But very quickly, Han Zhi’s heart tightened. He immediately pulled his hand back and guardedly examined the strange crystal core from a distance.
Fu Erdie sensed that something was wrong and held the crystal core farther away.
“How is it?”
Han Zhi said, “There’s psychic contamination on it.”
As a fifth-rank psychic ability user, and someone whose ability was often borrowed by Fu Erdie, Han Zhi actually had far greater control and understanding of psychic abilities than ordinary psychic users.
An extreme sense of vigilance rose in his heart, and he observed it very carefully.
Most psychic crystal cores were purple. But this so-called seventh-rank psychic crystal core seemed to only be purple on the surface.
Looking through it with X-ray vision, one could see that the inside of the crystal core was a semi-transparent ink-black colour, an extremely abnormal colour.
Fu Erdie became even more certain of her guess.
After the sixth-rank disguised zombie in An City Base was dealt with, An Ya breathed a sigh of relief. At the same time, she softened her voice and invited Fu Erdie to settle in.
“Please forgive me. I didn’t understand the people from Ning City Base before, so out of caution, I didn’t allow your plants into the base, Garden Principal.” An Ya’s face carried just the right trace of embarrassment and ingratiation that was not unpleasant. “Ning City Base is far too overbearing and dangerous. Letting the plants settle here is not us doing you a favour. It is you needing to confront him directly and protect us.”
Her polite words and genuine feelings were mixed together, very calm and proper.
Fu Erdie finally brought the dandelions and covered the area of An City Base with her domain. At the same time, she asked An Ya to help settle the ability users who had been hunted by Ning City Base.
Over the past two days, Building Seven had already rescued two groups of people, eleven ability users in total. For now, they were being carried along inside Building Seven together with the plants. Those in better spirits would fight alongside Cen Xiyang and the others.
However, aside from the two days they had spent being hunted, these people had already been extremely exhausted before that. They were covered in injuries, and their ability spaces were in turmoil.
They were clearly not suited for battle.
Settling these people in An City was a good choice.
An Ya’s eyes lit up. “They are very welcome.”
The fact that these ability users had refused Ning City Base meant that their general views and position were aligned with An City Base. And these lone ability users must each have their own skills. Of course An Ya was extremely happy to have them join An City Base.
Fu Erdie and Han Zhi stayed in An City for lunch. Around four or five in the afternoon, Building Seven also finished fighting the surrounding zombie hordes and slowly entered An City Base.
This was the first time the people of An City had seen the legendary Butterfly Garden Principal’s ability! Supposedly, it was a house and plants, along with some other special powers!
They gathered around at a neither-too-close-nor-too-far distance, gazing in awe at Building Seven, which was formed entirely from plants.
Some people who were especially curious and bold even reached out to touch the spider plant leaves that stretched dozens of metres out from Building Seven.
The spider plant remained calm and quietly retracted its sharp leaf blades, letting people touch it like a harmless ribbon.
Seeing this, the others felt a little less afraid and wary, and gathered closer.
After everyone rested briefly, they set out again.
However, the ability users who were originally supposed to remain in An City Base now wanted to leave with Fu Erdie.
They had only stayed in Building Seven for two days, but before that, they had long since heard of the Butterfly Garden Principal. And after moving into Building Seven, they ate the vegetables and fruits that the plants casually produced… Even eating them raw, they could feel gentle changes throughout their bodies.
Their external injuries healed one after another, and the turmoil in their ability spaces also calmed slightly.
The current Building Seven was different from when it had been in the residential compound. It did not have twenty-four floors, only sixteen. The sixteenth floor, where Fu Erdie and the others lived, was the top floor. He Xuan’s seven-person team and the eleven newly arrived ability users all found places to stay on the sixteenth floor. Usually, they chatted and exchanged information in the corridor, and He Xuan’s group’s trust and dependence on Building Seven and the Butterfly Garden Principal quietly influenced the eleven newcomers.
He Xuan mentioned some information that Fu Erdie had made public on a small scale, namely another special feature of her ability—she could use the abilities of her “close companions.”
After following Fu Erdie for so long, especially throughout March and April, there was no way He Xuan and the others could not notice Fu Erdie spreading the dandelion domain outward.
After thinking it over, Fu Erdie, Sang Wenhao, and the others did not hide it. After all, many details could be traced. If they wanted to work with everyone long-term, it was best not to treat ability users who had survived countless hardships and become extremely shrewd as fools.
At the time, Cen Xiyang had said this: “If you trust the Butterfly Garden Principal and are willing to hand over your ability space to her control, then she can possess your ability. Your violent ability can also be calmed by the Butterfly Garden Principal, and even if you don’t eat crystal cores, the volume and rank of your ability will continue to increase. But the risk for you is very high, because your ability will be completely in her hands, and even your life and death may be held by her. I trust her. I have completely handed my ability over to her. If you are considering this, you had better think it through clearly yourselves.”
“But even if you don’t think it through, it’s fine. If you reject the intervention of her ability, she will sense it and respect it.”
After receiving definite information, He Xuan observed Sang Wenhao, Cen Xiyang, Han Zhi, and even the whole of Building Seven more closely.
The “close companions” did not show any discomfort from having their lives threatened. There was only vitality, playing, and laughter.
One day, Cen Xiyang and Fu Erdie had an argument. The reason was that when Fu Erdie was taking a shower, she could not find her own slippers, so she habitually took Cen Xiyang’s slippers to wear. As a result, she wore a pair of seemingly ordinary slippers—which had actually been a famous brand worth tens of thousands before the apocalypse—into the water.
When Cen Xiyang discovered it, her scream frightened the entire building.
Then…
The Butterfly Garden Principal got beaten up…
Although He Xuan and the others did not dare go out to watch the scene, Fu Erdie’s begging for mercy was genuinely quite loud.
This incident was neither big nor small, but it planted a seed in He Xuan’s heart.
After discussing it with her teammates, He Xuan’s team proposed that they also wanted to become Fu Erdie’s close companions.
Fu Erdie had expected it somewhat, but she was still surprised.
If it were her, as long as life was still bearable, she would not take the risk of handing her life over to someone else.
Was the ability turmoil really that unbearable?
She had to admit, Fu Erdie had guessed the truth. This was also why the newly arrived ability users, after only two days, decided to try becoming Fu Erdie’s close companions as well.
Their lives had been too bitter. They clearly knew they could not use their abilities casually, or else they would endlessly consume themselves and be harmed by their own powers. But if they did not use their abilities, sooner or later, they would die.
It was like cutting themselves with a knife. A slow death was nothing more than that.
After hearing He Xuan explain the special nature of Fu Erdie’s ability, they only hesitated for two days before urgently wanting to become “close companions.”
Even if they had to die, at least let them die more comfortably. They did not want to be tortured like this anymore.
And so there was the scene now.
The group of ability users only stayed one night at An City Base, where they originally would have been stationed long-term. The next day, they passed the test and left together with Fu Erdie.
An Ya: “…”
She was both annoyed and amused… and a little envious.
Other people could pat their backsides and leave whenever they wanted. She had a base and had to be responsible for everyone. How could she leave?
With the addition of eighteen ability users, Fu Erdie gained many abilities.
There were support abilities such as healing, psychic power, and illusion; conventional offensive abilities such as metal, wood, water, fire, and earth; and strange, unconventional abilities such as a good-luck buff, a prediction buff, and even the creation of illusionary clones.
Fu Erdie almost did not want to do proper work anymore and only wanted to play with these abilities.
Honestly, some abilities were truly useful! For example, this good-luck buff and prediction buff. With both buffs active, Fu Erdie charged across the snowy plains almost to the point where whatever she pointed at, she could hit.
Every morning, they would mark the fifteen places they planned to visit that day and draw up several feasible routes.
Then they rolled dice, blindly selected one route, and set off directly.
Along this route, they could avoid rugged terrain caused by landslides, avoid the swampy landforms that had previously made Building Seven suffer, and avoid plains where violent headwinds made travel difficult. They advanced straight ahead, following the day’s wind direction and coordinating metal control with wind abilities, arriving at places where there were zombies or Ning City Base’s collaborators.
On the way, Fu Erdie deliberately killed ability users who had already risen to seventh-rank and joined Ning City Base.
These ability users’ powers were inflated and hollow. Let alone comparing them to Fu Erdie, they could not even compare to the seventh-rank fire-type zombie that had attacked Building Seven in Jian City at the beginning. Although it was difficult, Fu Erdie dealt with them one by one.
When a speed-type zombie from Ning City Base tried to return and report information, Fu Erdie used the prediction ability to foresee the place the speed zombie would pass through and set up an ambush there in advance.
It was just… too satisfying!
“May everything go smoothly” was no longer a beautiful wish. It had directly become reality.
The good-luck buff had always been quietly influencing the entire team. The day Fu Erdie and the others most directly felt the good-luck buff was one day in late May.
That day, Fu Erdie was unusually lazy and did not want to check in at the target location. Instead, she took Building Seven to squat in a nearby abandoned industrial zone and stayed there for an entire day.
That night, the earth warmed, breaking past the critical point of zero degrees and rising to five degrees.
The ice and snow melted, and snowmelt flowed everywhere across the ground. Soil mixed with snow water and gradually softened and collapsed. Many mountainsides that had already collapsed before caved in again, and the rumbling sound of landslides could be heard everywhere, near and far.
Building Seven stayed steadily in the abandoned industrial park, parked on flat concrete ground, unmoving and full of security.
Dandelions flew through the air, gathering scenes from all directions.
The next day, based on the existing routes, Fu Erdie redrew their route and continued travelling at the fastest speed, letting the plants deal with and absorb the zombie hordes.
Everything was under control, and all matters progressed in an orderly manner.
There were many difficulties, but there was always a way to overcome them.
At this moment, Ning City Base was deathly silent.
Bin Mushi wore a neat suit and looked at the zombie army completely under his control. The usual effortless confidence in his eyes was gone.
Why? He had clearly given out so many crystal cores and assimilated so many people, yet he had not received a single useful piece of information!
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