Chapter 310 - 243: The Vault of Heaven

Chapter 310: Chapter 243: The Vault of Heaven

"Tell me, what’s the precision of your imagination?" Ye Qingzhou asked, looking Lin Fan in the eye. "Also, can you read mechanical engineering blueprints?"

"...I’m a veterinarian."

Lin Fan was silent for two seconds before blinking and answering with great sincerity. He felt his current expression was a dead ringer for Chu Zhaozhao’s.

"Let me study that greatsword of yours," Ye Qingzhou said, stepping back to clear an open area.

"Sure, be my guest." With a wave of his hand, Lin Fan summoned the greatsword. It appeared out of thin air and slammed onto the open ground with a THUD, embedding itself in the concrete. It stood between the two of them like a door slab.

"Qingniao, help your sister hold it." At Lin Fan’s signal, Ye Qingniao obediently hurried over to grab the hilt, holding the greatsword upright while Ye Qingzhou studied it. She was in charge of helping flip it over.

Lin Fan himself took two steps back, watching Ye Qingzhou’s focused back. He glanced at the steady green health bar above her head, then at Su Qing and Chu Zhaozhao nearby, and a sense of security washed over him.

"We’re going to go wash up. You two can study it for now." After speaking, he turned and waved to Su Qing and Chu Zhaozhao. "Come on, let’s go rinse off in the river."

The river water under the broken bridge was turbulent, crashing against the scattered rocks on the bank and churning up white foam. Though it was summer, the river was still icy cold after the heavy rain.

However, for these three "monsters" whose physiques were long past human, the temperature was just right for cooling down their overheated bodies.

All three of their jackets were caked with blood and gore, so they had simply taken them off and thrown them away. Dressed in T-shirts and shorts, they stood on the riverbank upstream.

"Everyone hold on tight! The ’Zhaozhao-Brand Fully Automatic Washing Machine’ is starting up!"

Each of them held a short steel rebar. The moment she finished speaking, the three of them rose into the air, hanging stiffly—bodies, clothes, and all—above the turbulent river’s surface.

"Into the water we go! Heavy-duty cycle first!"

At Chu Zhaozhao’s command.

SPLASH! SPLASH! SPLASH!

The three of them, like three giant, human-shaped tea bags or slices of mutton for hot pot, were dunked in unison by the rebars into the icy river water until even the bars were submerged.

WHOOSH—

Chu Zhaozhao manipulated the rebars, plunging them up and down and swinging them side to side in the rapid current as if she were rinsing a mop.

The icy river water instantly soaked through their clothes, washing away the heat of their bodies, the sweat, and the sticky grime.

The current scoured away clots of dark red blood and shreds of flesh clinging to the fibers of their clothing. They quickly separated from the three, spreading out in faint red clouds in the surrounding water before being rapidly dispersed and carried away by the river.

"COUGH, COUGH... A little slower! I’m getting dizzy!"

Su Qing was getting dizzy from the shaking and shouted while clutching the rebar tightly.

"Heh heh, spin-dry cycle!"

Chu Zhaozhao giggled mischievously. Not only did she not stop, she controlled the rebars to lift them out of the water, then spun them violently in the air like a pinwheel for two rotations. She used centrifugal force to wring out most of the water from their clothes before plunging them back into the river, lifting them out, and spinning them again...

「A few minutes later.」

"GACK! GACK!"

Chu Zhaozhao, the one who had just been shouting about the "spin-dry cycle," was now standing barefoot on the bank, leaning against a crooked little tree and dry heaving repeatedly.

It felt like her own pinwheel spin was about to wring the acid right out of her stomach.

Su Qing stood beside her helplessly, her soaking wet hair plastered to her cheeks. She wrung out the corner of her shirt with one hand while using the other to gently pat Chu Zhaozhao’s back, an amused look in her eyes.

"Much cleaner now," Lin Fan said, wiping the water droplets from his face. Though he was soaked to the bone, having washed off that stinking shell of dried blood made him feel much more refreshed.

He looked at Chu Zhaozhao’s pale face and couldn’t help but mock her, "Serves you right for messing around. Spun yourself dizzy, huh..."

’Trying to compare physical fitness with two melee-class types like us, tsk tsk.’

Once Chu Zhaozhao recovered, she obediently took the three of them on a straight vertical ascent and landed them back on the bridge’s surface.

The moment they landed, Lin Fan saw Cheng Qi holding up the greatsword’s hilt with both hands, letting it rest diagonally on the ground. Meanwhile, under her sister’s direction, Ye Qingniao was holding a piece of Blade and carving into the greatsword with it, as if performing some kind of hardness test.

Seeing Lin Fan’s group return, dripping wet, Ye Qingniao—who was in the middle of "destroying public property"—handed the Blade to her sister and asked curiously, "Aren’t there any fish in the river that bite?"

"Biting fish?" Lin Fan replied casually while wringing out his sleeves. "Would they dare bite me? I’d shatter their teeth."

He said that, but a strange thought flashed through his mind.

Forget biting fish, he hadn’t even seen a single normal one. There weren’t many fish in the city’s rivers to begin with, but since the apocalypse started... now that he thought about it, aside from the Mutant Dogs and that one pig, he really hadn’t seen any other animals.

Stray cats? Stray dogs? Rats?

It was as if they had all evaporated overnight.

It would make sense if large mammals had been caught and eaten by zombies, since zombies have a keen sense of smell. But...

"Now that you mention it, that reminds me." Lin Fan suddenly stopped wringing his clothes, looked up at the fiery red sky, and frowned slightly. "Have you seen any birds?"

The sky is three-dimensional, and zombies can’t fly. There’s no way they could have caught all the birds.

But in the past few days, aside from hearing an occasional call, he hadn’t seen a single sparrow.

"Birds..."

Ye Qingniao paused for a moment, then searched her memory. "I have! I saw them back when we were at Jishan... but after we came into the city, I don’t think I’ve really seen any... Sis?"