Chapter 178 - 177: Messenger

Chapter 178: Chapter 177: Messenger

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...

These bright red health bars forcibly injected the only, eerie splash of color into the deathly silent, black-and-white scene.

But this color was visible only to Lin Fan.

Countless zombies roamed the area, almost none of them at full health.

And these zombies showed none of the stratification based on health that Lin Fan had observed the previous night.

Zombies with five hundred health mingled with those with three hundred, wandering aimlessly.

But they all avoided the area about a hundred meters around the deep crater...

Upon closer inspection, faint wisps of smoke were still rising from the cracks in the ash-covered ground.

Apparently, the ground there was still incredibly hot—even the zombies knew not to scorch their feet.

"You won’t be able to cross. The ground in the middle is clearly still very hot; even the zombies are avoiding it..." Lin Fan said, pointing toward the deep crater.

Ye Qingzhou, however, ignored him. Her eyes gleamed as she stared at the two "long snakes" buried in the ash on the road.

"Are those two the ’Tree’s’ tentacles?"

Lin Fan had never seen such a greedy look in her eyes. It was like a child spotting a fascinating new toy in a shop window.

"You want them?" Lin Fan asked tentatively.

’She’s a researcher, after all. It’s understandable that she’d want to get her hands on a novel specimen.’

"Can I?"

Ye Qingzhou suddenly looked twenty years younger. She stared at Lin Fan with wide, pleading eyes. After all, with so many zombies below, there was no way she could go down and get them herself.

"Uh... how big of a piece do you want?"

’It’s not out of the question,’ Lin Fan thought. ’If I bring a sample back for her to study, she might discover something.’

"This big... or this big, if it’s convenient... The bigger, the better..."

Ye Qingzhou held up a hand, making a gap of about three centimeters between her thumb and index finger. Then, after a moment’s thought, she spread them as wide as they could go. Her voice, muffled by her mask, cracked slightly with excitement.

"Alright, wait for me to get back..."

As he spoke, Lin Fan drank a small vial of stealth potion and equipped his Stealth Crystal.

In that instant, Ye Qingzhou felt the Lin Fan before her suddenly grow colder, as if veiled by something. It was an indescribable sensation.

But she paid it little mind. Her attention was completely focused on the tantalizingly close specimen. Hearing that Lin Fan was going to get it for her, she nodded eagerly...

"Get back? You’re going *there*!?"

She suddenly realized what Lin Fan was saying and looked at him in confusion.

"Didn’t you say it’s too hot over there and impossible to cross?"

"I said *you* can’t cross, not that *I* can’t cross... What else do you want? I’ll bring it back for you later."

Lin Fan was speechless. ’How could such an intelligent person start acting like Chu Zhaozhao the moment she saw the remains of the tentacles?’

"Remains of the ’Tree,’" Ye Qingzhou said, looking at him. "Besides those tentacles, bring me back any other parts or pieces you can find. I assume anything too close to the blast was incinerated, but just do your best..."

"Oh, right. I might disappear in a bit. You just wait here for me. If something goes wrong, I’ll run in the opposite direction and warn you on the walkie-talkie. Then you call Chu Zhaozhao and the others to come pick you up."

’Lin Fan suddenly recalled the fiasco he’d nearly caused by not explaining things clearly to Wang Yuanhua. He couldn’t have her panicking and calling for Chu Zhaozhao’s group on the walkie-talkie the moment he vanished.’

"Disappear? What kind of disappearing?" Ye Qingzhou asked, puzzled.

"The same way that guy disappeared when he was showing off for you all..."

"You can do that too? Your ability... can a person have multiple abilities, or is it just different uses of one ability?"

Hearing that Lin Fan could also disappear, Ye Qingzhou pressed him for confirmation.

"I don’t know, but it should count as different uses of one ability..." Lin Fan thought for a moment before answering.

"Okay."

Ye Qingzhou accepted his answer. It reminded her of how Ye Qingniao’s ability also had various applications, so she immediately accepted his explanation and took two steps back to avoid disturbing him.

But as she took those two steps back, she could already feel Lin Fan’s presence weakening...

Lin Fan finished his preparations. He walked to the edge of the roof, crouched, and then launched himself off the eaves with both feet, shooting outward like an arrow loosed from a bow!

The tremendous force of his push-off shattered the cement of the fire-baked, brittle eaves, sending a cloud of gray dust and debris into the air!

Behind him, Ye Qingzhou watched as Lin Fan blew apart the cement on the roof’s edge and vanished into mid-air like a cannonball. Her heart began to race, and her gaze trembled.

Though she was well aware of Lin Fan’s power and was constantly experiencing it firsthand, the sheer force of his movements was something she couldn’t just get used to from seeing him leap onto a few rooftops.

Seeing Lin Fan vanish in mid-air, she assumed he had leaped all the way to the crater. She quickly pulled out her binoculars and aimed them at the other side of the road.

But Lin Fan didn’t travel nearly as far as Ye Qingzhou had imagined. The brittle eaves hadn’t provided a solid launch point, and he began to descend after only forty or fifty meters.

The moment he landed, he summoned his spear and swept it with all his might!

The necks of the zombies within a two-meter, fan-shaped arc in front of him all snapped. Several heads flew into the air as the headless bodies toppled to the ground like statues.

The surrounding zombies were attracted by the commotion. The nearby zombies vaguely sensed Lin Fan’s presence and lunged straight at him.

Although the zombies farther away didn’t sense any prey, they still slowly moved toward the direction of the disturbance.

’Looks like the small vial of stealth potion isn’t as effective as a medium one...’

’After all, a medium vial combined with the Stealth Crystal let me walk shoulder-to-shoulder with zombies without being noticed.’

But Lin Fan hadn’t planned on using a medium vial. The drop rate for intermediate-grade potions was low, and he currently had fewer than ten medium vials of any potion type. He had plenty of small ones, though, so he had to be frugal.

Lin Fan’s initial plan had been to use a medium vial if the area was swarming with zombies, then find a way to lure away those near ground zero.

But since the zombies had already cleared out of that area, a small vial was sufficient.

The spear in his hand easily crushed the heads of the zombies blocking his path. Three-hundred health or five-hundred health made no difference to Lin Fan.

He charged straight for the blast crater. The number of zombies trailing him grew, but as Lin Fan picked up speed, he left them further and further behind until they gradually lost their target and stopped in their tracks.

Lin Fan pushed on, bursting into the zombie-free zone. After running a few more meters, he dispatched the last few zombies trailing him with a clean backhand strike.

The distant horde of zombies returned to its aimless milling, though one could vaguely sense that the high-temperature, zombie-free circle was shrinking, likely as the ground slowly cooled.

Lin Fan wasted no time and headed deeper into the area. Each step kicked up the gray ash, revealing the scorched black earth beneath.

The soles of his shoes began to melt, and a burnt smell wafted up from his feet.

He glanced down. The soles of his shoes were already stretching into sticky threads against the scalding earth. The air shimmered with the intense heat, like a rippling layer of water above the ground.

’Equip Armor Crystal...’

Lin Fan swapped his Stealth Crystal for the Armor Crystal. He’d used it to withstand high temperatures before; he just wasn’t sure if it would work here.

Two faint blue lights glowed from his feet, saving the precarious soles of his shoes.

’Thank goodness it works. If my soles burned through, walking barefoot on these hot coals would turn into a real circus act.’

Ye Qingzhou, unable to spot Lin Fan through her binoculars, simply stood on the rooftop. At first, she could only see out of the corner of her eye that zombies were beginning to topple over, seemingly in pursuit of something.

But as group after group of zombie heads went flying or burst apart, the number of pursuers actually dwindled.

Finally, the last group of zombies died just short of the edge of the clearing, and Lin Fan appeared in that empty space.

Only then did she realize that Lin Fan hadn’t jumped very far, but had landed in the middle of the zombie horde.

He had only alerted a small number of them, yet had somehow slipped through a net of thousands of zombies to reach his destination.

"What mysterious power..."

She slowly raised her hands, caressing her own cheeks through her mask as her eyes flashed with excitement.