Chapter 376: Just What The Doctor Ordered
The giant zombie looked a lot less impressive once I stripped away half the road it had been wearing.
It was still ugly and still determined to kill me, but at least now I could see what I needed to be stabbing. Its real body was long and narrow, with grey skin stretched over bones that should never have supported something that large. The green core glowed behind its eyes, right in the center of its forehead, pulsing hard enough that I could see the light moving beneath its eyes.
All I had to do was reach it, and it was mine.
Apparently, the zombie had other ideas.
It stopped roaring and moved.
The thin body that had been hidden beneath all that stone snapped forward so quickly that Yuche’s metal restraints slid off its wrists before he could tighten them. One second, the creature was on its knees, and the next, its hand was tearing toward my face.
I threw myself sideways.
Its fingers missed my head and carved through the pavement behind me, sending concrete and dust across my back. My injured ankle folded when I landed, but I forced myself upright before any of the men could decide that catching me had become their full-time job.
"Fast little bastard," I muttered.
The zombie spun toward me with its broken arm hanging at an angle. The roots wrapped around the exposed limb tightened, but the creature ripped through them before they could drag it back down. Without the armour weighing it down, it moved like something completely different.
That was just slightly irritating.
I had just figured out how to kill the first version, I didn’t need to deal with the uglier version under it.
A smaller zombie charged out of the smoke behind me, but a strip of metal passed over my shoulder and buried itself between its eyes. Yuche pulled the blade free without looking away from the giant.
"Rouxi," he called, his voice carrying a warning I didn’t need.
"Yeah, yeah, I see it," I grumbled back.
"You’re shaking," he sighed instead of yelling at me for something else.
I looked down to try and see what he was talking about, and my fingers were trembling around the knife.
Well... that was rude.
I tightened my grip until it stopped and smiled at the giant as it lowered its body, preparing to charge again. This smile didn’t need to convince anyone. I knew what was inside it now, and I knew it couldn’t hide from me underground.
The zombie lunged toward me, and I slammed both hands toward the road.
Concrete rose around its legs and crashed inward, catching it below the knees. The creature’s momentum carried its upper body forward while its feet stayed trapped, and the sound of bones breaking echoed across the street.
It hit the pavement hard enough to shake everything around us.
Before it could push itself up, roots punched through the cracks and twisted around its thighs. I pulled them in opposite directions, forcing the broken legs farther apart while the zombie clawed at the ground and dragged itself toward me.
That was fine.
Closer saved me the trouble of walking.
The baby vine launched from my wrist before I could tell it to stay back. It raced across the pavement, jumped onto the zombie’s shoulder, and sank the tiny teeth from both leaf-heads into the side of the zombie’s neck.
The giant jerked and swatted at it.
My baby vine released its bite, dodged the enormous hand, and disappeared beneath the zombie’s chin before biting it again.
"Don’t get eaten," I warned.
The vine hissed at the creature like it found the suggestion insulting.
Lingyun’s laughter came from somewhere behind me, followed by the roar of fire and Chenghai shouting at him not to burn everything. The rest of the horde hadn’t politely stopped attacking while I dealt with the giant, which meant the road was still filled with snapping teeth, groans, and the sound of bodies hitting the ground.
Zhenlan’s lightning flashed through the smoke to my right. Chenghai caught a zombie that had broken through and threw it back into the others before crushing another beneath his heel. Yuche’s metal kept passing close enough to feel against my skin, cutting down anything that tried to approach me from behind.
The giant didn’t care about any of them.
Its eyes stayed fixed on me.
"Still hungry?" I asked as it dragged itself another half metre across the pavement. "You’re starting to look desperate."
The creature opened its mouth and released another roar, spraying black saliva across the road.
"Disgusting."
It swung its good arm and I managed to duck beneath it and drove my knife into the exposed flesh between its ribs. The blade sank deep, but the zombie twisted before I could reach up to its core and threw me away.
I hit the road on one shoulder and rolled. Pain shot across my back, and the air left my lungs hard enough that I couldn’t immediately pull it back in.
The giant tore one leg free from the concrete.
It started pushing itself upright.
Nope. Just nope.
I hadn’t gone through all of that just to let it put the road back on and start the entire fight again.
I pressed my palm against the pavement. The ground beneath the zombie’s other leg collapsed, swallowing it to the hip, while roots wrapped around both arms and pulled them away from its chest.
The creature fought hard enough to tear grooves through the road.
My hands shook again as power poured through me and disappeared into the ground. The plants took everything I gave them, reaching farther, growing thicker, and demanding more while my body became heavier with every breath.
I didn’t have time to argue with them.
"Hold it," I snarled.
The roots tightened.
One wrapped around the zombie’s broken arm and pulled until the joint tore apart. Grey flesh stretched, split, and finally gave way, sending the limb across the pavement. The giant’s other hand clawed at the road, but more roots caught its wrist and dragged it backward until its shoulder popped free.
The baby vine raced across its face and buried its teeth in the torn flesh above the glowing core.
Green light flashed through its tiny body.
"Mine," I told it.
My vine turned its head toward me and hissed.
"Don’t start with me," I hissed back. This thing had already eaten more than its fair share of my cores, and I wasn’t giving it this one, too.
It bit down once more, then reluctantly moved aside.
The zombie’s head had a perfectly open circle in it and was big enough that I could now see the core clearly. It was larger than my fist, buried behind layers of grey brain matter and cracked bone.
I dropped the knife.
There was no point pretending this was going to be clean.
I drove both hands into the opening.
The zombie bucked beneath me trying to bite at my arms that were stupidly close to its mouth. It’s broken skull fragments scraped across my arms as I forced them apart even more.
Black blood poured over my wrists, hot and thick enough to make my grip slip, but I shoved deeper until my fingers closed around the smooth surface of the core.
The creature screamed.
I pulled.
Flesh stretched around my hands, holding the core inside for one stubborn second before tearing apart. I stumbled backward with the green crystal clutched against my chest as the giant collapsed onto the road.
The body twitched once.
Then it stopped.
The smaller zombies were still groaning around us, but the sound seemed farther away as I stared down at the core in my hands. It was the largest green crystal I had seen since coming back, clear enough that the energy inside moved like liquid.
No one said anything.
Chenghai stood several metres away with blood running down one side of his face. Lingyun’s black shirt was scorched around the sleeves, while Zhenlan and Yuche watched me closely enough that I could almost hear the questions they weren’t asking.
They were probably waiting for me to hold the core up and tell Chenghai that I had been right again.
I didn’t.
For one quiet second, I looked at the dead zombie, the broken road, and the hole it had tried to drag me into.
I was still standing.
And that was enough.
I closed both hands around the core, watching as it melted into me immediately.
Power flooded through my palms and surged up both arms, so strong that my back arched before I could stop it. The trees lining the road bent toward me. Grass poured through every crack in the pavement, spreading in thick green waves, while roots burst from the ground and twisted through the dead.
For half a second, the energy filled the empty space inside me.
Then the plants reached for it.
I felt the power split and rush outward, feeding every root, vine, and blade of grass surrounding us. The men stared at the sudden growth like it was proof that I had become stronger.
I let them believe it.
The surge settled, leaving my body tired but steady. I wiped the blood from my hands, looked over the ruined street and the four filthy men standing in it, then grinned.
"Now that is just what the doctor ordered."