Yuche crushed another zombie’s skull against the hood of an abandoned car hard enough to cave it inward.

The body dropped and stayed there for a few seconds before it started moving again.

"What the fuck?" Lingyun barked from somewhere to his left as flames exploded down the highway. Three zombies caught fire instantly, their bodies twisting and jerking while the smell of burning flesh rolled across the air thick enough to taste.

One of them kept crawling.

Still on fire.

Still moving forward like it was just a minor inconvenience that it couldn’t walk properly.

"Oh, come on," Lingyun snapped before driving one of his glowing blades through its head hard enough to pin it to the asphalt. "Just die already!"

The zombie twitched violently right before it grabbed his leg and tried to bite him.

Lingyun swore loudly and kicked it hard enough to rip the arm clean off before finishing the thing with another slash across the neck.

It felt like it had taken forever, but the body finally stopped moving.

For now.

Yuche frowned.

Something was wrong.

Not with the fighting itself. Between the five of them, this number of zombies shouldn’t have been a problem. Chenghai was ripping through bodies with enough force to shatter bone, Lingyun was setting half the highway on fire, and Zhenlan’s air blades were slicing through skulls cleanly enough that several zombies dropped before realizing their heads were gone.

But they weren’t staying down consistently.

Some died immediately even as others kept moving after injuries that should have killed them twice over.

One of the zombies Chenghai had punched through the chest suddenly lurched back to its feet with half its ribs missing.

"Seriously?" Chenghai muttered before grabbing it by the throat and slamming it headfirst into the pavement again.

The skull cracked open and still the zombie twitched, reaching out to get its prey.

Rouxi sighed somewhere nearby and Yuche could imediately picture the look on her face. She wasn’t scared or stressed.

That was the sound that came out when her drama was over and she didn’t get the results that she wanted.

That was Rouxi pissed

"Could you waste any more energy?" she complained as another vine shot from her palm and speared directly through a zombie’s forehead. "Do you have any idea how much food you are going to need if you keep going this way? Energy isn’t cheap you know."

The body dropped instantly.

The vine withdrew just as fast, bringing a glowing yellow crystal back with it before vanishing into thin air beneath her sleeve.

Yuche’s eyes narrowed.

There.

That was the difference.

Every zombie Rouxi killed stayed dead.

Every single one.

"The dead don’t have beating hearts anymore," Rouxi continued casually like they were discussing the weather instead of standing in the middle of a highway covered in corpses.

Another zombie stumbled toward her and she barely looked at it before a vine burst through its eye socket. "But the stronger ones will have cores."

The vine ripped something glowing blue from the zombie’s head before disappearing again.

Before Yuche could ask anything, another vine whipped toward a different zombie and removed the head completely. "The dumb zombies can still be killed easily enough."

Lingyun stared at her.

Then at the zombie currently trying to drag itself forward with one arm despite missing most of its torso.

"Are you serious?!" he demanded.

Rouxi blinked at him slowly. "Yes?"

"We’ve been out here fighting these things for months!"

"Mm."

"And you forgot to mention the magic rocks inside their heads?!"

"I didn’t forget," she replied with a shrug. "Technically, none of you asked."

Lingyun looked personally betrayed by that answer and Yuche couldn’t hold back the bark of laughter. Of course they hadn’t asked. It never occurred to them in the first place that that was even possible.

Another zombie lunged toward Rouxi from behind.

Yuche moved automatically, metal twisting beneath the wreckage nearby before a jagged piece of a broken car door shot forward and punched through the zombie’s skull.

The body collapsed. Then it started twitching again.

Yuche’s eyes sharpened. Interesting. The metal shard was still lodged exactly where the brain should have been.

But something deeper inside the skull was glowing faintly beneath the ruined flesh.

The core. The stone that Rouxi had shown them before.

A vine shot past him before he could react, pierced directly through the glow, and pulled a crystal free.

This time the zombie stopped instantly.

Yuche looked down at the small white crystal rolling briefly through the vine before Rouxi caught it lazily in one hand.

"Air," she announced before tossing it toward Zhenlan.

Zhenlan caught it automatically, staring down at the glowing stone resting in his palm. "It’s warm," he murmured quietly.

"Don’t put it in your mouth," Rouxi warned. "You’ll probably pass out. Or explode."

The fact that she said probably did not make Yuche feel better.

Chenghai ripped another zombie apart nearby before finally seeming to notice that the legs were still moving separately from the upper body.

"...I hate this," he muttered.

"That’s because you are doing it wrong," Rouxi replied. "Aim for between the eyes until you can figure out which one is which. That way you are always guaranteed a deader dead guy."

Yuche stepped around another zombie before driving his fist straight through its face hard enough to shatter the jaw. The body stumbled backward but didn’t fully collapse this time.

Instead, it kept trying to move toward him despite most of its head being gone. Yeah, this was getting old fast.

He focused briefly and the metal buried inside the zombie’s skull shifted.

Something cracked deeper inside the head before a small red crystal suddenly punched free through the side of the temple. The body collapsed instantly afterward, finally staying still.

Everyone paused.

Even Rouxi looked at him.

The crystal hovered awkwardly in the air for half a second before dropping directly into his hand.

It was burning hot to the point that Yuche threw it at Lingyun instead of trying to hold onto it himself.

Rouxi nodded her approval. "Red for fire," she shrugged. "When we get home I’ll give you a gold star. Way to catch on."

Lingyun looked horrified. "Why does that sound like she’s training us?"

"Because she is," Chenghai muttered.

"I’m literally not," Rouxi replied immediately.

The baby vine hissed suddenly.

All five of them turned.

More zombies were stumbling onto the highway from between the abandoned vehicles further down the road. Dozens this time. Maybe more. Several moved differently than the others, faster and more coordinated, their movements less jerky and far too focused.

One of them opened its mouth.

Then screamed.

Not groaned. 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚

Screamed.

Every zombie on the highway immediately turned toward them.

Lingyun slowly looked over at Rouxi. "I think your shopping trip just got more expensive."

Rouxi grinned.

"Ohh," she purred softly as vines began crawling up both of her arms. "Now this looks fun."