LGHTNOVELBOOK Chapter 147: Noah's List
Thump! Another muffled sound, no different from the last, yet it struck everyone's hearts like a heavy hammer.
What to do… Do we really have to keep hiding here, gambling that the battlefield won't reach this place?
Or open the doors and risk it all?
One wrong move, and both choices lead to complete failure!
Yun Feng gritted his teeth, desperately searching for a way to guarantee everyone's survival.
A way…
He had no way.
"What if…" Amidst the deathly silence, Yun Feng suddenly looked up, staring at everyone. "We leave one by one?"
"What?" Kiana and the others were taken aback. Mei and Yun Feng immediately pressed for clarification.
There were no fools here; every suggestion and opinion voiced deserved careful consideration.
"You said those Honkai Beasts track people based on the size of the group, right?" Yun Feng deliberately lowered his voice, speaking softly to the group.
Mei nodded; this theory, deduced by Otto, had already been tested in Nagazora City.
Yun Feng took a deep breath, then spoke even more softly, each word carefully enunciated, outlining a plan.
"Open the exit, leave one person at a time, one minute apart. That way, we can avoid the Honkai Beast, right?" A coldness flickered in Yun Feng's eyes.
"No way! There are over a hundred of us here!" Chen Shicheng immediately rejected Yun Feng's proposal. "One person leaving every minute means it'll take two hours for everyone to get out! That's two hours!! We don't have that much time for everyone to leave!!"
"Even if only one person leaves, it's better than all of us staying here, gambling on the Honkai Beast showing mercy and sparing us!" Yun Feng growled in a low voice.
Unlike the smiling Yun Feng they had seen before, the current Yun Feng was much like the one who had coldly glared at Chen Shicheng last night.
An undeniable aura of authority surrounded him.
"But have you considered how you're going to decide on your 'Ark list'?" This time, Chen Shicheng didn't back down, gritting his teeth and glaring at the man who had already accepted the idea of sacrifice from the start.
"And how are you going to make those people accept your list? Who goes first? Who are you sending out first to be the sacrificial pawn, scouting the way?"
"I…" Yun Feng was momentarily speechless, looking at Chen Shicheng with a grave expression.
"Um…" Just as Yun Feng seemed to be formulating a rebuttal, Kiana suddenly interjected. "Could we leave in groups of a few people?"
Both men's gazes snapped to Kiana, remnants of their previous anger still lingering in their eyes.
Kiana instinctively shrank back, but she persevered, finishing her thought.
"If three people leave at a time, wouldn't the total evacuation time be shortened threefold?"
"Groups of a few?" Yun Feng paused, then shook his head, not even bothering to correct Kiana's slightly inaccurate use of "threefold." "We don't know how many people are with your captain. If the group is too large, the Honkai Beast will definitely come after us."
Kiana closed her mouth. It had taken her quite a while to calculate how long it would take to evacuate everyone in groups of three…
"Wait… Bronya believes Finality's suggestion is feasible." Just then, Bronya stepped in. "Provided we know how many people the Honkai Beast will tolerate traveling together."
"How do we check? Send one person, then two, and so on? We don't have that many chances to experiment…" Yun Feng shook his head.
"No, we do!" Chen Shicheng suddenly raised his voice, surprise evident even to himself.
He turned to look at Bronya, who silently nodded at him.
Chen Shicheng swallowed hard, then slowly spoke.
"We… have two exits, don't we?"
"Two exits? Here, besides the main entrance…" Yun Feng frowned, then his eyes widened as he turned to look at the ventilation duct on the wall not far away.
That was where… Shu and the others, along with Yun Mengxi and Liu Zhuohua, had returned the day before yesterday. And also…
The place Chen Shicheng had originally planned to use for their escape!
Yun Feng hadn't noticed it, but Chen Shicheng had been paying attention!
It was quite far from the main entrance… So, they did have a chance to test their theory!
But now the question was… who would be the first few to scout the situation?
Who… would be the sacrificial lambs in this escape?
A heavy silence fell over the group.
It was then that they suddenly realized the surroundings had become completely quiet.
Yun Feng and Chen Shicheng turned around to see everyone sitting silently, 145 pairs of eyes fixed on the five of them.
Including Yun Mengxi, holding the notebook.
Not a sound. Yun Feng, who had just been searching for "sacrificial lambs" for his plan, suddenly felt a pang of guilt under their gazes.
"Brother… we…" Yun Mengxi was the first to break the silence, but she trailed off, unsure how to continue.
It was clear to everyone what situation they were facing.
So… no one spoke up, and no one would volunteer at a time like this…
"Sigh…" A long, weary sigh echoed from the crowd. A middle-aged man in work clothes gently pulled away from the woman beside him and stood up.
"What's all the fuss about? Let me go first. These old bones aren't good for much anymore. I'll go ahead." The middle-aged man spoke with forced cheerfulness, but his eyes held no glimmer of hope for survival.
There was a strange sense of resolve in them.
Yun Feng was choked up. "Uncle Li! This isn't a joke!"
"That's right! This isn't something to joke about!" The woman beside Uncle Li, who had been holding his hand, scolded him and reached out again to grab his hand.
That's right, this kind of thing… Just as Yun Feng and the others breathed a sigh of relief, they saw the woman not pulling Uncle Li back down, but instead pulling herself up alongside him.
"The first spot is for the young ones! We'll go together, second in line." The woman slapped Uncle Li on the shoulder, then put on a bright smile, linking arms with him.
"You…" Yun Feng was speechless, staring wide-eyed at the woman excitedly clinging to Uncle Li's arm, and at Uncle Li's helpless expression.