Chapter 318: Waiting For A Hug
The eight men Xu Zhenlan dropped in front of the porch barely had time to understand where they were and what was happening before the plants closed around them.
One tried to scramble back toward the bottom of the driveway, only for a root to wrap around his ankle and drag him across the pavement. Another rolled onto his knees and reached for the knife still strapped to his leg. Yuche flicked his fingers, and the blade tore free from its sheath before burying itself in the man’s shoulder.
The remaining six managed to stand. It was nice to see that they understood the assignment.
For a moment, they looked toward the road as though someone might still be coming to rescue them, but they were only disappointed. No more engines came screaming into my territory thinking that it belonged to them, no one answered the frantic voices crackling through the radios scattered among the bodies.
The fight was over, and they had lost.
The men already trapped between the wreckage had stopped shouting orders. Most were either dead, dying, or beginning to understand that every command they had followed had only moved them closer to the plants.
I rested both hands against the porch railing and looked over what remained of the fight.
Gu Han’s observers had seen the plants tear through armed men. They had watched Lingyun burn through everything these people threw at him, Yuche turn their own weapons against them, Zhou Chenghai treat reinforced vehicles like toys, and Zhenlan walk through the middle of an ambush because the people blocking the road had made the mistake of standing between him and home.
There was nothing left to prove.
The woman with the shaved head still hung from the vine wrapped around her wrist. Her face had gone pale beneath the blood splattered across one cheek, but she continued looking toward the eastern road as though refusing to accept that the reinforcements she had expected were already lying around her.
One of the newly captured men found his voice first. "Commander!" he shouted toward her, his voice begging her for answers that she didn’t have. "What do we do?"
Her mouth opened, but I didn’t feel like listening to another speech on how much better her kindergarten class was compared to me. "Kill them," I sighed, waving my hand like some sort of queen.
My words weren’t all that loud, but everyone around me heard them.
Lingyun’s head turned toward me immediately. The fire around his hands brightened, and his smile spread with the kind of happiness most people reserved for gifts or good news.
Yuche didn’t smile at all.
He simply lowered the blood-covered bat and looked toward the remaining attackers as though I had finally given him permission to finish an unpleasant chore.
Zhou Chenghai shifted his weight near the bottom of the porch steps, while Zhenlan remained beside me. Wind moved around the property, sliding through the gaps between the buildings and tightening into an invisible boundary around the road.
No one was leaving, but the six remaining men in front of the porch tried anyway.
Three rushed toward the steps together, apparently deciding that reaching me was their only chance of ending the fight. Only, Zhou Chenghai met them before they crossed half the distance.
The first man swung a metal pipe at his head like he was channeling his inner Yuche. Zhou Chenghai caught it in one hand, tore it free, and drove the end into the attacker’s chest hard enough to lift him from the pavement.
The second tried to move around him, but Chenghai caught the back of his coat and slammed him face-first into the ground. Before the man could push himself up, one of the plants wrapped around his neck and pulled him beneath the cracked pavement.
The third one stopped, his brains from earlier making a sudden appearance after disappearing for a while. He looked at Chenghai, then at the porch behind him, and slowly began backing away, his hands up in the air like I would accept his surrender.
I didn’t forgive or forget too easily and neither did my plants. A root rose directly behind his legs as he moved backwards causing him to stumble over it and fall to the ground.
The flowers took him before he finished falling.
On the driveway, Yuche lifted one hand, and every loose piece of metal answered him at once.
Knives, bullets, broken vehicle panels, rifle parts, and jagged strips of steel rose from the wreckage, you name it, it obeyed his orders. They hovered above the remaining three fighters, turning slowly until every sharpened edge pointed inward.
The men froze, their eyes widening as they stared at the sight in front of them. Yuche, on the other hand, looked over his shoulder toward me, silently asking his question.
I gave him a small nod, and the metal fragments attacked like they had a mind of their own.
Some of the invaders managed to raise their arms in order to shield their faces, while others tried to hide behind the vehicles they had brought with them.
But it didn’t matter.
Wherever they went, the projectiles followed them like faithful puppies wanting to make their master happy. The metal curved around the wreckage, changed direction in midair, and found every opening they left behind.
Lingyun moved through the chaos before the bodies finished hitting the ground.
He didn’t need to chase anyone, everyone he was going to kill was already breathing their last breath. Zhenlan’s wind kept the injured survivors pressed inside the road, and the plants blocked every path leading away from the mansion.
All Lingyun had to do was choose where the fire went next.
He swept one arm toward the men lying on the ground, pinned under some of the overturned trucks. Honestly, this was probably an act of mercy if nothing else. They were already dying anyway.
Flames rolled beneath the vehicle and climbed over both sides, cutting the moans of the men off suddenly.
Two that had been faking their injuries to see if they could escape jumped up and turned toward the plants instead, thinking that that would give them a higher chance of survival. I had to hold back a laugh. Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon.
The vines opened wide like arms waiting for a hug. For half a second, the attackers must have believed they had found a way through, and then the greenery folded around them.
Screams disappeared beneath leaves, thorns, and petals followed by a crunching sound as bones shattered inside the flowers mouths.
