His gaze turned to the telegraph machine in Sang Wenhao’s arms.
This telegraph machine actually had a healing effect?! Then what was the point of fighting?!
Bin Mushi was furious. This damned couple—one attacked his ability, the other attacked his body. In terms of ability, he could not gain the upper hand. In terms of body, he did not have a healing cheat.
He had none of the right timing, terrain, or people on his side!
As if sensing his impatience, Fu Erdie pressed her advantage, attacking even more fiercely. Bin Mushi lost his footing and failed to dodge Sang Wenhao’s slash. A wound instantly appeared on his right shoulder, so deep the bone could be seen.
Bin Mushi cried out in pain and once again tried to directly absorb Sang Wenhao’s crystal core. But when he thought of how the undigested crystal cores inside him had become nourishment for Fu Erdie, he truly did not dare take the risk.
And so the three of them fell into a miserable, life-for-life tug-of-war. Ten minutes passed. Twenty minutes passed.
At the thirtieth minute, Fu Erdie seized the opportunity and pierced through a weak point in Bin Mushi’s energy space.
Bin Mushi’s desperate resistance abruptly froze. He no longer paid attention to Sang Wenhao’s harassment and swiftly moved to defend himself.
But it was already too late. With the pierced weak point as the centre, spiderweb-like cracks began to spread through the space. His ability began leaking away like air from a punctured ball.
Fu Erdie’s contamination level infinitely approached 100. She seized the chance to deal Bin Mushi a fatal blow, while also sensing that she was about to become part of what Bin Mushi had contaminated and assimilated.
Inside Bin Mushi’s space, psychic contamination raged wildly. His ability leaked everywhere, while also attacking Fu Erdie’s energy particles.
She used up the last of her strength once again, disregarding her own loss as she rushed toward another exposed weak point, successfully opening a second hole in the space.
A pain struck Bin Mushi’s heart. Before he could react, he stood there blankly. He moved his fingers, only to discover that he could no longer control his ability.
A blade thrust horizontally through his chest, piercing through his sternum and straight into his heart.
He fell to the ground and looked at the grey sky. Blood sprayed from his chest, marking the passing of his life. The movement of every gust of wind, every cloud, and every drop of blood before his eyes seemed to slow down.
Why had it turned out like this?
How had it come to this?
Had all his planning only led to this moment, where he was killed by a mere seventh-rank and a mere sixth-rank?
He regretted it a little. If he had left a few subordinates to help him… No, even if it had only been one subordinate, would the ending have been different?
The man in front of him held the blade and looked down at him from above. The blood spraying from his chest dyed the man’s sleeve red.
This man had clearly been planted with a seed of psychic control at the very beginning of the apocalypse. Why had it not sprouted? Why had he not become his puppet?
He remembered when he had first been reborn, full of expectation and longing for everything.
Before the apocalypse arrived, he had impatiently awaited its descent.
Unfortunately, he had only been an ordinary poor student. He had no money, and his useless parents had no money either. He had known he could stockpile supplies and make more preparations for the apocalypse, but because he had no money, he had missed the chance to accumulate capital.
If he had had money—even if it had only been like this man surnamed Sang, with an uncle who ran a bicycle shop—he could have lived much more comfortably.
If he could start over again… If he could start over…
A vicious light burst from Bin Mushi’s eyes.
If he started over again, unless he was reborn into a different life, he could not have done any better!
It was all the fault of these damned fools, these damned rich people, this damned woman, these damned moral saints! It was all their fault!
He did not know whether he could reload and start over again. But at the very least, now, he would drag everyone down with him!
Sang Wenhao stabbed the blade fiercely between Bin Mushi’s eyes, wanting to destroy his crystal core.
Fu Erdie also held on until the moment her contamination concentration reached 100, desperately continuing to destroy the energy space and accelerate Bin Mushi’s death.
But it was too late.
Violent energy stopped the two of them from moving any further. Enormous and savage psychic contamination began condensing into a sphere, wrapping Sang Wenhao completely inside.
Bin Mushi’s rank was high. If left uncontrolled, it would definitely affect the many plants and ability users in An City thirty kilometres away.
Fu Erdie and Sang Wenhao had both prepared to die together with Bin Mushi while entangled with him. After all, with their contamination level reaching this point, it was like taking an incurable poison. Death was ultimately unavoidable. But they had fought so desperately because they wanted to protect the plant cubs and close companions as much as possible, letting them survive this disaster and have a different fate.
Although they did not know whether there would be a turnaround later based on their contamination levels, for now, only by surviving could there be a chance.
Fu Erdie could not allow the eighth-rank psychic-contaminated crystal core to explode. Otherwise, not only An City Base, but even places one or two hundred kilometres farther away might be affected.
But she had already used up all her ability, and her consciousness was beginning to grow muddled. Sang Wenhao was the same.
They watched helplessly as the eighth-rank crystal core continued to riot, reaching the critical point of explosion. Their hearts sank continuously in despair.
Suddenly, something shot across the silent sky.
A wave of heat rolled up. A long-range missile arrived at high speed and exploded less than five hundred metres from the crystal core.
The energy sphere, which had not yet finished accumulating power, exploded early. The crystal core turned into fine powder. All the abilities scattered outward, but stopped spreading once they reached ten kilometres. The world returned to silence.
Fu Erdie only felt herself being blown out of Bin Mushi’s energy space. In the unseen depths, she seemed to connect with some gentle and familiar energy. At the same time as her contamination level reached 100, her ability rank seemed to reach eighth-rank.
Before she could think any further, her vision blurred. The whole world became fleeting light and shadow, losing its original shape. Following the heat wave of the explosion, she instinctively wrapped up all the familiar energy she could sense, dispersing it into nearby safe places. Then she fell into deep sleep and completely lost consciousness.
At the same time, thousands of li away, the senior leaders of D City Base all had tense expressions as they stared at the map, as if they were looking through it toward some unknown distant place.
It turned out that half an hour earlier, when Sang Wenhao found Fu Erdie, he had sent the coordinates to D City Base. After arguing their case with Jing City Base for a long time, D City had finally been allowed to use the long-range missile strike plan, unlocking the missile launcher.
“Comrade Fu Erdie, Comrade Sang Wenhao, we will remember you.”
Everyone in D City Base removed their hats and solemnly bowed toward the east.
Many people sent to gather information set out from D City and Jing City, heading toward the front line to confirm the result of the battle. An City Base, which was closest to the explosion site, also sent people to follow the pothos, Cen Xiyang, and the others as they rushed toward the destination.
On the devastated land, there was no trace of the eighth-rank ability user, no trace of Fu Erdie, and no trace of Sang Wenhao.
All signs of living people had been wiped clean, just like this lifeless scorched earth.
In the ruins of the explosion point, Cen Xiyang found the fragments of the telegraph machine that belonged to the house, but she did not find the bodies of Fu Erdie or Sang Wenhao.
Crying, she and everyone from the butterfly garden carefully packed up the fragments and placed them solemnly inside her space, not noticing the white light that flashed across the fragments.
Half a month later, everyone in the butterfly garden collected all the dandelion corpses within the ten-kilometre radius affected by the bomb and self-destruction, placing them inside Cen Xiyang’s space.
One month later, all the bases in Hua Country confirmed the news that the leader of the butterfly garden, the leader of Ning City Base, Sang Wenhao, and the others had died together. At the same time, they also confirmed another piece of news: all zombies and zombie kings outside the bases had been completely cleared away.
The apocalypse seemed to have entered a safe new phase.
At the end of September, C City and D City erected a huge memorial monument for Fu Erdie and gradually spread intelligent plants outward, planting them across the vast regions beyond C City and D City.
In the fifth year of the apocalypse, on January 1st, the butterfly garden’s plants had already spread across three million square kilometres of Hua Country, while the dandelions had spread across five million square kilometres.
In August of the fifth year of the apocalypse, bases large and small, represented by Jing City, generally accepted aid from mutated crops. They also accepted intelligent mutated plants into their bases to live together with everyone. The apocalypse officially entered a stable new era.
In February of the sixth year of the apocalypse, the telegraph machine fragments that had remained still for two years inside Cen Xiyang’s space flickered with faint white light. Two transparent figures, each the size of a grain of rice, slowly appeared.
On June 6th of the sixth year of the apocalypse, exactly five years after the apocalypse descended, Cen Xiyang saw two sleeping figures the size of coins inside her space and was overwhelmed with excitement.
In September of the sixth year of the apocalypse, all the close companions of the butterfly garden felt that familiar, long-lost aura of being pushed and pulled by the Butterfly Garden Principal. The abilities that had begun rioting again after the Butterfly Garden Principal disappeared were instantly greatly soothed.
In December of the sixth year of the apocalypse, Fu Erdie, Sang Wenhao, the House, and the dandelions that had seemed to die in the explosion were reborn inside Cen Xiyang’s space. Fu Erdie had fully entered eighth-rank and gained the ability to travel and jump through the energy spaces of all her close companions together with Sang Wenhao and the House. At the same time, she also gained the ability to completely purify psychic contamination.
It turned out that at the final moment of the explosion, Fu Erdie had advanced to eighth-rank and gained a new ability—purification. Almost instantly, it restored her mind, which had been contaminated to 100, back to 98.
At the same time, her old particle-form ability upgraded, allowing her to turn her teammates into energy particles and hide them inside energy spaces.
So she turned Sang Wenhao into particles and pulled him into the house, into the fragment space later named Wanju House by the people of the butterfly garden. As for her own uncontrolled particles that had been blown away, they hid inside the energy spaces of those dying dandelions. On one hand, she gained a place to rest. On the other, she also purified the dandelions’ energy spaces, helping them protect the source of their abilities and preserve their lives.
After the house and dandelions brought all the particles of her and Sang Wenhao into Cen Xiyang’s safe space, it became a slow process of automatic purification and healing. It took a full two years before they finally fully woke up.
All the close companions were grateful they were alive. As for what form they lived in, and whether they could return to the real world, no one dared hope for more.
As long as they were still there, that was enough.
In April of the seventh year of the apocalypse, Fu Erdie repeatedly pushed and pulled with her close companions, conserving her strength and returning to her peak. Finally, in the butterfly garden’s Senyu Residential Compound, at the place where Building Seven had once stood, she drew her particles out from the energy space and condensed them back into the shape of a body.
Holding Sang Wenhao’s hand, and carrying the tiny house in her arms, she looked at her parents, Cen Xiyang, the succulent, the pothos, the dog… She looked at everyone she loved and everyone who loved her, then smiled softly.
“I’m back.”
—End of Main Story—
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