! A massive explosion! The huge mouth burst open! Flesh and blood splattered everywhere!

A moment later, the acrid smoke cleared. Feng Ling stood at a safe distance, cautiously observing the mountain’s reaction.

The result of her observation was—no reaction.

The spot where the grenade had landed had become a bloody pit. The mouth was blown to bits, and the nearby eyeballs had also suffered collateral damage; they were bloodshot and twitching constantly.

But the parts farther away were completely unaffected. Those eyeballs still swiveled about, and the overlapping, tangled limbs waved gently in the air. The massive mountain body rose and fell slowly, with no pained howls or death throes.

To the mountain, the bloody crater seemed to be no more than a popped pimple—no pain, no itch.

Ye Zheng, however, was quite satisfied with this result. She said, "Blast the same spot again. Then we’ll go to the other side of the mountain, blast a corresponding spot twice, pack explosives into both craters, and detonate them simultaneously. That will ensure a more thorough internal destruction."

Feng Ling nodded and, following Ye Zheng’s instructions, tossed another grenade right into the bloody crater they had created.

’Something feels strange,’ she thought. ’This mountain’s reaction is too... stoic. Why isn’t it fighting back at all?’

’Why would the Maze’s genetics evolve such an illogical creature?’

The second explosion made the bloody crater bigger and deeper. The flesh inside was charred black and lifeless, while the surrounding chunks of meat contracted and twitched violently from the blast’s impact.

Compared to the mountain’s total size, the hole she had blown was probably no bigger than a single doorway in a seven-story apartment building.

Feng Ling packed the hole with enough explosives, then went to the other side of the mountain and repeated the process, blasting open another hole and packing it with explosives as well.

After all this was done, the three of them retreated to the roof of a distant residential building and pressed the detonator—

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!!!

A deafening series of explosions thundered across the sky.

The stench of burnt flesh mixed with the thick smell of blood washed over them. ℯℯ𝑙.

Feng Ling squinted, waiting for the smoke from the explosion to clear. After a moment, she felt that something was wrong.

"The fog nearby... why does it seem a little red..."