If the dandelions around Building Seven were drifting fluff in the cold wind, then the dandelions in C City were the most vibrant oasis in a vast snowfield.
Their flowers were large, but their leaves were large too. Every part of them flourished openly. They had no need to enlarge the snowy-white parts of their bodies as camouflage in the ice and snow.
They were relaxed, free, and carefree, growing proudly and recklessly in the heavy snow. When they saw their companions coming from afar, they immediately welcomed them with joy and connected with them as one.
This was what dandelions were.
This was the dandelions’ greatest special trait apart from their wind ability.
The reason dandelions could transmit messages to one another, and even pass Fu Erdie’s ability push-pull to injured dandelion companions far away, was because their energy spaces could connect to each other.
It was just that one dandelion’s ability was limited. Once the distance exceeded a certain range, reconnecting became extremely difficult.
Like now, connecting so many dandelions across more than a thousand kilometres was very strenuous.
The connections between them were like elastic ropes.
Within five kilometres of Building Seven, where Fu Erdie was, the elastic ropes were very relaxed, not even needing to be stretched.
Extending outward was, in essence, forcibly pulling the elastic rope outward, then driving a nail into each limit point to fix it in place and planting a new dandelion there.
The new dandelion would have its own small elastic rope. Fu Erdie connected that section of elastic rope to the main body, then continued stretching outward. When she reached the new limit, she planted another dandelion.
In this way, she expanded the domain bit by bit. Reaching C City was already another limit.
Unlike Fu Erdie’s vast, constantly taut dandelion network, C City’s dandelions were connected to Butterfly Garden in a very loose and free state.
Their volume—in other words, the size of their elastic rope—was actually about the same as Fu Erdie’s dandelion colony that stretched for thousands of kilometres. The instant they touched and merged, the pressure across the entire taut domain suddenly eased. All the dandelions, including Fu Erdie, relaxed greatly.
Meanwhile, Fu Erdie’s dandelion domains in the other directions had already extended to the edges of Jing City, Ning City, and Miao Province.
Apart from the vast northwest, which took up half of Hua Nation’s land, Fu Erdie had already covered all the urgent areas.
She did not immediately withdraw from this state. Instead, she took advantage of the wind and snow to begin a full-scale ability push-pull.
This was a long recovery process, and also a process of training her ability.
All the dandelions unconsciously quieted down, sinking into an incredibly tranquil, gentle, and comfortable “exclusive gardener spa” inside the energy space.
Day after day passed. Fu Erdie gradually lost her sense of day and night.
Because in the dandelions’ energy space, whether it was blue sky and white clouds or a sky full of stars depended entirely on the mood of the little ones.
When they wanted to play, the whole world became bright as daylight, with cool spring wind blowing loudly.
When they had played enough and wanted to rest, the space became a sea of dandelions beneath the night sky.
They could accept Fu Erdie’s push-pull while still causing mischief in reality: teasing other plant cubs, playing with familiar people in the community, or discovering a passing zombie horde and secretly killing a few zombies to eat before the zombie king noticed and fleeing far away.
The dandelions’ lives continued as usual. It did not delay them at all.
Only Fu Erdie lay in the massage chair the entire time, constantly performing ability push-pull, and her body visibly thinned.
By April, no matter how Sang Wenhao fed her nutrient-rich watermelon juice, zucchini juice, bitter melon juice, pumpkin juice… all the juices from every fruit and vegetable Building Seven had, Fu Erdie still continued to lose weight uncontrollably.
Cen Xiyang and Han Zhi came to see her many times every day. If not for the dandelion growing larger and larger—especially the one Fu Erdie held in her hand, which had upgraded from fifth rank to sixth rank and was almost bigger than the massage chair—Cen Xiyang would have suspected her best friend was dying!
In the blink of an eye, two months passed. In late April, Cen Xiyang could no longer sit still and prepared to forcibly shake Fu Erdie awake.
The moment her hand touched Fu Erdie’s arm, Fu Erdie seemed to sense something and slowly opened her eyes.
Cen Xiyang stared at Fu Erdie’s clear, moist eyes and froze. The next second, she fiercely ruffled Fu Erdie’s head.
“Go look in a mirror! Look how thin you’ve gotten!”
Fu Erdie did not struggle. She simply smiled and let Cen Xiyang rub her hair.
Her gaze passed over Cen Xiyang and the huge dandelion, then fell on Sang Wenhao, who stood to the side looking at her gently. Their eyes met, and they smiled.
How wonderful.
Fu Erdie really had become skin and bones, weighing only a little over seventy jin.
But her mind was in excellent condition, and her energy was extremely abundant. If not for the fact that she was so thin it took her a long while even to stand, she would have thought she was incredibly strong and could rush straight to Ning City to fight that mental-type ability user in one breath.
Her spirit was good. Her ability was full. But her physical strength was not.
Fu Erdie estimated the current weather trend.
Mm. It was time to start rebuilding her body.
After two months without eating, relying only on juices to maintain her body’s basic needs, Fu Erdie was extremely hungry.
While eating, she told everyone about the changes in the dandelions.
The dandelions had connected across the country. Over two months, they had continuously upgraded, formed a coordinate system in the energy space corresponding to reality, and successfully located all the zombie hordes across large areas of Hua Nation.
Some scattered zombies without zombie kings had already been dealt with by the dandelions.
For zombie hordes with zombie kings, or with powerful and sharp ability zombies, the dandelions had not attacked rashly. Instead, they ambushed small targets when they could while marking the locations of those zombie hordes.
The terrain of the dandelions’ energy space was clearly not the same as the real world, but the general directions and layout matched. For example, if the terrain was flattened into a plane and placed into a coordinate system, then when a dandelion at a certain coordinate in the energy space reported the location of a zombie horde, finding the corresponding coordinate in reality would locate that zombie horde.
Excluding the northwest, Jing City, Ning City, Miao Province, and the flooded areas, Fu Erdie’s dandelion colony occupied a full two million square kilometres of land.
During these two months, Fu Erdie had been reinforcing this already-taut elastic rope, strengthening it again and again, while every individual dandelion also continued to upgrade.
At first, Fu Erdie needed six days to push-pull the entire two-million-square-kilometre energy space, and that was with great difficulty and constant stumbling. Later, as she became more skilled and faster, six days became five, then four… eventually, she compressed the time to half a day!
In other words, within twenty-four hours, she could train all the dandelions twice.
Fu Erdie was currently seventh rank. When she performed a push-pull on a close friend once, it was equivalent to feeding them one attribute less first-rank crystal core, or ten different-attribute crystal cores.
After two months, even newly born dandelions had been forcibly raised to fourth rank by Fu Erdie.
However, many new dandelions were still being born later, and upgrading to fifth and sixth rank required more time. On average, the whole dandelion colony was fourth rank. But many individuals that had originally been mid-fifth rank had been forcibly raised to sixth rank. When connected with the group, they displayed as fourth rank. If they were not singled out and tested individually, probably no one except Fu Erdie would know that the dandelion in front of them was sixth rank.
From early June last year to late April now, the ice-and-snow period had lasted a full eleven months.
Through the dandelions, Fu Erdie sensed one thing: the earth was warming.
This process was not as fast as the cooling, but since March, the temperature had been inching closer to zero. When Fu Erdie woke up, the temperature had risen from the coldest point earlier in the year, minus sixty degrees, to minus twenty degrees.
If this trend continued, the temperature might return to zero next month.
For most humans, animals, and plants, this was a good thing—the revival of all things. But for Fu Erdie and that mysterious mental-type ability user, it was the prelude to war.
After all, the wind and snow not only made movement difficult for ability users, but also froze zombies stiff, making it hard for them to move. If Ning City’s mental-type ability user could not control zombies, it was like cutting off one of his own arms.
Fu Erdie looked at her shockingly thin body.
She had to strengthen herself quickly and enter battle condition.
There was not much time left for her, her teammates, and the plant cubs.
….
Jian City.
During this winter that had lasted a whole year, five hundred of Jian City Base’s two thousand ability users had died one after another. The survivors each had a thermometer in hand and spent every day hoping for the temperature to rise.
Base leader Luo Can was wrapped in thick clothes. Looking at the letter in his hand, he could not help stamping his feet.
Give him a crystal core and ask him to monitor Butterfly Garden’s leader? Was this Ning City person insane?
He was a fourth-rank ability user. Asking him to watch a seventh-rank person—no one with a functional brain would come up with that idea!
Suppressing his greed, Luo Can pushed back the crystal core the messenger had brought.
“Thank you for Ning City Base Leader’s appreciation, but my ability is truly too weak. I can’t do this.”
Unlike Luo Can, who was dressed like a bear, the messenger wore a windproof mask and a thick cloak. He did not look bulky. To others, he even looked rather lightly dressed.
The messenger’s voice was hoarse. “Are you sure you don’t want this crystal core? It matches your attribute. It is a mental-type crystal core.”
Luo Can paused, but still forced himself to remain rational and refused.
“Even if I eat a same-attribute fourth-rank crystal core, at most I’ll upgrade to fifth rank…”
“Who told you this is fourth rank?”
The messenger took out a square box.
The box was very simple. When opened, there was a transparent crystal core inside and a display panel showing a number.
Its initial number was 6. When it approached Luo Can, the number changed to 4.
Luo Can: “…”
Luo Can sharply inhaled.
This was an ability detector from a large base. Jian City, which had no proper connection to either side and no real infrastructure, had only managed to obtain one of these things, and it was always kept with the base patrol team.
He was fourth rank, while the person in front of him was actually sixth rank!
As if that was not enough, the man took out the crystal core that had just been pushed back and forth and placed it into the box.
The number slowly climbed. Under Luo Can’s shocked and expectant gaze, it slowly became…
7!
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