The Chemical Processing Plant in Sector 02 was usually the quietest part of the Industries, humming with the gentle sounds of distillation. Today, it smelled like a refinery fire waiting to happen.
Vats the size of swimming pools were churning a thick, translucent orange sludge. It was a mixture of refined gasoline and a gelling agent derived from aluminum soaps—primitive Napalm-B.
Captain Han stood on the catwalk, looking down into the vats. The fumes made his eyes water even through his protective mask.
"It looks like... honey," Han muttered, dipping a long metal testing rod into the mixture. It came up coated in a thick, sticky glob that didn't drip.
"Don't taste it," Jiang Chen said, walking up behind him. He was holding a stopwatch, timing the mixing rotors.
"Administrator," Han wiped sweat from his forehead. "The men are uneasy. They know how to fight men. They know how to fight beasts. But the walking dead? They say you need fire priests to cleanse them."
"Priests pray for fire, Han," Jiang Chen said, clicking the stopwatch. "Engineers manufacture it."
He took the testing rod from Han. He pulled a lighter from his pocket and flicked it.
WHOOSH.
The glob on the end of the rod didn't just catch fire; it erupted. It burned with a violent, sputtering intensity, black smoke boiling off it.
Han leaned back, startled by the heat. "It's just oil fire, sir. The dead won't stop stop just because they are burning. They feel no pain."
Jiang Chen tilted the rod. The burning jelly didn't drip off. It clung to the metal, burning hotter and hotter.
"This isn't oil," Jiang Chen said coldly. "It's adhesive thermal agony. It burns at 1,200 degrees Celsius. It sticks to flesh, bone, and rotten muscle. It doesn't just burn them, Han. It consumes them."
He tossed the burning rod into a bucket of water. The fire didn't go out. It kept burning underwater, bubbling furiously.
Han stared at the bucket, his face pale. He had seen cultivators throw fireballs, but water always extinguished them. This... this was unnatural.
"Load the canisters," Jiang Chen ordered. "The dead are knocking."
The Western Plains - 10 Miles from Beiluo
The ground was dead. The snow had turned a sickly shade of green, corrupted by the miasma rolling in from the west.
Elder Ku of the Corpse Refinement Sect floated on a palanquin made of human bone, carried by four hulking zombie-ogres. He was a skeletal man, his skin dyed green from years of absorbing cadaver toxins.
Behind him stretched a sea of shuffling horrors. Ten thousand freshly raised corpses—villagers, bandits, and beasts dragged from mass graves. They were slow, stupid, and relentless.
Elder Ku smiled, revealing rotten teeth. He could feel the fear radiating from the distant city of Beiluo.
"A new warlord sits on the throne," Ku croaked to his disciples walking alongside him. "He killed a White Cloud Elder. Impressive. But can his swords cut that which is already dead? Can his arrows stop a heart that doesn't beat?"
One disciple pointed to the sky. "Master! Look! Metal birds!"
Three specks appeared in the grey sky, moving with a loud, droning roar that grated on the ears.
Elder Ku squinted. He felt no Qi from them.
"Scout puppets," Ku scoffed. "The Heavenly Craft Sect plays games with wood and spring. This new lord plays with metal. Useless toys."
He waved his bone staff. "Ignore them! March! Tonight, we feast in Beiluo!"
The horde shambled on.
In the cockpit of Lead P-47 "Dragon 1"
Pilot Li adjusted his oxygen mask. His hands were sweating inside his gloves. He wasn't fighting a cultivator this time. He looked down. The ground was a carpet of moving green rot. It was the stuff of nightmares.
"Dragon Leader to flight," Li's voice shook slightly over the radio. "Target confirmed. The Horde is massive. It stretches for miles."
"Steady, Li," Jiang Chen's voice came through clearly from the command bunker. "They are slow. They are bunched up. They are kindling."
Li took a deep breath. He looked at the wings of his plane. Underneath each wing hung two massive, bulbous tanks painted with a red 'X'. External Drop Tanks, filled not with fuel for the engine, but with the orange jelly.
"Initiating bombing run. Vector 2-7-0. Drop altitude: 500 feet."
The three P-47s dipped their noses, screaming down toward the green sea.
On the ground, Elder Ku watched the metal birds dive. They were coming straight at him.
"Foolish!" Ku screamed. He gathered the Corpse Qi around him, forming a dense green fog bank. "You fly into my domain of death! My toxins will rot your wooden wings!"
The planes didn't fire guns. They flew right over the leading edge of the horde.
CLUNK. CLUNK. CLUNK.
Twelve large metal pods detached from the wings. They tumbled through the air, end over end.
Elder Ku frowned. "Bombs? Without Qi?"
The pods hit the ground among the densest clusters of zombies. They didn't explode immediately. They burst open on impact, splashing thick, orange liquid over hundreds of corpses, coating the ground in a slick layer of sludge.
The zombies, mindless, kept walking, slipping in the goo, covering themselves further.
"What is this filth?" Elder Ku sneered, wiping a speck of orange jelly from his bone palanquin.
High above, Li pulled his plane into a tight turn.
"Payload delivered," Li reported. "Ignition in three... two..."
Li flicked a switch on his console. Under the belly of his plane, a flare dispenser fired a single, phosphorus-tipped magnesium flare downward.
It fell like a brilliant white star, trailing smoke.
It landed right in the middle of the orange sludge.
FWOOM.
It wasn't an explosion. It was an ignition.
A wall of fire, fifty feet high, erupted instantly. The orange jelly caught with terrifying ferocity. The fire didn't spread naturally; it jumped, igniting everything coated in the substance in a chain reaction that covered half a mile in seconds.
A collective, gurgling shriek rose from the horde as thousands of zombies instantly ignited.
Elder Ku didn't have time to be arrogant. The fire hit his palanquin.
His defensive Corpse Qi fog, which could rot flesh in seconds, did nothing against fire burning at 1,200 degrees. The fog burned away instantly.
"AHHHH!"
Ku screamed as the sticky fire splashed onto his robes. He tried to bat it away, but it just stuck to his hands, transferring the fire to his skin. He tried to channel Qi to protect himself, but the pain was so intense it broke his concentration.
His zombie-ogre bearers, coated in the jelly, turned into towering torches. They collapsed, dumping the Elder into the burning sludge.
From the sky, it looked like a line of hellfire had been drawn across the earth. The center of the horde was gone—vaporized. The rear ranks, seeing the inferno, stopped, confused by the wall of heat that melted the snow for a mile in every direction.
Beiluo City Walls
It was dusk, but the western horizon was glowing brighter than noon.
Thousands of citizens and soldiers stood on the walls, silent. They felt the heat on their faces from ten miles away. They heard the distant roar of a fire so large it created its own weather system, sucking in air and creating fire tornados.
Captain Han lowered his binoculars. His hands were trembling.
He had feared the zombie horde. Everyone did. They were a plague that had ended dynasties.
But this... this was worse.
He looked at the soldiers around him. They weren't cheering. They were pale, staring at the apocalypse their master had unleashed with the push of a button.
"The Administrator said it would cleanse them," a young soldier whispered, clutching his rifle. "He didn't say it would melt the earth."
Han looked toward the Command Bunker in the center of the city. He realized then that Jiang Chen didn't need their loyalty. He didn't need their love.
He commanded the sun.
"Get back to your posts," Han said, his voice hoarse. "Pray you never end up on the wrong side of his mathematics."