Chapter 81 - 79: Equipment Acquired
In the final moment before his consciousness faded, the last sliver of the setting sun sank completely below the horizon.
Night had fallen.
SCRAPE... SCRAPE-SCRAPE...
The faint, intermittent scraping of sharp claws against gravel and dried leaves echoed from the shadows on all sides.
The sounds grew more frequent, and more distinct.
Zhang Yuqing lay paralyzed on the ground, unable to move a muscle.
Her heart was filled with nothing but endless confusion and despair.
She didn’t understand.
’Didn’t Lin Ye say with his own mouth that these spider legs were edible, and that they even tasted pretty good?’
’The taste really was good, though.’
’But how could eating them lead to... this!’
A warm, pleasant sensation enveloped her entire body, like soaking in a perfect hot bath, making her not want to lift even a single finger.
But it was precisely this comfort that had robbed her of all ability to move.
She had eaten less than a third of a leg and her body had already gone limp, her consciousness blurring. Only through immense willpower was she keeping herself from instantly falling into a deep slumber.
One could only imagine the fate of the people from Ningke University Affiliated Middle School who had eaten one or even two whole legs.
The footsteps of the mutated beasts drew closer and closer.
Zhang Yuqing’s body was immobile, but her senses were sharper than ever before.
She saw them.
At the edge of the area illuminated by the campfire, one pair, two pairs, three pairs...
At least a dozen pairs of ghostly green eyes emerged silently from behind the building’s ruins and out of the dense thickets.
They were wolves!
And not just any wolves—a pack of more than a dozen mutated wolves!
They were a size larger than ordinary wolves, saliva dripping from the corners of their mouths. Their ghostly green eyes reflected the seven or eight defenseless humans by the fire, who exuded an alluring scent of flesh.
To these starving predators, it was a feast sent from heaven.
There was no probing, no hesitation.
"AWOOOO!"
The alpha wolf let out a long howl.
In an instant, the dozen or so mutated wolves transformed into black streaks of lightning and swarmed forward!
"AH—!"
A bloodcurdling scream erupted from Zhou Qiming’s throat, only to be instantly drowned out by the horrific sound of tearing flesh.
He was jolted awake by excruciating pain, only to watch, helpless, as a mutated wolf’s gaping maw clamped down and viciously snapped his neck!
Blood sprayed wildly!
Zhang Yuqing heard the crisp crunch of bones being chewed, the slick squelch of entrails being dragged out, and the excited sounds of the monsters munching and fighting over the scraps.
She trembled all over, a chill shooting from the base of her spine straight to the crown of her head.
She knew that once the wolves finished with them, the next one...
...would be her!
Just as she sank completely into despair, on the verge of closing her eyes to await death.
A dark figure shot out silently from the shadows behind her.
Without the slightest pause, the figure swept her up from the ground, grabbing her by the waist.
The next second, Zhang Yuqing’s world spun as the wind howled in her ears.
She was carried away at an incredible speed, disappearing into the depths of the darkness.
Zhang Yuqing struggled to open her stinging eyes, which were irritated by the wind. By the faint light of the distant campfire, she made out the face right in front of her.
It was Lin Ye.
The wolf pack, of course, had been lured by him.
It was a case of giving them a taste of their own medicine.
"You... You..."
Zhang Yuqing felt a rush of Qi and Blood to her head. Mustering all her strength, she managed to squeeze two words through her clenched teeth.
"You lied!"
Lin Ye carried her without breaking stride, his figure weaving through the complex ruins as if on level ground.
"Haven’t you ever heard the saying?"
"’For the strategist to outwit fate, he must first place himself on the board.’"
Zhang Yuqing’s mind went blank.
’Place himself on the board?’
’You mean place *my* body on the board, don’t you?!’
"The entire body of a mutated wolf spider is poisonous, not just its venom sacs and fangs."
"Its meat is edible, but only under the premise of being in a completely safe environment."
"Ingesting a small amount of this toxin actually promotes deep sleep and accelerates stamina recovery."
"By the time you wake up, the toxin will have been mostly metabolized by the body."
"But if you eat it in the wild, in a dangerous situation..."
Lin Ye didn’t finish, but the meaning was self-evident.
It wasn’t food; it was the world’s most powerful sleeping pill.
Zhang Yuqing’s vision went black. Unable to fight the overwhelming wave of drowsiness and rage any longer, her head lolled to the side, and she lost consciousness completely.
It was hard to say whether she’d passed out from the poison or the anger.
Lin Ye found a completely safe dead-end corner on a high floor of a building and carefully set Zhang Yuqing down.
Then, he turned and, like a wisp of smoke, vanished once more into the night.
He returned to the scene of his crime.
The area by the campfire was already a scene of utter carnage.
Zhou Qiming and his seven or eight companions had been reduced to a scatter of severed limbs, now a meal in the bellies of the mutated wolves.
As for the dozen or so mutated wolves that had feasted, they were now just like their prey—sprawled out on the ground, fast asleep and snoring.
They too had ingested the residual toxins within the human bodies.
Although the effect was greatly diminished, it was still convenient enough for Lin Ye to clean up the battlefield.
Like the Grim Reaper, Lin Ye’s figure appeared silently in their midst.
SHINK!
The standard-issue longspear in his hand pierced precisely and elegantly into a mutated wolf’s cranial cavity.
A single, fatal strike.
One spear, one kill. Lin Ye dispatched them like a farmer harvesting ripe wheat in a field.
In just over ten seconds, the dozen or so mutated wolves had all become souls claimed by his spear, and experience points for him.
After finishing all this, Lin Ye’s gaze finally fell upon the three silver-gray metal contraptions standing quietly in a corner of the camp.
T-3 Hovering Exoskeleton Armor.
He walked over and reached out, his fingertips tracing the cold metal shell. He could feel its smooth lines and the understated sense of technology it held.
Lin Ye inspected them carefully.
The energy indicators on all three sets of exoskeleton armor were still lit, showing remaining power levels between 85% and 90%.
Not much had been consumed.
He quickly located the latch for the power modules.
After studying it for a moment, he discovered that the power modules were detachable and interchangeable, allowing him to consolidate their energy into a single suit.
Lin Ye immediately got to work, detaching the power module from one of the suits.
Then, he chose the suit with the fullest power supply and began to put it on.
CLICK-CLACK!
Once he finished equipping it, Lin Ye pressed a button.
The half-coverage armor components fit perfectly against his body, emitting a crisp, mechanical clicking sound as they locked into place.
The armor wasn’t heavy. Instead, through some kind of kinetic conduction design, it distributed its weight evenly across his body, making it feel almost burdenless.
The design of this exoskeleton was very user-friendly; there was even a magnetic slot on the side specifically for securing melee weapons.
Lin Ye swung the longspear in his hand behind him. With a soft *CLINK*, the spear was firmly secured to his back, extremely convenient to access.
He carried a spare power module in one hand, and with the other, he simply picked up an entire spare exoskeleton.
Only one empty shell of an Exoskeleton Armor was left behind.
Lin Ye tried moving his arms and legs.
A surging sense of power flowed from every joint of the armor.
With just a light leap, he jumped two or three meters into the air, landing without a sound.
When he ran, he was as swift as the wind. The armor’s built-in support system made every step incredibly effortless.
’Good stuff!’
Lin Ye praised it in his heart.
Although he hadn’t yet figured out how to activate its hover mode, the sheer boost to his ground combat abilities was like adding wings to a tiger.
He delayed no further and, carrying all his spoils, quickly returned to where he had left Zhang Yuqing.
Looking at the still-sleeping Zhang Yuqing, her brows slightly furrowed, Lin Ye didn’t hesitate to equip her with the spare exoskeleton as well.