Chapter 153 Now That's Something I Can't Just Roll Past

A viscous yellow liquid slowly squeezed out through the cracks in the wall, resembling a massive glob of yellow phlegm.

This mass of yellow mucus continued to push outward, causing the bricks embedded within it to crumble and scatter onto the floor.

The woodlice on the ground rustled and scurried in all directions to escape the falling debris, though a large number of them were still crushed into pulp by the tumbling bricks.

Li Tianque instantly recognized the yellow liquid; this must be the large yellow sphere that Tatar had mentioned!

It was the core-bug that Wu Miaoran and her companions had come here to find!

Therefore, the "Food Limit" that Chu kept talking about was, in all likelihood, the name of this core-bug!

Had he known that crushing a few woodlice would lure it out, he wouldn't have put himself through such a harrowing ordeal.

While Li Tianque was lost in thought, Chu paid no heed to what was happening behind her.

She continued to measure the distance with her hands, and after finishing her estimation, she began wrapping fine metal wire around her fingers once more.

With a succession of sharp swishes, she launched all the metal wires from her ten fingers, anchoring them to the exposed concrete rebar at the broken section of the staircase.

Following that, Chu pulled the other ends of the metal wires and tied them tightly to the concrete rebar on their own side.

After repeating this process several times, she actually used these metal wires to construct a makeshift bridge of strings between the two severed ledges.

Her movements were smooth and effortless, executed with the practiced ease of a veteran artisan molding sugar figurines in Tianjin.

It was only at this moment that Li Tianque noticed the white tunic Chu was wearing. The inner lining was entirely lined with hanging pockets—even more than the pockets on his own rat-hide garment—capable of holding a great deal of items.

However, Chu hadn't placed anything else inside them; instead, every single pocket was stuffed with bundles of this very same metal wire.

Li Tianque stared dumbfounded at the hastily constructed string bridge, overwhelmed with astonishment.

The string bridge spanned the chasm between the two fractured ledges, anchored securely on both sides by being wound around the concrete rebar.

While some sections of the bridge appeared sturdy, others looked rather fragile.

Although the overall structure of the bridge seemed capable of supporting a person's weight, the fact that the span consisted of metal wires lashed to concrete rebar meant that—leaving aside whether the opposite end was truly secure—even if the far side was solid enough, attempting to walk across it on foot posed immense danger.

During the crossing, the slightest shift in gravity would concentrate all the weight onto a single strand of wire, causing that specific wire to snap instantly and plunging both of them into the abyss below.

"I don't think this bridge is crossable... It probably won't hold the weight of both of us," Li Tianque voiced his doubts immediately.

To his surprise, Chu shot him a sideways glance and retorted ungraciously:

"Go on, walk across and let me see."

Li Tianque offered an awkward smile; naturally, he had no intention of walking across to prove anything.

With a cold snort, Chu forcefully shoved Li Tianque aside to clear some space for herself.

Knowing better than to argue, Li Tianque prudently stepped back several paces.

Confusion swirled in his mind, leaving him feeling utterly baffled.

It was obvious that Chu wasn't building a piece of art by stringing up this metal bridge, yet judging by her words, she didn't intend to walk across it upright either. What on earth was she planning to do?

Even more bizarrely, she had retreated quite a distance backward. Could she be planning to make a running dash and barrel across in one go?

If she did that, wouldn't the force exerted on the bridge by her feet be even greater? That would be far more dangerous than simply walking over!

As Li Tianque was pondering this, he suddenly felt a rush of wind brush past his ear, followed immediately by Chu sprinting past him from behind. Indeed, she intended to charge right across.

However, just as she approached the string bridge, she threw herself flat onto the ground and rolled directly across it.

The movement was fluid, seamless, and executed like a scene from an action movie. Before Li Tianque could even react, Chu had already rolled over to the other side.

"Get over here!" Chu commanded from the opposite end of the stairs.

Recovering his wits, Li Tianque still felt a lingering sense of hesitation.

Although rolling across the way Chu did offered a high probability of making it, the maneuver required precise timing and control over running speed and the exact moment to drop into a roll.

If he were even slightly too slow, he would fail to clear the upward slope and might end up stranded in the middle, squeezed half-to-death by the taut metal wires.

While Li Tianque was hesitating over whether to take the risk, the wall completely collapsed. The fake door blocking the surface was blasted away by brute force and crashed heavily onto the floor.

Immediately afterward, the viscous yellow liquid poured out entirely, resembling flowing magma.

Li Tianque shone his flashlight toward the spot and discovered that this mass of yellow liquid was truly a living creature.

Seeing it with his own eyes, Li Tianque realized that this entity bore no resemblance to Tatar's description, and differed vastly from the image he had conjured in his mind.

Li Tianque lacked the words to describe this repulsive organism, save to say it looked like a massive lump of human fat piled together.

The large yellow sphere appeared exceedingly obese, yet its body was crystal-clear and soft, resembling gelatin. What made it even more sickening was that this plump, fleshy blob was entirely transparent.

Li Tianque could clearly see countless black, fleshy chunks squirming densely inside its body, to a degree of nausea-inducing horror.

"Is that the Food Limit?" Chu shouted across to Li Tianque.

"If by Food Limit you mean the large yellow sphere in front... it has already crawled out from inside the wall," Li Tianque replied with a deep frown.

"Then what are you waiting for! Roll your ass over here!" Chu lost her patience and snapped coldly at Li Tianque.

Pulling his thoughts back, Li Tianque handed the flashlight over to Chu, then retreated dazedly, though he couldn't resist casting one more glance at the Food Limit.

People were sometimes profoundly strange; even when something was utterly revolting, morbid curiosity still compelled them to look just one more time.

At that moment, the Food Limit was creeping flat along the ground, its sticky body pressed tightly against the floor. Miraculously, all the woodlice on the ground began to wriggle, crawling upward from beneath its body and burrowing directly into its flesh.

Only then did Li Tianque understand that the dense mass of black, fleshy lumps inside the Food Limit's body were precisely these large woodlice!

Though the exact composition of the Food Limit's body remained a mystery, these woodlice seemed able to slip effortlessly into the interior of the yellow meat-ball.

The Food Limit absorbed all the woodlice onto its surface, and enveloped in this layer of ash-gray insects, it slowly dragged its entire bulk out from the interior of the wall.

Two sticky tentacles suddenly shot straight up like a pair of spinning spindles, probing the darkness as if searching for something.

After swaying for a moment, the two large tentacles froze, and a protruding, gel-like structure resembling a head turned toward Li Tianque's direction.

A pang of shock struck Li Tianque's heart, but fortunately, Chu clicked off the flashlight in time, preventing the creature from spotting him.

Yet even after the light was extinguished, Li Tianque could still clearly hear a succession of wet, slithering friction sounds echoing down the corridor.

The noise grew closer and more rapid, clearly advancing straight toward his location.

Cold sweat broke out instantly across Li Tianque's scalp. The Food Limit must have caught the scent of the woodlouse remains on his shoes and locked onto him as its target.

"It looks like this thing has found me after all," Li Tianque said.

Chu slowly stood up, switched on the flashlight once more, and cast its beam directly onto Li Tianque.

"Yes. In that case, I'll make it easier for it to see you."

Li Tianque was so infuriated his nose felt crooked. Although he knew full well that Chu was merely provoking him to roll across, he honestly felt that crossing that string bridge was far from a good idea.