Chapter 397: I Wasn’t Asking
Lingyun heard the changes going on around him before he could see what had caused it.
The gunfire in the freight yard continued, but the shouting had changed just enough to make it obvious.
The market guards who had been firing steadily began calling warnings over one another, while the Red Jackals trapped among the armored vehicles stopped looking for a way out and turned toward the upper warehouse like there was a prize up there that only they could see.
Lingyun followed their attention and saw the zombie horde moving away from the sirens. Hundreds of rotting faces had lifted toward the same building, ignoring the wounded men and fresh blood surrounding them. Something that he had never seen happen before in two lifetimes.
But he knew one thing... Rouxi was inside that warehouse.
The man kneeling at Lingyun’s feet tried to crawl away while he was distracted, but Lingyun was never that distracted. Before the man could get anywhere, Lingyun tightened the flame already burning beneath the man’s skin without bothering to look down, and the attacker collapsed with a scream.
"Why did they turn?" Han Zhi demanded over the radio.
No one answered him, but the reason didn’t matter yet. The dead were moving toward Rouxi, and that was enough to strip the last trace of amusement from Lingyun’s face.
Beside him, Yuche looked toward the upper warehouse. His expression didn’t change, but metal groaned throughout the district as his power spread deeper into the freight yard.
"They won’t reach her," Yuche said. His voice was steady, but there was just a hint of panic that he was desperately trying to hide.
"No," Lingyun agreed as he stepped over the burning man. "They won’t."
The first zombies crashed against the walls of shipping containers Yuche had positioned across the yard. Bodies piled against the steel while the rest of the horde continued pressing forward, clawing over one another in their attempt to reach the warehouse.
Yuche shifted the containers before the pressure could break the formation.
Steel scraped across the pavement as the funnel he had created twisted into a new shape, closing the direct route to Rouxi and guiding the horde into a narrow corridor between two solid walls.
He hadn’t opened a path for them. Instead, he had built somewhere to bury them.
"Clear the loading platforms," Yuche ordered through Han Zhi’s radio. "Anyone still standing there in thirty seconds has chosen the wrong side."
The market guards retreated immediately, not willing to test Yuche’s version of time. Several Red Jackals attempted to follow them, but steel shutters slammed down between the two groups and sealed the attackers inside the freight yard.
One man reached the barrier in time to shove his arm beneath it. The shutter closed around his elbow and continued tightening until the joint broke beneath the pressure. His scream rose above the gunfire before he collapsed against the steel.
Lingyun walked toward the yard while Han Zhi hurried to catch up with him.
"There are still market people trapped near the western containers," Han Zhi warned. "They’re surrounded."
"Then they should move."
Han Zhi looked as if he intended to argue, but Lingyun glanced at him and the words disappeared.
Rouxi was upstairs while the dead moved toward her. Lingyun wasn’t going to slow down for people who had been given enough warning to save themselves.
The thirty seconds Yuche just gave them wasn’t the first warning they had been given. They had the chance before the fighting had even started.
The freight-yard doors opened before him, and heat rolled across the concrete as Lingyun stepped outside.
Several zombies near the entrance changed direction, drawn by the movement and the living bodies gathered there. They climbed over the dead with their mouths open, their fingers scraping across concrete as they rushed toward him.
Lingyun raised one hand.
The fire didn’t spread wildly across the yard. It narrowed into thin red lines that crossed the distance between him and the herd, slipping through open mouths, eye sockets, and broken sections of skull.
The flames reached their brains without touching the clothing or merchandise around them.
The first row collapsed together. The zombies behind them stumbled over the bodies, and Lingyun stepped forward as he sent another wave of precise flames through their heads.
Corpses began piling inside the corridor Yuche had created.
The market guards watching from the loading platforms fell silent. They had seen fire power before. They had watched buildings disappear beneath uncontrolled waves of heat and seen entire crowds burn because someone couldn’t control the flames after releasing them.
Lingyun wasn’t throwing fire.
He was choosing exactly what died.
A zombie opened its mouth as it climbed over the bodies, and a narrow flame entered through its throat. Another attempted to scale the container wall, but its eyes burned through before its fingers reached the top. When three zombies became wedged together near the centre of the lane, Lingyun curled his fingers and built enough heat inside their skulls to burst them.
Rotten blood and fragments of bone sprayed across the steel walls, but the containers remained untouched.
Yuche followed several steps behind him, controlling everything made of metal without raising his voice. Ammunition tore itself from Red Jackal weapons before the men could fire. Truck doors sealed around hands and feet, while steel cables unwound from loading equipment and wrapped around the attackers trying to climb onto the warehouse roofs.
One man raised a knife as Lingyun passed him. The blade bent backward in his hand and drove itself into his throat before Yuche even looked in his direction.
The zombie herd continued pushing forward, but the dead in front had nowhere left to move. Bodies packed the narrow corridor until those behind them began climbing over the mound.
Lingyun smiled.
Nothing in that yard belonged near Rouxi.
He spread his fingers, and fire travelled beneath the pile of corpses. It moved through clothing, hair, and decaying flesh without scorching the shipping containers on either side. The bodies began burning from within as skin blackened, swollen stomachs split, and melted fat ran between the limbs of zombies that continued clawing forward even while flames consumed their heads.
The smell rolled across the freight yard, and several men behind the barricades began vomiting.
But Lingyun kept walking.
His fire formed a controlled line between Rouxi’s warehouse and the herd. Anything dead that crossed it burned through the skull before it could take another step.
The market belonged to Rouxi now. He wouldn’t damage it, and he wasn’t going to allow anyone else to damage it either.
A Red Jackal emerged from behind an overturned truck and fired at him. The bullet stopped in the air beside Lingyun’s head, caught inside Yuche’s power, before turning around and striking the attacker’s knee.
The man fell and attempted to crawl beneath the vehicle, but Lingyun reached him first.
"You brought them here," Lingyun said as he nodded toward the zombies trapped between the containers.
The attacker clutched his ruined leg. "Qiao Ren ordered it."
"I know."
Lingyun pressed two fingers against the man’s chest, and the attacker’s eyes widened as heat entered beneath his ribs.
"Then why—"
"I wasn’t asking."
The man’s question disappeared into a scream. Lingyun left him alive on the pavement, knowing the closest zombies would reach him once the fire line moved forward.
The armored command truck remained trapped beneath the red crane. Yuche had crushed its wheels inward and fused every door into the frame, leaving the men inside to strike uselessly at the reinforced windows with the butts of their guns.
Yuche stopped several meters away and raised one hand.