Chapter 89 - 87: Sacrifice
Zhang Yuqing was stunned.
This was the first time she had ever heard Lin Ye say he needed her help.
He had always been like an insurmountable mountain.
Calm, powerful, omnipotent.
He was always out front, scouting ahead and keeping all dangers at bay.
She, on the other hand, felt more like a burden he was constantly protecting—a burden who could only occasionally be of some use.
But now, Lin Ye was asking her for help.
Zhang Yuqing’s heart clenched. An indescribable thrill ran up her spine. It wasn’t fear, but the excitement of being acknowledged, of being needed.
She replied almost without thinking, blurting out, "Okay!"
His expression was more serious than she had ever seen it.
"Don’t be so quick to agree."
"If we want to win, we’ll have to put everything on the line. Even our lives."
"And even then, we’ll only have a chance of killing it."
"Are you still willing?"
His voice was calm, yet it held a coldness that showed he had already made peace with death.
"If you agree, I’ll factor your life into my calculations as well."
In the eyes of the young man before her, Zhang Yuqing saw an ultimate will to fight, and an almost fanatical desire for victory.
It was the light of a burning soul.
Any lingering fear in her heart was ignited by his frenzied battle lust, burning away to nothing.
She nodded with unwavering resolve.
"The competition’s almost over anyway. Might as well risk it all!"
"Good."
With her confirmation, Lin Ye closed his eyes.
His mind began to race, calculating every possibility to turn the tables.
The first certainty was that the heavily injured Crystal Spirit Race cub was completely dependent on absorbing the life energy of other creatures to heal.
It hadn’t pursued them earlier because, in its calculations, the energy required to hunt them down far exceeded the potential gains from capturing them.
Based on that, if they could cut off its energy supply, they could significantly weaken its combat strength. It might even be forced to tap into its reserves, causing its injuries to deteriorate further.
But trying to kill every mutated beast in the area right now was pure fantasy.
Lin Ye remembered the hundreds of desiccated mutant beast carcasses back in the tunnel.
He had spent the entire day hunting in other parts of the South District and in countless subway tunnels.
But he had never seen such a dense concentration of remains.
This indicated that the Crystal Spirit Race cub had been operating within this vicinity recently.
It was likely trying to conserve energy, too lazy to hunt actively. Instead, it was lying in wait, letting wandering mutant beasts deliver themselves to its doorstep.
A plan—imperfect, even flawed—began to take shape rapidly in Lin Ye’s mind.
Only ten hours remained. It wasn’t enough time.
He didn’t have time for more intricate planning or preparations. He could only use the simplest, most brutal method: create a battlefield that gave him every possible advantage.
...
「More than eight hours later.」
The collapsed section of the subway was deathly still.
Lin Ye stood in the middle of a wide, subterranean main passage.
Behind him, a wall of fire over ten meters wide blazed furiously, casting the entire tunnel in the light of an inferno.
From the other side of the fire, the anxious roars of mutant beasts echoed intermittently, but their innate fear of the flames kept them at a safe distance.
And before Lin Ye, in the darkness leading to the heart of the collapse, lay dozens of mutated beast corpses he had just slain. The rich stench of blood saturated the air.
Meanwhile, at the other end of the tunnel, roughly ten kilometers away.
Zhang Yuqing also stood behind a burning wall of fire.
It had taken them hours to build these two firewalls, scavenging tires from abandoned vehicles, foam, plastic, and any other combustibles they could find in the vicinity.
The materials wouldn’t burn for long.
But they were enough to block the tide of mutant beasts pressing in from behind.
This turned the ten-kilometer stretch of subway tunnel into an enclosed space.
Lin Ye had cleared out most of the mutant beasts inside the "arena."
The mutant beasts outside didn’t dare take a single step past the firewalls.
If the hungry Crystal Spirit Race cub discovered that no more foolish mutant beasts were delivering themselves to its doorstep like takeout, it would be left with only two options.
Either leave its familiar hunting ground to search for prey farther away.
Or, enter the cleared-out area and find the culprit responsible for it all.
The plan was riddled with holes and fraught with uncertainty.
Lin Ye couldn’t even be sure that the cub was still in the area, that it hadn’t already left.
But he had to gamble.
He had to bet all his remaining time on it showing up.
The seconds and minutes ticked by.
Over an hour later...
The flames of the firewalls began to die down.
And with them, Lin Ye’s heart sank.
’Did I fail?’
Just as the thought crossed his mind...
A single point of ethereal purple light ignited without warning in the endless darkness ahead.
’It’s here!’
Lin Ye’s heart leaped, but his muscles instantly relaxed, and he entered a state of absolute, placid calm.
That point of purple light was the uncanny single eye of the Crystal Spirit Race cub.
It moved slowly through the darkness, its pace unhurried, as if patrolling its own territory.
It saw the ground littered with mutant beast corpses, and it saw Lin Ye, the lone human standing among them.
Its single eye locked onto Lin Ye.
A cold wave of Spirit, filled with scrutiny and killing intent, washed over him like a tide.
Expressionless, Lin Ye met its gaze in silence.
However, when it was still several hundred meters away, it suddenly stopped.
Then, its single eye revealed a clearly discernible trace of...
Contempt.
It was as if it were mocking a foolish Hunter for setting such a crude trap.
Then, it turned and walked away!
Without a shred of hesitation!
A flash of purple light, and it moved with extreme speed, about to vanish back into the distant darkness in the blink of an eye.
Lin Ye’s pupils contracted.
’The trap failed!’
Buried more than two hundred meters ahead of him, directly beneath the ground he stood on, was the last spare power module he’d taken from the group from Ningke University.
Lin Ye had discovered earlier that the T-3 Exoskeleton Armor had a built-in emergency self-destruct function.
His plan was to act as bait, luring the Crystal Spirit Race cub into the blast’s core.
He had decided to sacrifice himself to take the alien down with him.
Even if the blast didn’t kill it, it would at least leave it critically wounded.
Assuming it took the full force of the blast and was completely cut off from any energy source, Lin Ye was betting everything on Zhang Yuqing, who was waiting ten kilometers away.
He was counting on her to seize the fleeting opportunity to deliver the final blow to the dying cub.
But that plan had gone completely up in smoke!
Unlike the mutant beasts, which operated on primitive hunting instincts alone, this Crystal Spirit Race—despite being a mere cub, equivalent to a human infant—demonstrated intelligence and caution far beyond that of any ordinary mutant.
’Chase!’
Lin Ye activated his armor, preparing for a last-ditch effort.
Lin Ye had been in pursuit for less than thirty seconds when...
BOOM—!!!
A monumental, earth-shattering boom, so deep it felt like it could tear the ground asunder, came from the far distance!
The sound tore through thick layers of rock and concrete, sweeping through the entire subterranean space with unstoppable might!
Immediately after, a pillar of fire surged skyward. Even from kilometers away, it lit up the entire subway tunnel as bright as day!