Chapter 374: His Rouxi
The moment the zombie’s hand closed around Rouxi’s ankle, Lingyun stopped thinking.
Fire burst across his palms hard enough to bleach the colour from the air, and he took one step toward her before Rouxi’s head snapped in his direction.
"Don’t," she hissed out, her eyes flashing as bright as his flames.
The word stopped him more effectively than a wall.
The giant zombie pulled from beneath the road, dragging Rouxi’s leg forward and knocking her off balance. Yuche caught her arm before she hit the pavement, but instead of letting him haul her away, Rouxi twisted onto one knee and drove both hands against the ground.
Roots struck the buried arm from every direction.
They didn’t wrap around the stone covering it. They pushed into the cracks, splitting into thinner strands that disappeared beneath the armour and dug toward whatever flesh remained inside.
The zombie jerked away hard enough to practically tear another section of road apart.
Rouxi slid nearly a meter across the pavement thanks to the zombie’s movements, the knee of her pants shredding beneath her, but the cold expression on her face didn’t change.
"It has your leg," Lingyun snarled as he burned through two smaller zombies trying to reach her from behind.
Rouxi looked down at the enormous fingers locked around her ankle. "Gee, thanks. I kinda noticed that little fact."
"I can fix that," Lingyun insisted, not understanding why she wouldn’t accept his help. She had nothing to prove... not to him. He wanted to drop to his knees and beg her to accept his help.
But he didn’t. He would never put her in that position.
"You’ll cook my core," Rouxi replied, shaking her head.
Lingyun sent a narrow stream of fire through the mouth of another zombie, then ripped his hand sideways. The flames tore through its skull and dropped it before it could fall against Rouxi.
"I’m more concerned about it hurting you," he hissed, his attention going to yet another zombie that was getting just a bit too close.
"That sounds like a problem with your priorities," she said, just as the zombie started to pull her again. This time, before Lingyun could reply that she was his only priority, Rouxi let the zombie take her.
Lingyun saw the exact moment she stopped fighting the direction of the force. Her body shifted forward instead of back, and every root buried in the creature’s arm tightened as it dragged her closer to the opening in the road.
Yuche moved with her, refusing to release her arm, while metal spread over the collapsing pavement beneath both of them. Zhenlan held the broken edges apart with wind as Chenghai drove himself into the horde gathering behind them.
Lingyun should’ve stayed where he was.
He knew that.
The smaller zombies were still pouring onto the street, and Chenghai couldn’t keep every snapping mouth away from Rouxi while Yuche and Zhenlan focused on stopping the road from swallowing her.
But the hand around her ankle made something hot and vicious tear through Lingyun’s chest.
He remembered another wound around that same leg.
He remembered Rouxi unconscious and covered in blood while the rest of them stood nearby, too late to stop any of it.
The fire around his arms surged.
Rouxi glanced at him, and the look in her eyes wasn’t playful anymore. There was no lazy amusement or smug certainty left in it. She looked furious enough to tear the entire street apart, and beneath that rage was something Lingyun understood far better than he understood fear.
She needed the thing holding her to suffer.
Preferably before it died.
And that was language Lingyun spoke fluently.
He turned away from her and threw both hands toward the horde.
Fire roared across the road in a wide wall, forcing the closest zombies back without engulfing them completely. Chenghai used the opening immediately, catching one by the shoulders and driving it headfirst into the pavement before throwing its body into the others.
"Keep them off her," Lingyun shouted.
Chenghai glanced toward Rouxi, saw the hand around her leg, and swore. "I’m trying."
"Then you are doing a shit job of it. Try harder."
A zombie lunged from Lingyun’s left. He caught it by the face, burned through the front of its skull, and shoved the smoking body into the crowd. Another reached for his back, but Chenghai’s fist appeared past his shoulder and crushed its throat before it could bite.
"You talk too much," Chenghai growled.
"You’re welcome."
"For what?"
"Motivation."
Chenghai’s answer disappeared beneath the sound of the road breaking open.
The giant zombie surfaced.
Its shoulder tore through the pavement first, followed by its head and upper body. Stone plates scraped against one another as it forced itself upward, bringing Rouxi with it. The fingers around her ankle loosened for half a second while it changed position.
But she didn’t pull free.
Instead, she drove the roots in deeper.
The zombie roared, and the sound shook dust from the nearby roofs. It lifted Rouxi by the leg, raising her clear off the ground, but Yuche tightened his grip around her forearm and anchored himself with metal wrapped around both boots.
For a brief, ugly second, Rouxi hung between them.
The giant pulled down.
Yuche pulled back.
Lingyun’s flames flared so violently that the nearest zombies recoiled from the heat.
"Rouxi," he warned.
Her hair hung toward the pavement, and blood ran from the scrapes along her palms, but she still managed to glare at him upside down.
"Don’t you dare," she snarled at him.
"You’re being torn in half," he snarled back. Normally he would let her do whatever she wanted, but this was not one of those times.
"I’ve had worse mornings," she pointed out.
"That isn’t comforting."
"It wasn’t supposed to be."
Roots erupted from the cracked pavement and wrapped around the zombie’s wrist, elbow, and shoulder. Rouxi twisted both hands, and every vine buried beneath the stone armour pulled in a different direction.
The first plate tore free with a sound like a building splitting apart.
Grey stone crashed against the road, crushing two smaller zombies beneath it. Another slab peeled away from the creature’s forearm, followed by a thick piece covering its shoulder.
What lay underneath didn’t match the size of the armour.
The exposed arm was thin and twisted, the grey flesh stretched tightly over narrow bone. It looked almost starved beneath the stone it had gathered around itself, as though the enormous body they had been fighting was nothing more than a shell.
Rouxi saw it too, her eyes sharpening on its newfound weakness.
The zombie tried to drag its arm back underground, but the missing armour had left the flesh vulnerable. Rouxi’s roots tightened directly around the exposed limb and squeezed.
Bone snapped, and the creature’s hand opened.
Yuche pulled Rouxi toward him the moment her ankle came free, catching her against his chest as the giant’s broken arm dropped onto the road. She landed badly but stayed upright, one hand gripping Yuche’s shoulder while the other pressed against her injured leg.
Lingyun reached them before he remembered he was supposed to be watching the horde. "Let me see," he demanded, trusting Chenghai to do his damn job while he took care of Rouxi.
But she only slapped his hand away. "It’s still attached."
"That isn’t the standard I’m using."
"It’s the only one that matters."
A zombie rushed them from behind, forcing Lingyun to turn. He sent a blade of fire through its neck without taking his eyes fully off Rouxi.
She was breathing too fast.
Her smile was gone, and for once she didn’t seem interested in pretending otherwise. She stared at the giant zombie as it pulled more pavement toward itself, trying to rebuild the missing armour around its broken arm.
The stone moved slowly this time, and everyone saw it.
Rouxi straightened, testing her weight on the ankle that had been trapped. Pain tightened her face for a second, but then she looked at the thin body hidden beneath the armour and understood exactly what she had found.
The stone wasn’t the zombie.
It was protection.
Without it, the creature underneath was weak.
Rouxi’s mouth curved.
Lingyun had seen that smile countless times. He had watched her use it while lying, threatening, teasing, and hiding the parts of herself she refused to let anyone touch.
This one was different.
There was no strain behind it. No fear stretched thin beneath the edges.
Rouxi looked at the towering zombie, rolled her injured ankle once, and smiled because she finally knew how to kill it.
Lingyun felt his own grin return.
There she was.
His Rouxi.