Chapter 24
Chapter 24: Breaking the Limit
The rain came down in sheets, as if the sky had finally found something to hate.
It was the first true downpour in three months of apocalypse.
Inside, the squad could only watch through the small ceiling gap. Purple light flashed again and again, the roof shuddering with thunder. Two hours dragged past. The time between lightning bursts grew longer.
Everyone knew what that meant.
Zi Ying was running dry.
“Those fucking zombie birds,” Ying Ao muttered, jaw tight.
Because Lian Yi held their attention, the flock wasn’t fixated on the people below anymore. It wanted the fresh flesh on the roof first.
Up top, Ying Yi wiped rain spray from his face and shouted over the storm, “Zi Ying! Can you hold?”
“I can!” Lian Yi shouted back. “I’m close to breaking my limit!”
Ying Yi’s water shield kept them from being soaked even under the pounding rain.
Lian Yi used the storm as a weapon, frying any birds that rushed in reckless. The survivors learned fast. They stopped charging as a wave and started feinting—trying to draw one of them out, trying to split them.
“They’re setting traps,” Ying Yi said, disbelief edged with horror.
He flicked his fingers. Raindrops sharpened into water needles, then snapped forward with precision, punching into skulls. Zombie sparrows fell in clumps—tiny bodies, razor claws, the worst kind in close quarters.
When Lian Yi regained even a sliver of strength, she stepped in to cover Ying Yi’s side, throwing a lightning sphere into the flock. The rain carried the current. Birds dropped like stones.
Her reserves bottomed out again almost instantly.
Ying Yi didn’t get to rest. He pushed harder, forcing water ability into another brutal burst and shredding the next ring of birds that tried to close.
Through storm-dark, Lian Yi caught flashes of red eyes—blinking in and out, watching, calculating. The flock wasn’t mindless. The sparrows bled them down while the larger birds waited for the moment their defenses failed.
“They’re getting smarter,” Lian Yi said grimly. “They’re trying to wear us out.”
“With this storm, our abilities counter them,” Ying Yi said, teeth clenched. “All we can do is hold.”
Lian Yi drew a breath. “Captain. Your ability is at the peak of Level One. Use the storm to break through. I’ll borrow outside force.”
She wasn’t going to let this flock escape. The base wasn’t far. If these things flew off intact, they’d slaughter someone else by morning.
Ying Yi had been suppressing the pressure of a breakthrough for a while—wrong place, wrong time. Now, with death circling overhead, there was no room left for caution.
“Fine,” he said. “Hold them for a moment. I’m breaking through.”
He gripped two Level One crystal cores in each hand and started absorbing. The squad carried issued cores for exactly this reason—emergency replenishment.
As energy flooded him, the barrier inside him thinned. He accelerated, pulling harder, faster.
Beside him, Lian Yi forced open a crackling thunder net, jaw locked. She wanted to curse. She’d meant for him to break through after she finished absorbing the Level Two crystal core—not while she held the entire roof alone.
No choice now.
She pulled the Level Two crystal core from her pocket space, clamped it in her fist, and absorbed while holding the net. Lightning crawled over her skin and snapped into the rain, keeping the flock back.
The larger birds finally moved. Two surged toward the roof, wings beating hard.
Then the water curtain above them expanded—widening, thickening—until it covered the whole two-story building like a dome.
Ying Yi rose to his feet, breath steadying, power surging through his limbs. A faint curve touched his mouth.
Under that pressure, he broke through to Level Two.
The next instant, the dome shattered into thousands of arrows under his control. They roared outward, piercing the oncoming large birds. Bodies dropped in a wet, brutal heap.
Thunder answered.
Lian Yi’s body jolted as her own barrier snapped. With the Level Two core’s help, she broke through as well.
She raised her hand and threw a lightning sphere the size of a football into the sky.
It met the natural lightning overhead and linked.
The strike that followed was monstrous—purple light exploding outward, carried by rain across the airport, engulfing every zombie bird still clinging to the area.
When the light faded, the storm still poured—but the ground in front of the building was carpeted in charred feathers and broken wings.
They’d won.
Lian Yi dropped to a sitting position, chest heaving.
Ying Yi leaned over the roof edge and shouted down, “Clear any zombie birds still inside the building. Then move to the big warehouse. This place isn’t safe.”
“Copy!”
Forty minutes later, Ying Ao brought the rest of the squad up. Under Ying Yi’s water shield, they pushed through the rain and relocated to the big warehouse.
The downpour only grew heavier. Water pooled fast in low ground.
Back at the base, on the evening Lian Yi’s group had departed, Sun Yi finally broke through. Her perception ability reached Level One.
When she opened her eyes, only Sun Wang was there, guarding her. Unease hit like a punch.
“Where’s Lian Yi?” she demanded.
“Sister Lian Yi went out with Captain Eaglewing on a mission,” Sun Wang said, sulking. “They didn’t take me. They made me stay here to protect you while you ranked up.”
His expression softened as he looked at her. “But you did it. You hit Level One.”
Thunder cracked overhead. Lightning tore across the sky. Rain arrived in heavy, urgent drops, like it had been waiting for that exact second.
Sun Yi stared at the window, dread sharpening into something clear.
“Come with me,” she said.
“Now?” Sun Wang blinked. “In this weather?”
“Now,” she repeated. “Move.”
He grabbed a rain poncho, and the two of them hurried out of the dorm area.
Before the storm turned truly violent, they returned. Sun Yi’s face was tight, eyes focused.
She’d confirmed it.
She knew what had been whispering that warning into her bones.
Without wasting time, Sun Yi went straight to the brigade leader and reported what she sensed. After that, it was out of her hands.
All she could do was pray Lian Yi and the others made it back alive.