“Sure enough, as long as you release enough dogs, one of them will catch the prey eventually.”
“I’ve caught you.”
Fu Erdie sensed something and looked in the direction of Ning City. But she quickly snapped back and focused again on dealing with the elephant-shaped zombie in the water.
Seventh rank against sixth rank was, most of the time, overwhelming suppression.
Fu Erdie and Building Seven reached the shore. Once the elephant-shaped zombie came up, she quickly coordinated with x-ray vision and used wind blades to accurately slice toward the zombie’s other crystal cores, soon finishing it off.
This extremely strange zombie, assembled from different bodies, had four crystal cores in total.
“If I’m not wrong,” Cen Xiyang said, watching the plants decompose the zombie’s corpse with a frown, “the human, elephant, chicken, and snake that made it up were all sound-wave attack zombies. But how did they combine together? Did one individual eat the other bodies and then mutate in appearance?”
Fu Erdie said, “That possibility can’t be ruled out.”
But mutated plants and animals were already rare—apart from Butterfly Garden, Fu Erdie had seen fewer than ten ability-bearing plants and animals combined.
There were plenty of ordinary zombie animals without abilities, but perhaps because of animals’ own constitutions, they found it hard to develop abilities.
Thinking of that faint sense of being watched just now, Fu Erdie’s brows stayed furrowed.
The unknown was always what made people uneasy.
Qing City Base had sent people to target her, and now it had been cleared out. But there was still someone behind Qing City Base, and that person was hiding in Ning City Base to the east.
From the existing signs, he had some understanding of her and was clearly targeting her, while she knew nothing about him.
If the person behind the scenes was even more brutal than Ying Da of Qing City Base, and had organised people from the beginning to carry out all kinds of zombie research and discover more inhuman methods of upgrading… then could his current rank be higher than hers?
Fu Erdie felt that this person was most likely at least the same rank as her. After all, even Ying Da had already been sixth rank, and that fire-type zombie hypnotised into wandering out to assassinate Fu Erdie had also been seventh rank.
At the very least, he must be stronger than Ying Da, who was nearly seventh rank, and he also needed the ability to hypnotise a seventh-rank ability zombie king…
Could she beat someone like that?
As an attribute less ability user, she was weaker than others of the same rank. Even if she could use her teammates’ abilities, making her seem to have many output methods and attacks, in the end, she had to rely on her close friends. And those close friends had to be within the range covered by her ability.
She had many times imagined scenarios where she fought other powerful ability users or zombie kings. She knew her greatest support was her close friends, and her greatest weakness was also her close friends.
If the enemy did not attack her, but attacked her close friends first, how could she protect them?
Even if she used metal or other methods to block physical attacks, what about a sixth-rank sound-wave attack like today’s? Or a sixth-rank scent attack or other chemical attack? How could Fu Erdie protect her teammates and defend against everything?
Killing this strange sixth-rank zombie did not make Fu Erdie feel safer. Instead, it made her even more doubtful and vigilant.
After a long silence, Fu Erdie picked up the telegraph and sent messages to D City Base, Jing City Base, An City Base, and Jian City Base.
Close to midnight, the wind calmed a little, and He Xuan’s group finally reunited with Fu Erdie’s group.
Fu Erdie learned about the zombie feeding in the village, let the ability users rest in Building Seven, then took out the map, paper, and pen. In the deep night, she calculated and thought for a long time, finally finding a line of thought through that mental-type ability user.
If Ning City, Qing City, and the entire eastern region farther downstream that had been flooded by the ocean had a population of six hundred million, then in the first year of the apocalypse, the number of first-rank ability zombies would have been sixty thousand.
According to Fu Erdie’s calculations, an ability user needed ten thousand first-rank crystal cores to reach sixth rank, one hundred thousand first-rank crystal cores to reach seventh rank, and an estimated one million first-rank crystal cores to reach eighth rank.
But for her, as an attribute less ability user, and for attribute less zombie kings, this requirement was divided by ten. In principle, when the mental-type ability user at Ning City Base used one hundred thousand first-rank crystal cores to upgrade to seventh rank, Fu Erdie could use those same one hundred thousand crystal cores to upgrade to eighth rank.
Clearly, even the entire southeast region did not have that many crystal cores for him to use. And he still had to cultivate subordinates. There was definitely more than one sixth-rank ability user like Ying Da.
So after using so many crooked methods to upgrade, he should still be at seventh rank and not yet eighth.
He had sent his people to attack her likely not only because he wanted her crystal core, but because he felt she had become a threat.
Because she upgraded too quickly. In the first two years of the apocalypse, she had very likely upgraded even faster than him, despite all his crooked methods.
If Fu Erdie were him, and she had discovered the secret to upgrading by chance, she would definitely maximise the value of every resource.
Just like in the Onmyoji game, there were several types of eggs that could be eaten to level up. Red eggs could be eaten anytime and directly gave experience. White eggs were usually raised to four or five stars before being eaten, because the experience they needed to level up was only half that of other eggs.
For players, cultivating white eggs meant using half the experience to obtain the material needed for upgrading, so of course they had to be used sparingly.
That mental-type ability user might have discovered those special zombie kings among the zombie hordes, but he could not eat a “white egg” zombie king while it was only two or three stars. He had to raise it longer.
So in the beginning, when the zombie kings were still growing and upgrading slowly, that mental-type ability user was probably also struggling to survive, secretly making small moves and not showing himself.
Later, once the system for raising zombie kings took shape and he reached third or fourth rank, his upgrade speed accelerated, and he became an open or hidden leader of one side.
He had discovered the rules of upgrading earlier than everyone else, so after hearing rumours about Fu Erdie’s rank, he likely sent specialised ability users to investigate… and inferred Fu Erdie’s attribute less nature.
Fu Erdie looked at Ning City and Qing City on the map, took a deep breath, closed her eyes, then slowly opened them again.
If his “white eggs” had already matured, and he had confirmed her location, then once the wind and snow stopped, that might be the moment when he emerged with overwhelming strength and officially attacked her.
She could not wait any longer.
Building Seven’s generator was running constantly, and the telegraph also remained switched on. However, the other bases that had received the telegram had not replied.
Fu Erdie asked Pothos to help keep watch over the telegraph and rested on the sofa nearby.
This sleep was not comfortable.
She kept dreaming. She dreamed that in the early days of the apocalypse, she was alone, dazed and muddled.
Although the house, Pothos, and the others did their best to protect her, she had no ability to defend herself.
In the dream, she never discovered that she had an ability, and she never happened to meet Sang Wenhao, who had come to the community to take shelter. So in the winter of the first year of the apocalypse, she was killed at home by a second-rank ability user who forced his way into her room and seemed impossibly powerful at that time.
Her Pothos, Spider Plant, Gardenia, and Succulent all desperately protected her. But it was useless.
At that time, they were still only fragile plants. They had no strength and no attack power. Almost at the same time the intruder beat Fu Erdie to death with a steel rod, those plants were also uprooted and destroyed beyond recognition.
“Xiaodie, Xiaodie!” A distant yet familiar male voice woke her from the dream.
She suddenly sat up from the sofa, face pale and covered in cold sweat.
Sang Wenhao held her hand and pressed his forehead against hers, feeling her temperature.
No fever. No illness.
“Did you have a nightmare?”
Fu Erdie turned her head and slowly looked at Sang Wenhao. For some reason, her eyes stung.
Sang Wenhao tightened his grip on her hand. “It’s okay. It was only a dream. I’ll pour you some hot water.”
Fu Erdie shook her head, wrapped her arms around Sang Wenhao’s lean waist, and buried herself in his embrace.
Was it a dream? Or a previous life?
If Sang Wenhao really had not come, maybe she truly would have died in that dark winter night, just like in the dream, knowing nothing about her special ability.
“Thank you for coming to my side,” Fu Erdie murmured.
Sang Wenhao paused, then the tension in his expression softened.
“And thank you for letting me stay.” He hugged her tightly, pulling her into his arms.
D City Base was the first to reply.
While Fu Erdie was still trapped in the nightmare and had not yet woken up, their telegram had already arrived.
In the middle of the night, Rong Le’an and the other D City leaders held an emergency meeting and replied that they were willing to let Fu Erdie’s plants fully enter D City. But in exchange, the edible fruits produced by the intelligent plants stationed in D City could be handled by D City Base themselves, as payment for allowing Butterfly Garden’s entry.
This exchange could hardly be considered payment. After all, Fu Erdie did not have the energy to manage the surplus food. If the plants produced fruits like toys out of boredom and did not want to manage them, of course the nearby people could handle and eat them.
D City’s reply was very fast. Even through the telegraph, the wording carried a hint of excitement. The other bases were different.
After careful consideration, Jing City Base gave a very official reply seventeen hours later: “The ten intelligent plants you previously supported our base with have already greatly reduced the impact of zombie mutation incidents inside our base. We temporarily do not require further assistance.”
Fu Erdie could understand. After all, from other people’s perspective, regardless of the personalities and habits of these intelligent plants, they were ultimately controlled by Fu Erdie. If they entered a base in large numbers and caused damage, the base would have no time to respond.
Jian City Base and An City Base were even slower to respond. An City Base took a full two days before politely declining.
“The area around the base can be managed by you, but for now, the inside of the base does not need it.”
Fu Erdie thought this was fine. This alone was enough.
On the other side, Jian City Base did not reply for a long time. They even pretended several times that they had not received the telegram.
Fu Erdie was too lazy to arrange a messenger and simply defaulted to treating them the same as An City Base.
Now, the division of territory across Hua Nation was already clear. Apart from Jing City and the broad two-hundred-kilometre area around it, the ten thousand hectares belonging to An City and Jian City respectively, the remote and less important Miao Province Base, and Ning City’s territory, everything else could be handled by Fu Erdie as she pleased.
Since that was the case, she would no longer hold back and slowly negotiate through trades.
Wherever this wind passed, that was where Fu Erdie’s domain could reach.
Inside Building Seven, Fu Erdie, Sang Wenhao, the others, and He Xuan’s team ate together. Fu Erdie announced that she would go into seclusion for a few days to lay things out.
“Eat when you should eat. Rest when you should rest. Don’t look for me.”
Ability users had huge appetites, and Fu Erdie ate three times as much as usual for this meal.
She did not know how long she would need to work and prepare, so she first made sure her body had enough energy.
Building Seven had a massage chair that was not plugged in. Fu Erdie sat in it, found the most comfortable position to recline, held a fifth-rank dandelion in her hands, closed her eyes, and entered the dandelion’s ability space.
It was a plain made entirely of dandelions. The weather was clear, and from time to time a breeze swept past, stirring waves across the sea of dandelions.
This space did not belong only to the fifth-rank dandelion in her hand. It was shared by all the dandelions within a fifty-kilometre radius.
Fu Erdie felt very at ease in this space. She fully immersed her ability and consciousness into it, spread them to the outermost ring of dandelions, and led those dandelions at the edge to ride the wind and continue expanding outward.
The area beyond the domain boundary was pure white. Fu Erdie’s extension had limits. If, before reaching her limit, she saw another small dandelion land like an isolated island in the distance, it meant she had contacted another distant dandelion’s domain.
The two sides connected and smoothly merged into one.
Fu Erdie stayed in the newly added domain for a while, then did a round of push-pull. Once both she and the dandelions had recovered their energy, she continued extending outward.
This was the scene in the ability space. In reality, if someone looked down from high above, they would see vast stretches of dandelion fluff riding the chaotic wind and snow, drifting freely in all directions.
Mixed into the snow, they were not very noticeable, but they were indeed extending, and extending.
Every few kilometres at the boundary, the dandelion fluff would pause briefly, leave behind one seed beneath the snow to take root and sprout, while the rest continued forward.
Across the vast land, with Building Seven where Fu Erdie was as the centre, the dandelion fluff spread outward little by little, circle by circle.
The first wave of fluff had all landed. The newly produced fluff continued riding the wind and flying in every direction.
In Jian City, a soft piece of dandelion fluff drifted past the front of a sentry’s telescope, drawing no attention from him.
In the valley where Ning City fed its zombies, the zombie king watched the drifting fluff fall, but did not even move its eyes.
In a certain mountain cellar, a hidden ability-user team made their routine observation of the surroundings. A dandelion landed at an angled corner ten metres outside the cellar door, and the ability users did not notice.
The violent wind kept blowing, and blowing.
The dandelion domain also kept spreading.
Fu Erdie repeated the cycle of exhausting herself, recovering through push-pull, exhausting herself again, and recovering again, continuing for five full days.
She was immersed in the dandelions’ special, interconnected ability world, but her body was not completely unaware. Every time she felt thirsty, she could sense a warm, broad hand holding the side of her face, slowly pouring sweet water mixed with honey and watermelon juice into her mouth.
Her mouth was sweet, and her heart was sweet too.
She pushed forward in one breath, continuously expanding the domain.
Finally, when the sun rose on the sixth day, Fu Erdie saw another large dandelion domain at the end of the energy space. A familiar, joyful, intimate feeling rushed toward her.
The dandelions of C City!
Fu Erdie had led the dandelion colony across twelve hundred kilometres and connected with the dandelions of C City!
Leave a Reply