Chapter 227 - 211: The Sky-Earth Line

Chapter 227: Chapter 211: The Sky-Earth Line

The moment Lin Fan gave the command, Cheng Qi, already strapped in, stomped on the gas.

ROAR—

The turbo roared like a waking beast. Driven by the surging power, the armored vehicle carved an arc, its nose pointing in the direction Lin Fan indicated. It accelerated, charging forward in a straight line!

Simultaneously, Lin Fan powered his legs and leaped straight up. In mid-air, he summoned his great-axe and, carrying the momentum, brought it down hard on the dome above!

PFFT!

BANG!

Just as the blade of Lin Fan’s axe tore through the surface layer of tentacles on the dome, the armored vehicle beneath him smashed violently into the wall!

The sloped front armor plate slammed right into the tail end of the spear Lin Fan had deliberately left sticking out.

It was like a super sledgehammer of over twenty tons, slamming brutally onto a steel spike!

The spear instantly vanished into the wall, brutally piercing through countless layers of tough tentacles to reach deep inside.

The spearhead had even pierced completely through the wall and into the wind and rain outside...

VMMMM—RUMBLE RUMBLE RUMBLE!

The armored vehicle showed no sign of stopping. Its Diesel engine roared, and the exhaust pipe belched thick black smoke.

Though the vehicle’s front was jammed tight against the wall, its giant bulletproof tires began to spin wildly at that very instant!

The thick treads ground against the zombie limbs and gore on the floor like a meat grinder, churning up scorched, bloody mud and sending up plumes of acrid smoke.

The acrid smell of burning rubber and flesh, mixed with the choking exhaust fumes, instantly filled the entire space!

Under this relentless, terrifying force, the tough wall of flesh began to emit a grating, creaking sound. Pushed by the armored vehicle, it slowly began to bulge outward.

"Is it working!?"

Lin Fan’s axe opened a large gash in the dome. He had just landed back on the armored vehicle when he shouted down below.

"We had it, but it’s gone!"

Ye Qingniao stood inside the vehicle, gripping a handrail with her eyes squeezed shut.

The spear had pierced through, but waves of tentacles reflexively swarmed from all directions toward the front of the vehicle, thickening the outer wall there and causing the entire dome to slowly form a grotesque bulge.

The armored vehicle’s power alone was not enough to break through the cage, which was why Lin Fan had deliberately damaged the dome to split the structure’s regenerative focus. But it was clearly not enough.

"Keep pushing! Don’t let up!"

The axe wasn’t the right tool for the job. Lin Fan saw that the gashes he was creating were too shallow and were already starting to heal. He kicked off the vehicle’s side plating and shot toward the distant "Jiang Jing," which had just managed to pull itself back together.

’You can still heal, can you... Let’s see which side you can save now!’

At this point, "Jiang Jing" had completely shed its human guise. This was perhaps due to an imbalance from being over-infused with energy, or maybe an adaptation specifically to counter Lin Fan’s agility.

Its original flesh was now covered and fused with large plates of dark red chitin. For the sake of extreme explosive power, its leg joints had twisted backward, becoming insect-like reverse-jointed legs.

Its arms had completely abandoned their gripping function. The phalanges and ulna had calcified and proliferated wildly, ultimately fusing into two bone scythes that glinted with a cold light.

It was clearly some sort of specialization in speed, meant to counter Lin Fan.

It had been coiled to strike the armored vehicle, only to see Lin Fan charging directly at it instead.

Its completely distorted face contorted. Its reverse-jointed legs kicked hard off the ground, its body blurring into an afterimage. The two sharp bone scythes crossed in the air, scissoring toward Lin Fan’s neck and torso—it intended to use its superior speed to slice him into three pieces!

’Holy shit, it’s fast!’

A flash of surprise crossed Lin Fan’s eyes. Perhaps this was a last-ditch monster specialization from the Corrupted Giant Tree, or perhaps simply having its Life Value stacked to over seven thousand had caused a quantum leap in "Jiang Jing’s" overall power. It was no longer the clumsy damage sponge it had been before, but an agile predator.

’But I’m done playing with you...’

In the next instant, a massive greatsword appeared in Lin Fan’s previously empty hands...

Before absolute power, speed is meaningless.

BOOM!

"Die!"

The spine of the greatsword roared, and the blade shot forward!

The greatsword’s appearance altered Lin Fan’s inertia. Riding the violent thrust, he closed the distance in a flash, striking first despite moving second.

That explosive acceleration, defying all prediction, turned the enormous blade into a shadow of death that filled "Jiang Jing’s" entire field of view. The stance it had just adopted seemed like a joke in the face of the greatsword’s absolute mass.

Its two deathly-pale scythe-arms were pulverized on contact.

Followed by its chest, its torso...

Before this brutish kinetic force, its chitinous shell and energy reinforcements might as well have been paper, torn and crushed in an instant.

Its entire body was blown apart in mid-air, split into an upper and a lower half.

The blade’s momentum carried through, striking the wall behind the creature and carving a deep gash into it.

BOOM—!

Without a moment’s pause, Lin Fan’s greatsword roared again. The blade swung in a great arc, smashing violently into the wall.

The air displaced by the sword’s spine blasted "Jiang Jing’s" severed torso into a corner. The attack’s unparalleled kinetic energy landed on the first gash, tearing open a deep, intersecting scar.

This time, the opponent lurking in the shadows seemed to finally concede the failure of its puppet. The lower half of "Jiang Jing’s" body, which had fallen to the side, suddenly dissolved into a pool of slime and fragmented tentacles that flowed back into the wall.

It was reclaiming its energy.

As for the upper body, all that remained was a defiant head attached to a scrap of shoulder, propped crookedly on the ground. Its dull, pale eyes were still fixed on Lin Fan.

[122/7250]...

The Life Value stopped regenerating. It had been completely abandoned.

Meanwhile, just as Lin Fan had predicted, the tentacle cage, now heavily damaged, went into a stress response due to his ferocious feint.

Waves of tentacles surged madly toward the gash, attempting to repair and reinforce the wall before Lin Fan could break out.

Just as the wound in the wall began to squeeze shut and mend itself, a clear, joyous shout cut through a lull in the armored vehicle’s roaring engine:

"Got it!"

It was Ye Qingniao!

"Now!"

A sharp glint flashed in Lin Fan’s eyes. He swapped the greatsword for his great-axe and, with a flick of his wrist, hooked "Jiang Jing’s" severed head from the floor. Then, like an arrow loosed from a bow, he bolted toward the armored vehicle.

He tossed the head onto the twisted, deformed guardrail of the vehicle’s turret...

This was the plan the three had agreed upon. And her shout of "Got it!" could only mean one thing: a physical link had been established.

When Lin Fan had pierced the wall earlier, it wasn’t just to see if the cage’s integrity had weakened. More importantly, he needed to confirm the weather outside—to see if it was still raining.

When they were first trapped, Lin Fan, anxious to escape and worried about the others outside, had force-fed Ye Qingniao upgrades. Though she couldn’t perfectly control her suddenly amplified electrical abilities, her fundamental skills remained.

The first thing Lin Fan thought of was to borrow the great power of nature: the art of lightning.

Unfortunately, Ye Qingniao’s answer at the time had been, "I can’t..."

She couldn’t do it.

Now, Lin Fan knew these tentacles were the root system of the Corrupted Giant Tree. And just like the branches it used for attacks, these tentacles were imbued with the Corrupted Giant Tree’s unique energy.

It was enough to block all perception and electromagnetic signals.

It had sealed the two of them in a black box, where Ye Qingniao was completely unable to sense external electrical charges. Calling down lightning was out of the question.

Lin Fan had attempted this maneuver once before, which was why Ye Qingniao was able to get the hang of it so quickly this time.

Unfortunately, the last time they tried, the spear alone was too weak. Before Lin Fan could even damage the opposite wall to draw its regenerative attention, the writhing flesh had "spat" the spear—their antenna—out like a fish bone. They’d had no chance to establish a stable connection to the outside.

But this time was different.

This time, he had a self-propelled, twenty-plus-ton sledgehammer. Not only that, but this sledgehammer was a giant hunk of metal. And with Ye Qingniao, a super-conductor who only needed a single inch of her "skin" to touch the rainwater outside...

The connection between heaven and earth was forged.