Chenghai moved before Huang Zedong’s friends could.
In a single second, he saw Shen Kaiyang shift his weight toward Lingyun, saw Tao Jun angle himself between ilan and the rest of the room, and saw Lin Cheng reach for a weapon he had no business bringing into Rouxi’s presence.
Guo Renwang dragged Huang Zedong’s corpse backward by its shoulders until the pressure and the movent itself finished what the fire hadn’t. The body disintegrated into nothing more than a pile of ash with chunkier bits where the bones were still sowhat solid.
The it didn’t matter if Huang Zedong was alive or dead, they were protecting him anyway.
Even before he was set on fire, no one demanded that he apologize for following order, they didn’t think he had done anything wrong.
And that was the worst part.
But it was done. Huang was dead.
The only thing that concerned Chenghai was what was going to happen next.
Lingyun stood exactly where he was, grinning like the situation had finally improved enough to be worth his ti.
"I asked who was next," he reminded them, his tone bright enough that several of Commander Li’s soldiers imdiately turned their weapons toward him instead of the intruders.
Chenghai could not even bla them. Lingyun looked like the sort of man who would burn down a room just to see whether anyone inside could stop him. And he had just proven that he had no problems doing it.
"Stand down!" Commander Li barked, but the order landed a second too late.
Lin Cheng moved first. He ca in low and fast, not toward Lingyun, but toward the floor where Rouxi lay beside Luo Xin. Chenghai intercepted him before Yuche could, catching the man by the shoulder and driving him sideways into the overturned coffee table.
The table cracked under the impact, and Chenghai felt sothing inside him go colder than anger as splintered wood scattered across the floor.
Rouxi liked that table.
Sure, she might actually hate it, but she kept her snacks on it, her remotes on it, and half the ti her feet on it while insulting everyone else for standing too close to the television.
Chenghai had heard her complain when soone left water rings on it. Now Lin Cheng had broken it in half because he chose to lunge toward a dying woman instead of using his brain and backing off.
That made the answer simple.
Chenghai hit him again.
The blow drove Lin Cheng back hard enough that his shoulder cracked against the side of the sectional. ilan scread sothing that might have been his na, but Chenghai ignored her as Shen Kaiyang ca in from the right.
The man moved well, exactly as the future version had moved in Chenghai’s mories, with controlled strength and no wasted motion. For half a second, Chenghai’s body recognized him before his mind did.
That hesitation almost cost him.
Shen Kaiyang’s fist slamd into Chenghai’s ribs hard enough to force air out of his lungs, and the second hit would have caught his jaw if Chenghai had not twisted aside and caught the man’s wrist.
The grip felt familiar. The angle felt familiar. Even the weight behind the strike pulled up mories of battles fought in mud, snow, and broken city streets where Shen Kaiyang had stood on the right side of the line and earned every bit of respect Chenghai had given him.
Then Chenghai looked past him and saw ilan.
She stood near the doorway with one hand pressed to her chest, her face pale with anger and fear as Tao Jun and Guo Renwang closed ranks around her. Huang Zedong was still smoking on the floor behind them, and not one of the five n looked like they regretted the fire outside.
Instead, they looked angry that Lingyun had retaliated. They looked offended that the people inside Rouxi’s house had not accepted their presence, their claims, or their history as enough reason to yield.
The future Shen Kaiyang might have deserved respect.
But the man standing in front of Chenghai right now had chosen ilan.
So, Chenghai stopped holding back.
He twisted Shen Kaiyang’s wrist until the joint strained, then drove his knee into the man’s stomach and threw him toward the entryway. Shen Kaiyang hit the wall beside the door hard enough to crack the plaster, and Chenghai’s attention snapped imdiately to the damage.
The wall was almost completely destroyed and they just fixed that one a few months ago after the first ti ilan had co into the house uninvited.
Damn it. Rouxi was not going to like this. They didn’t have any more drywall to fix it.
"Take this outside!" he shouted, his eyes going wide as he fought back the slightest bit of panic at what would happen when Rouxi woke up.
But nobody listened.
Of course nobody listened.
Why would they?
It wasn’t their house that they were destroying!
Tao Jun’s power activated a heartbeat later, and a wave of force rippled across the room hard enough to shove several soldiers backward. Zhao Yucheng answered with fire that he kept tight and controlled, burning across the floor in a thin line ant to block movent rather than spread. Lingyun looked at the fla, looked at Zhao Yucheng, and then looked delighted for entirely the wrong reasons.
"Ooh," Lingyun purred. "Pretty."
"Do not encourage him," Commander Li snapped.
"I was being supportive."
"You set a man on fire less than a minute ago."
"And now he’s warr," replied Lingyun with a shrug of his shoulders. "I was really preforming a public service for him."
The answer made Wang Junjie choke on sothing that might have been horror or a laugh.
But Chenghai did not have ti to find out which because Guo Renwang kicked a broken piece of the coffee table toward Luo Xin, and Yuche moved so fast that the entire room seed to hesitate around him.
tal ripped from sowhere near the entertainnt system, thin and sharp, and pinned the broken wood to the floor before it could reach the healer.
Yuche hadn’t even bothered to stand as he completely shut down the attack. He was strong enough that he didn’t need to leave Rouxi’s side to defend her. He simply looked at Guo Renwang, and the man went still.
That was almost worse than if he had attacked.
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