Chapter 275: Blind Trust
I reached the front hall and watched through the very large cracks in the front door as the SUV pulled into view, followed by a military truck that looked suspiciously like Commander Li’s truck, and two transport trucks large enough to block half the driveway.
Their headlights swept across the damaged front of the mansion before they finally came to a stop. Yuche swept me up into his arms and ’opened’ the door. He stepped out onto the porch so that we could see all the tarps, wood, pipes, toolboxes, and stacks of supplies that the guys brought home.
For one brief moment, I forgot to be pissed.
They had actually done it.
They had left to bring back a few useful people and returned with enough materials to begin putting the house back together.
I could feel my lips twitching. Lingyun was going to be unbearable about it. He would walk through the front door smiling like he had personally repaired every wall, demand praise for his sacrifice, complain that no one had fed him properly, and then invent some reward he believed I owed him for surviving the trip.
At this point, I was more than willing to give him whatever reward he asked for.
"They’re back," Yuche whispered in my ear. And this time, it hit completely differently. My shoulders dropped and I rested my cheek against his shoulder. "They’re back," I agreed, just as softly.
The back of the military truck opened, and people began climbing down.
An older man climbed down first with a length of pipe gripped in one hand, then turned to help the others out behind him. There was a woman with broad shoulders carrying a bundle of tools that followed after him, along with another woman who kept glancing toward the vehicles, a stern-looking woman studying the damage to the mansion, and an older man who favored one leg as he reached the ground.
More adults continued climbing out after them, far more people than I had expected the others to bring home.
They looked exhausted and filthy, but none of them appeared helpless. Their eyes moved over the mansion, the damaged walls, and the vines curled along the exterior as if they were already trying to decide what needed to be repaired first.
But no matter what they looked like, or what they were doing, I could only focus on one thing.
Lingyun was not with them. He was not the first one out of the SUV or the truck or the two massive transport trucks. He wasn’t anywhere.
The realization came slowly enough that I had time to tell myself he was still in the SUV, probably arguing with Chenghai or refusing to help unload until someone thanked him properly.
But no matter how much I tried to convince myself... it wasn’t working.
The moment I felt Yuche’s fingers tightening on my skin, I knew that he saw it, too.
Lingyun should have been the first one out. So, where was he?
Then Zhenlan climbed out of the front passenger seat and moved around the vehicle without looking toward the house.
Something inside me went cold.
Chenghai opened the rear door and reached inside.
When he turned around, Lingyun was in his arms.
For half a second, I could not understand what I was looking at.
Lingyun’s head rested against Chenghai’s shoulder, his face pale beneath streaks of ash, while one arm hung uselessly at his side. Blood had soaked through his shirt from the top of his shoulder to the middle of his chest, dark enough that I could see it from the doorway.
The vines struck the outer wall hard enough to make several of the newcomers flinch.
"What happened?" I asked, my voice turning ice cold. I patted Yuche and he placed me down on my feet even as he stepped behind me and wrapped an arm around my waist.
I didn’t fight him. We both needed support at that moment.
When no one answered immediately, every plant in my front yard started to stir, reacting to my emotions.
"What happened to him?" I repeated, my voice turning even colder if possible. I would kill each and every last person who was standing in front of me, staring at the ground like it was more important than answering me.
I wondered if they saw the vines running along the driveway, ready to kill them if I gave them permission. Right now, I was really tempted to.
"He was bitten," Chenghai answered as he carried Lingyun toward the house. His voice remained even, but there was blood on his hands. "He had already used too much power before the attack. He killed the zombie, but he lost consciousness right afterward."
Bitten.
The word shouldn’t have mattered as much as it did. Lingyun was a power user, and zombie bites could not turn power users. I knew that as certainly as I knew the sky was above us and the dead should have stayed dead.
He wouldn’t turn. He wouldn’t become a zombie.
But that didn’t explain why he looked like a corpse.
"He is in this state," I murmured, my eyes going up and down Chenghai’s body before drifting over to Zhenlan’s. Or maybe I should call them Zhou Chenghai and Xu Zhenlan. After all, I didn’t know what happened to put Lingyun in this state.
Anything was possible, and I never believed in blind trust.
Taking in a deep breath, I spun around, catching myself against Yuche’s chest.
Yeah, my leg had healed so that I wasn’t in constant pain, but if I wasn’t concentrating hard, the limp that I had developed after having my leg broken twice would be noticeable.
And I refused to show weakness to anyone.
To me, that was the perfect opening for someone to try and kill me. I wouldn’t give anyone the opportunity to think that I was easy prey.
The happiness, the contentment, the joy and everything else that I had been feeling today was completely gone. And in its place was the understanding that I would bury the world under twenty feet of dirt before I let anyone or anything hurt what was mine.
"The honeymoon’s over," I muttered under my breath as I took my hands off Yuche. His own arms dropped to his side as he stiffly nodded to me.
"Bring him inside," I continued, not bothering to look at the two men that had let this happen to Lingyun. "And set them up in the houses around here. They aren’t stepping foot into my house until my man wakes up."
