The alarm is lifted.
Fu Erdie took the bundle of air dumplings, made a slit, and tried to inhale the air through the opening.
One second passed.
Two seconds passed.
Nothing happened…
Only a fresh scent of green vines and vegetation filled the air.
Fu Erdie kept inhaling for a long time, feeling like she could have sucked dry an oxygen tank, before she opened the air dumpling. Inside, it was clean and empty. She wasn’t sure if the energy cluster had been sucked away or had simply dissipated.
Fu Erdie and the green vines stared at each other for a moment, speechless.
“Forget it,” Fu Erdie sighed.
She sat down by the door of 16-1 in the hallway. The wounds from scratches and bites were all over her left shoulder and body, now belatedly throbbing with pain.
Now, Fu Erdie could only think of two ways to gain abilities: being scratched by an ability zombie or eating a crystal core.
She was worried that the mutated virus in her body might not take effect and be eradicated by her own house’s treatment, so she chose to wait outside instead of going home for treatment. If the zombie virus erupted, she would fight it head-on.
If she couldn’t hold out and was about to turn into a zombie, she would return home at the last moment.
Large leaves of green vines covered the bleeding areas on Fu Erdie’s body, helping to stem the bleeding.
The dog lay beside Fu Erdie, keeping her company, while nearby, the roots of 16-7 swayed as they extended.
They surrounded her, silently offering support and companionship.
Fu Erdie smiled, noticing her fresh blood turning into faint white light and being absorbed into the house.
In the past, the white light would circle around and return to heal Fu Erdie’s wounds. Now, at Fu Erdie’s refusal, it was her blood flowing and providing energy unilaterally.
She lifted her hand weakly and touched the snow-white wall, “I guess… I’ve given you a little snack, haven’t I?”
A faint flicker of white light responded silently on the house.
Resting her head against the wall, Fu Erdie murmured softly, “I wish I could understand you. It would be nice if you could speak.”
Fu Erdie felt her eyelids growing heavy, ready to slip into unconsciousness at any moment.
She struggled to stay awake and rambled on with the dog, the house, the green vines, and the blurred images before her, unable to distinguish between orchid and gardenia leaves.
She didn’t feel herself mutating, nor did she have a feverish urge to eat people. She just felt tired, in pain, and desperately wanted to sleep.
She pinched herself, trying to stay alert. But the pain from the pinch was like a light drizzle compared to the other wounds on her body. It didn’t even qualify as an itch.
The door of 16-1 wasn’t shut tight. Fu Erdie’s hand rested on the door, lightly pushing it, ready to open.
But entering now meant that her path to evolving abilities had failed.
In stories, some people evolved overnight, others took several days. What if she was one of those who needed several days to evolve?
If she missed this opportunity, she would have to fight desperately against ability zombies again and retrieve another crystal core…
No, she had made up her mind. This would be her last chance.
She was really tired and didn’t want to move anymore.
In the torment of her wavering consciousness, Fu Erdie finally couldn’t resist the physiological reaction to excessive blood loss and passed out.
At the last moment of consciousness, instead of opening the door of 16-1, she firmly closed it.
The white wall of the house flickered with a slight pulsation of white light.
The door turned slightly outward, but out of respect for Fu Erdie’s wishes, it didn’t force her back home.
Fu Erdie had many wounds on her body, but none were fatal. The green vines had effectively stopped the bleeding with physical means.
So, at the moment, Fu Erdie was not in any serious danger.
She had a dream, a very long dream.
In the dream, she turned into a child, joyfully chasing after a butterfly in the midst of complete darkness.
But the butterfly flew very fast, much faster than her short arms and legs could ever manage.
At first, the butterfly teased her, dancing just out of her reach, sparking her curiosity and playing with her nerves.
Later, when she earnestly started to chase after it, the butterfly flew higher and farther away.
She ran desperately, stumbled, lost her balance, and fell to the ground.
At those moments, the butterfly would pause in the sky, look back at her from a distance, as if waiting for her.
She gathered her courage, got up again, and chased after it, only to fall again…
Until finally, there was no glow left on the butterfly’s wings in her world.
In the darkness, she finally understood that the butterfly didn’t belong to her.
Yet, despite not belonging to her, it still hung tantalizingly in front of her. It was annoying, wasn’t it?
In the corridor, Fu Erdie lay on the ground in a sorry state, unconscious and unaware, tears suddenly sliding down her face.
The weather in September was much better than in August.
At least for humans, a temperature of 37 degrees was much preferable to anything above 40 degrees.
However, Fu Erdie’s record notebook always stayed stuck on August 31st.
— The day after killing the Speed Zombie passed without incident.
To say nothing happened would only apply to Fu Erdie herself.
Apart from her, changes in Building 7 were quite significant.
That day after waking up, she went straight to find the old lady and asked to move into Apartment 16-1, with the condition of watering the mutated plants on different floors of Building 7 every day.
The Green Vine had grown larger. Its leaves and main body had grown larger, and its root system could extend farther.
After some thought, it extended its roots to Apartment 16-2, taking over the entire house in one go.
Fu Erdie, upon learning of this, speculated that the energy of the crystal nucleus must have been unconsciously absorbed by it.
Eating an energy crystal nucleus was more effective than eating a floor of zombie flesh. It was normal for it to occupy a new house.
As temperatures dropped, the zombies became more active, and the mutated plants became more active as well.
The production of mutated plants outside of Apartment 16-1 noticeably increased. Especially the Millet in Apartment 16-7 grew vigorously, growing into a tree in the room, with heavy ears hanging all around. The old lady had to carry a lot of them back every day.
The Spider Plant would grind the ears into millet, and now they piled up more and more, more than Fu Erdie, the old lady, and the dog could eat.
In addition, kumquats, peaches, cherries, sweet potatoes, potatoes, cabbage, cucumbers, and tomatoes also had abundant harvests.
Potatoes and sweet potatoes could be stored for a long time, but fruits had to be eaten immediately, or they would spoil.
Fu Erdie would drink some millet porridge and eat some fruit every day, then return to her bedroom and close the door to lie down.
The surplus fruits worried the old lady, fearing they would spoil, so she would call the dog to eat them with all his might every day. If they couldn’t finish them, they would give them to the mutated plants.
Don’t say it, just look at which plant was eating which fruit, and you could see their grievances and enmities.
Leading the charge were cucumbers and tomatoes.
Enemies, they were initially both planted on the balcony of Apartment 16-1. But because they kept fighting, Fu Erdie moved them outside.
The longer they stayed in Apartment 16-1, the stronger the vitality of the intelligent mutated plants became. They didn’t need soil at all; placed against the walls, they crawled all over the room on their own.
Fu Erdie placed the cucumbers in Apartment 16-5 and the tomatoes in Apartment 16-10, basically diagonally across the entire floor, unable to come into contact with each other no matter what.
As a result, they seemed to sense each other’s positions and insisted on encroaching into each other’s territory. Right now, their root tendrils had just started to crawl out of their rooms, but it was estimated that in one or two years, they would be able to climb over each other’s heads.
The old lady didn’t understand.
Initially, she thought these two plants got along well and were separated by Fu Erdie.
Later, when there was overproduction and the plants also started eating fruits, they would definitely choose each other’s fruits.
Normal plants eat by secreting corrosive liquids, enveloping the food, and slowly digesting it.
Tomatoes and cucumbers eat each other by inserting, tearing apart, tearing, and making a crime scene look, then secreting corrosive liquids to digest and absorb them.
Tomatoes eating cucumbers was not so frightening.
When cucumbers ate tomatoes, the “blood” in the room almost scared the old lady into a heart attack.
The dog was very obedient, spending most of its time patrolling in Building 7. When zombies approached, it would bite them to death, drag them into the succulents’ extended root system, and let them be eaten.
However, its hearing and sense of smell were getting better now. Even from five or six floors away, it could hear the movements downstairs.
So after patrolling the area, it would return to Apartment 16-1, familiarly stand on its hind legs, open the door with its front legs, enter Fu Erdie’s bedroom after shaking off the succulents that had just cleaned its fur and feet, jump on the bed, and lie down next to Fu Erdie.
What was Fu Erdie doing?
She was listening to the radio.
This was during the brief restoration of signal in the apocalypse, where the government broadcasted messages that survivors could tune into.
However, there was no sound now, only the buzzing interference noise.
Fu Erdie didn’t mind it though; she treated it like white noise and continued to stare at the ceiling absentmindedly.
Effort doesn’t always guarantee success, but giving up will certainly bring ease.
Now she was at home, eating fruits every day, enjoying the air conditioning, and leaving regular zombies for the dog to handle. When encountering tough zombies, she would lie flat and wait for death, which was quite nice.
If a malicious mutant were to come and kill her or force her out of the house, there wouldn’t be much she could do about it except resign herself to it.
She thought about this as she got up from bed and ran to the window ledge to look down.
In the chaotic apocalypse, there were already too many corpses, so her absence wouldn’t make much of a difference.
Fu Erdie pushed open the window and tried to lean out, hoping to casually spot a few familiar corpses or zombies.
However, the window seemed welded shut; no matter how hard she pulled, it wouldn’t budge.
Fu Erdie looked at the faint flickering light on the wall and smiled faintly to herself, “Not going to commit suicide. Why would I?”
The house ignored her.
Reluctantly, Fu Erdie had to give up on admiring the view and continued lying down on the bed.
In mid-September, it started raining in City C.
Previously, the dog would accompany Fu Erdie intermittently for a few hours each day. However, these past few days, it either didn’t come back or returned with injuries, relying on the house’s assistance to recover.
It dawned on Fu Erdie belatedly that this bout of heavy rain was lasting quite a while, which meant the temperature was likely dropping again.
She checked the outdoor thermometer; previously it had been around thirty-seven to thirty-eight degrees Celsius, but now it had dropped to below thirty-five degrees.
At the beginning of the apocalypse, lower temperatures meant zombies were much more active.
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