Free Web NovelChapter 218: This Is My House
Jiang Meilan lowered her sunglasses and looked at the overgrown entrance to the mansion for several long seconds before the corner of her mouth lifted.
There it was.
Her house.
Or, at the very least, what should have been her house before Shen Rouxi ruined everything by existing in the wrong place at the wrong time. She knew the bitch had been reborn, even if she hadn’t come out and say it. But it didn’t matter. What was hers would be Meilan’s in the end.
After she disinfected everything.
The thought that Shen Rouxi had once slept in her house was enough to make Meilan’s smile tighten, but she refused to let the irritation show too clearly. She had not come all the way back here to look petty in front of the five men standing behind her.
Especially not after the last time.
She still hated thinking about that night.
Not because she had been wrong to leave. She hadn’t been. Any intelligent person would have left when an entire zombie horde surrounded the property and the people inside started acting like feverish lunatics. Staying would have been stupid. Dying for a house that hadn’t properly become hers yet would have been even stupider.
The problem was that Shen Kaiyang, Tao Jun, Lin Cheng, Guo Renwang, and Huang Zedong had seen her leave.
That was the part that bothered her.
Not the running.
The witnessing.
Meilan adjusted the strap of her pale designer bag against her shoulder and stepped away from the vehicle like she was arriving for lunch instead of standing in the middle of the apocalypse. Her white linen shorts were still spotless, her sleeveless rose-colored blouse clung prettily to her figure without looking cheap, and the gold sandals on her feet had survived the drive far better than Tao Jun’s expression suggested they should have.
He kept glancing at them like they were the most impractical thing she owned.
She noticed.
Of course she noticed.
Men always thought they were being subtle when they weren’t.
The air around the mansion was warm and damp, more like late summer than December, and Meilan allowed herself a small breath of satisfaction. Even the weather here was better than the base. The safe zone had too much concrete, too many uniforms, too many people pretending they mattered because her father had allowed them to hold a clipboard or carry a gun.
Her father was the Minister of Civil Security. The civilian governor of the base. The man who decided who received housing, food, fuel, and protection.
He was a very important man.
Which meant Meilan had no reason to live like ordinary people.
She had never been ordinary.
Not in her first life.
Not in this one.
Some women were simply born with a heroine’s fate, and no matter how badly Shen Rouxi had tried to steal what belonged to her, fate always corrected itself eventually. It had corrected itself once before when the crowd finally understood that Rouxi was the traitor. It would correct itself again now.
The vegetation swallowing the gate proved that much.
No one had maintained the entrance in months. The thorns had grown thick enough to cover almost everything, and the plants had climbed so high that they made the property look less like a mansion and more like something nature had already reclaimed. Meilan found the whole thing irritatingly wasteful, but not surprising.
Shen Rouxi had always been that way.
Too arrogant to manage what she had.
Too stubborn to step aside when someone better suited could take control.
Too used to men looking at her with that irritating amount of attention.
Meilan’s hand tightened on the strap of her bag before she forced her fingers to relax. She would not think about that right now. There was no point. Rouxi was dead. She had to be. Nobody survived this long in an abandoned mansion swallowed by plants, not after the horde, not after the fever, and certainly not after losing the protection of people who actually understood how the world worked.
"Looks like no one’s been through here in a while," Shen Kaiyang said from beside her.
Meilan didn’t look at him right away.
She let the silence linger just long enough for him to understand that she was deciding whether the statement deserved a response.
"Obviously," she finally replied.
He didn’t react to the correction, but she felt the way Tao Jun’s attention shifted toward them. Tao Jun always watched too much. That had been useful before, when his attention was properly placed, but lately all five of them had been irritatingly careful around her, as though one night of necessary self-preservation had somehow changed who she was.
It hadn’t. frёeωebɳovel.com
If anything, this was her chance to prove that.
She had returned.
She was standing here.
She was taking back what should have been hers from the beginning.
"What if someone is still inside?" Lin Cheng asked.
Meilan turned her head slowly and stared at him until he had the grace to look uncomfortable. "And just who exactly do you expect to be inside?"
Lin Cheng didn’t answer immediately.
"Commander Li, maybe," Guo Renwang offered from behind him, his voice lower, more cautious.
Meilan laughed.
She couldn’t help it.
The idea was so ridiculous that the sound slipped out before she bothered stopping it.
"Commander Li?" she repeated, amusement dripping from every word. "Please. If Commander Li survived, he would have dragged himself back to the base to report to my father like the loyal dog he is. If he didn’t survive, then he clearly wasn’t as useful as everyone kept insisting."
None of them answered that.
Good.
There was nothing to answer.
Commander Li was capable, she would give him that much, but capable men were still just men. Her father had dozens of them and they existed solely to carry out orders from people who actually mattered.
Meilan looked back toward the gate and let out a soft sigh.
Honestly, she was surrounded by powerful men and still somehow had to think of everything herself.
Tao Jun stepped closer, his gaze moving over the wall of thorns. "The entrance is completely blocked."
"Yes."
"So how do you want to handle it?"
Meilan turned to him again and for one long moment, she wondered if he was doing this on purpose. Then she realized he was serious.
"How exactly do you expect to get past the thorns if you don’t get rid of them first?" she asked, keeping her voice patient even though patience was quickly becoming more effort than it was worth. "Really, Tao Jun. Use your brain."
His jaw tightened slightly, but he lowered his gaze.
Much better.
Meilan looked toward Huang Zedong and waved her hand in the air. "Burn it."
The fire user lifted his head even as he raised an eyebrow. "The whole gate?"
"The plants," Meilan corrected, because apparently precision was now required for the simplest possible instruction. "The thorns. The vines. Whatever else is blocking the entrance. I would like to get inside before sunset, and I would prefer not to ruin my sandals climbing through a wall of weeds."
Huang Zedong glanced toward Shen Kaiyang as if to confirm the order and that annoyed her more than the question had.
Meilan’s smile disappeared. "Is there a problem?"
"No," Shen Kaiyang answered before Huang Zedong could speak. His tone was calm, soothing, the same tone he used whenever he thought she was upset and needed to be handled. "There is no problem."
"Good," Meilan replied. "Because I was beginning to wonder."
Huang Zedong stepped forward quickly after that, his palm turning outward as fire gathered above his fingers. The heat rolled outward in a faint shimmer, barely noticeable against the already humid air. Meilan watched the orange light reflect over the thorns and felt something inside her settle.
Finally.
Something was being done properly.
The first fireball struck the overgrowth with a heavy burst of heat.
For half a second, nothing happened.
Then the vines caught.
Flames ran upward through the wall in bright, hungry lines, spreading faster than Meilan expected. Leaves curled black. Thorns cracked. Smoke rose thick and dark into the warm evening air while the vegetation hissed and snapped beneath the fire.
Meilan smiled again. freёwebnovel.com
There.
That was much better.
She had always known this place could be beautiful once someone sensible took control of it.
Behind the burning wall, something deep inside the jungle screamed.
