Chapter 340: Cutting Out My Heart
A tree near the road bent sharply as several of its largest roots were severed at once.
The trunk groaned under the strain, and its branches scraped across the roof of an abandoned house, showering the yard with leaves and broken twigs.
The tree tried to lean toward the mansion, but it was too large to move quickly.
One of the surviving vines wrapped around the trunk and tugged while several others reached for the lower branches as though they could somehow drag the whole thing out of danger.
They couldn’t.
"Leave it," I ordered, even though the words tasted worse than the smoke coating my tongue. It honestly felt like I was about to cut out my heart and have Lingyun burn it. "Anything that can’t move fast enough gets cut off."
The vines hesitated, their leaves shaking around the tree.
"I know," I muttered. "I don’t like it either."
Yuche’s blades moved beneath the soil before the plants could argue any longer. The remaining roots snapped one after another, and the tree slowly tilted away from the mansion. Its branches tore across the roof tiles before the trunk crashed into the infected yard hard enough to shake the ground beneath our feet.
Lingyun looked toward the fallen tree, flames already spreading over his hands. "Do you want me to burn that too?"
"Do you really need to ask?"
His smile widened like it was all fun and games. "I like hearing you say it."
"Burn the damn tree." I tried to seem unaffected, but I was getting dangerously close to burning the people who had brought these things here and forced me to hurt my plants.
He sent a wave of fire across the yard before I finished speaking.
Chenghai moved in behind Yuche, driving the shovel through cracked pavement and wrenching up large slabs of road. He threw each piece toward the infected side, exposing the damp soil beneath. The ground was darker there, packed tightly enough that the heat from the first fire had barely touched it.
Lingyun followed with even more flames.
Fire swept through the open ground in a wide wall, climbing over broken pavement and sinking into every section Chenghai uncovered. Heat rolled toward the houses, cracking windows and blistering old paint from the doors.
"Try not to burn the entire neighborhood," I called out, lifting one arm against the heat.
Lingyun glanced over his shoulder, grinned, and sent another wave of fire into the trench.
Apparently, arguing with him only made the flames larger.
Zhenlan moved along the edge beside him, forcing the air downward instead of allowing the fire to spread uselessly across the surface. The ground buckled beneath the pressure, pushing the parasites toward the open soil Chenghai had already exposed.
The first pale shape appeared near the foundation of an abandoned house. It twisted in the open for half a second before Yuche’s metal cut it in two.
Both pieces kept moving.
"That’s disgusting," I muttered.
Lingyun burned them before they could reach the foundation.
Then the dirt erupted.
Dozens of thin lines twisted beneath the surface, scattering away from Zhenlan’s pressure. Some headed toward the houses, while others turned toward the road, searching for roots that hadn’t been cut.
"Left side," Chenghai warned, pointing with the shovel before driving it into another section of pavement.
Yuche redirected several blades underground while Lingyun swung the fire across the exposed soil. Pale shapes curled out of the dirt and blackened in the heat, but one darker creature kept crawling.
Its back was covered in something hard enough that the flames rolled over it without stopping it immediately.
Chenghai dropped a slab of pavement on top of it.
The creature disappeared beneath the concrete with a wet crunch. Chenghai pressed his boot against the slab before driving the shovel into the dirt beside it.
"Still moving?" I asked.
He leaned more weight onto the pavement, then shook his head. "Not anymore."
"Good. I wasn’t in the mood to name it."
Behind us, the plants continued retreating. A large vine wrapped around two younger ones and dragged them toward the mansion, while a row of flowers bit into one another’s stems so they could be pulled together.
Another vine tried to free a patch of grass, but the roots were too tangled. The grass tore apart instead, leaving half of itself behind in the infected soil.
The whole defense line was breaking apart.
Normally, anything approaching the mansion had to cross layers of vines, flowers, grass, roots, and trees before reaching the driveway. Now the plants were tearing themselves free faster than the parasites could enter them.
Each plant that escaped left another empty patch behind.
Each cut root widened the opening.
These things hadn’t attacked the mansion once, yet they were doing more damage to my defenses than most people managed with guns.
I hated efficient enemies.
"More fire," Zhenlan called as another section of ground shifted near the abandoned house.
Lingyun’s flames brightened until the center turned white. Zhenlan drove the heat deeper, trapping the movement between pressure on one side and fire on the other.
The damp soil began to steam.
Several dark shapes pushed toward the surface before sinking again, searching for another path. Yuche sent blades through the dirt and cut a line between the house and the road, while Chenghai ripped away the concrete edging around the yard.
"Push them this way," Lingyun told Zhenlan, pointing toward the open trench. "I can catch them if they come up together."
Zhenlan narrowed the pressure beneath the soil until the ground rose in a long ridge. The parasites twisted below it, forced toward the only open path left.
Lingyun waited until the ridge reached the trench.
Then he dropped the fire directly on top of it.
The earth cracked, and pale and dark shapes burst through the surface before disappearing inside the flames. Some burned quickly. Others twisted long enough to make me wonder whether fire killed them or only made them angry first.
For several minutes, the ground shifted violently beneath the pressure and heat.
Then it stopped.
No one relaxed.
Chenghai tore up one more strip of pavement and found nothing moving beneath it. Yuche swept the metal blades through the soil twice before pulling them free, each edge covered in damp dirt and black residue.
Lingyun kept the fire burning anyway.
None of us trusted silence anymore.
Zhenlan held the pressure over the ground for another minute before slowly releasing it. Dust settled across the road, mixing with ash and broken leaves until the entire area looked dead.
"Anything?" I asked.
He watched the soil before shaking his head. "Nothing moving near the surface."
"Near the surface," I repeated.
"That’s all I can be sure of."
Wonderful. Another comforting answer.
I looked toward the mansion.
The plants had pulled back almost to the main garden, leaving a long section of road, dirt, and abandoned yards completely bare. No vines crossed the fences. No flowers waited beneath the windows. Even the grass had torn itself away from the most dangerous patches.
The fallen tree burned behind us, its branches collapsing one at a time while sparks drifted over the empty house.
For the first time since the plants had taken over the area, someone could walk from the entrance of the cul-de-sac toward the mansion without being bitten, dragged underground, or eaten.
The thought settled badly in my stomach.
Chenghai followed my stare, his hands still wrapped around the shovel. "We stopped them before they reached the main roots."
"For now."
Yuche came to stand beside me, dirt and soot covering the lower half of his clothes. He looked over the bare road before resting one hand against my back. "We can rebuild the barrier."
"Not until we know the ground is clean."
"We’ll watch it."
"We already watched it once."
His hand pressed slightly harder against my back, not trying to move me, only reminding me he was there. "Then we watch it better."
That sounded suspiciously like something I would say, which made it harder to argue.
Behind us, one of the surviving vines crept toward the edge of the bare section while keeping most of its body wrapped around a fence post. It stretched one leaf toward the blackened dirt and touched the ground.
The vine jerked back so violently that it nearly tore itself off the fence.
Every other plant stayed where it was.
That answered that.
The parasites hadn’t reached the mansion.
But they had eaten a hole through the wall protecting it.