She looked at her parents, who had completely relaxed and fallen into deep sleep, and felt incomparably grateful.
Thankfully, she had arrived in time and had not stopped along the way because of anything.
Thankfully, she had met this good-luck buff.
Whether this luck had originally belonged to Fu Erdie herself or had been brought by He Xuan, Fu Erdie would remember this favour.
She bowed solemnly to He Xuan, placed her hand on the carriage wall, and circulated her ability, allowing the carriage to replenish the white light consumed while treating her parents. At the same time, she disguised it as herself using a healing ability, letting the white light pour into He Xuan’s body and completely heal her.
After five straight days of travelling, Fu Erdie was exhausted, Sang Wenhao was exhausted, but after being healed, He Xuan instead became the most energetic one.
It was now three in the afternoon. Fu Erdie felt she could try trusting He Xuan, and also trust Potato Seedling, so she hugged Sang Wenhao while circulating her ability and leaned against the carriage wall, falling into deep sleep.
He Xuan was somewhat surprised, but after glancing at the lively Potato and the very active dandelions drifting around on the roof, she knew this was Fu Erdie’s initial trust in her, but also Fu Erdie’s trust in her plant ability.
She did not plan to do anything disadvantageous to her boss. In the future, her boss would understand.
They slept very deeply. When the family of four woke up, it was already eleven at night.
It was not raining outside at the moment, so Fu Erdie took the chance to travel for two hours. When the rain began again, they found a relatively sheltered patch of water, landed, dropped anchor, and continued the conversation they had not finished.
There were many, many things to talk about from the past six months of the apocalypse. For example, at the beginning of the apocalypse, a base had been recruiting people. When they saw Fu Chenghong and Cao Bingqing, they thought the two were strong people in their forties and wanted to take them to work. But after checking their IDs, they found both were in their fifties—middle-aged and close to elderly—so they rejected them.
Another example: when they saw the flood, they had wanted to install solar panels on the roof of the car and flee with them. But in the end, never mind the solar panels, even the entire car was gone.
Another time, someone tried to rob them of their bicycles. Cao Bingqing expressionlessly picked up a stone from the ground and crushed it.
The other side thought she was an ability user and did not dare make a move again. Or rather, they felt making a move was not worth it, so they slunk away.
Fu Erdie was amazed. “Mom, why didn’t you tell me this afternoon that you had an ability?”
Cao Bingqing rolled her eyes at her. “What ability would I have? When my bicycle ran over it, I heard a crack. It was probably one of those stones that got dried out in the summer heat and would crumble when touched. I used it to scare people.”
Fu Erdie felt a little regretful.
Cao Bingqing made as if to hit her. “Are you looking down on your mother for not having an ability?”
“How could I!” Fu Erdie quickly begged for mercy. “No matter how inhuman I am, I’d never look down on my mom! I just thought that if you had an ability, you wouldn’t have suffered so much…”
After she finished speaking, the carriage fell silent for a moment.
The apocalypse really was too bitter.
When looking for her parents, Fu Erdie had travelled day and night without stopping. Now that she had found them, she was no longer as anxious on the way back.
First, she no longer needed to jump back and forth, searching different locations for people. Second, as they travelled and killed zombies along the way, the mutated dandelion seeds they scattered on the corpses had already grown.
These new dandelions could sense the position of the dandelions in the carriage. When the wind direction and distance were suitable, they would uproot themselves and fly over, the entire football-sized dandelions all moving toward the direction Fu Erdie wanted to fly. So there were more and more large dandelions, wrapping the box-car inside and out.
Sometimes, even when Sang Wenhao did not use his ability, the dandelions could keep the carriage floating in the air without falling.
In short, it was extremely convenient and effort-saving.
Just like that, the carriage leisurely found the hill where they had parked the electric car earlier. Then they drove the electric car back to the two-storey house where the ability-user team was staying. Rushing as much as they could, they returned to the small two-storey building on the very day the ten-day period ended.
At this time, however, the farmhouse courtyard where eight people should have been had only five people left.
Two strength-types and one speed-type were missing.
Fu Erdie raised an eyebrow. Had they temporarily gone out for something, or had they already left?
When Professor Zhao saw the familiar people enter, followed by two unfamiliar middle-aged people, she knew Fu Erdie had found her parents.
“Congratulations, Miss Fu. Did the journey go smoothly?”
This was the first time Fu Erdie had heard Professor Zhao speak. Her gaze swept across everyone in the room, paused briefly on the now-empty boxes that had stored potatoes and water, then looked toward Professor Zhao.
“With Sister He Xuan there, everything went fairly smoothly. What happened here?”
When she had set off, she had said she left the group ten days’ worth of potatoes and water. But in reality, she had given them according to fifteen days’ worth.
Based on the habits of survivors who were used to saving every bite in the apocalypse, if they ate sparingly, those supplies would have been enough for twenty-five days. She had not expected them to already be gone now.
Thinking of the three missing people, Fu Erdie had a guess in her heart.
Potato had already cleaned the tables and benches again. Fu Erdie, Sang Wenhao, and her parents sat beside the square table and listened to Professor Zhao explain what had happened over the past few days.
Time went back to nine days ago.
After a day of rest, the eight-person team finally felt that their stomachs, empty for half a year, had been filled. Not only did they not feel uncomfortable from overeating after long hunger, but the skin and organ lesions caused by river-water pollution had also eased a lot.
After taking turns keeping watch, everyone had recovered their energy. Only then did they begin thinking about their future again.
One strength-type ability user said uneasily, “Do you think Sister He Xuan might leave with them and not come back? Maybe they were afraid we’d force her to stay, so they left food to stabilise us?”
Zhuang Licheng, the electrical engineer in his fifties and the older-brother figure among them, could not help wanting to laugh.
Those two were so strong. Why would they need to use so many resources to stabilise everyone? He was saying it as if their group was very strong and had a bandit style that would not allow He Xuan to leave.
He had just wanted to speak when he felt his clothes being tugged. Turning his head, he saw it was Professor Zhao.
She shook her head slightly at him.
Zhuang Licheng frowned, not understanding what she meant, but he still said nothing more.
At the doorway, the short-haired woman keeping watch turned back unhappily when she heard this. “Don’t talk nonsense. Sister He Xuan wouldn’t leave without saying goodbye. If she wanted to leave us, she’d just say it. She wouldn’t sneak off without a sound like she was guilty.”
The sports student echoed, “We made it this far thanks to Sister He Xuan’s koi physique. If Sister He Xuan gets recruited and makes up her mind to leave, of course we’d wish her well! What else do you want? Drag her back and stop her from taking the bright road ahead? Besides, if Sister He Xuan wanted to leave, she could’ve just left yesterday. Why would she introduce us to the two big shots?”
The strength-type ability user who had spoken first persisted. “What if those two wanted to steal He Xuan away and tricked her into leaving, then refused to let her come back? Are we supposed to just wait here until we die?”
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