Sang Wenhao: “…”
The house: “…”
The plants, Cen Xiyang, and Han Zhi: “?!!!!”
Fu Erdie grew excited.
So it really worked! She really could lift such a heavy building with ease!
She raised Building Seven and kept it suspended in the air for a full ten minutes before finally running out of strength and setting it back down.
But that short while was already enough to prove that when she used a “close friend’s” ability, the majority of the energy consumed was her own. Because if it had all consumed Sang Wenhao’s ability, it definitely would not have lasted that long.
Fu Erdie was very happy and began trying the dandelions’ wind-type ability.
She closed her eyes, feeling the flow of the wind, feeling herself slowly grow lighter as though lifted by the wind, then gradually float into the air.
After drifting freely for a while, she returned to the roof and continued experimenting.
It was also at this moment that Fu Erdie discovered she could use at most two close friends’ abilities at the same time.
For example, if she used Cen Xiyang’s long-distance spatial control and Han Zhi’s vision, then she could not use Sang Wenhao’s metal ability or the dandelions’ wind ability.
This placed certain limits on her power, but it did not diminish how powerful the boost was.
After all, as long as she was present, it was equivalent to having many different high-rank attack methods of different attributes.
After reaching seventh-rank, Fu Erdie temporarily stopped absorbing crystal cores. After all, the higher the rank, the more crystal cores were needed. Going from sixth to seventh already required ten thousand cores; seventh to eighth might require one hundred thousand. Since she could not upgrade for now, it was better to give the remaining cores to her close friends and maximise the benefits.
She distributed the remaining crystal cores to the pothos, gardenia, spider plant, and the others. Using three or four hundred second-rank cores in total, she upgraded all the plant babies to fourth-rank.
There were now more than five thousand second-rank cores, over four thousand first-rank cores, and around one hundred third-rank cores left. Roughly estimating, these could still allow eleven or twelve people to upgrade to fifth-rank.
However, Fu Erdie did not use them immediately. Instead, she stored them away first and let everyone enter a period of rest and training.
She needed to prepare to head south. At the same time, she had to plan how dozens of ability users would go to the northwest to lure zombies back.
The outside ability users gathered around the complex were willing to work for the complex because Fu Erdie could provide them with sufficient healing ability.
But if Fu Erdie was heading southeast and constantly encountering zombies, asking them to ride bicycles alone over such long distances to lure zombies back would be much more difficult and dangerous.
They definitely could not lure zombies on the same massive scale as Fu Erdie and Sang Wenhao. It was very likely that they might travel a long distance, spend a month, and only bring back a few hundred zombies.
While luring zombies, they might also encounter ordinary zombies evolving into ability zombies. In short, there were risks.
Butterfly Garden needed to quantify their workload. For example, how many zombies brought back would allow them to stay in the complex for how many days, or how many treatment sessions they could receive from Fu Erdie. If they accumulated a certain number of zombies, how many crystal cores could they claim from the complex?
Similarly, for those with special abilities, or those who found resources the complex needed, how much currency could they exchange them for?
When Fu Erdie was not around, how much would they need to pay to exchange for potatoes with some healing ability?
All these terms and rules needed to be slowly clarified by Butterfly Garden, so that everyone had clearer standards for income and expenses, and so that the daily operation of Butterfly Garden could become more formal and richer.
To Fu Erdie, while she went out to fight, her family would remain in the complex. In a way, the complex was also its own small society.
Only with a more complete system would everyone act with clearer rules, and only then would her rear base become more stable.
In December, Cao Bingqing, Fu Chenghong, and the all-rounder Professor Zhao introduced a series of regulations together.
Outside ability users had to independently go out and lure zombies. For every one hundred zombies brought back, they could live in the complex for one day and accumulate one-tenth of a treatment session.
Ability users had to leave Butterfly Garden. They could no longer stay indefinitely.
Over these past few months, their physical injuries and illnesses had already been completely healed. Although they were reluctant, since Butterfly Garden no longer allowed them to stay, they adapted well enough and returned to their previous bases, returning to their old lives.
Some with stronger constitutions did not set out again immediately.
But those easily affected by polluted water and soil in the apocalypse began making urgent preparations to lure zombies. While the zombies were still ordinary zombies and the mutated ones had already been killed by Fu Erdie’s group, they would bring back as many as they could.
Butterfly Garden had promised that as long as a person could lure back one million zombies, they would gain permanent residence inside Butterfly Garden.
One million. Without the help of Fu Erdie’s group, it was truly difficult to reach.
But when they had gone out with Fu Erdie before, they had discovered that many places had zombie tides of various sizes. If they were lucky and encountered zombie groups that had lost their leader but had not yet scattered, they could bring back one large wave directly.
If they were even luckier, they might directly bring back a million-level zombie tide, successfully earn a house, and bring two relatives or friends allowed by Butterfly Garden to live there.
If they were unlucky and only encountered zombie tides of a few thousand or tens of thousands, that was still fine. With enough trips, sooner or later they could gather the required number.
They had maps given by Butterfly Garden, as well as maps they had found outside.
As long as their ability-user teams moved together and advanced in an organised manner, they could definitely lure zombies back in batches.
How the ability users handled things was up to them to think through and decide. Inside Butterfly Garden, everyone’s division of labour also changed.
Planting was no longer limited to staple crops. Many seasoning-type plants were also grown.
These seasonings could be exchanged with D City Base and other nearby bases that had established contact, trading for supplies such as cotton quilts, or various kinds of industrial knowledge, whether handmade or mechanical.
The ordinary mutated crops in the complex were still being cultivated at full speed. Once Fu Erdie’s group headed southeast after the new year, it would no longer be so easy for the complex to obtain mutated crops from the house’s domain.
They needed to gather these crops and trade them with nearby bases. Although it was semi-supportive in nature, they would still gain plenty of benefits, especially technical benefits.
Butterfly Garden’s ability-user team, including Zhuang Licheng and Pan Feizhou from the technical department, continued practising their abilities. They tried connecting and pushing-pulling with Fu Erdie to see whether contact with her could improve their ability ranks, while also allowing Fu Erdie to gain new close friends and new abilities.
Of course, while pushing and pulling with the ability-user team was important, that was only the reason on the surface. Fu Erdie wanted to use this to judge the trust and loyalty the ability users in the complex had toward her.
Being unwilling to fully open one’s heart was normal. Not everyone who stayed cautious and could not let her ability connect with theirs was a malicious bad person. But Fu Erdie would not feel comfortable entrusting the rear base to such people, especially a place where her parents, grandmother, and other family members lived.
After several attempts, Fu Erdie discovered that Pan Feizhou and Ye Jia, the woman with wind blades, trusted her completely and without defence. As for Lucky Koi He Xuan and engineer Zhuang Licheng, they carried a natural vigilance. Even after a year of contact, they still maintained basic human wariness toward Fu Erdie.
Fu Erdie did not force them. She made Ye Jia and Pan Feizhou her new trusted people, gave them crystal cores, and upgraded them to fourth-rank, enough to stand above the crowd.
Since they were fourth-rank, the plants Fu Erdie trusted without reservation and left behind to guard the complex needed to reach fifth-rank.
Dandelion, potato, bamboo, and watermelon — these were either plants that had been with Fu Erdie for a long time, or plant babies that, regardless of personality, had been generally steady and reliable since birth.
Once their ranks were raised, they could suppress outsiders, suppress the tomato and cucumber that fought and caused damage from time to time, and face possible betrayal or all kinds of strange disputes.
Fu Erdie was not stingy. She took out second- and third-rank crystal cores and quietly upgraded the four selected plant babies to fifth-rank in one breath, directly raising the overall ability level of the whole complex.
After ensuring that there would be no problems at her main base, Fu Erdie gave the remaining second- and third-rank crystal cores to Cen Xiyang, Han Zhi, the pothos, spider plant, and gardenia, who would follow her southeast. Everyone was upgraded to fifth-rank.
After consuming a large number of crystal cores, there were still four thousand first-rank crystal cores and eight hundred second- and third-rank cores left.
These cores were then handed over to Sang Wenhao for upgrading. After Sang Wenhao absorbed all the second- and third-rank cores and two thousand first-rank cores, he successfully rose from fifth-rank to sixth-rank.
In the end, after sweeping through the northwest and obtaining thirty thousand crystal cores, then consuming them until only two thousand remained for the later operation of the base and wages, Butterfly Garden possessed one seventh-rank ability user — Fu Erdie herself; one sixth-rank ability user — Sang Wenhao; eleven fifth-rank ability bodies — Cen Xiyang, Han Zhi, the house, the succulent, the pothos, spider plant, gardenia, dandelion, potato, bamboo, and watermelon; two fourth-rank ability users — Pan Feizhou and Ye Jia; as well as many third-rank ability bodies made up of dandelions, and even more second- and first-rank ability plants that spent all day lying around like salted fish.
Fu Erdie did not understand the situation of ability users across all of Hua Country, let alone the whole world. But she felt that, at least across more than half of Hua Country, her complex was invincible.
Later, when the ability users lured the northwest’s zombies over to feed the complex’s plants, the plant babies in the complex would only stand undefeated and grow stronger and stronger.
Of course, Fu Erdie would now take Building Seven and the plants on that floor toward the more densely populated southeast, and they would also become stronger and stronger.
After the new year, January 1st, the third year of the apocalypse.
Butterfly Garden invited people from D City Base over and celebrated New Year’s Day lively together, sharing information.
On January 4th, Fu Erdie finished preparations and set off with her “Butterfly Legion.”
She felt that she was very happy now — basically the happiest among all the survivors of the apocalypse.
She had family, friends, and a stable rear base. All she needed to do was eat, drink, and head toward crowded places.
The friends, family, and plants seeing them off grew farther and farther behind, soon blocked by tall buildings and the slopes rising and falling around them.
Fu Erdie followed the slope downward, heading toward the Li River.
When the house, the succulent, and the others step by step, with increasingly practised cooperation, reached the riverbank, they sealed off the whole building and transformed into a long, thin shape, moving forward in the river three or four metres from the bank.
Building Seven’s feet stepped on the riverbed, following the terrain below the water, winding up and down, left and right, as it moved downstream.
On the river’s surface and at the riverbed were all kinds of corpses: human, fish, rotting, mutated. While moving together with Building Seven, the plant babies stretched out roots, stems, and leaves, grabbing whatever corpses, filth, and garbage they could reach, lifting them to the water’s surface, then corroding and absorbing them.
Because the apocalypse had brought repeated floods over the past two years, many embankments had rotted without anyone able to repair them. The water level remained high due to factors such as heavy rainfall and melting icebergs.
The river surface was very wide, and the deepest part of the river was also very deep. From Han Zhi’s X-ray-like feedback, the deepest point was more than one hundred and fifty metres, over forty metres higher than under normal pre-apocalypse conditions.
The surface current was not particularly rapid, but there were undercurrents below the water that occasionally swept against Building Seven.
However, the succulent, the house, and even the pothos, spider plant, and gardenia were fifth-rank mutated bodies. They would instinctively take action to stabilise Building Seven. Fu Erdie and the others staying on the fourth floor looked at the water and did not feel any jolting.
Because they needed to walk while clearing the riverway, and because they were in no hurry, their speed was very slow.
After walking for an hour, the house and plants grew somewhat tired. They retracted their legs, adjusted the house’s area and shape, turned the fourth floor where Fu Erdie and the other three were staying into the top floor, and spread the twenty floors above it out across the wide water surface like a flat pancake, leisurely drifting like a small boat.
Unexpectedly, this transformation had originally been for resting, but once changed, they realised that abandoning the conventional walking posture and occupying the whole riverway was much easier.
They floated to the centre of the river, casually stretching out the plants’ branches and leaves to scoop up all the rubbish on the river surface.
When they scooped up more and more, until the plant babies could no longer absorb it all, the succulent would drop anchor. Using its fleshy leaves as an anchor, it rooted into the riverbed at the spot closest to the bank where the water was shallowest. The whole flattened Building Seven would stop and slowly absorb the mountain of corpses and blood.
The dandelions flew out, stopping on the garbage-filled river surface and cleaning up some of the missed corpse fragments.
Their ethereal pure white colour made the river surface seem less filthy and bloody, but Fu Erdie and the others still did not look.
Because if they looked, they would still know that they were surrounded by corpses.
As Building Seven spread itself wider and wider, its height became lower and lower. Now it was almost only one floor high. If they insisted on opening the curtains and looking outside…
The layers upon layers of rotting, stinking corpse fragments on the river would be level with their line of sight.
Cen Xiyang raised her hand first. “If we open the windows, I definitely won’t be able to eat dinner, and I’ll have nightmares.”
Since she said so, Han Zhi also nodded in agreement.
So everyone decided out of sight, out of mind. They let Building Seven wrap and seal all the windows shut. They simply treated it as a holiday in a boat cabin, eating hotpot, playing mahjong, enjoying the perfectly warm winter breeze, breathing the isolated fresh air that had clearly been filtered and purified layer by layer, and comfortably taking a sip of hot coffee.
Beautiful.
To ensure the safety of the main complex, their telegraph machine remained connected twenty-four hours a day.
They had also agreed that they would set off at the beginning of the month, and at the end of the month, the house would enter the box truck, then they would drive the electric car they had brought this time back home.
Within a month, if anyone at home developed negative pathological mutation, it could be discovered and removed in time at the end of the month.
Everyone had a plan. With so many fifth-rank plants, their sense of security was full. So after being alert and tense at the start, they completely let Building Seven and the plants decide the specific pace of travel.
Only when they reached near a city would Building Seven come ashore and stop. Then it would huff and puff its way out of the Li River and enter the city to kill zombies.
At their speed, they basically came ashore once every two or three days and slaughtered zombies once.
Under Fu Erdie’s guidance, Building Seven would go to the largest square in the city. Fu Erdie and the other three would kill the ability zombies in the whole city, then lure the hundreds of thousands of ordinary zombies to the square and wait for Building Seven to slowly slaughter them.
In some of these cities, survivors and ability users knew Fu Erdie’s reputation and took the initiative to avoid her. Some tried to finish off zombies Fu Erdie’s group had nearly killed and steal crystal cores. Without exception, they were repelled. Those who were especially vile and unbearable were directly counter-killed and had their crystal cores taken.
After Fu Erdie and the plants finished handling all the zombies in a city, Building Seven would set off again, slowly returning to the riverbank, going back into the water, and continuing its leisurely drift.
And the reputation of the “Butterfly Legion” and “Butterfly Garden” slowly spread outward from the Li River, bit by bit, toward the surrounding towns and cities.
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