“Please, Butterfly Garden Principal,” the surrounding D City decision-makers solemnly urged.
Fu Erdie nodded.
Even without them saying it, she would go. After all, the butterfly garden was too prominent. It had been Ning City Base’s primary target for such a long time.
She took a deep breath.
“Move out.”
This time, she did not fly directly to An City with Sang Wenhao. Instead, she set off with D City’s tanks, artillery shells, and all kinds of energy weapons.
She and Sang Wenhao would use their abilities as much as possible to reduce the weight of the armed convoy. When they encountered areas cut off by rocks or rivers that could not be crossed, they would use the old method and lift each tank and vehicle one by one, flying them over the difficult terrain.
These huge machines, each weighing dozens of tons, placed a heavy burden on Fu Erdie and Sang Wenhao. Along the way, they transported them while constantly using push-pull to recover their strength. Only by moving day and night without stopping could they maintain the convoy’s speed.
Finally, two days later, after crossing countless difficulties, the convoy arrived at An City covered in dust and exhaustion.
At this time, Ning City Base’s zombie king horde was also accelerating toward An City. It was less than fifty kilometres away.
The battle was about to begin.
That night, the wind stopped, and the whole world was deathly silent.
The house spread out its domain, adjusting itself to its most natural state, and enveloped An City Base within it.
As for Building Seven’s main body, under the house’s control, it moved out everyone’s daily belongings. Then it transformed into a dark green liquid and clung to the eastern city wall of An City Base.
The plants that had merged inseparably with Building Seven were finally completely liberated at this moment. They stretched out their branches, leaves, and roots, ready to strike.
The pothos, succulent, gardenia, and spider plant were the founding members. They were family who had accompanied Fu Erdie since before the apocalypse, and they were the closest companions who bickered and fought with each other, yet remained the most intimate.
Freed from the building, they were filled with fighting spirit.
At seventh-rank, they had already explored and upgraded their respective areas of expertise to the extreme. The succulent’s defence could constantly adjust its foothold according to its companions’ attack angles and root positions, becoming a flexible shield for them. Its fleshy leaves, harder than steel city walls, could bear tons of attacks for its companions.
The pothos was still the boss of the plants. Its absolutely overwhelming strength and explosive instant power allowed it to seize every opportunity to snap an enemy’s neck.
The spider plant was extremely fast, and when deliberately controlled, its leaves became extremely thin, small, and dark. They were almost invisible at night, allowing it to turn completely into a ghostly assassin and become excellent at finishing off enemies.
The gardenia’s scent was strange and unpredictable. It could increase its teammates’ combat power, reduce the enemy’s attacks, create hallucinations in intelligent humans, and slow down the movements of less intelligent zombies.
The four of them complemented one another and had honed their teamwork. Facing the zombie king horde and high-rank ability users was still pressuring, but with the Garden Principal’s help, their infinite regeneration and recovery meant they were not afraid at all.
Instead, the real issue lay with Fu Erdie and the dandelions. If they could not kill Bin Mushi and defend against his psychic contamination, then it was only a matter of time before everyone else was contaminated or hypnotised.
The technical department head’s words still echoed in her ears.
The opponent lacked explosive power but had high sustained damage, while she had strong burst power and stronger offensive ability. As long as she killed him first… it was not impossible.
A vast formation made up of hundreds of high-rank ability users and zombie kings advanced from the distance. Before the two sides had even formally seen each other, the first clash had already begun.
Long-range ability attacks collided in mid-air, creating fierce storms of power. The sound of exploding shells followed closely behind, deafening.
Underground, earth-type ability attacks intertwined with the attacks of plant roots, occasionally triggering huge tremors. For a time, sand and stones flew everywhere, and the scene fell into chaos.
Amid the chaos, the power of psychic contamination spread like unnoticed dirty water flowing over the ground, alarming no one. Wherever it passed, the attacks of the zombie kings and ability users belonging to Ning City Base became even more frenzied.
Fu Erdie closed her eyes and sensed that cold, damp, sinister aura approaching.
At this moment, all the dandelions were flying high in the sky, keeping a considerable distance from the ground. However, the instant the psychic contamination drew near, the foremost sixth-rank dandelion still withered halfway in an instant.
Fu Erdie pulled it back. In the dandelion energy space, she swapped her own energy with the dandelion’s energy, instantly replacing it at the very front line of contact with the psychic contamination. She seized the psychic ability user’s energy fluctuation and invaded in reverse.
Her speed was extremely fast and fierce, like a fish swimming upstream through sewage, heading straight for the source of the filth.
However, the other party reacted very quickly. The flow was cut off midway, stopping the “fish” from tracing it back.
Fu Erdie frowned.
She had four ways to attack a person’s energy space.
The first was physical contact, such as grabbing the opponent’s shoulder or arm and instantly driving her ability into them. This was the fastest and most reliable method.
The second was when the opponent was within one kilometre of her pure ability attack range. Fu Erdie could send her own ability out like a ranged attack. Once it struck the opponent, the ability could directly rush into their energy space and destroy the source of their ability with crushing force.
The third was by touching the ability the opponent was actively outputting. Whether it was the spreading psychic contamination just now, which Bin Mushi had been continuously controlling, or the way some plant-type ability users continuously controlled plants to attack, as long as the attack came within one kilometre, Fu Erdie could seize it and trace it back to its source.
But if it was something like a wind blade or an arrow, where a burst of energy was sent out and no longer controlled afterward, Fu Erdie could not trace it back. It was the same now.
Bin Mushi had essentially sent his attack out without continuing to control or retrieve it, so Fu Erdie could not catch him by the tail.
Not only that, but when Fu Erdie directly touched the opponent’s ability attack, she had to bear the damage herself.
The uncontrolled psychic contamination had now stained Fu Erdie’s originally pure white and empty energy space with a little grey. It was not much, but it was disgusting.
“Fu Erdie.” Sang Wenhao reminded her to open her eyes and look at the ability indicator.
“That psychic ability user called Bin Mushi…” Sang Wenhao’s voice was heavy. “He is eighth-rank.”
Fu Erdie’s fist tightened slightly.
Although she had expected it… when this terrible situation truly arrived, her heart still sank.
Sang Wenhao held her hand. “I’ll go find Bin Mushi. I’ll be the bridge that lets you make contact with him.”
This was Fu Erdie’s fourth method of attack.
When a close companion was within one kilometre of the enemy, and Fu Erdie was within twenty kilometres of that close companion, Fu Erdie could use the close companion’s energy space as a springboard. Just like she had done in the dandelion’s energy space earlier, she could swap her own energy with theirs and launch a counterattack.
Fu Erdie rejected Sang Wenhao’s proposal. “You’re sixth-rank. Facing an eighth-rank is too dangerous. They’ll come over sooner or later. We’ll wait for him to come.”
During this period, Fu Erdie was not idle. She simultaneously controlled six close companions’ abilities and continuously launched long-range harassment attacks.
On the surface, the two sides appeared evenly matched. The people in the base watched abilities flying everywhere and felt greatly encouraged. Sang Wenhao and the other ability users who had reached sixth-rank, as well as the plant cubs, were doing their best to assist in the battle. Both sides exchanged blows, fighting fiercely. After fumbling around for a while, they learned to predict the direction and position in which ability zombies would jump. After wasting many shells, they also hit many sixth-rank ability users and zombie kings.
However, Fu Erdie knew that the situation was not optimistic.
By the time the zombie king horde reached a position five kilometres from An City Base, their force of several hundred had already been reduced to only forty or fifty.
The others cheered, but Fu Erdie, Sang Wenhao, and the few who knew the inside story looked increasingly grim.
Because the crystal cores of those killed ability users and ability zombies had already been absorbed by Bin Mushi at the instant of their deaths.
In other words, these losses were not losses at all for Bin Mushi. They were merely helping him slaughter the pigs he had raised so he could eat them.
By contrast, their own side had been drained of quite a lot of energy by those pigs.
Moreover, Bin Mushi’s psychic contamination had continued the entire time. Fu Erdie could no longer let the dandelions’ energy space remain connected, so she could only try to turn them back into individual entities.
It was like how an ordinary person could flatten a large, wide, empty gift box with one punch, but would find it difficult to flatten a square little cardboard box the size of an eraser. Even if they forced it, they would hurt their hand.
Sure enough, after giving up their interconnected nature, the dandelions were finally not contaminated as easily. They unleashed their own wind abilities freely and attacked the enemy with great momentum. For a moment, it even seemed as though the butterfly garden had gained some advantage again.
And now, the one most easily contaminated had instead become Fu Erdie.
Because she was connected to every close companion around An City and was monitoring their energy spaces. Once anyone suffered a psychic attack first, Fu Erdie would immediately seize the opportunity to swap and trace it back.
As this happened more and more, the negative state of psychic contamination kept accumulating in Fu Erdie’s energy space. And Fu Erdie had not successfully traced back even once.
The other party had clearly discovered this as well. Even when his subordinates had already reached the city gates and entered close-range combat outside An City Base, he still did not approach. It looked as though he had made up his mind to wear her down from a distance.
Fu Erdie stood on the city wall and used X-ray vision, looking through the layers of plants and zombies toward the dark figure still twenty kilometres away. She could not help sneering and called out loudly.
“Eighth-rank against seventh-rank, attribute against no attribute, and even under these circumstances you still don’t dare show your face? Are you that afraid of me?”
The distant figure made no movement, but the zombie kings’ attacks became even more intense.
Clearly, Bin Mushi could hear through the ears of those he had contaminated.
“In that case, I’ll start with your little brothers.”
She did not believe he could abandon his underlings the way she had abandoned the dandelions’ shared energy space.
As long as he dared abandon them, she would immediately dare to snatch and absorb the crystal core energy of these zombie kings!
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