Free Web NovelChapter 219: The Fire
Lingyun stood near the window and watched as someone use fire wrongly.
That was the first problem. And yes, there was definitively a way to use fire the wrong way. He would know. He was the expert.
The second problem was that the fire was being used against something that belonged to Rouxi, which meant that whoever had started it had already volunteered to become fertilizer. The only real question was whether Lingyun should burn the person first and scatter the ashes himself, or whether the jungle would prefer something wetter and more nutrient-dense.
He was leaning toward the second option.
Tropical plants needed nitrogen, didn’t they?
Or was that roses?
Either way, he could grow some roses if that was what Rouxi wanted.
Rouxi’s relationship with plants was simple. If a plant killed zombies, dropped crystal cores, or otherwise made itself useful, it got to stay. If it didn’t, then it was removed... roots and all... until it could prove its usefulness.
Which was exactly why the fire was such a problem.
The jungle wasn’t pretty decoration, it was a useful shield that kept other predators away. And now... it was turning to dust and ash before his very eyes.
Fire was his thing. It was his power, his temper, his very nature. It was not supposed to be thrown at his own home. Let alone his own home with his woman dying on the floor.
That was what made this insulting.
The flames racing through the jungle outside were bright enough to paint the living room windows orange. They climbed through the vegetation with greedy speed, chewing through leaves, thorns, vines, and branches while smoke thickened in the humid air outside.
Whoever had done it had power.
Lingyun could respect that much, even if respect didn’t mean mercy.
The flame itself was clean and hot, strong enough to catch the outer growth quickly despite how damp the air had become around the property.
That almost made it worse.
If the fire had been weak, he could have been dismissive.
Since it wasn’t, he had to be offended.
Someone with enough power to know better had used fire against Rouxi’s walls, Rouxi’s plants, Rouxi’s home, and by extension, Rouxi herself.
Lingyun could accept stupidity from people who didn’t know any better, mostly because the apocalypse was full of people who had somehow survived despite possessing the survival instincts of boiled cabbage.
But a fire user should understand certain things instinctively.
You didn’t burn what protected your own side.
You didn’t let flames touch what you intended to keep.
And you definitely didn’t use fire to slap Lingyun in the face while he was standing right there.
His fingers flexed and a thin line of flame curled briefly over his knuckles before disappearing again.
Beside him, Commander Li was issuing orders in a low voice, sending two of his men toward the side windows while keeping the others near the front, forming a line between the threat and the woman they all wanted to keep safe for different reasons.
The soldiers moved quickly and never once questioned orders.
Chenghai had already moved toward the door, but he stopped before opening it, his head turning slightly toward the living room floor.
Yuche hadn’t moved at all.
Not that Lingyun had expected him to.
Yuche was still crouched beside Rouxi, one hand resting against her arm while his eyes remained fixed on the windows. The Dragon Head looked calm, but usually, it meant he had stopped considering whether someone deserved to die and had already moved on to deciding the best way to hide the body afterward.
Good.
At least they were on the same page.
Zhenlan swore softly as another section of the outer growth caught. "It is spreading fast."
"No shit," Lingyun replied, completely ignoring the way the other man was looking at him. Lingyun smiled without meaning it. "Sorry. Were we pretending the giant wall of fire outside was being subtle?"
Zhenlan didn’t answer, which was probably for the best.
Lingyun looked back toward the window and tried to decide how long he had before the person outside became inconveniently hard to identify. He would need a face. A voice would be better. If there was another fire user out there, he wanted to know which idiot thought they had earned the right to throw flames at Rouxi’s territory.
Then Rouxi screamed.
The sound tore through the living room so violently that every thought in Lingyun’s head burned away at once.
He turned so fast that his shoulder clipped the edge of the window frame, but he barely felt it.
She was still lying on the blankets in the middle of the living room, still unconscious, still pale beneath the blood and grime that no one had fully cleaned off yet. But her body had arched upward in a way that made his stomach drop.
It wasn’t normal.
It wasn’t even close to normal.
The way her spine was moving was more inline with an exorcism than anything else.
Her back bowed off the blankets as though something had hooked into her spine and pulled. The larger vines wrapped around her immediately tightened, not attacking, not panicking, but trying to hold her together as her broken body strained against them. The wooden strands supporting her legs and back creaked under the pressure, shifting just enough to keep bones aligned while her scream continued.
And still she didn’t wake up.
That was the part that made it worse.
Her eyes stayed closed. Her hands didn’t reach for anyone. She didn’t curse at them, didn’t threaten to bury the person who touched her, didn’t complain that the house was too loud or that someone had ruined her drama. She was unconscious, and still she screamed like something inside her was being torn apart.
And suddenly, Lingyun forgot about the fire. For one impossible second, he forgot that there was anyone outside at all.
Yuche was already moving before Lingyun managed to cross the room. Chenghai reached Rouxi’s other side a heartbeat later, his hands hovering uselessly because there was nowhere safe to touch. Zhenlan stopped behind them, his face tight, while Commander Li’s men froze where they stood with the expressions of people who had entered the wrong nightmare and couldn’t find the exit.
Luo Xin went white as he dropped beside Rouxi and started checking her with shaking hands.
His fingers moved over her spine, her pulse, the damaged sections of her leg, the places where his healing had been working minutes ago. "No," he whispered in a way that was decidedly unhelpful.
Lingyun hated unhelpful words.
"What happened?" Chenghai demanded.
"I don’t know."
That was even worse.
Yuche’s voice came out low. "You were healing her."
"I was reconnecting the vertebrae," Luo Xin answered quickly, too quickly, like the explanation was already running faster than his thoughts could keep up. "The nerves were damaged. I had to reconnect what I could before the pathways degraded further. She was responding. She was improving."
Rouxi screamed again and Luo Xin flinched hard enough that Lingyun almost reached for him.
Almost.
He didn’t, because if he touched the medic right now, there was a chance his hand would close around the man’s throat instead of his shoulder, and that would not help Rouxi.
Probably.
It might make him feel better for half a second, but Rouxi would be annoyed if he killed the only healer in the room before she finished using him.
That thought was just practical enough to keep him still.
The vine swimming in the crystal cores like the Loch Ness Monster stopped eating.
That was when the room somehow became worse.
A moment ago, nothing had distracted it. Not Zhenlan yelling, not Commander Li’s men staring, not Luo Xin looking horrified when it spat a healing core at his knee like a cat offering a dead bird.
Now it froze. freeωebnovēl.c૦m
Its little triangular head lifted slowly from the box, venom still clinging to its teeth, and turned toward Rouxi.
Lingyun’s humor disappeared as he studied the physical connection to Rouxi.
The baby didn’t move for several seconds, it could only stare at the woman whose mouth was wide open but the sound completely cut off. Then it let out a thin, terrible sound that wasn’t quite a hiss and wasn’t quite a cry.
Yuche’s head snapped toward it but didn’t say anything.
Then, it was like Rouxi had found her voice again. She screamed, louder this time, her body arching so high that Luo Xin made a strangled sound and pressed both hands near her spine as though he could hold her together by force. The vines around her tightened further, but even they looked strained now, leaves curling at the edges while the baby started making that horrible sound again.
Lingyun’s fire rose under his skin, demanding to be set free to fix everything.
He looked toward the window once more, then back to Rouxi, and for the first time since the flames appeared, he didn’t know where to put his rage.
The person outside needed to die.
The fire needed to stop.
Rouxi needed to stop screaming.
Luo Xin needed to fix whatever he thought he had broken, and the baby needed to never make that sound again.
Unfortunately, the universe had apparently decided to be unreasonable.
Because just when he thought he had a plan, a way forward.... the handle of the front door started to turn.
