Chapter 242 - 218: The Road Beneath Your Feet, Part 2

Chapter 242: Chapter 218: The Road Beneath Your Feet, Part 2

As she spoke, she tossed a mangled object to Lin Fan. It was the dismantled walkie-talkie. A few charred black spots on its dark-green motherboard stood out starkly under the rainwater.

"Your walkie-talkie is broken too. The motherboard is completely fried..."

She used the rain to wash the black soot from her hands and asked helplessly,

"What do we do now? Should we..."

"Stop the car!"

SCREECH—!

Lin Fan’s shout was so urgent that Cheng Qi reflexively slammed the brake pedal to the floor.

The eight massive off-road tires locked up instantly, emitting a teeth-grinding screech as they skidded across the slick asphalt!

The twenty-plus-ton steel behemoth couldn’t stop under the massive inertia. Like a flung chunk of iron, it skidded for dozens of meters across the road. The tail swung violently through the muddy water, throwing the entire vehicle almost sideways before it finally slammed into the median guardrail and ground to a halt.

"Cough... cough cough!"

The unluckiest of all was Ye Qingniao. She had been poking her head out like a gopher, and the immense inertia from the sudden stop threw her forward. Her neck slammed right into the hard edge of the observation hatch, nearly choking her.

She clutched her neck, where a red mark instantly appeared on her fair skin. The pain brought tears to her eyes.

"Brother Lin! What’s wrong? An ambush?"

Still shaken, Cheng Qi shouted back to the cabin from the driver’s seat. He leaned forward, pressing his head against the lone panel of bulletproof glass to peer ahead.

"Cough cough... What did you see? I can’t see anything..."

Ye Qingniao ducked back inside, rubbing her neck and coughing dryly, then emerged from another access hatch.

But they both knew that if Lin Fan yelled to stop, something must have happened up ahead.

"I have a feeling the bridge up ahead is out."

Lin Fan said, frowning as he pointed his spear toward an upward slope a few hundred meters ahead.

The other two had lower vantage points than him. Even with Ye Qingniao halfway out of the hatch, all they could see was the incline.

"Huh? I can’t see it..."

Ye Qingniao put on her raincoat, climbed onto the roof of the truck, and shielded her eyes from the rain to gaze ahead, but she still couldn’t see anything, looking around in confusion.

The screech of the brakes tore through the curtain of rain, attracting a few wandering zombies from the roadside. They pawed at the sides of the armored truck, stretching their arms desperately toward the two people on the roof.

"I said I have a feeling... Never mind. You two wait here. I’m going ahead to confirm..."

Lin Fan shook his head helplessly. His spear struck out like a viper’s tongue. With two soft thuds, it precisely pierced the rotting, snapping heads.

The black blood had barely splattered before the downpour washed it clean.

"I’m going too!"

Before Lin Fan had even finished speaking, Ye Qingniao grabbed her single-edged sword from the cabin and leaped from the truck ahead of him. In a flash of cold steel, the next few zombies that lunged forward were decapitated, never to rise again.

"My legs were going numb from the ride anyway."

"Fine..."

Lin Fan figured she was just bored anyway, so some exercise would do her good.

He jumped out of the truck, glanced at the front bumper pressed against the guardrail, and then shouted to Cheng Qi inside,

"Cheng Qi, back the truck up. Get ready to turn around and run for it..."

After speaking, he gave his spear a shake and gestured to Ye Qingniao.

"Let’s go."

Numerous corpses were draped over the guardrails on the sides and in the middle of the bridge. At first, Ye Qingniao was on high alert, but seeing Lin Fan’s relaxed demeanor, she began to ease up as well.

The two of them braved the downpour, walking along the slightly inclined bridge approach toward the high point several hundred meters away.

The river ahead was called the Boundary River, the mother river of Linjiang City. It was wide and cut diagonally through the entire city from south to north.

’If I remember correctly, Linjiang University should be on the east side of the Boundary River. That means following the outer ring road east, we’d have to cross the Boundary River Bridge. I don’t know the exact route, so I just have to sit on the roof and wait for that landmark to appear.’

’After crossing the Boundary River, turn left at the next big intersection, then head east at the next main road, and we should be close to University City.’

From a distance, he had just spotted the towers of the Boundary River Bridge and hadn’t even had a chance to feel happy before something "troublesome" appeared in his vision...

Zombies. A lot of zombies. But they were very far away.

At first, it was just a few scattered red dots of light. Then they formed into patches, then blocks, and finally merged into a scarlet ocean.

Countless, densely packed health bars seemed to float on a layer from another dimension, piercing the grey-white mist—abrupt, glaring, and blanketing everything in sight.

’Judging by the angle and elevation, they must be on the other side of the river.’

’By all rights, that many health bars shouldn’t just be waiting obediently on the east bank of the Boundary River. And yet, while there are plenty of corpses on the road and roadside on this side of the bridge, not many of them are moving.’

Lin Fan thought for a moment, and a single possibility came to mind.

"Well... this is trouble."

Lin Fan wiped the rain from his face. Looking at the cliff-like gap, his mood was as heavy as the weather.

"Huh?... The bridge... it’s really out?!"

Ye Qingniao shielded her forehead with her hand to block the rain, her pupils constricting as she couldn’t help but let out a cry of shock.

The two of them reached the top of the slope. Below them, the wide, cross-river bridge, upon reaching its highest point, abruptly vanished. Now, only a huge and menacing-looking break remained.

The jagged stumps of reinforced concrete jutted out like fangs, whining mournfully in the wind. Below the break was a drop of dozens of meters into the void, and beneath that, the Boundary River, now a raging, turbid torrent from the downpour.

The two- to three-hundred-meter-wide river roared and churned beneath their feet, throwing up massive white-capped waves that slammed against the bridge piers with thunderous force.