Although there was still some difficulty in realising the travel plan, being able to “stand up” was already a very good start. According to the plants’ feedback, basic small-range movement was not a problem.
At present, the biggest problems were two things: coordination, and the fact that the body was too large, making entry and exit inconvenient.
How to cleverly solve the size problem was another matter. Coordination, however, required repeated practice.
The plants could not speak and could only slowly communicate using pinyin, so letting them figure things out by themselves would not work. Fu Erdie had to guide them.
So the next day, Fu Erdie suggested that the technical department work in the cleaned-up Building Six during the day.
She would have the house enter the box van, then move the box van to the entrance of Building Six. Using extension cords and other tools, they could draw electricity from the box van, and everyone could continue working as usual.
The cement workers had no cement tasks, so they worked together with the people responsible for planting and collecting grain. After finishing, they could find any place to rest, as long as they did not approach the dangerous area around Building Seven.
Once everyone had somewhere to go, Fu Erdie began trying to get the plants to move.
First, she tested the flying ability of her tool-man boyfriend and the dandelions to see whether they could make the house fly.
With everyone and all the plants working together, they could keep the house suspended in the air for ten minutes before exhausting themselves and lowering it back down.
“It seems short flights are possible, but long-term flight isn’t.” Fu Erdie recorded this in her notes.
Then they began trying to walk like a millipede.
She divided the bottom of Building Seven into a 4×4 grid, making sixteen zones, or sixteen “elephant feet.” Four rows and four columns. Whether moving forward or sideways, they would first move the first and third row/column, then the second and fourth row/column.
This way, they did not “trip over their own left and right feet” and tangle themselves up again. But the walking was very stiff. They could only move forward, backward, or sideways like a crab. Once they encountered situations requiring more complicated turns, it did not work.
So Fu Erdie tried a third method: no longer having all the plants participate in leg movement. Instead, the walking would be handled by the strongest and most powerful succulent. Aside from a few third-rank plants like the pothos and spider plant, the other plants would attach themselves to the succulent’s roots, stems, and fleshy leaves, coordinating with its movements to support and strengthen its actions. This way, the succulent could control the building’s walking by itself.
The pothos and the others could “walk” together with it. Because third-rank plants were already strong, and because they would coordinate with the succulent as the main body, they would not be disturbed by the movements of other plants. Their movement space and role during walking would be much greater.
Once this method was proposed, the succulent became extremely excited!
It still remembered the grand promise Fu Erdie had drawn for it in the beginning: that it could wrap around the entire building and hold the pothos boss and the others in its hands!
Although it had not grown that tall yet, it was already very happy to be able to control the direction of the first-floor plants!
And now, the pothos boss was even helping it! Hmph! In the future, the pothos would not be the boss. It would be the boss!
The pothos ignored the succulent’s one-sided declaration of a successful usurpation. Whatever the gardener told it to do, it did.
The house slowly began to move. Forward, backward, left, right, diagonally, even turning in place — the succulent completed them all smoothly.
It was just a little tiring…
After spinning in place two more times, the succulent got a little dizzy.
Fu Erdie had everyone retract their roots and place the house back on the ground. She told them not to feel discouraged, to rest for a while, and then try other methods.
That afternoon, Fu Erdie took frozen ice from the fridge connected to the box van, wanting the plant building to try stepping on ice or ice water to slide. She also asked Sang Wenhao and the sports student Pan Feizhou to extract and make especially hard metal rollers.
But without exception, before the enormous weight of a building weighing several hundred tons, these tools shattered into pieces within minutes. Without the enhancement of hundreds of second- and third-rank ability plants, the residential complex simply could not find any tools that could help the house move.
So in the end, the problem returned to the plants themselves.
If the plants could not become stronger, then the house would always be very difficult to move, or it would move at a tortoise-like speed.
At first, the succulent refused to believe it and kept trying all kinds of methods. In the blink of an eye, a week passed, and after struggling until May, it finally became discouraged and sulkily acted spoiled with Fu Erdie.
Fu Erdie was helpless and also a little guilty. “If I had planted you outside from the beginning, maybe now you could have smoothly pulled out your roots and moved around by yourself.”
The succulent hurriedly shook its fleshy leaves.
How could this be the gardener’s fault? If anything, blame the plants for suddenly wanting to run away…
Clearly, at the beginning, everyone had assumed they would root in one place and grow properly.
That was a plant’s instinct. None of them had ever thought about leaving.
It was only after seeing the potato, and later more and more ability plants, follow the gardener outside that they became unwilling to stay behind and also wanted to go out to play.
Sigh…
Fu Erdie had no choice but to continuously practise push-and-pull ability every day with the succulent, pothos, and the other main contributors to the house’s movement, helping them grow as much as possible.
At night, Fu Erdie hugged Sang Wenhao’s arm, brows tightly furrowed. “I feel that if we want this house to truly become fast, even flexible enough to bypass all kinds of obstacles, at the very least we need the succulent to reach fourth rank. No, actually, even if the succulent reaches fourth rank, it probably won’t be enough. Maybe the pothos, dandelions, and the others also need to reach fourth rank…”
But thinking about it, to raise the house to fourth rank, they had basically searched through several districts of C City’s centre, finding seven or eight hundred ability zombies among four million zombies, and used so many crystal cores to push the house to fourth rank. Now, if the succulent needed fourth rank, the dandelions needed fourth rank, and the pothos needed fourth rank, how much effort and how much time would it take to pull them up?
Sang Wenhao reached out, his long fingers following the force as they slipped into her hair and massaged her scalp. “Don’t worry too much. Plants are different from the house. They can grow not only by absorbing crystal cores, but also by corroding and absorbing zombies. The average level of so many dandelions has reached third rank, which means many individual dandelions have reached third rank.”
“If the energy used to raise hundreds or thousands of dandelions to third rank is instead concentrated on raising one succulent to fourth rank, I don’t think it will be that difficult.”
Fu Erdie’s eyes lit up, but then she realised a new problem. “The dandelions can follow us and go to zombie-dense places to corrode zombies and grow. The plants in Building Seven can’t. We can only go out and lure zombies back.”
This was troublesome, but after thinking it over, there was still a gradual possibility of achieving it. It no longer seemed as distant as before.
That was enough. She should not ask for too much else.
Fu Erdie calculated that tomorrow she would comfort the plants, and in a few days, around mid-May, they could go out again to lure zombies.
However, this time, before Fu Erdie could go looking for zombies, the zombies came looking for them.
Of course, they were not looking for Senyu Residential Complex, but the D City base.
Leave a Reply