The tunnel slled like blood, rot, and death.
Yuche barely noticed the stench anymore, that was pretty much how everything slled since he walked into this Hotel.
The underground passage shook violently every few seconds while roots groaned overhead and concrete cracked sowhere deeper beneath the hotel. Several tis, dirt collapsed from the ceiling hard enough that soldiers behind them had to shove soone out of the way before anyone got crushed.
None of it mattered.
Yuche moved through the darkness quickly, tal floating silently around him in jagged pieces torn from pipes, walls, and abandoned equipnt. Beside him, Lingyun’s flas lit the flooded tunnel in uneven flashes while Chenghai stayed several steps ahead like he was physically trying to outrun whatever waited at the end.
Nobody spoke... there was nothing useful left to say anyway. What could they say? That Rouxi would be fine? That all this was probably nothing? That she hadn’t been eaten?
Nothing would calm him down until he saw Rouxi standing in front of him with a sarcastic or flirty comnt on her lips for him.
Another tremor rolled violently through the underground corridor and the entire tunnel groaned.
Then sowhere ahead of them, sothing massive moved beneath the earth causing everyone to freeze imdiately.
Yuche felt the movent through the tal embedded in the walls around them. Whatever it was, it was big and retreating deeper underground while the entire hotel shook around it.
He didn’t have ti to think about what it could be. There was only Rouxi right now.
She was the only one who mattered.
Chenghai reached the destroyed chamber first. Yuche was right on his heels, but almost crashed into him when the man stopped suddenly. He pushed Chenghai out of the way, needed to see what was happening...
And for one horrible second, nobody moved as even the world stopped turning.
Rouxi lay crumpled near the collapsed wall like soone had picked her up and thrown her through the underground chamber hard enough to break every bone in her body.
Blood covered almost everything; her clothes, the floor under her, the wall behind her... everywhere he looked there was more and more blood turning darker and darker.
There was so much blood... there was no way...
No, he couldn’t think that why.
Instead, he continued to catalogue what he saw.
The vines were wrapped tightly around her waist, legs, shoulder, and arms like they were desperately trying to hold her body together through sheer refusal. Several of the wooden vines had rooted themselves directly into the cracked concrete around her while others still clung weakly to her skin beneath layers of sli, dirt, and black blood.
One leg was bent wrong.
Her shoulder under the vines looked even worse.
The flesh had been torn away deeply enough that Yuche could see exposed muscle beneath the blood while black bruising spread across the skin around the wound in ugly uneven lines.
Burns streaked across both arms and there was dried blood around her mouth.
Worst of all, she wasn’t moving.
Yuche stopped breathing and the tal floating around him crashed violently onto the flooded ground.
Sowhere beside him, Lingyun made a sound that didn’t fully seem human.
Commander Li swore sharply under his breath while Chenghai imdiately dropped to his knees beside Rouxi hard enough that dirty water splashed across the chamber floor.
"Rouxi?!"
There was no response.
Yuche stared at her face, waiting for her to open her eyes and look at him. Waiting to see that sparkle that seed to be just for him even though he knew better.
But there was nothing. No sarcastic comnt, no annoyed glare, no insult about everyone taking too long, or the fact that she should be on her couch eating snacks.
Nothing.
The entire world narrowed into one impossible thought.
They were too late.
Sothing inside Yuche simply... stopped and he could feel himself cracking in a way he didn’t think possible.
The cold careful part of him that normally separated panic from logic suddenly went completely silent. His thoughts emptied out until there was nothing left except the sight of Rouxi lying motionless beneath the vines still desperately wrapped around her body.
Dead.
The word landed heavily in his chest, but no matter how much a part of him was screaming in denial, his brain was fixated on that one word.
Dead.
Lingyun dropped beside her so fast his knees slamd hard against the broken concrete. Fire burst wildly across his hands before imdiately disappearing again while he reached toward Rouxi’s face like he was afraid touching her too hard would break whatever was left.
"Rouxi?" His voice cracked slightly around her na.
Yuche had never heard that happen before.
Not once.
Luo Xin shoved forward imdiately afterward, his dic bag nearly slipping from his shoulder in the rush. Commander Li grabbed Chenghai by the arm hard enough to pull the larger man backward so that Luo Xin had room to drop beside Rouxi’s body.
The dic froze for just a split second before he shook his head and got started.
But Yuche saw the exact second Luo Xin understood how bad things were.
The broken leg.
The angle of her spine.
The blood loss.
The fact that the vines wrapped around her body seed to be acting like splints because her actual bones couldn’t anymore.
Luo Xin’s face lost what little color it still had.
"Move," he snapped sharply, but there was no one else around.
But the vines seed to understand exactly what he was trying to say.
Several wooden strands gently unwrapped themselves from Rouxi’s body and pointed themselves toward Luo Xin like sharpened spears. The movent looked weak compared to normal, slower and unsteady, but the warning behind it remained perfectly clear.
’Do not touch,’ they seed to hiss while Rouxi’s vine lifted its head from around Rouxi’s neck and turned to look at the dic. Black poison dripped for a tiny line in the triangle shaped leaf.
Luo Xin went still imdiately, understanding the warning, even if he didn’t understand how vines and plants could be that sentient.
Yuche stared at the vines silently, a slight smile on his face as he finally took in a deep breath. Even unconscious, Rouxi was still trying to protect herself. But the vines wouldn’t react if she was dead. The vines would have been dead, too.
That thought alone gave him hope.
"It’s ," Luo Xin said carefully, his voice quieter now. "I need to check if she’s breathing." He held up a single hand and showed a white mist that seed to form around it.
Healing powers.
The vines twitched violently for a second, but then they slowly loosened.
It wasn’t a lot, just enough to give the man access.
Luo Xin imdiately pressed shaking fingers against the side of Rouxi’s throat before he sagged slightly in relief. "She’s alive."
The word gave Yuche the confirmation that he needed. The relief hit hard enough that his knees nearly gave out underneath him.
Alive.
Alive.
She was alive.
Lingyun laughed once and the sound ca out broken. But no one comnted on it.
Chenghai covered his face briefly with one hand before turning away sharply like he didn’t want anyone seeing the expression underneath it.
Commander Li exhaled slowly through his nose while tension visibly left his shoulders for the first ti since entering the tunnel.
Only Yuche stayed completely still.
Rouxi still hadn’t woken up yet, and until that happened, he needed to be prepared. Whatever had done this had retreated before they entered the chambers, but that didn’t an that there wasn’t more threats out there.
He rose to his feet and started looking around, his eyes taking in every hold in the ground, every crater in the walls, the part of the ceiling that had been so destroyed that so cars from an underground parking lot had spilled down.
"Fuck." The word was breathed out of Luo Xin’s mouth so silently that Yuche was pretty sure that it wasn’t ant to be heard. But now he couldn’t unhear it.
Fuck was never sothing you wanted to hear from a dic that was holding your heart in the center of his palms.
"Threats," he grunted to Lingyun before turning back to Rouxi. He trusted Lingyun to have their back and protect their woman.
But now that he looked closer, the damage seed even worse sohow. The vines wrapped around her lower body weren’t just supporting her injured leg, they were holding her upright from the waist down entirely.
Yuche understood imdiately, even if he didn’t want to.
His stomach dropped.
Luo Xin clearly understood too because the dic’s expression tightened before he carefully slid trembling hands beneath Rouxi’s neck.
"We need to move her carefully," Luo Xin said quietly. "Very carefully."
No one asked why.
No one wanted the answer.
Another violent tremor shook the underground chamber hard enough that fresh dirt collapsed from the ceiling overhead.
The hotel was running out of ti.
Yuche crouched beside Rouxi slowly before reaching out to brush filthy hair back from her face. His fingers ca away wet with blood and dirt.
She looked exhausted.... she looked destroyed.
And it was a look that he never wanted to see on her again.
The vines curled weakly around Yuche’s wrist like they weren’t sure if he was there to help or to hurt.
Sothing sharp twisted painfully in his chest and he moved one of his fingers just enough to stroke the vine around Rouxi’s neck.
"You did enough," he said softly. "We’ll take it from here."
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