Chapter 11 Trace, Unable to Mark

Turning this corner, the view ahead suddenly opened up.
A cavern large enough to fit one or two neighborhoods appeared before their eyes. Nearly a hundred meters above, accompanied by trickling waterfalls, a few beams of sunlight spilled down, bringing some light into the dark cave.
“Help!”
There were only seven or eight people left on the mushroom-shaped platform about seventy or eighty meters away.
On the pitch-black stone bridge rising from the bottom, an ugly, elongated worm coiled around the top of a pillar of unknown height, arched its body, and glared at the platform opposite, making a threatening gesture.
Just as Yang Zicang looked over, another child was hooked up by several winged insects with their claws.
“My child!” A woman next to the child screamed in panic instantly.
“Mommy.”
The four members of the Monster Hunter Alliance, who were fighting against several large lizards, had no time whatsoever to rescue her.
On the lower side of the platform, another ugly worm was pushing its body, thicker than a cow, arching along. It had to be at least ten meters long!
There were two Marauding Worms!
“How disgusting! Captain Yao, quick, that monster is going to ambush your teammate!”
Below the platform seventy or eighty meters away, the monster twisted its body like a snake, moving stealthily, looking for an opportunity to deliver a killing blow to those few.
That was their strategy: one deliberately exposed itself to cut off the road, while the other, larger one, hid below and launched a sneak attack.
[Four Anonymous Patrons withdrew 23N.]
[Luo Xin invested 50N for me.]
Yao Qiming stood The Ultimate Evil Bow on the ground: “Zicang, infuse the arrows with the Order of Time Spindle Substance. I will shoot.”
“Sure.”
Yang Zicang drew a black arrow shaft and held it in his hand, and it was instantly shrouded in a pale golden ethereal flame.
The arrow nocked onto the bowstring, Yao Qiming held his breath and strained with all his might to draw the wire-like bowstring back.
This pitch-black Bow of Ultimate Malevolence radiated a thick aura of hatred, deepening with every inch the bowstring was pulled! At its center, a crimson eye the size of an egg emerged, gleaming like a red crystal.
However, this eye was murky and appeared lifeless.
The worm on the Black Bridge sensed the fluctuation of hatred emanating from behind, turned its head, and spat out a pool of green solution with a loud plop.
Whoosh!
The arrow carved a long golden trail through the darkness, grazing past its skin.
“Boom!”
With a dull crash, the worm’s raised body instantly plummeted onto the stone bridge, sending clouds of dust scattering into the air from the surface impact, causing fragments of rock beneath the bridge to shatter and fall.
“The captain is here!” The others on the opposite side exclaimed with delight.
Yao Qiming’s arrival speed was far faster than they had anticipated.
“Piercing through that venom already negated over three hundred years of temporal force on the arrow, but its skin is even tougher. Again!”
Yang Zicang handed forward another arrow. Facing the rapidly charging worm, Yao Qiming remained unflustered, his eyes wide as he nocked the arrow and drew the bow.
The worm-like monster twisted its body, rolled to the other side of the bridge, and concealed itself while rushing swiftly forward.
“I can’t see it anymore.”
“Roar~”
Yang Zicang’s entire body involuntarily tensed as the monster circled out from under the bridge over twenty meters away and raised its head.
A golden arrow sliced through the air with a gust of wind.
[Trajectory Dispatch!]
Whoosh! The arrow arced forward and, the moment it left the string, seemed governed by an invisible force, surging tremendously in speed.
Double acceleration!
The mouthpart, as wide as a tabletop, opened wide, and a glob of green fluid splattered outward like water.
The instant Yao Qiming loosed the arrow, he dropped the Extreme Evil Bow. Clapping his hands together, a starlight flickered within his palms, and in the motion of pulling them apart, he unfolded a temporospatial barrier as clear and broad as an umbrella.
The fluid was blocked outside the barrier as the golden arrow plunged into the monster’s mouthpart.
“Hit it!”
Yang Zicang had adjusted the angle of this shot, sending the arrow straight into the monster’s belly, unleashing a resonant, drum-like explosion.
Boom! The monster’s body exploded.
Crash!
The ancient, pitch-black long bridge, already buckling under the strain, had a section shattered by the blast.
Half the monster’s body, along with countless rocks, plunged straight into the depths of the unfathomable sinkhole below.
[I’ve harvested 32.5N.]
A great many years of the Evil Nightmare’s lifespan were nullified.
“Ah, the bridge is broken!” The people on the opposite platform turned pale with terror.
What now? There was no path at all for escape.
Across various investment hubs in the financing model, onlookers murmured to one another as they watched this scene unfold.
“Hold your breath.”
The poison gas from the exploding corpse was completely unbearable; every breath cost hundreds of years of time sequence rhythm. Yao Qiming pulled out a small emerald green ball from the pouch at his waist and threw it.
Boom! A strong whirlwind swept across the ground, dispersing the stench and poisonous gases.
Yang Zicang and the other squeezed their noses for a few seconds before daring to breathe.
“That’s a great item—is it a magical artifact?”
“You could say that.”
After Yao Qiming said this, a look of anger appeared on his face: “Damn it, that beast broke the bridge.”
Several gecko-like monsters charged over; the man drew his steel longsword, swung it, and with several thuds, chopped them into pieces.
An Ji Xiu’s telepathic voice came through the financing model:
{as I see it, your bow seems to fall a bit short of hitting that other monster. Looks like your teammate is quite unlucky; probably at the limit for today.}
In response to the cynical remark, Yang Zicang said, “Captain Yao, no matter what, we have to try again. That monster hiding under the stone platform is still lying in wait.”
“Alright, let’s give it another try!” Yao Qiming raised his longbow and ran toward the towering, narrow Blackstone Bridge, which was about twenty meters away from the point where it had broken.
Yang Zicang followed behind him; the bridge, just over a meter wide, gave him an illusion that he might fall off at any moment. Fortunately, his “scheduling” ability helped.
{You can’t go any further—the brickwork of the bridge deck there has already loosened.}
The investors were offering long-distance advice through the financing model.
{Look at that creature over there—the one with bloodline aura, that’s a nightmare worm monster, isn’t it?}
Beneath the platform opposite, another worm monster craned its head and stared this way. It no longer cared about the panicked prey above its head; now, its only thought was how to eliminate the two humans on the broken bridge who had killed its kind.
Bracing the bow and drawing the string, a golden arrow pierced the dim space, but its golden radiance faded just a few meters from the platform. The black arrowhead struck the worm, which merely recoiled as if tapped by a small stick, then fell directly into the darkness.
“No good, it’s out of range. You should flee from that side!”
On the platform opposite, the four people who had fought with all their might to kill off most of the flying insects, leaving only a few scattered ones, panted heavily and shouted, “We’ve tried. There’s also a monster on the way to the other side of the city. We’re already surrounded.”
These monsters needed the breath of the living to breed nightmare eggs—otherwise, we ourselves would have long since died.
But now, the worm nightmare, having witnessed the killing of its kind, had been consumed by frantic emotions.
Rumble, rumble.
The platform shook. A four-bladed steel claw, like a sharp talon on the monster’s tail, swung and pulled a colossal boulder the size of a tea table from a pillar.
It leaped upward, shot over the edge of the coronal platform, and landed on it like a scorpion.
“Ah!” One person was crushed on the spot.
The monster’s tail swung like a catapult, the immense force hurling a massive rock with a roaring gale!
It wants to destroy the bridge!
“Watch out!”
Yao Qiming planted his feet in a lunge, raised his steel sword, and a faint golden flame ignited on the blade.
“Wait!” But Yang Zicang was already too late to stop Yao Qiming.
The captain hurled the sword, the golden light quickly fading away.
Bang!
With a flash of light, the massive rock hurtling with the gale shattered into pieces, and the steel sword that clashed with it snapped into three sections instantly.
Countless fragments of rock and steel sword shards flew in with a roar, like a shotgun blast.
“It’s over.” Yao Qiming had no time left to deploy his force field.
[Deploy!]
A quadrilateral thread suddenly spread out.
[Maximum quantity: single digits; nine targets have been marked.]
[The quantity is far too large; I need the Principle of Temporal Bequest to boost calculation speed and marking capacity.]
At the critical moment, Yang Zicang’s brain raced with convulsive pain.
[99N of the Principle of Temporal Bequest has been invested.]
[The slot positioning for the ‘Deploy’ ability has been permanently expanded to ten positions.]
“Not enough, it’s simply not enough—”
The impact from these stones would collapse the Black Bridge, and he would fall into the dark depths of the monster’s lair.
“Am I going to die again!”
Time seemed to slow down. Yang Zicang, filled with intense desperation, looked up as the debris covered the space above his head.
[The 41st Assessment Judge has sensed my strong will.]
A gaze descended from infinitely high above.
[The 41st Assessment Judge invested in me, Void Zero Timeline 99999.]
[The ‘Dispatch’ ability’s rank has been temporarily expanded to Ten-thousand-rank. Remaining 5 seconds, 4 seconds…]
“Ah——!”
His mind went blank in an instant, as if some sort of energy had been unleashed.
Blood vessels and nerves around Yang Zicang’s eyes bulged like spider webs, and the world in his sight seemed to shatter, revealing countless dense, glowing cracks.
The whistling debris rapidly traced countless trajectories in his eyes; every tiny fragment, every shift, gave rise to infinite possibilities of motion.
[Timeline reduced by 1R.]
[Timeline reduced by 3.27Y.]
[Timeline reduced by 9.5N.]
[Timeline reduced by 1225N.]
Whoo, whoosh!
An invisible barrier seemed to form before the two on the stone bridge.
The dense shower of rock fragments exploding toward them strangely scattered on their own in front of them.
In the smoke and dust, a blank area shaped like a streamlined water droplet appeared—a wind tunnel path formed by the roaring debris as it veered away.
Whoo—
A black shadow twisted in a bizarre arc in midair, changing direction to plunge straight down at Yang Zicang from above. Yao Qiming tried to reach out but was too late.
With eyes wide in fury, Yang Zicang raised his hand boldly.
Slap!
His right hand instantly caught the hilt of the flying remnant sword and held it inverted in his grip.
The broken blade was now only over thirty centimeters long.
Yao Qiming’s eyes trembled, his expression complex!
“Ha~” The young man let out a strange expression, both excited and pained.
A rasping “hah-chi, hah-chi” sound escaped his throat.
Yang Zicang glared at the monster that had risen upright on the platform across from them, rampaging without restraint, and grinned as he said, “Throw me over there.”
“What?”
Yao Qiming looked at the cruel smile on this young man’s face as if he were watching a mental patient.
“I said, throw me over. That way, the distance problem is solved.”
A golden ethereal flame surged from the broken sword held reversed in his palm.
“Are you sure? Uh…”
Yang Zicang turned his head slightly, staring coldly into Yao Qiming’s eyes:
“You deaf or what?”
The burly man’s eyelid twitched. He swallowed hard and said in a deep voice, “Fine!”
The man settled into a horse stance, crouching low with his hands cupped loosely in front of him. Yang Zicang, standing tall and upright, planted one foot firmly in his hands.