Chapter 351: Nothing Gets Through
The dead turned toward me.
For one impossible second, every zombie in the cul-de-sac stopped fighting the vines, the metal, the wind, and Lingyun’s fire.
Their ruined heads lifted in the same direction, and every cloudy eye locked onto me like the fire-breathing asshole at the entrance had just pointed a dinner bell straight at my face.
Behind them, the glowing zombie strained against the metal rods around its legs and the roots wrapped beneath the road. Smoke leaked between its broken teeth. Its chest pulsed brighter, hot enough that the air around it bent.
I stared at it.
"Oh," I muttered. "So you’re stupid too."
Lingyun’s fire curled higher up both arms. "Pretty princess?"
"Don’t let it spit again," I grunted, not impressed with any part of my day today.
His smile came back sharp and mean. "Gladly."
The fire zombie’s mouth opened wider, but Lingyun moved first. His flames snapped forward and wrapped around the heat building in its throat, holding the fire there instead of letting it break free. Zhenlan’s wind pressed down a heartbeat later, sealing the air around the creature until the glow in its chest flickered unevenly.
The zombies rushed me, but Chenghai hit the first one hard enough to fold its skull inward.
He caught the next by the shoulder and threw it into the railing, where Yuche’s metal rose through its ribs and pinned it in place for the vines to tear apart. More came behind it, tripping over bodies, spikes, and one another as they clawed toward the porch.
"Yuche, close the sides," I ordered.
Metal screamed across the lawn. Blades, rods, fence pieces, and torn gate fragments snapped into a jagged crescent around the burned opening, forcing the dead into a narrower path. The zombies didn’t care. They shoved themselves against it until metal cut through bellies, legs, and jaws.
Good.
Let them bleed.
The grass drank greedily, and the flowers opened beneath the bodies trying to crawl through. I felt the plants feeding, felt the black blood soaking into roots that had been starving after the parasites forced them back. Their hunger poured through me, sharp and eager, but I shoved it toward the gap instead of the bodies.
"Eat later," I hissed. "Build now."
The vines obeyed.
They dragged themselves through ash, blood, and scorched soil, weaving around Yuche’s metal and pulling the torn barrier back together. New stems grew through the mess, thin at first, then thicker as more black blood soaked into the ground.
The burned edges still hurt.
Every vine that brushed the fire-scorched circle sent pain scraping up my arms, but pain was better than helplessness.
Pain meant something was still alive.
The fire zombie screamed again, but this time the sound broke halfway through. Zhenlan cut the air tighter. Lingyun pulled the heat outward. Yuche drove another metal rod through the creature’s ankle and bent it backward until the bone snapped.
I sent the roots deeper.
The surface was too hot, so I went under it. Roots slipped beneath the road, under pavement and ash, under the burned circle where the gate used to be. The fire zombie burned anything that touched its skin, but it still had bones, and bones did not get to argue with me.
The first root wrapped around its shin through a crack in the pavement.
Smoke rose immediately.
I clenched my teeth and sent three more.
They coiled around the metal pinning it, then climbed higher, using the rods as a path where the heat was weaker. One root blackened and split. Another took its place. The flowers near the gate opened wider, feeding faster as zombies collapsed into them.
"Rouxi," Zhenlan warned, his voice tight.
"I know."
The fire zombie’s chest was brightening again. Lingyun held most of it back, but the thing was building pressure inside itself, furnace heart pulsing harder with every second. If it exploded, it would take the gate, the vines, and half the front lawn with it.
Absolutely not.
I lifted both hands and curled my fingers.
The roots tightened.
The fire zombie lurched as they dragged its legs down through the cracked road. Yuche’s metal twisted with them, folding around its knees and hips. Lingyun stepped closer, fire streaming from his hands in controlled bands that wrapped the creature’s chest without touching the vines.
"Open it," I snapped.
Lingyun didn’t ask what I meant. His fire cut across the glowing cracks in the zombie’s chest, peeling burned skin and ribs apart until the furnace inside showed through.
Disgusting.
Useful, but disgusting.
"Zhenlan."
The air compressed.
The fire inside the zombie’s chest bent inward instead of outward. The creature thrashed, jaw snapping, arms jerking toward me as if it could still command the horde while being pinned like an insect. Chenghai tore through the zombies reaching the porch, his fists and boots breaking everything that came too close. Yuche’s metal field kept chewing through the rest.
I pushed every bit of black blood the plants had swallowed into one command.
The roots pulled.
The fire zombie split from the ground up.
Its legs tore first, dragged beneath the road by roots and metal. Its spine stretched until the glowing cracks spread across its ribs. Lingyun yanked the heat out at the same time Zhenlan crushed the air around it, and the fire that had been building inside the corpse collapsed into itself.
For one bright second, the thing looked like a lantern being crushed in a fist.
Then it went out.
The scream stopped.
So did the horde.
The zombies closest to the porch sagged as if someone had cut invisible strings from their backs. They were still dead, still hungry, still moving, but whatever had pointed them at me disappeared with the fire zombie’s light.
That was enough.
I lowered one hand toward the road.
The vines surged.
They came from the lawn, the porch, the flower beds, and the half-repaired barrier. They came from beneath the dead, through the bodies, around the metal, and over the scorched ground. This time, they didn’t grab one zombie or three.
They grabbed all of them.
The front lawn exploded into movement. Bodies jerked upward, sideways, and down. Throats snapped. Limbs tore free. Black blood rained over the gate, the path, and the flowers waiting beneath. The grass rose through the mess, drinking every drop it could reach while the roots beneath the burned circle thickened and locked together.
Then, the barrier closed. It wasn’t pretty, but it was done.
The grass grew over the remains with thorns, vines, metal, and black blood, sealing the hole where the fireball had torn through. Yuche’s rods became bones for the new wall. My vines wrapped them until the entrance looked less like a gate and more like a warning.
When the last zombie stopped moving, I stood on the porch covered in gore, soot, and satisfaction.
Lingyun came to my side, smoke still curling off his arms. "Still want to play?"
I looked at the rebuilt barrier, then at the ruined road beyond it.
"No," I replied. "Now I want to make sure nothing ever gets through that gate again."