After the apocalypse, excluding the bases that had been submerged, Hua Country still had eight major bases in total: New Province Base in the northwest, Jing City Base in the northeast, Miao Province Base in the southwest, Qing City Base in the southeast, Ning City Base in the east, D City Base in the central-east, An City Base in the central-north, and Jian City Base in the centre.
Now Qing City Base had already fallen, and New Province Base had joined D City Base’s Butterfly Garden. That left only six major bases.
Jian City, where Building Seven was located, sat roughly in the middle of the six major bases. Even the farthest one, Jing City Base, was only nine hundred kilometres away, almost half the distance from C City to Jing City. It was much more convenient to decide at short notice which base to visit.
Not to mention, Jian City itself also had Jian City Base.
However, at the beginning of the year, Fu Erdie had taken Building Seven around sweeping through zombies and had already cleared most of the area between Jian City and C City. Now Jian City only faced pressure from the zombie hordes to the east.
The snowstorm was too fierce, and Fu Erdie’s movement speed was limited. She did not want to face another situation where she went out to fight monsters while the safety of the rear could not be guaranteed. So she could only trouble those ability users to go out and gather information.
Among the people sent to investigate the other bases were He Xuan, who had the luck buff, and her old partner Ye Jia, the wind ability user. As core members and old employees of Butterfly Garden, Fu Erdie trusted them greatly. She gave Ye Jia all the wind-type crystal cores collected along the way and upgraded her to fifth rank. She gave He Xuan the crystal cores that enhanced her mysterious luck attribute and upgraded her to fourth rank.
This was equivalent to prepaid wages. Fu Erdie promised that she would help the two of them continue upgrading later.
Setting out with them were Tan Haoge, the lightning ability user from Qing City Base, Xin Nuo, the purification ability user, and several other relatively trustworthy ability users with strong self-preservation skills.
Going out was very hard, but they had a water ability user in charge of water, two intelligent mutated plants in charge of food and treatment, and, besides the map, Yin Xuan from C City University Town, who had an extremely strong ability to remember roads and identify terrain.
This team had complete equipment and complementary abilities. Almost every aspect had been considered, reducing the danger and difficulty of the trip.
If they really encountered danger, the fourth-rank dandelion they carried could lift them in the gale and let them flee with the wind.
This team’s target areas were Ning City Base and Jing City Base to the east and northeast. Besides them, another team of ability users headed toward Miao Province Base in the southeast.
Their goal was clear: they would pretend to be ordinary ability users seeking shelter in the strong wind and snow, approach the bases, or even enter them, and gather information. Once they obtained useful news, they would find an opportunity to assemble the telegraph machine with a storage battery and send the information back to Butterfly Garden.
During this period, Fu Erdie would operate with Jian City as the centre. She would take Building Seven out to attack zombie hordes whenever the wind and snow eased, or use the scent of gardenias to spread the smell of humans in the wind, attracting zombies to gather before attacking them. They would continuously strengthen themselves and clear zombies as much as possible.
By late October, there were no zombies left within a hundred kilometres of Jian City.
By late November, the temperature had fallen to minus fifty-five degrees. D City and Butterfly Garden’s technical departments finally developed a small, movable ability-powered generator, which could be used by Building Seven and any ability-user teams or research teams that needed to go out.
Fu Erdie immediately made a trip home. While visiting her family, she also brought out the new generator.
Fu Erdie was not surprised. Jian City Base’s infrastructure was extremely poor, and they were simply enduring the cold. No one knew how long the temperature would continue to drop in the future.
Without further cold-proofing work, forget the base’s normal operation; he could not even be sure whether he himself could survive until the next day in such cold weather.
After all, quite a few ability users at the base had already failed to endure it and died unknowingly in the cold night.
Fu Erdie was not surprised by their choice. She had also long since used x-ray vision and detection instruments to investigate Jian City Base’s situation. There was nothing abnormal about it. It was just an ordinary base taken over by ability users after the apocalypse.
However, unlike D City and New Province Base, there were no ordinary people in this base.
As a base that had originally protected a group of civilians under military control, Fu Erdie was unsure what arrangements—or even methods of disposal—they had used for those ordinary people. If they had directly killed them through various means like Qing City Base, Fu Erdie would not interfere.
If they had simply driven ordinary people away like many places had… Fu Erdie needed to look at their ability spaces before deciding.
So Fu Erdie made a request.
When Jian City Base’s leader, Luo Can, received the reply brought by the messenger, he frowned in confusion.
“Allow her to use her ability on everyone in the base and conduct screening… What does that mean?”
Jian City Base had so many people and so many supplies. Whoever they joined should be happy for a long time. Yet this Butterfly Garden Leader was actually being picky and wanted to do some kind of screening?
And…
“Isn’t her ability plant-type and home-type dual abilities? How is she going to screen people?”
In the meeting room, several subordinates fell silent at the same time.
In truth, they had discussed this Butterfly Garden Leader’s ability many times, but each time, they failed to reach any particularly effective conclusion.
Butterfly Garden Leader publicly claimed to have both plant-type and home-type abilities. But whose ability could be separated and left at home while the user herself roamed outside?
Moreover, ability users who had fled from Qing City Base, as well as some ability users who often moved around C City and D City, had mentioned many times when passing through Jian City to search for supplies that Butterfly Garden Leader could fly and use wind.
Although her man was a metal ability user who could fly, and they could forcefully treat him as the reason Butterfly Garden Leader could fly, what about using wind?
Could she be a three-ability user?
They always felt that Butterfly Garden Leader’s ability was not that simple.
Now Butterfly Garden Leader had even proposed using her ability on Jian City Base’s people. What should they do? Let her come and kill their own people?
Luo Can could not understand it, so he simply sent the messenger on another trip to ask clearly what was going on.
Two days later, the messenger brought a new reply.
Luo Can looked at the letter, somewhat dazed.
“High-rank ability users can actually evolve new abilities?”
In the letter, Fu Erdie did not directly state her rank. She only said that after upgrading to a certain level, she could sense an ability user’s good and evil, as well as the extent of the evil they had once committed, based on the ability they released.
It had to be said that this made Luo Can’s heart pound uneasily.
Even though Fu Erdie said that water too clear had no fish, and that killing done for survival fell within the normal range, she would not be overly demanding. As long as someone was not rotten at the root and likely to affect Butterfly Garden’s people, she would not deal with them.
But no matter what, every standard was in Butterfly Garden Leader’s hands. She herself was the standard.
What counted as normal judgement, and what counted as overly strict judgement, were all up to her. Luo Can and the others would have no autonomy at all.
How could they possibly agree to that?
And so, Jian City’s attempt to join them came to nothing.
Fu Erdie did not particularly care. As long as they did not cause trouble for her, they could do whatever they wanted.
In the blink of an eye, two and a half years had passed since the apocalypse began. It was now the end of the third year of the apocalypse.
After taking Building Seven and clearing a two-hundred-kilometre radius around Jian City, Fu Erdie arrived in An City for the New Year.
An City Base took the initiative to greet Building Seven, exchange information, and even sent some An City special products as New Year gifts to express goodwill.
Fu Erdie accepted them with a smile and returned a gift as well: healing zucchinis. Then she set up camp in An City and began clearing the surrounding zombies.
As days passed, the more zombies Fu Erdie cleared, the more clearly she sensed the ratio of ability zombies among the zombies increasing.
According to feedback from D City Base and Butterfly Garden, there were also more records of ordinary people suddenly becoming zombies or ability users without being scratched.
This change had already shown signs before, so the plant cubs had always been paying attention. Once they discovered someone in a crowd turning into a zombie, they would immediately react, tie them up, then strangle and absorb them after they fully turned into a zombie.
In fact, a person turning into a zombie was a process. At first, the brain was corroded. All memories, consciousness, and even what many people were now willing to believe was the soul would die along with the death of neurons. In medical terms, this was brain death.
After that, the person’s body would begin showing zombie-like characteristics, such as the pupils becoming cloudy and gradually pitch-black, corpse spots appearing on the body, and then being unable to control the zombie instinct to kill and eat people, attacking those around them.
In the past, when a person became brain-dead, the plant cubs would rush up and kill the person who was currently zombifying. But after the misunderstanding from D City’s ordinary people, the plants in D City stopped involving themselves in the base’s internal matters.
It was only later, when newly born intelligent mutated plants were still young and begged by the base’s people to return and help, that new plants began controlling the situation inside D City Base. As for the plant cubs who had been wronged at the beginning, they could not be bothered to care.
These plants had their own communication network, and through word of mouth, they had also accepted one default principle: do not let there be any suspicion when it came to killing zombies. Let these not-too-bright humans clearly see that their relatives or companions had indeed zombified. Only then would the plants kill.
Plants did not understand human emotions, nor did they understand why those people cried when someone died.
As for them, from birth, they had many, many so-called brothers and sisters. Some brothers and sisters were not smart and did not mutate, so they were eaten by humans as soon as they were born.
Among the remaining mutated brothers and sisters, many were also very stupid. They could not communicate or think. They just stood there blankly. If there was too much water, they did not know to move somewhere drier. If they were thirsty, they did not know to find water. If they were hungry, they did not know to hunt. If they were cold, they did not know to find a place sheltered from the wind.
In short, they were dull. Without someone to care for them, even these mutated but unintelligent brothers and sisters would die when the environment became too unsuitable.
What remained were the cubs like them, who could jump and run!
So although their numbers seemed to be increasing now, many of their brothers and sisters had died too! Some had even been eaten by humans!
But they did not feel anything about it. Why exactly did these humans cry?
But if their Park Leader died… No, the Park Leader would not die~ So there was nothing sad in this world!
Fu Erdie did not know what these new plant cubs she had not yet met were thinking. If she did, she would probably have to mutter, “Sorry, I’m going to eat you,” every time she looked at the fruits and vegetables she ate every day…
She and Sang Wenhao, Cen Xiyang, Han Zhi, along with Pothos and Succulent, spent New Year’s Eve in Building Seven in An City.
The small ability-powered generator was placed outside the city, constantly receiving the wind energy outside and treating it as wind-type ability power to keep one room warm.
Fu Erdie and the others ate vegetable hotpot and mutton from the sheep raised by Butterfly Garden, passing midnight on December 31st.
Once the year turned, it was the fourth year of the apocalypse.
The temperature on New Year’s Eve stabilised at minus sixty degrees.
Outside, as far as the eye could see, there was nothing but ice, snow, and decaying buildings. There was no trace of any living creature moving. Even the zombies’ joints should have frozen stiff, making them unable to move, so they disappeared from sight too.
The whole world sank further into silence.
When D City Base communicated with the other major bases, everyone requested the new ability-powered generator developed by D City and Butterfly Garden.
After several rounds of negotiation, both sides sent people to Jian City and An City, the two cities in central locations, to carry out several exchanges.
The trades went smoothly. D City and Butterfly Garden obtained many special materials needed for research, as well as some fuel and mineral resources needed for base operation.
Along the way, through various probing, both sides also learned some information.
Except for Jing City Base, the other bases had no ordinary people.
Jing City Base currently had the most complete infrastructure, but it also had the largest and most difficult ordinary population.
Their heating method was very primitive: everyone squeezed into one room. Comfort was completely out of the question. They just had to squeeze together, and everyone wanted to stay away from the walls or outer edges and squeeze toward the middle. It smelled terrible, there were many disputes, and there were many cases of flu and contagious skin diseases.
But they could not care about that. They only wanted to live.
After Jing City Base made contact with D City Base, what they wanted was not ability-powered generators, because they had also invented similar equipment. What they wanted was crops that could feed several million people.
When Fu Erdie first heard that Jing City Base had several million survivors, she was completely stunned.
Since the apocalypse began, she had never heard of so many ordinary people!
D City Base had struggled immensely just to feed thirty thousand people and had nearly failed to hold on. Yet Jing City had actually taken in three million ordinary people!
It had to be said that this was a miracle.
D City did not simply believe whatever Jing City said. So when trading, they also sent two fourth-rank ability users to follow Jing City’s team and take a look. During the second trade in January, they brought back accurate news.
There really were three million survivors, and they were all ordinary people.
This time, Fu Erdie truly respected them.
She had Butterfly Garden support them with large quantities of mutated crops that they actually had no time to plant, urgently cultivated them, and sent them to Jing City Base. At the same time, after asking some of the plant cubs for their opinions, she discussed with Jing City Base and sent many intelligent plants over.
These plants could help Jing City Base ease the pressure of handling ordinary people turning into zombies, and could control zombifying ordinary people as quickly as possible.
After Jing City Base learned some of D City Base and Butterfly Garden’s situation, they also sent ability users from their technical team to exchange and learn.
During this exchange, Fu Erdie discovered a new problem.
It was an ability riot that had existed long ago, but had been suppressed and overlooked because of Fu Erdie’s ability.
Everyone with an ability had their own energy space. After many people used their abilities, their energy spaces would riot.
Just like when she first came into contact with Sang Wenhao, his energy space had many metal spikes flying everywhere, crashing wildly around. This made his ability unstable and unconsciously harmed the ability user himself.
At the same time, ability users had very high food requirements. Their need for various nutrients, especially vegetables, fruit, protein, and meat, was extremely urgent. For some ability users with lower ranks, or higher ranks but severe elemental deficiencies, if you threw them a type of food they lacked, they might instantly become like zombies, full of animalistic hunger, letting their desire for food control all their actions.
However, Fu Erdie’s ability could soothe her close friends, and the house’s repair effect could also help the ability users in the complex stabilise their abilities.
Even the ability users of D City Base, after eating many fruits from intelligent plants, could maintain a relatively good and normal state.
The people from other bases were not so lucky.
When injured, they used crystal cores to ask healing ability users for help. When their ability spaces became chaotic, they desperately sought different plant ability users to buy different foods from.
If nothing worked, they paused using their abilities and forced themselves to endure.
But there were so many ability users, and the apocalypse had gone on for so long. There would always come a day when someone could no longer endure.
One technical department ability user travelling from Jing City to Butterfly Garden suddenly began bleeding from all seven orifices near Butterfly Garden, without warning. His ability rioted, and he fainted.
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