Fu Erdie did not respond much in front of so many people. Instead, she went familiarly to the personnel office to handle the registration procedures for taking someone away and left behind the pick-up fee for two people.
“One is for my cousin. The other is for the person who stole from him and beat him. Just consider him taken away by me,” Fu Erdie said coldly.
The person at the personnel office did not understand the specific situation and looked toward the cement factory supervisor accompanying them.
The supervisor roughly explained what had happened and did not mention holding her responsible for killing someone. So this pick-up procedure was handled very smoothly.
After her cousin packed his things and dazedly got onto the electric scooter with the box van on top, he finally slowly came back to himself.
He had really left the D City base.
He no longer had to do exhausting work, hide food, worry about those awful matters, or endure a life where he could not bathe every day.
Just now, inside the box van, he had scrubbed himself from top to bottom. Not only that, all the injuries big and small on his body had healed. The treatment effect was far better than what the healing ability users at the base could provide!
“Sis, you’re amazing!”
His excitement had not passed yet, and he kept talking around Fu Erdie nonstop.
After the vehicle had driven for an hour and his mouth had gone dry from talking, he finally quieted down, leaned against the seat, and stared blankly out the window.
If this had been him a month ago, learning that his cousin clearly had an ability and the power to take him away but deliberately left him behind would definitely have made him very unhappy.
But now, after experiencing one month without his mother and grandmother, he felt he vaguely understood some things.
First of all, this thing called brotherhood had truly disgusted him.
When he first hid the food, he had secretly told Xiao Feng, thinking they had a good relationship and could quietly eat some to fill their stomachs.
But in just one week, his food disappeared.
At the time, he had guessed that Xiao Feng had done it, but he had no evidence and did not dare make it public, afraid that once he made a scene, he would never again have the chance to secretly eat the food his cousin sent him.
If the food had not been stolen again this Spring Festival, he felt that with his current situation, if he still did not fight for himself, he would be unworthy of all that grain. So, with the mindset that no one should have an easy time, he made a fuss.
Being betrayed by his “brother” had disgusted him for a whole month. And the attitude of the fellow villagers who lived and worked beside him had become another thing that repulsed him.
Before, dealing with fellow villagers — or “co-workers” — had always been Grandma and his mother’s matter.
His mother often called him over and managed him, telling him to learn caution and keep things hidden in his heart. He had not really cared, thinking his mother overthought things and was overly cautious. Everyone around them was someone they knew. How could they possibly be that bad?
It was only when, within such a short period of time, even the things he carried with him — things he thought had no value to steal — were stolen that he realised the cruelty of reality.
And the irritating nature of losing trivial daily items.
He lost many things he had never cared about before and had thought no one would possibly steal: the shoelaces from his shoes, the stuffing from his pillow, leaving it flat and empty, his old tattered padded jacket that was too ruined to wear, and so on. They were so small and broken it was unbelievable.
He had no idea what those things had been stolen for. In any case, they were gone.
At first, he had found it completely unbelievable and cursed loudly, saying these people had no regard for fellow-villager bonds and no shame. At the same time, he emphasised that his cousin’s boyfriend was an ability user, telling them not to go too far.
As a result, on the surface, no one clashed with him. Secretly, however, things were stolen even more severely. Even the pen and paper he had asked the supervisor for disappeared, along with the notes he had taken while studying various things about the cement factory.
Only then did Cao Yuanbai finally realise what Grandma and his mother had been doing openly and secretly before.
Those acts of tolerance, vigilance, smoothing things over, and maintaining friendly relations with people they did not like — things he had once thought completely unnecessary — all had the same purpose behind them: to maintain this environment that, although terrible, could still preserve a basic rhythm of life.
Now, they were gone. He had faced those malicious intentions and hidden twists directly. Many times, he had even heard people making sarcastic remarks, indirectly mocking someone for relying on a man to climb up, pulling the whole family up with her, but leaving behind her unlikeable younger brother, and so on. Anyone could tell they were talking about Cao Yuanbai and his cousin, yet whenever Cao Yuanbai got angry, those people would say mockingly, “We weren’t talking about you. Why are you taking it personally?”
It turned out that all peaceful interpersonal relationships were illusions. Hypocrisy, cruelty, scheming over tiny benefits, and speaking ill of people behind their backs were the norm.
After figuring this out, and after going through and learning every process of the cement factory’s operation, he no longer endured it.
This conflict with Xiao Feng was an outburst of anger, but it was also his self-assessment. He felt that when his cousin came to find him next time, he could openly and confidently go with her with the skills he had learned. He no longer needed to care about making a mess of the relationships here. He just wanted to tear away the fig leaf completely and vent his anger, beating up his so-called good brother while also cursing all those tasteless people who stole things and whispered behind others’ backs.
He caused a scene.
Half of his anger had indeed been vented, but he had not expected that Xiao Feng, who had originally been weaker than him, would become stronger than him after secretly eating the food his cousin had given him. As a result, the imagined scene of him beating up that bastard Feng to vent his anger became him being beaten by that bastard Feng.
Hearing this, Fu Erdie said lightly, “The potatoes I gave you had healing effects. He secretly ate twenty jin of potatoes, so the injuries and illnesses on his body should have mostly healed. Beating up someone as low-energy as you would be more than enough.”
Cao Yuanbai looked out the window, feeling his already-healed body, his eyes dimming slightly.
“If you hadn’t deliberately left me behind, Cousin, I wouldn’t have known I was this bad at judging people.”
Fu Erdie mercilessly added, “Not only bad at judging people, but also arrogant, conceited, lacking restraint, and full of yourself.”
Cao Yuanbai spat blood!
“Sis, are you practising idioms?”
“I’m stating facts.”
Sang Wenhao drove the vehicle, listening to the cousins bicker, and a smile could not help appearing in his eyes.
Fu Erdie emphasised, “After going to Senyu Residential Complex, I will tell everyone else that your personal promises do not represent my opinion. If you casually promise things to others, not only will I not agree, I may even downgrade both you and the person making the request in terms of living conditions. I don’t want to see anyone come to me saying, ‘Your younger brother promised me this, now you have to fulfil it.’ Don’t challenge my patience. If this month’s lesson still wasn’t enough…”
Her icy gaze looked through the rear-view mirror at the young man sitting in the back seat. “I will personally become your lesson.”
Cao Yuanbai’s heart tightened. He could not help sitting upright. A little afraid but firm, he nodded.
With Cao Yuanbai brought back, Fu Erdie’s relatively close relatives were now officially gathered together. As he had said, Cao Yuanbai began his path as a cement technician. Together with the five other hired cement workers, he painted the walls of the complex. Once the complex was finished, they worked on the roads outside. Once the roads were done, they worked on some small houses in the fields on the slope.
Before the apocalypse, Fu Erdie had always jokingly called the complex part of the urban-rural fringe, because this was indeed a place that had not been fully developed, one or two hours by bus from the central business district. There were many high-rise residential buildings, but also many unplanned empty lots. The farmers who had originally lived nearby and later moved into the complex after demolition continued using those lots as back gardens for farming.
There were some houses in the fields. Some were old rural bungalows that had not been demolished, while others were newly built.
The surrounding zombies had all been cleared, and the dandelions flew around all day. If anything abnormal appeared, they would warn in advance. In fact, they did not even need to warn anyone; they directly dealt with any zombies that slipped through the net. So there was no real problem with Cao Yuanbai going to repair the houses on the slope outside the complex.
However, Fu Erdie began thinking about the dandelions’ mechanism.
Previously, at the D City base, the dandelions that made Xiao Feng explode had not been the dandelions Fu Erdie brought with her, but the wild dandelions that had refused to return to the complex with her and had been wandering outside for a long time.
In fact, although those dandelions had run away from home, they did not dislike Fu Erdie. So when Fu Erdie went over, they came close to greet her and also connected with the dandelions Fu Erdie had brought, passing along information.
Fu Erdie looked at the pinyin pronunciations pointed out by the dandelion fluff on the pinyin chart and learned that those wild dandelions had controlled the person surnamed Feng. So, led by the dandelions, she easily killed him.
When she left the D City base, those wild dandelions drifted away again.
But because of this, Fu Erdie discovered another very interesting trait of the dandelions: their ability level actually fluctuated.
When they were in the complex, a large group of dandelions tested at a true level of third rank. The dandelions she took away in the box van tested at second rank.
But at the D City base, because many of the wild dandelions were first-rank, when they linked with the second-rank dandelions, it was as if they pulled down the average, causing the overall level to become first-rank.
Fu Erdie found this very curious. Why was it that in the complex, when there were many dandelions, numbers meant strength and they became third-rank, but after going out to the D City base, more numbers meant “less” strength and they became first-rank?
After thinking and thinking, Fu Erdie believed that every individual dandelion probably had its own ability reserves. When they linked together, the overall level shown by testing was indeed displayed according to the average, not the total sum of all the dandelions’ ability reserves.
This meant that behind the complex dandelions’ average third-rank, there should be many third-rank dandelions pulling up the average and raising the level.
The dandelion’s wind attribute and linkage attribute were both its special traits. Individual strength did not count as true strength, so these powerful individual dandelions should also be intentionally allowing weaker individuals to follow Fu Erdie outside for training.
With this, Fu Erdie realised one thing. If the dandelions wanted to level up as a whole, the rubbish they corroded and the nutrients they absorbed should be several times that of other plants.
Fu Erdie: “…”
Thinking of this made her a little worried.
Fortunately, last time, clearing a million zombies in the city had allowed the dandelion group to level up, so their progress had not fallen behind. After returning to the complex, because the dandelions’ overall level had increased, their coverage area also expanded from the complex’s thirty mu to sixty mu.
In fact, some wild dandelions chose to disconnect and went further away without taking from the group’s energy. So from an outsider’s perspective, a radius of five hundred metres — a full three or four hundred mu — was all dandelions. Or rather, it was the territory of Fu Erdie, the Butterfly Principal.
Now that the territory and plant scale had grown, Fu Erdie began to discover that they were short on manpower.
First, there was a bit too much food. Previously, the mutated plants in Building Seven could easily produce two hundred jin of food a day. It was their daily task, as easy as an author updating two hundred words a day.
This was basic training and a way to maintain the plant babies’ condition.
But the fifty-plus plants that had newly grown to second rank, as well as those plants that slowly grew to first rank, would produce another two hundred jin or so of food every day. Relying only on Granny Zhang Dongxuan, the little girl Zhang Guya, and Auntie Cao Rui — three ordinary people — was becoming a bit too much.
Although the plants in Building Seven were very sensible and helped them go upstairs and downstairs, and even actively delivered their produced food to the sixteenth and seventeenth floors, the plants downstairs and in the other buildings were beyond the reach of the Building Seven babies. Granny Zhang and the others still had to walk back and forth.
In short, every day was becoming a little tiring, and they could not keep up.
And several hundred jin of food a day was only the basic operation. Some plants with especially vigorous energy would produce a fruit whenever they had nothing else to do. They turned a two-jin basic task into twenty jin. One day, the millet even wanted to tease the spider plant, which was specially responsible for processing millet into hulled grain, to see whether it could produce faster or the spider plant’s hands could work faster, so it started producing extremely quickly.
The spider plant also competed with it. The two plants developed a strange competitive spirit and produced five hundred jin of millet in one day…
In short, that day and the following days, the food inventory shot upward. By February 5, Building Seven had already stored eight thousand jin of grain.
And this was only what they had saved leisurely over a month. Later, as more zombies were lured in, the plants grew stronger and more energetic, this number would definitely continue to rise. At that time, relying only on Granny Zhang and the other two would definitely not be enough.
So Fu Erdie hired another ten people from the D City base to take care of the plants in the other nine buildings aside from Building Seven, as well as the plants in the complex’s green belts downstairs, collecting food every day.
Because the plants had become stronger and their output had increased, Fu Erdie thought she might as well directly rent the equipment from the D City base that they had originally planned to make themselves.
Buying was impossible. A purchase price of one hundred thousand jin of grain at every turn was still too much for Fu Erdie. But rent of ten thousand jin of grain per month, with the plants’ current surplus output of three or four hundred jin per day, was completely affordable. This way, construction in the complex could speed up.
After discussing with Professor Zhao and Xu Qi, the D City person in charge, everyone hit it off quickly. They soon determined the regulations for renting personnel and equipment, as well as the arrival date for people and equipment.
During this time, Fu Erdie and Sang Wenhao successively lured the zombies within a ten-kilometre radius, roughly five hundred thousand zombies, back to the direction of Building Seven near the road, then let the plants rooted in Building Seven carry out rapid clearing and evolution.
The succulent and gardenia, two veteran plants, finally reached third rank during this nutrient absorption, becoming two more third-rank plants after the pothos, dandelions, spider plant, and potato.
But after eating another one hundred crystal cores, the house still had not upgraded to fourth rank, as if it was still just a little bit short.
Fu Erdie hoped the house could reach fourth rank quickly, because as the babies in Building Seven grew stronger and stronger, she kept having the illusion that the building might be broken apart by the plants at any moment. And the leap from third to fourth rank was a qualitative change.
When the house was first-rank, it was one room in 16-1. When it reached second-rank, it covered the whole sixteenth floor. At third-rank, it covered floors 14 to 18. Once it reached fourth-rank, its coverage would double, and it would definitely be able to cover the entire Building Seven.
So after the equipment and people from the D City base arrived, Fu Erdie began nonstop taking Sang Wenhao and a box van of intelligent mutated plants out to clear zombies.
In late February, she went to a densely populated district and obtained more than two hundred crystal cores, all of which she gave to the white light inside the box van.
After returning to rest and reorganise in the first half of March, she changed to another batch of plants and dandelions and set out again. In the second half of the month, she cleared another densely populated district of zombies.
By late April, Fu Erdie, Sang Wenhao, and the others had, together with previous batches, cleared a total of four million zombies from several districts in the centre of C City, basically emptying the city centre of zombies. Only then did the house finally eat enough crystal cores and break through to fourth rank.
When testing the ability levels of the house and the plants, Fu Erdie tested through her own ability, so the measured value would be one higher than the true value. Therefore, the house’s ability level was four, but displayed on the detector as five.
Looking at the [5] on the detector, Fu Erdie felt so excited that she was even more excited than when she and her boyfriend upgraded. She immediately brought the house home to check the range of its domain.
After returning, before saying anything, she let the white light enter Building Seven from the box van.
As expected, the house really! finally! included all of Building Seven!!!
The entire building, which had originally been dim, began constantly flickering with gentle, non-dazzling white light. Water and electricity ran through the whole building, and even the elevator made a “ding” as it powered on and restarted, now able to operate normally.
Fu Erdie was happy, the house was happy, and all the plants in Building Seven were exceptionally excited.
They finally did not have to worry about damaging this building anymore!
So on this day, Senyu Residential Complex — now officially called Butterfly Garden — Butterfly Garden’s main base, Building Seven, suddenly glowed with soft white light as if the whole building had mutated. The entire house was no longer restrained and began to pulse and twist.
It was like a lump of jelly. Before, while still obediently sitting in a plastic box, it had looked no different. Now, in an instant, it broke free of its restraints and started wanting to dance.
If everyone in Building Seven had not been notified in advance, especially the hired personnel who had been mentally prepared, these people would almost have been frightened out of their wits.
Now the whole building was within the white light’s control range, so the white light could transform it freely.
Fu Erdie did not know how the house and the plants communicated. She only saw the house’s colour gradually become lighter and paler. The newly painted cement and old cement together began falling down in sheets. The entire building only maintained a steel-bar skeleton and the most original interior decoration, while from the outside, it completely turned into something like jelly. Inside the “jelly,” the dense roots, stems, and leaves of the plants were incomparably clear.
And now, the whole building separated from its foundation. With the plants’ combined effort, it suddenly…
Stood up!!!
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