And so, after Fu Erdie, Sang Wenhao, and the others had lazed around at home for a month or two, they finally set off again!
Fu Erdie was still fifth-rank, and Sang Wenhao was still fourth-rank.
They could clearly feel that the higher the rank, the slower the upgrades became. For ordinary ability users, the higher the rank, the more crystal cores were needed. For them, the more time they needed to spend training their abilities.
And the more things progressed, the more they realised that low-rank mutated zombies were no longer a threat to them, but a limited resource.
For ordinary ability users, or even ordinary bases besieged by zombies, obtaining a single crystal core from so many zombies was very difficult.
But when the strong took the initiative to encircle and suppress zombies, once they gained the advantage, they could snowball, continuously obtaining more zombie crystal cores, becoming stronger and stronger. The winner took all.
Fu Erdie did not want to care about what those people who wanted crystal cores but could not fight ability zombies thought. Right now, she wanted to become the one who took everything at the very top as much as possible.
Perhaps once all ability zombies and ordinary zombies were cleaned up… everyone could return to a more normal life like before?
Fu Erdie notified D City Base through the telegraph. Some other bases also listening in on D City Base’s channel learned more or less about Fu Erdie’s plan and silently watched.
Although there was no signal here and no livestream, Fu Erdie and the others would bring a telegraph machine on the road. After agreeing on a communication frequency with her aunt Cao Rui at the complex and maintaining long-term telegraph contact between both sides, Fu Erdie set off.
She drove a thirty-seat bus. Besides herself and Sang Wenhao, she also brought Han Zhi and twenty-seven ability users from near C City Base.
The bus luggage compartment held all kinds of clothing and daily necessities needed for the trip, as well as many balloon surfaces for the dandelion balloons.
On the roof of the bus were thirty bicycles, covered with windproof and rainproof cloth to protect them as much as possible from wind and rain damage.
In addition, the roof also carried the box truck containing the house.
The box truck was connected to the bus. Inside it was another plant accompanying them on this trip, besides the dandelions: the all-purpose zucchini.
If anyone needed the toilet on the road, they could go upstairs, climb into the box truck, and relieve themselves in the specially prepared spittoon. The zucchini would corrode and clean up all waste and other dirty things, leaving behind no smell or trace.
The bus full of people set off with nervous and excited hearts.
C City centre and the surrounding areas had already been mostly cleared by Fu Erdie or the nearby ability users, so they drove straight out of the city. As they travelled, they cleared roadblocks, and after one day they arrived at the first target location.
The sound of the moving vehicle attracted zombies to gather around.
Fu Erdie and the others ignored them and continued forward. When the surrounding zombies had gathered enough to almost block the road ahead, Sang Wenhao stopped the bus and controlled it to rise into the air.
The bus weighed dozens of tons. If Sang Wenhao had still been third-rank, lifting it would have been exhausting.
But as a fourth-rank, with Fu Erdie’s help, although he could not move quickly, he could still lift the bus fairly steadily and easily onto the roof of the tallest nearby building.
The dandelions blew away the scent of everyone in the bus. Everyone also stayed silent.
The group quietly hid on the rooftop. Fu Erdie, Sang Wenhao, and Han Zhi came out. With Han Zhi’s shared vision, they accurately searched for ability zombies in the zombie horde. Once they caught the locations of the ability zombies, they floated down from the rooftop and charged in different directions.
Each time Sang Wenhao charged, he harvested a zombie head, skilfully splitting open the skull and taking out the crystal core.
Fu Erdie stepped on dandelion fluff as light as feathers, approached the zombies, and used her ability to forcefully absorb the energy inside the ability zombies. Once a zombie lost strength and collapsed, a large dandelion floating around Fu Erdie would land on its head, insert its roots into the skull, pull out the crystal core, and hand it to Fu Erdie.
Compared with the bloody scene on Sang Wenhao’s side, Fu Erdie’s side seemed much more elegant…?
At least, that was what the group silently watching from the rooftop thought.
After Fu Erdie and Sang Wenhao finished dealing with this circle of zombies, they returned upstairs, took Han Zhi, told the others to rest where they were, and flew toward a farther area.
Without pulling anything heavy, and only bringing Fu Erdie and Han Zhi, Sang Wenhao flew very quickly. They soon swept through the ability zombies across several hundred square kilometres. After confirming none had been missed, they took a loudspeaker and began luring the zombies from the first divided area toward the tall building where the bus was parked.
There were few people in this area, but gathered together, there were still more than ten thousand zombies. To ordinary ability users, this was already like a small zombie tide.
They had never seen such a scene before. Three people were needed to guide this first batch of zombies home.
Everyone looked at one another. According to the small teams they had privately discussed, they selected a three-person team.
Sang Wenhao nodded and immediately dismantled the door and roof of an abandoned vehicle on the ground, creating a small box-shaped carriage with doors and windows, then hung it beneath a dandelion balloon.
Under Fu Erdie’s guidance, the dandelions obediently entered the balloon and quickly lifted the small box carriage.
Two minutes later, Sang Wenhao and the dandelion balloon carried the three ability users, three bicycles, and the food and water the three would need on their way back to a spot one kilometre away, where the loudspeaker began to sound.
The zombies were alarmed and ran toward the three bicycles one kilometre away, following the bicycles farther and farther off. Sang Wenhao had already returned to the rooftop, bringing the busload of people back on the road.
The three ability users were not far from Senyu Residential Complex now. If they were fast, they would return tomorrow. If slow, the day after tomorrow.
They rode their bicycles at a steady speed, using the loudspeaker to lure ten thousand zombies home. The dandelion balloon floated unhurriedly in the air.
When night fell, the ability users asked the dandelions to lower the balloon. The three people brought the bicycles back into the small box carriage and flew into the air. Some ate, some slept.
When the zombies had followed the sound all the way beneath them, they turned off the loudspeaker, charged it with a power bank, and relied purely on their scent as humans to attract the zombies to gather around them.
That night, they slept uneasily, yet unexpectedly peacefully.
The next day, they hesitated for a moment and lazily wanted the dandelions to fly them directly.
Then, under the weight, the dandelion balloon moved very slowly, swaying like an old grandma taking a walk. Who knew when they would get home at that speed?
The ability users had no choice but to trouble the dandelion ladies to work harder, carry them two or three hundred metres away, put them down, then continue using bicycles and the loudspeaker to lure the zombies home.
Around four or five in the afternoon the next day, the three people, as the first batch of ability users to bring zombies back, successfully returned home under the welcome of the ability users and ordinary people guarding the base! The plants also quickly killed this batch of zombies and turned them into nutrients.
Cao Rui sent the news of their arrival home to Fu Erdie. Fu Erdie translated the telegraph and told the bus full of ability users. Everyone began applauding warmly!
This plan worked. The first trial had succeeded!
With the first successful case, the following journey became even smoother.
Fu Erdie knew that if she did not need to consider luring zombies, her speed would be faster.
But while there were still ability users available, they needed to gather the zombies from each area handled by every three ability users, so the ability users could better drag them home. Because of that, the overall efficiency was not especially high.
Twenty-seven ordinary ability users, three per group, lured away the several thousand to ten thousand zombies in their assigned planned area each day, then returned home.
By the ninth day, all nine groups of ability users had successively gotten off the bus and led away the zombies they were responsible for. After that, the speed of Fu Erdie, Sang Wenhao, and Han Zhi suddenly increased.
They no longer cared about ordinary zombies. Each time they arrived somewhere, they quickly cleared the ability zombies first, then found roads the bus could travel during the process of killing zombies. Following the map on the tablet, they moved quickly to the next location.
If their zombie-clearing speed with ordinary ability users had been one planned area per day, then without ordinary ability users and without needing to lure zombies, they could clear ten areas in one day.
Three people and one bus, carrying the box truck on the roof, swept through everything like breaking dry weeds and smashing rotten wood for another twenty days. After clearing two hundred areas in total, they finally began returning after receiving news that the last group of departing ability users had successfully reached home.
This trip had lasted a full month from start to finish.
The people sent by D City Base had already returned. Aside from the core group on the sixteenth floor, the complex now had 220 ordinary people and 75 ability users.
Fu Erdie had not returned yet. Their daily work was to care for the plants in the complex. They had no other work and no longer went outside.
Because the weather was now extremely hot again.
In July, the average temperature was thirty-five degrees. In August, it averaged forty-five degrees. By the time Fu Erdie drove the electric bus home, the temperature had already reached fifty degrees. Places exposed to the sun without shade were even over sixty degrees, and the ground temperature might already be over seventy.
Fu Erdie was very worried about the vehicle’s tyres. She and Sang Wenhao kept paying attention to the tyre pressure. However, after an emergency brake caused by refugees blocking the vehicle, one tyre still burst.
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