However, there are no major issues.
Apart from the 48 packs of instant noodles that haven’t been touched, the kumquats on the balcony have ripened.
Other fruits and vegetables planted last month, such as potatoes and sweet potatoes, are still growing vigorously.
The crops have undergone some mutations, more or less, all in a positive direction. Seedlings grow quickly, fruit trees grow tall, kumquat trees are full of fruit, each one nearly the size of a small orange.
Estimating her own food consumption, Fu Erdie eats sparingly, managing to barely satisfy her hunger with three or four a day.
She picks off a dozen ripe kumquats, eats one, puts the rest in the refrigerator, to be taken out when she’s hungry again.
Fu Erdie hopes that the other vegetables and fruits she planted will ripen soon. If the food grown on the balcony alone can fill her stomach, then it couldn’t be better.
But after all, she’s still uncertain about the stability of her situation, the principles of mutation in buildings, plants, and crops, all of which she hasn’t fully understood yet. What she’s currently seeing is only the positive side; the side effects or the costs to be paid are still unknown.
She no longer wants to be tormented by nightmares and wait for death.
She wants to live. She wants to find a way out.
She ties her hair into a bun for easy movement, puts on the tattered clothes that she washed clean after they were torn, picks up a hammer, packs her keys, and quietly walks out.
She lives on the 16th floor, with eight more floors above, ten households on each floor. The stairs are divided into main and auxiliary staircases.
Fu Erdie first scans her own floor.
She often goes in and out of 16-2, and she holds the spare key to the main door, just in case.
For the other households with broken doors, she directly enters to inspect. Anything usable is moved to the doorway and then carried back home.
For the households with intact doors, Fu Erdie doesn’t attempt to break in and simply moves on.
In fact, most households have some reserves. However, after zombies rampage through, many things are unintentionally overturned and destroyed. There’s nothing seemingly usable on the surface, so she has to search through each cabinet one by one.
She finds plenty of undamaged items like rice, flour, cooking oil, salt, and sugar.
Especially in the homes of some elderly people, there’s quite a bit of rice stored.
Fu Erdie carries them all back home, one by one.
The rice had worms in it. The spider plant extended its small green tendrils into it, stirring it around, and soon wrapped the worms up in agate-like beads before leaving, shaking them in front of Fu Erdie.
Fu Erdie couldn’t help but laugh and caressed the leaves of the spider plant.
“Thank you, little spider plant.”
The “little spider plant,” now taller than Fu Erdie, gently brushed her hand, very pleased.
In addition to moving edible items, Fu Erdie also brought six flower pots over.
There should have been seven, but the seventh floor vase was very large and very heavy, too heavy for her to move.
She placed five of the pots together, scattered various seeds she found in the house—whether familiar or unfamiliar—watered them, and let them grow freely.
With the remaining small pot in her arms, she squatted down next to the “environmentally friendly greenery”: “Who among you is willing to come in and help me with my work outside?”
Before the other environmentally friendly plants could react, they were squeezed aside by the massive spider plant.
Its large leaves slapped into Fu Erdie’s arms, a root deftly extended into the pot, and then the whole house trembled, as if more roots were about to burst out of the walls.
Fu Erdie: !
Fu Erdie hurriedly stopped it. “Good spider plant, we can’t do without you in this home! You have to protect our home!”
The spider plant hesitated, then reluctantly relented. The room returned to calm.
Fu Erdie felt helpless but also found it amusing, so she quickly reassured it.
Her target was the lonely-looking spider plant squeezed next to the spider plant.
The spider plant was almost as big as it was before the apocalypse, still the smallest in the “environmentally friendly greenery” group.
Fu Erdie guessed that the spider plant was the main force in helping with household cleaning and absorbing garbage and debris, but the other plants also had such functions. However, they initially fell behind, and then didn’t have the opportunity to snatch what Fu Erdie considered trash but they considered nutrition, so they had to shrink here.
She had already swept most of the sixteenth floor. But there was one room she didn’t dare to enter. Because it smelled too bad.
She could be sure there were dead people or zombies inside, now rotting in the heat, perhaps already turned into a pool of putrid water.
She didn’t dare to go in and check the situation, so she wanted to see if any mutated plants were willing to accompany her and help with the cleaning process.
Without the dominant presence of the spider plant, the other plants started to compete for attention.
The spider plant with its leaf interrupted the squabbling between the plants, pulled out a potato seedling from the flower bed, and then placed it in Fu Erdie’s small pot.
Fu Erdie was baffled.
No, wait, can pulling up plants really be done so forcefully and completely?
Fu Erdie noticed that the potato seedling pulled up by the spider plant wasn’t the best-looking or the smallest in size, but rather an ordinary seedling, neither big nor small, and quite inconspicuous.
The moment this seedling was placed into the small pot, it visibly shook happily, and its intact roots grasped down immediately.
This turned out to be a mutated potato seedling, similar to environmentally friendly plants but with subjective mobility!
Fu Erdie was astonished!
She couldn’t believe it, but still carried the potato seedling to the door of the house emitting a strong foul smell, and placed the potato pot down.
As soon as the potato touched the ground, it laboriously, slowly extended its roots towards the room.
Fu Erdie didn’t want to look inside.
Because she knew that seeing the scene inside would give her nightmares, make her feel sick and want to vomit.
But she was also genuinely curious about what the potato seedling would do.
So she still leaned towards the door to peek inside.
The next moment, she immediately rushed back to the hallway, retching.
The bodies inside were no longer recognizable as human forms, various organs were scattered messily on the ground, clearly torn apart by zombies.
A clump of hair, still attached to a scalp, along with an eyeball, stared directly at the doorway, as if watching her, or perhaps every passer-by in this world.
She retched for a long time.
This was the apocalypse, and she should adapt.
With this thought, Fu Erdie turned around and looked back at the scene inside.
But soon, she rushed out again.
The stress response made her tremble uncontrollably, vomiting violently.
The kumquats she had eaten in the morning had already been vomited out along with stomach acid, and her entire oesophagus burned with pain.
Her tears and snot smeared her face, she wiped them off with the tattered cuffs of her clothes, throwing them on top of the vomit to cover it up.
Standing up, she approached the room for the third time.
But suddenly, she realized that something had tugged at the hem of her clothes. Turning around, she saw the familiar spider plant.
A small leaf of the spider plant stretched to its limit, pulling at her clothes.
As if to say, “It’s okay not to face it, we’ve always been here.”
Fu Erdie felt that her tears of more than twenty years had dried up in these two months.
But just now, she couldn’t help but burst into tears again.
“Thank you,” she touched the spider plant’s leaf, “It’s so good to have you.”
The spider plant understood, nudged her again, and then slowly turned yellow, from the leaf to the extended tendrils, all withered and fell due to lack of nutrients, becoming a long line.
Fu Erdie watched this scene and understood something.
The environmentally friendly plants, or rather the spider plant, could understand her words, could distinguish the condition of every plant on the balcony, and could accurately discern her intentions.
It was very, very smart, but its roots were at home, in that house.
Perhaps they could spread around, but their current energy wasn’t enough. They stretched out a tiny branch, already exerting all their strength.
The potato was the same.
It was even weaker than the spider plant. Its roots spread very slowly.
They were all striving to survive and help her.
She also needed to overcome her fear and take them to places they couldn’t go.
Fu Erdie tore off the other sleeve, tied it around her eyes.
She gently lifted the pot, cradling the fragile roots of the potato seedling, and walked towards the room, leaning against the wall.
The putrid smell pierced her nose, and the buzzing of mosquitoes around was nerve-wracking.
Unknown insects bit her, itchier and more painful than usual.
But she continued to move forward, ignoring whatever sticky substances she encountered, relying on the scene she had seen inside the room before, she reached a spot not far from where the corpse lay and placed the potato seedling down.
The moment she placed it down, she seemed to touch something sticky, soft, and enveloping bones.
Her arm stiffened, but she still carefully put down the potato seedling, stood up again, turned around, brushed against the wall as she walked a few steps, removed the blindfold from her eyes, and ran back to 16-1.
She stripped off all her clothes and shoes, threw them on the floor, and rushed into the bathroom to shower.
“Don’t think about it, don’t think about it.”
She brainwashed herself, alternating between hot and cold water, rinsing away the sensations from earlier.
Dead humans, humans with abilities, seemed to instil more fear in her than the zombies themselves.
She wanted to take a long shower.
But the water, electricity, and gas in the house were all provided by the spider plant and the house through some peculiar energy conversion, and she didn’t want to waste it.
She finished showering in ten minutes, holding her dog on the balcony, surrounded by the fresh scent and colours of the spider plant, gradually calming down.
Next came the excitement of overcoming her fear and doing something significant.
She decided to cook a packet of instant noodles to celebrate.
But it seemed like she forgot something…
What was it again…
Oh well, it doesn’t matter!
Today’s achievement of overcoming fear was the most important thing!
To be honest, after two months of pickles and plain rice, Fu Erdie had had enough. Now, a packet of instant noodles alone couldn’t satisfy her craving for something more flavourful. She tore open a packet of ready-to-eat chicken breast, dipped it in the noodle soup and ate.
Hmm… the taste was a bit strange.
She dutifully finished the chicken breast, reluctant to waste the noodle soup, and sipped it down.
The phone played soothing music, leaving only the dim night light in the room, serene and tranquil.
After a happy sleep, the next day, Fu Erdie routinely watered the crops on the balcony.
Suddenly, she realized what she had forgotten.
The potato seedling!!!
The clothes she wore yesterday had already been thrown away by Fu Erdie as trash.
But during the days of fighting zombies, she had ruined seven sets of clothes. These clothes, which she would continue to wear for labour and hard work, let’s temporarily call them “beggar clothes.” Fu Erdie put on the tattered beggar clothes and hurriedly went to the room where the potato was located.
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