The question hung in the air between them, unanswered for a long moment as all four men went down the stairs and looked out of the living room windows.
There were bodies everywhere—dozens of them, maybe more, scattered across the lawn and driveway like discarded debris after a storm. The sunlight made everything look worse, if that was possible, highlighting the unnatural stillness, the way limbs were twisted at wrong angles, the way nothing moved except the slow drift of dust particles in the air.
Xu Zhenlan's head still throbbed with that inflated pressure, and the cold feeling in his chest hadn't faded, but his mind was working through the problem methodically despite the discomfort.
The bodies were a tactical issue now—exposure, contamination, decomposition. They couldn't just leave them there to rot in the sun, attracting attention and creating a biohazard directly outside the house they were still trapped in.
"We need to burn them," Yuche announced, his voice flat and practical. He stood near the window with his arms crossed, his gaze moving across the property as he assessed the situation with the same clinical detachment he applied to everything. "Lingyun's right. It's the most efficient option. Complete disposal, minimal contamination risk."
Chenghai shook his head immediately. "We don't have enough fuel. We'd need accelerant for that many bodies, and we don't have the supply. Even if we did, the smoke would be visible for kilometers—it would draw more infected from outside the perimeter."
"Bury them?" Lingyun shrugged, throwing Chenghai's original suggestion back at him. But his tone was highly sarcastic since he already knew the answer.
"That's days of work," Chenghai replied with a sigh. "And we don't have the equipment for mass graves."
Zhenlan's gaze remained fixed on the bodies outside, his mind running through scenarios and discarding them one by one.
Burning was logical but impractical.
Burial was too labor-intensive.
Moving them to the far edge of the property would only delay the problem, not solve it.
And leaving them where they were wasn't an option—the smell alone would become unbearable within days, and the contamination risk was too high.
"We could—" Lingyun started, then stopped, his expression tightening with frustration. "I don't know. A flamethrower or something like that would be useful right about now."
It was meant as dark humor, the kind of offhand comment people made when faced with impossible situations and no good solutions, but Zhenlan almost responded. He almost pointed out that a flamethrower would have the same fuel problem Chenghai had just mentioned, but the words died in his throat as something happened that didn't make sense.
Suddenly, from nowhere, fire appeared on Lingyun's hands.
Not metaphorically.
Not as a figure of speech.
Actual fire—bright, orange, flickering—manifesting directly from his palms like it had always been there, like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Zhenlan stared, his mind stuttering over the impossibility of what he was seeing.
Fire didn't just appear. It required fuel, oxygen, ignition. It didn't spontaneously generate from human skin without any of those things present.
But there it was, dancing across Lingyun's palms, casting shifting shadows across his face as he looked down at his own hands with an expression of complete shock.
"What—" Lingyun's voice cracked, his hands jerking apart instinctively, and the fire moved with them, spreading outward in a way that fire shouldn't spread, reaching toward the nearest surface like it was alive.
The curtain caught first.
The fabric ignited instantly, flames racing up the length of it with unnatural speed, consuming the material and spreading to the wall behind it. Smoke started to billow out immediately, thick and acrid, filling the space near the window as the fire climbed higher, reaching toward the ceiling with hungry, grasping fingers.
"Lingyun!" Yuche's voice cut through the shock, sharp and commanding, but Lingyun wasn't moving—he was frozen, staring at his hands where the fire was still burning, still flickering across his skin without consuming it, without causing any visible damage.
The fire alarms in the house triggered, its shrill piercing wail cutting through everything else and adding to the chaos. Chenghai moved first, grabbing Lingyun's arm and pulling him away from the window, away from the spreading fire, but the flames were already climbing the wall, spreading across the ceiling in a pattern that defied logic.
Zhenlan's tactical mind tried to process what was happening, tried to categorize it into something that made sense, but every explanation his brain offered was immediately rejected by the evidence in front of him.
Fire didn't manifest from nothing. People didn't generate flames from their bare hands. This wasn't possible.
But it was happening.
The heat intensified rapidly, the smoke thickening as the fire spread further, and Yuche was moving toward the kitchen, probably looking for an extinguisher, while Chenghai was still gripping Lingyun's arm, trying to get him to focus, to respond, to do something other than stare at his own hands in horror.
And then... Rouxi appeared.
Zhenlan didn't see her approach—one moment the doorway to the basement was empty, and the next she was standing in it. Her expression was calm and assessing as her gaze moved across the scene with the kind of clarity that surprised him.
She didn't say anything. She just turned and walked toward the kitchen with quick, efficient steps, her movements purposeful and controlled.
Zhenlan heard the sound of water running, the metallic clang of a bucket being filled, and then she was back, moving through the smoke-filled room with the bucket gripped in both hands.
She didn't throw the water at the fire.
She threw it directly at Wei Lingyun.
The water hit him square in the chest, drenching him completely, and the fire in his hands extinguished instantly The fire on the wall sputtered and died a moment later, leaving only smoke and the acrid smell of burned fabric hanging in the air.
The smoke alarm continued its shrill wail, but everything else was silent.
Wei Lingyun stood there, dripping wet, staring at his hands—now empty, now normal, now just hands—with an expression that suggested he was still trying to understand what had just happened.
On the other hand, Jian Yuche had frozen near the kitchen doorway, his gaze moving between Lingyun and Rouxi with the kind of sharp, analytical focus that meant he was cataloging every detail.
Chenghai had released Lingyun's arm and taken a step back, his hand moving instinctively toward the weapon at his side before stopping, recognizing that a weapon wouldn't help with whatever this was.
Zhenlan's gaze moved to Rouxi, who was still holding the empty bucket, her expression unchanged—calm, practical, faintly annoyed in the way someone might be annoyed by a minor inconvenience rather than a complete breakdown of physical reality.
She set the bucket down carefully, her movements deliberate, and looked directly at Lingyun.
"If you wanted attention, you could've just asked. Burning the house down feels excessive even for someone throwing a temper tantrum."