In WSNs, energy efficiency and low latency are considered as two key issues in designing routing protocol. This paper proposes two schemes to combine clustering strategy with chain routing algorithm in order to satisfy both energy and delay constraints in WSNs. The first scheme makes use of clustering strategy, direct transmission inside cluster, and chain routing among cluster-heads. The second scheme makes use of clustering strategy, chain routing inside cluster, and chain routing among chain-leaders. Based on two schemes respectively, two protocols are introduced in detail, among which one is link-based stable election protocol (L-SEP) and the other is chain routing based on coordinates-oriented clustering strategy (CRBCC). Simulation results show that two routing protocols perform better than PEGASIS using energy*delay metrics.