Twenty kilometres away, Bin Mushi calmly controlled his subordinates as they attacked An City.
“Heh, still trying to provoke me?” Bin Mushi refused to admit that there had indeed been one instant when he was enraged and wanted to charge straight in for a direct fight.
But he prided himself on having planned for years. He could not afford to slip up at the final moment before victory.
Actually, if he were facing any other seventh-rank zombie or seventh-rank ability user, he would have released his psychic contamination long ago, gone straight forward, contaminated them, and killed them. But when he had dealt with the dandelions earlier, he had discovered that Fu Erdie could pull back dandelions that were only fourth- or fifth-rank and not yet completely dead from an unbelievably far distance. It was truly beyond common sense.
Although he did not know whether she had saved those dandelions, that extreme ability to pull and drag gave him an enormous sense of danger.
One had to know, those dandelions had only been fourth- or fifth-rank. What he was facing now was the seventh-rank Butterfly Garden Principal.
Putting himself in her place, if he had so many mutant plants under his control, he would definitely pull those mutant plants over to block attacks for him. Every time his mind was about to be contaminated, he would let the plant’s energy space stand in front, then take the chance to counterattack.
Although the side with the weaker ability rank would definitely die, Bin Mushi could not guarantee that he himself would escape unscathed.
Fu Erdie wanted to use weapons to deal with him and did not want to fight head-on. Did he want to fight head-on either?
He wished his stupid pig-like subordinates would swarm forward and kill the Butterfly Garden Principal directly, so that he would not need to act and take any risks.
Once his subordinates killed the Butterfly Garden Principal, he would immediately absorb their crystal core energy. Then there would be no one in this world who could match him!
But now…
This group of idiots, forget killing the Butterfly Garden Principal, they could not even deal with her few plants!
Bin Mushi did not want to clash directly with the Butterfly Garden Principal, so he chose to first kill off her small fry and cut off her arms. But something that should clearly have been simple was now not going smoothly either.
Every time he felt he was about to contaminate a plant, that familiar sharp blade, like a maggot clinging to bone, would follow his ability back toward him, forcing him to cautiously sever his psychic control again and again. It was unbearably stifling.
If Fu Erdie knew Bin Mushi’s thoughts, she would definitely laugh loudly.
This was the charm of an information gap, and also the fixed mindset of a villain judging others by himself. Even now, Bin Mushi still thought Fu Erdie was making some “unimportant” plant bear the psychic contamination while she herself remained fine.
Bin Mushi gritted his teeth and continued controlling the zombies and ability users to attack.
However, as the fighting continued, the moment his subordinates approached a certain area, he suddenly had an ominous feeling.
Fu Erdie’s ability attack… was actually being transmitted through the bodies of some zombie kings.
She could not only attack through her own plants, but also through his zombies?!
Bin Mushi was used to being cautious, so he instinctively withdrew his ability control.
The next moment, the seventh-rank zombie king that lost control froze in place.
The moment after that, Fu Erdie broke into the zombie king’s energy space, absorbed all of its ability, and destroyed the zombie’s power.
Plants burst out from the ground, precisely captured the zombie king’s crystal core, and handed it to Fu Erdie. Very soon, Fu Erdie absorbed it, and it turned into fine powder.
Watching this scene through his subordinate’s eyes, Bin Mushi was so furious his eyes nearly split open.
A seventh-rank zombie king… his seventh-rank zombie king!!!
His seventh-rank crystal core!!!
Very quickly, the next zombie king was also attacked through tracing.
Bin Mushi knew he should not retreat. But over the four years of the apocalypse, to put it nicely, he was the behind-the-scenes manipulator who had understood the essence of levelling up. To put it bluntly, he was a sneaky coward who avoided entering the battlefield whenever possible.
He had invested so much effort, endured so much hardship, and abandoned his humanity, all for the sake of becoming an absolutely overwhelming powerhouse in the apocalypse.
He was unwilling to take any risk.
So the instant he made his decision, before reason could even catch up, instinct had already made him retreat.
He lost another seventh-rank crystal core!
His heart tightened with anger.
He could not let this woman continue stealing his prey! He could only face her directly!
“You forced me!”
Bin Mushi hardened his heart. When Fu Erdie seized another opportunity to trace back, he faced Fu Erdie’s attack head-on and increased the strength of his contamination.
Unlike Fu Erdie, Bin Mushi did not have the ability to see energy spaces. Even at eighth-rank, although his ability had many variant uses, he still could not see the state of Fu Erdie’s energy space.
He was simply resisting and attacking with his ability, using an overwhelming force to assault Fu Erdie and trying to kill her first.
There was no doubt that the volume of an eighth-rank ability far exceeded that of a seventh-rank.
If the ability reserves of an eighth-rank ability user were compared to a reservoir, then Fu Erdie’s ability reserves were equivalent to a single boat on the water’s surface.
When the reservoir was no longer using small trickles of water to test and probe, but opened the floodgates fully, the little boat would easily be flooded, until it finally sank.
Fu Erdie’s pure white space turned ink-black at a speed visible to the naked eye, and her consciousness also became somewhat dazed under the enormous impact.
She gritted her teeth and endured, rowing against the current as she continued tracing back, trying to break into the main body of the “reservoir.”
However, she could feel her control over her energy space and body gradually weakening. Her attack speed was gradually slowing under the surging contamination.
She had to push and pull with her close companions, recovering and maintaining her condition as much as possible, and use the circulation of push-pull to metabolise the psychic contamination and drain the “water in the cabin”!
But who should she use? Fu Erdie herself could not withstand it, and the impact on her close companions would not be small either.
What should she do… What method was there…
Fu Erdie’s eyes sharpened.
“The energy space is my home ground. It can only be my home ground.”
The battlefield changed in an instant. The butterfly garden and the gathered ability users soon discovered that the Ning City zombies and ability users, who had been attacking fiercely, began moving with serious sluggishness. The Ning City ability users even showed pain on their faces, their complexions alternating between black and white.
“Now!”
Fu Erdie’s strained voice sounded in the minds of all her close companions.
In order to transmit the message, Fu Erdie connected the energy spaces of all her close companions, and the psychic contamination leaking through that instant connection made everyone shudder.
The Butterfly Garden Principal was resisting an eighth-rank psychic user head-on!
The fastest to react, the spider plant and pothos, immediately abandoned their previous coordinated strategy. Destroying the eyes first, cutting the ankles first—none of that mattered anymore!
They had to seize this opening and directly take the enemies’ crystal cores!
How could Bin Mushi tolerate small fry taking advantage of the situation? He quickly strengthened his attack on Fu Erdie and his control over his subordinates.
However, the battlefield between him and Fu Erdie was the energy spaces of the zombie kings and Ning City ability users. Fu Erdie might not be able to go against the current and bite off a piece of Bin Mushi’s flesh, but did that mean she could not destroy the space she was inside?
As long as the psychic contamination had not completely killed and controlled her, she could destroy the energy spaces of these zombie kings one by one.
At present, the only seventh-rank ability bodies on Fu Erdie’s side were herself, the pothos, the succulent, the spider plant, the gardenia, and the house. Pushing and pulling with the pothos and the others could achieve excellent recovery effects, and as fellow seventh-ranks, they could withstand it and would not run into trouble in the short term.
After thinking it over, she chose to push and pull with the gardenia, succulent, and house.
And so the ability confrontation between Fu Erdie and Bin Mushi became like three new boats suddenly appearing within the torrent of psychic contamination pouring down from the reservoir. The new boats forcibly pulled Fu Erdie up from beneath the water. They held one another with thick iron chains to prevent themselves from being washed apart, while constantly helping one another clear the contaminated water from their cabins.
Fu Erdie finally became clearer-headed. She split off her attention and quickly dealt with one seventh-rank Ning City ability user, one seventh-rank zombie king, then another seventh-rank zombie king…
Bin Mushi furiously tried to stop her. But to his subordinates’ energy spaces, he, as the source of contamination, was also an attacker. Wanting to “protect” his subordinates’ energy spaces was truly wishful thinking—unless he could completely wrap up Fu Erdie’s ability.
But abilities were not physical objects, and Fu Erdie was not truly a little boat trapped and unable to move. Her being trapped only applied to tracing back. When she actively avoided Bin Mushi’s direct ability impact and instead attacked the energy space she was currently in, with her present mastery over her ability, no matter which angle she struck from, she could pierce through the energy space.
Bin Mushi became anxious. He no longer cared about letting his subordinates exhaust the enemy first before dying. He directly began driving his subordinates to self-destruct, while absorbing their crystal cores and fighting Fu Erdie for experience.
A battle that had originally been fierce and visible suddenly shifted from open combat to hidden struggle. Most seventh-rank ability bodies were now invested in the tug-of-war within the energy spaces.
However, whether in ability confrontation or crystal core competition, Fu Erdie and Bin Mushi had an obvious difference in attributes. Even though she was one rank lower, Fu Erdie’s speed in destroying energy spaces was still faster than Bin Mushi’s. In addition, the ability zombies and Ning City ability users themselves not only resisted Fu Erdie, but also instinctively resisted Bin Mushi’s erosion, making the situation even more complicated.
Ning City’s subordinates had no effective means of resisting Fu Erdie. Against Bin Mushi, however, they could slow his erosion. It was like water flowing through a pipe very quickly, but slowing greatly when flowing through uneven, rugged mud.
As one side rose and the other fell, Fu Erdie’s speed in seizing energy spaces was actually twice as fast as Bin Mushi’s, despite his head start. If it took Fu Erdie two minutes to pierce through the ability space of a seventh-rank zombie king, then Bin Mushi needed three minutes to absorb the zombie king’s crystal core under its full-bodied resistance.
Unless the seventh-rank zombie king was like the previous cannon fodder, worn down by the butterfly garden until it had only a little ability left and no room to resist, allowing Bin Mushi to instantly absorb its crystal core, he would always be one step slower than Fu Erdie.
And this one step was enough for Fu Erdie to pierce through the zombie king’s energy space before he finished absorbing the crystal core’s energy, then have the pothos, spider plant, and the others retrieve the crystal core that still had half its experience remaining and give it to Fu Erdie to absorb.
At this point, Bin Mushi could not even compete for crystal core experience, let alone trigger his subordinates’ final self-destruction!
Not only that, some zombie kings were even killed in advance by the pothos and the others during the brief gap of less than two seconds after Bin Mushi started absorbing them.
And so, the butterfly garden seized three almost complete seventh-rank crystal cores and six crystal cores with less than half of their experience remaining.
Fu Erdie still wanted to seize one more crystal core, but her energy space had already been heavily contaminated for a full fifteen minutes and had reached its limit.
She decisively withdrew from the zombie king’s energy space and quickly took the crystal core handed to her by the pothos, beginning to absorb it.
These seventh-rank crystal cores, plus the experience she had already accumulated at seventh-rank—would they allow her to level up to eighth-rank?
If they could, then there was still strength for one more battle.
If not…
She looked at Sang Wenhao, who was holding her hand and maintaining physical contact with her so their abilities could automatically push and pull. She looked at the plants gathered around her in concern, at the dandelions uneasily drifting in the wind, and at the ability users below the city wall staring nervously at her.
She, Fu Erdie, had to succeed.
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