Jiang ilan lowered her sunglasses and looked at the overgrown entrance to the mansion for several long seconds before the corner of her mouth lifted.
There it was.
Her house.
Or, at the very least, what should have been her house before Shen Rouxi ruined everything by existing in the wrong place at the wrong ti. She knew the bitch had been reborn, even if she hadn’t co out and say it. But it didn’t matter. What was hers would be ilan’s in the end.
After she disinfected everything.
The thought that Shen Rouxi had once slept in her house was enough to make ilan’s smile tighten, but she refused to let the irritation show too clearly. She had not co all the way back here to look petty in front of the five n standing behind her.
Especially not after the last ti.
She still hated thinking about that night.
Not because she had been wrong to leave. She hadn’t been. Any intelligent person would have left when an entire zombie horde surrounded the property and the people inside started acting like feverish lunatics. Staying would have been stupid. Dying for a house that hadn’t properly beco hers yet would have been even stupider.
The problem was that Shen Kaiyang, Tao Jun, Lin Cheng, Guo Renwang, and Huang Zedong had seen her leave.
That was the part that bothered her.
Not the running.
The witnessing.
ilan adjusted the strap of her pale designer bag against her shoulder and stepped away from the vehicle like she was arriving for lunch instead of standing in the middle of the apocalypse. Her white linen shorts were still spotless, her sleeveless rose-colored blouse clung prettily to her figure without looking cheap, and the gold sandals on her feet had survived the drive far better than Tao Jun’s expression suggested they should have.
He kept glancing at them like they were the most impractical thing she owned.
She noticed.
Of course she noticed.
n always thought they were being subtle when they weren’t.
The air around the mansion was warm and damp, more like late sumr than December, and ilan allowed herself a small breath of satisfaction. Even the weather here was better than the base. The safe zone had too much concrete, too many uniforms, too many people pretending they mattered because her father had allowed them to hold a clipboard or carry a gun.
Her father was the Minister of Civil Security. The civilian governor of the base. The man who decided who received housing, food, fuel, and protection.
He was a very important man.
Which ant ilan had no reason to live like ordinary people.
She had never been ordinary.
Not in her first life.
Not in this one.
So won were simply born with a heroine’s fate, and no matter how badly Shen Rouxi had tried to steal what belonged to her, fate always corrected itself eventually. It had corrected itself once before when the crowd finally understood that Rouxi was the traitor. It would correct itself again now.
The vegetation swallowing the gate proved that much.
No one had maintained the entrance in months. The thorns had grown thick enough to cover almost everything, and the plants had climbed so high that they made the property look less like a mansion and more like sothing nature had already reclaid. ilan found the whole thing irritatingly wasteful, but not surprising.
Shen Rouxi had always been that way.
Too arrogant to manage what she had.
Too stubborn to step aside when soone better suited could take control.
Too used to n looking at her with that irritating amount of attention.
ilan’s hand tightened on the strap of her bag before she forced her fingers to relax. She would not think about that right now. There was no point. Rouxi was dead. She had to be. Nobody survived this long in an abandoned mansion swallowed by plants, not after the horde, not after the fever, and certainly not after losing the protection of people who actually understood how the world worked.
"Looks like no one’s been through here in a while," Shen Kaiyang said from beside her.
ilan didn’t look at him right away.
She let the silence linger just long enough for him to understand that she was deciding whether the statent deserved a response.
"Obviously," she finally replied.
He didn’t react to the correction, but she felt the way Tao Jun’s attention shifted toward them. Tao Jun always watched too much. That had been useful before, when his attention was properly placed, but lately all five of them had been irritatingly careful around her, as though one night of necessary self-preservation had sohow changed who she was.
It hadn’t.
If anything, this was her chance to prove that.
She had returned.
She was standing here.
She was taking back what should have been hers from the beginning.
"What if soone is still inside?" Lin Cheng asked.
ilan turned her head slowly and stared at him until he had the grace to look uncomfortable. "And just who exactly do you expect to be inside?"
Lin Cheng didn’t answer imdiately.
"Commander Li, maybe," Guo Renwang offered from behind him, his voice lower, more cautious.
ilan laughed.
She couldn’t help it.
The idea was so ridiculous that the sound slipped out before she bothered stopping it.
"Commander Li?" she repeated, amusent dripping from every word. "Please. If Commander Li survived, he would have dragged himself back to the base to report to my father like the loyal dog he is. If he didn’t survive, then he clearly wasn’t as useful as everyone kept insisting."
None of them answered that.
Good.
There was nothing to answer.
Commander Li was capable, she would give him that much, but capable n were still just n. Her father had dozens of them and they existed solely to carry out orders from people who actually mattered.
ilan looked back toward the gate and let out a soft sigh.
Honestly, she was surrounded by powerful n and still sohow had to think of everything herself.
Tao Jun stepped closer, his gaze moving over the wall of thorns. "The entrance is completely blocked."
"Yes."
"So how do you want to handle it?"
ilan turned to him again and for one long mont, she wondered if he was doing this on purpose. Then she realized he was serious.
"How exactly do you expect to get past the thorns if you don’t get rid of them first?" she asked, keeping her voice patient even though patience was quickly becoming more effort than it was worth. "Really, Tao Jun. Use your brain."
His jaw tightened slightly, but he lowered his gaze.
Much better.
ilan looked toward Huang Zedong and waved her hand in the air. "Burn it."
The fire user lifted his head even as he raised an eyebrow. "The whole gate?"
"The plants," ilan corrected, because apparently precision was now required for the simplest possible instruction. "The thorns. The vines. Whatever else is blocking the entrance. I would like to get inside before sunset, and I would prefer not to ruin my sandals climbing through a wall of weeds."
Huang Zedong glanced toward Shen Kaiyang as if to confirm the order and that annoyed her more than the question had.
ilan’s smile disappeared. "Is there a problem?"
"No," Shen Kaiyang answered before Huang Zedong could speak. His tone was calm, soothing, the sa tone he used whenever he thought she was upset and needed to be handled. "There is no problem."
"Good," ilan replied. "Because I was beginning to wonder."
Huang Zedong stepped forward quickly after that, his palm turning outward as fire gathered above his fingers. The heat rolled outward in a faint shimr, barely noticeable against the already humid air. ilan watched the orange light reflect over the thorns and felt sothing inside her settle.
Finally.
Sothing was being done properly.
The first fireball struck the overgrowth with a heavy burst of heat.
For half a second, nothing happened.
Then the vines caught.
Flas ran upward through the wall in bright, hungry lines, spreading faster than ilan expected. Leaves curled black. Thorns cracked. Smoke rose thick and dark into the warm evening air while the vegetation hissed and snapped beneath the fire.
ilan smiled again.
There.
That was much better.
She had always known this place could be beautiful once soone sensible took control of it.
Behind the burning wall, sothing deep inside the jungle scread.
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