By rough estimate, the number of zombies lured in and slaughtered this time was around 120,000 to 130,000. It could be considered a full clearing of the zombies across several roads in this area.
The dandelions were spreading wildly in all directions, while the other mutated plants also worked hard to corrode the zombies and absorb nutrients.
The zombie bodies whose upper halves were still struggling and twisting slowly melted. Gradually, once their brains were corroded too, they finally fell completely silent.
The sound of claws scraping against the ground, the hoarse rattling from throats and windpipes, and the sounds of plants climbing and anchoring themselves gradually faded. The outside world returned to calm.
The sun sank between the rows of ruined high-rises, and a deep blue night covered the sky.
Fu Erdie and Sang Wenhao did not look for somewhere to hide. They simply stayed inside the box van in the middle of the square, cooking hotpot, eating vegetables, turning on a small lamp, and enjoying their food.
“We’ll need to find a hotpot base or seasoning packet factory on the way and bring some seasonings back to expand our stock.”
As Fu Erdie and Sang Wenhao chatted casually, the plants outside had already killed two more zombies that had wandered into the square by mistake.
Late at night, by twelve o’clock, there were no corpses or remains left in the square, only dandelions covering the ground and all kinds of other plants. Even the surrounding air had improved greatly, somewhat blocking out the lingering stench of blood and rot in the city.
Fu Erdie took out her phone and took photos of Sang Wenhao and the plants. It looked like they were camping in a quiet, peaceful park at night.
She was not the only one who thought so. The survivors nearby, who finally dared to come out and search for supplies after the large number of zombies disappeared, thought the same.
They carefully avoided the square, riding bicycles and pedal tricycles everywhere.
Fu Erdie did not bother with them. She did not even keep watch. She directly handed the warning duty to the dandelions and fell into a deep sleep inside the box van.
With no trace of Mother Cen, Fu Erdie’s later route no longer had a clear target. She simply moved around C City and its surroundings, continuously clearing zombies.
She and Sang Wenhao searched for people while killing zombies, feeling no pressure at all. While absorbing ability crystal cores, they also carried out ability push-and-pull, steadily improving their abilities.
The house was still staying at third rank for now, because Fu Erdie’s ability could not automatically circulate between her and the house, so the house did not upgrade as quickly as Sang Wenhao.
Aside from sleeping and fighting, Fu Erdie used the rest of her time to fairly practise push-and-pull with the house, zucchini, potato, and the others.
The group of people and plants travelled and stopped like this. After clearing out all the zombies in the large activity area from Mother Cen’s company to her home and the surroundings, roughly a district’s worth of over a million zombies, they finally returned.
It was not because they had stopped searching, but because the fifty-plus plants had all grown from tiny seedlings to about the size of the potato seedling. They had also broken through from their initial state to second rank, and were even faintly advancing toward third rank. The batch of dandelions they had brought out had already risen to third rank.
Some plants, such as the bamboo, did not have good flexibility. They could not coil themselves into a ball like the potato, and they quickly grew taller than the roof of the box van. They could only very carefully cling to the roof, becoming a messy little bamboo shoot in the air.
The other plants were a little better than the bamboo, but not by much. In short, they could no longer squeeze into the carriage and all crowded onto the roof of the box van.
With no other choice, Fu Erdie and Sang Wenhao could only return first, put these plants down, and also tell Cen Xiyang the news about her parents.
Cen Xiyang stood there blankly, eyes reddened, as she accepted the box containing her father’s remains. Although she had been mentally prepared, she still could not stop herself from crying.
The others did not know Father Cen, but thinking of their own deceased relatives, their hearts felt heavy.
Comfort was useless. Grief flowed through their eyes and around their bodies. In the end, it could only helplessly be handed over to time.
It was now mid-January, and the Spring Festival would be at the end of the month. Cen Xiyang wanted to choose a place where one could see the Li River before the Spring Festival, so her father, who had grown up by the river, could rest in peace.
If one went uphill from the residential complex toward the back mountain, the Li River could be seen halfway up.
Cen Xiyang chose a location, dug a pit where she wanted to set the grave, buried Father Cen’s bones, erected a stone tablet, then knelt and paid respects.
Fu Erdie and Han Zhi both stayed with her.
The setting sun was like blood, and the lives that had passed were like the surging Li River, gone forever.
Fu Erdie silently sighed at her own luck. Her beloved parents and grandmother were still alive, and her best friend Cen Xiyang was still here too. Only Zhao Xiaolu remained without news. Who knew where she had gone after fleeing C City? The D City base did not have her name. As for other bases, because they were too far away, even if they received Fu Erdie’s inquiry telegram, they ignored it since there was no trade or stake between them. They did not care about the several hundred or thousand jin of grain Fu Erdie might send from so far away.
In short, aside from the D City base, the other large bases did not really respond to her. Smaller bases had no idea about telegraphs at all. Without telegraphs, there was no way to contact them.
Fu Erdie thought that meeting Zhao Xiaolu again in this lifetime would probably be very difficult.
If fate allowed them to run into each other while searching outside for various resources, that would be wonderful. But the world was too vast. Without a precise location, and without even knowing whether the other party was alive, dead, or a zombie, searching for someone was truly like looking for a needle in the sea.
During the Spring Festival, Fu Erdie did not travel far again. Instead, together with the ability-user team, she continued clearing the roads from the residential complex to various industrial factories, then pulled zombies back for the plants to learn how to hunt.
Once the road from a target factory to the residential complex was cleared, Fu Erdie and the others could attach a base plate and iron wheels to the large electromechanical equipment, then have the electric scooter pull it back.
The team was growing and learning to work together, and the plants in Senyu Residential Complex were also maturing through coordination with one another.
By the time the Spring Festival arrived at the end of January, among the plants in Senyu Residential Complex, aside from the pothos boss and the dandelions, two more third-rank plants had appeared: the potato and the spider plant.
Actually, Fu Erdie was a little surprised. She had always felt that the succulent was very powerful. Its defence was thick, and it stood out among the plants. If it wanted to snatch some nutrients, that should be a matter of minutes. After all, if they clashed head-on, even the pothos could not really deal with it.
However, in reality, strong as it was, its movement speed was slow, its corrosion and absorption were slow, and everything it did was one step behind.
By the time the spider plant had already finished corroding two zombies, it was still dozing off on the side while corroding the first zombie.
Now, hearing Fu Erdie’s confusion, the succulent felt extremely wronged. Using the pinyin skills it had learned over the past half month, it pointed at the pinyin chart and demanded that Fu Erdie train with it and give it extra food.
Fu Erdie found it funny, and the others laughed too.
He Xuan said, “I keep feeling like Boss Fu is feeding some cute pet. When it’s hungry or wronged, it wants its owner to back it up.”
Fu Erdie also laughed. “I treat them like kindergarten children and consider myself the kindergarten principal. Speaking of which, from now on, don’t call me boss or leader. It sounds strange. You can call me Principal, but not a kindergarten principal — a botanical garden principal. Isn’t that fitting?”
He Xuan: “…”
Not really. In fact, it sounded even stranger than boss.
Fu Chenghong listened from the side. He knew his daughter had never been interested in being some boss or official, which was why she was not used to people constantly calling her boss, and why she did not want to seriously describe the complex as some ability-user base.
“How about this,” Fu Chenghong suggested. “I heard Professor Zhao say that many ability users like to take nicknames so others can call them easily. Your mum and I call you Xiaodie, and sometimes your friends call you Fu Erdie. Since you’re used to the title Principal, how about Butterfly Principal? Isn’t that much better? With this title, any area controlled by your plants in the future can be called Butterfly Garden. That way, it won’t sound out of place at all.”
Hearing this, He Xuan instantly voted in favour. The others also thought the idea was good.
No matter what, as long as the title could make Boss… no, Big Boss Fu did not like people calling her boss. In any case, they had to give Big Boss Fu the air of a leader, so they could introduce her properly, rather than letting others hear it and think she was just some passer-by.
Seeing everyone agree, Fu Erdie had many question marks in her heart.
What did “any area controlled by your plants will be called Butterfly Garden” mean? Right now, the plants only controlled the residential complex, and the residential complex was called Senyu Residential Complex.
She kept feeling that the subtext was especially exaggerated, as if her plants were going to expand territory and reach very, very far away.
“My plants haven’t even filled the whole complex yet…”
Fu Erdie’s reminder sounded insignificant amid the group’s heated discussion.
Fu Erdie: “…” Didn’t you just say I was the boss? Ha.
During the half month from mid-January to the Spring Festival, everyone’s life was extremely regular.
Under that regularity were visible daily changes: damaged buildings being patched and repaired by cement workers, the previously uncleaned Buildings One to Five, Nine, and Ten gradually yielding more supplies that were moved to the seventeenth floor of Building Seven, slowly filling it up.
The residential buildings in the complex that had been burned before were repaired and washed day by day, gradually becoming fresh and new again.
The newly and previously planted plants in the complex were also growing vigorously. The intelligent mutated seeds from before had already all been planted, and now more than two hundred new ones had been produced.
On January 26, Professor Zhao announced good news: the non-intelligent ordinary mutated plants transplanted out of the house’s domain had successfully taken root.
“Based on the data recorded over the past month, ordinary mutated plants must grow in your home domain for at least ten days before they can be transplanted outside. Previously, when you were away, the ordinary mutated plants that had not spent enough time there stopped growing, and a few especially weak plants even withered directly.”
Fu Erdie thought briefly.
Ten days? She had returned on January 15, and now it was only just eleven days later, one day more than ten.
Professor Zhao’s personality was not the type to rush to a conclusion after just one day.
“You mean these days can be accumulated?” Fu Erdie asked. “For example, before I left, the home ability acted on them for a few days, and after I came back, it acted on them for a few more days. Only plants whose total number of days reaches ten can truly be transplanted outside my domain and grow normally.”
Professor Zhao nodded. “Yes. Later, I’ll also test whether there is any difference between plants watered with water from your home ability and plants watered with river water or rainwater. If river water and rainwater can also irrigate them and allow ordinary plants to grow and produce crops every day…”
Professor Zhao’s voice paused slightly. She looked at Fu Erdie with bright eyes.
Fu Erdie looked out the window at the patches of plants. She took a deep breath, slowly exhaled, and continued the thought Professor Zhao had thrown out.
“Then the people of this world, especially ordinary people, can have a new way to survive.”
Before the apocalypse turned people into ability users, everyone had been ordinary.
Even Professor Zhao, until now, was still an ordinary person.
Fu Erdie did not want trouble, nor did she want to be responsible for so many people’s lives. After all, that responsibility was too great, too heavy. Just slightly lifting it made it hard to breathe.
But now that her own life had become stable and safe, she suddenly could not help instinctively wanting to move toward a better direction.
And now, this opportunity had knocked on Fu Erdie’s door.
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