Chapter 307 - 242: Entropy Reduction

Chapter 307: Chapter 242: Entropy Reduction

Ye Qingzhou stared at the "mountain of junk" that had abruptly appeared before her. For the first time, a daze best described as a ’system crash’ clouded the eyes that always tried to deconstruct everything with logic...

However, before her worldview could finish rebooting, an even more shocking and brutal scene on the other side of the broken bridge seized everyone’s attention.

As the trio leapt across the chasm, the bridgehead, which had just been a scene of bloody carnage, instantly fell into a deathly, brief silence. But just half a second later, that silence was shattered by a squelching, collapsing sound.

With Lin Fan, their "reef," no longer blocking the way, the tide of corpses that had been building up behind surged forward like a bursting dam. It was an ashen-gray torrent, crashing toward the broken edge with unstoppable momentum.

SQUISH SQUISH—

The "flesh-and-blood dam" at the forefront, built from hundreds, even thousands, of carcasses, didn’t last more than a few seconds. Under the crushing pressure of tons of bodies from behind, it instantly collapsed and disintegrated.

Thousands upon thousands of rotting feet trampled mercilessly forward. They didn’t care if they were stepping on the shattered skulls of their own kind or on flesh that had been ground into a gelatinous paste.

For this massive horde, the half-meter-thick swamp of flesh and blood was no longer an obstacle. Instead, it became a lubricant, hastening their advance.

SCRAPE— WHOOSH!

A hair-raising scraping sound rang out. Countless shoe soles acted like coarse scrapers, frantically scouring the bridge’s surface. That dark-red "carpet," which had just been calf-deep and incredibly viscous, was forcefully "shoveled" off the concrete, pushed and swept along until it poured over the edge of the broken span.

SPLASH! SPLASH! SPLASH!

From the edge of the broken bridge, it was as if a "corpse rain" had begun.

Countless mangled remains, mixed with tons of rotten flesh and black blood, along with a few unlucky zombies, plunged into the surging river like a dark-red debris flow. The already murky surface of the water was instantly stained a shocking blackish-red, only to be immediately scoured clean by the churning current.

A waterfall of flesh and blood had rained down, leaving behind a small hill of assorted materials.

Combined with Lin Fan, who stood amidst it all with white steam still rising from his body, the scene formed a tableau straight out of a hell scroll.

"This..."

Ye Qingzhou stared at the small hill that had piled up in mere seconds, circling the heap of materials like Scrooge McDuck happening upon a mountain of gold.

Lin Fan, however, turned and frowned, his gaze fixed on the battlefield across the broken bridge.

One minute. A single minute.

Once the last chunk of flesh was kicked off the bridge and the final bloodstain was scuffed dry by the subsequent footsteps, the "slaughterhouse"—the one Lin Fan’s trio had created by fighting tooth and nail to slay hundreds, even thousands, of zombies—had vanished completely.

In its place was a new, densely packed, ashen-white, and deathly still horde. They filled every inch of the broken bridge, the zombies at the very front still being squeezed off the cliff’s edge one after another, yet the mass of bodies behind them remained completely unfazed.

Their blankly ferocious faces roared toward the opposite bank, as if the recent slaughter had never even occurred.

The surface of the bridge was "clean" and crowded once more. Aside from the overpowering stench of blood that hung thick in the air, everything was back to the way it was.

It was as if these zombies were under some kind of "restraint." Other than the few dozen that had been shoved off the cliff by their frenzied companions, the zombies that followed stopped advancing and resumed their steady, aimless wandering.

Even when Lin Fan picked up a piece of rubble and threw it across, the zombie he hit merely shrieked, charged to the cliff’s edge, and roared in his direction. It didn’t foolishly leap off.

’They’re endless...’ He looked at the dense sea of health bars across the river, a tide that still stretched as far as the eye could see. He squeezed his eyes shut to relieve the strain, then turned to look at Chu Zhaozhao and Su Qing, who were sitting cross-legged on the ground.

The two women had long since lost the clean appearances they’d had when they set out.

Much like Lin Fan, their tracksuits, hair, and any exposed skin were all caked in a thick layer of blackish-red gore and pulped flesh. Since they couldn’t possibly get any dirtier, the two of them abandoned all pretense of maintaining their image, plopped right down on the ground, and gasped for breath.

The potion hadn’t worn off yet, so both of them still appeared energetic, showing no signs of exhaustion. But the worry in their eyes was plain to see as they stared at the endless horde on the opposite bank.

Their health bars read: Su Qing at [489/684] and Chu Zhaozhao at [487/772].

In other words, Su Qing had killed over a hundred zombies, while Chu Zhaozhao had killed a little over two hundred.

’Then I must have killed more than both of them combined. That means that under the effects of a single potion, our trio can kill roughly a thousand zombies...’

That rate of killing was nothing short of terrifying.

But Lin Fan didn’t allow himself to become blindly optimistic.

’We had a huge geographical advantage,’

he calmly analyzed in his mind. First, by defending a corner of the broken bridge, they only had to face a 90-degree arc of enemies in front of them, without worrying about their backs. If they had been surrounded by several thousand zombies on an open plain, they would have been drowned in a tide of bodies and blood.

Besides, the terrible sensation from the end of that fight was still fresh in his mind.

The first minute or two were fine. It was pure, simple slaughter, like slicing through melons.

But after three or four minutes, when the bodies beneath their feet were piled high as a mountain and new zombies were clambering over the old ones to pounce on them, it stopped being a fight. It was more like "making mincemeat."

And he meant that literally.

Swinging his greatsword no longer produced a clean whistle through the air. Instead, the blade bogged down in layer upon layer of mangled corpses, rotting flesh, shattered bone, and viscous entrails. The immense drag and cloying suction felt even worse than striking solid rock.