It was not a huge blanket of white fluff. Instead, they were tiny little clusters, tiny little seeds, utterly inconspicuous, yet in the truest sense, they had become eyes in the dark, silently growing among all kinds of half-dead weeds.
The group emerged from one of Jian City’s tributaries and gradually pushed eastward.
Along the way, they looked just like many other ability users travelling or searching for supplies. They rode bicycles and similar transport that did not consume fuel, moving forward covered in the dust of the road.
The only difference was that they were in very good spirits. Their bodies were clean, their clothes were neat, and the exposed skin on their arms, calves, and necks showed no traces of contamination from water sources or the environment.
The weather in April stayed around the teens. Compared with last year’s twenty to thirty degrees, it was much cooler, almost as if spring had returned to the natural climate before the apocalypse.
However, the farther downstream they went, the more traces of flood damage they saw everywhere.
Beneath some ordinary-looking stretches of water lay the bodies of many people who had not managed to evacuate in time, along with zombies that still had the ability to move.
Zombies did not need to breathe, so it made no difference whether they moved above or below the water. It was just that they were less stable underwater, so they tended to move toward the riverbanks. As a result, every so often, Fu Erdie and the others would see many zombies crawling out of the water.
Fu Erdie used her see-through vision to confirm that no ability users or ability zombies had passed nearby. Then she dealt with the zombies, scattered dandelion seeds over them so the dandelions could slowly digest them, and continued on her way.
Because of the floods, the terrain downstream had changed greatly.
Landslides buried roads. Together with one earthquake after another, large and small, many low-lying places had either become pools of muddy water or were filled with rocks, collapsed buildings, steel bars, and concrete washed down from elsewhere, making them uneven, filthy, and impossible to walk through.
Fu Erdie’s group travelled by bicycle, so they were already moving slowly. Now, whenever they came across ground that looked solid but felt soft and unstable underfoot, like quicksand or swamp, they had to assemble the bicycles together and fly across.
After two or three consecutive days of such difficult terrain, Fu Erdie chose not to continue deeper downstream. Instead, she moved south along the boundary between this hard-to-travel land and the edge of the vast floodwaters.
Two years of extreme heat had melted the glaciers. The current water level, or rather the sea level connected to the floodwaters, had already risen as far as it could.
No matter how much it rained later, it was only evaporated water returning in the form of rainfall. The total amount of water was fixed, so any rise or fall would not fluctuate too much.
As for the bases originally located downstream, some remained in the flooded plains because of special abilities, while others had set up camp not far from the water’s edge.
As Fu Erdie’s group travelled, they cultivated dandelions, scattering seeds everywhere. At the same time, they let the zucchini absorb zombies whenever it could. They did not speed up their pace just because of the previous seventh-rank zombie king.
Meanwhile, in Qing City to the south, the base leader, who had not received news of the Butterfly Garden group for a long time, slammed his fist against the table in irritation.
“Boss,” one subordinate said cautiously, watching his expression, “maybe they’re just lying low and haven’t come out yet? Our people have already headed that way. Maybe news will come back soon. You—ah!”
The man was kicked flying. He smashed through the already broken window on the twelfth floor and fell onto the rubble-strewn road outside.
His head and back struck sharp concrete slabs, leaving long bloody gashes.
But he did not die. Instead, he adjusted his posture in terror, knelt where he had fallen, and kowtowed toward the twelfth floor, begging for forgiveness.
An irritated “Get lost” freed him from his predicament. Ignoring the pain, he scrambled away in a panic.
The boss on the twelfth floor became even angrier and swept everything off the table.
Before the apocalypse, Qing City had been a major southern city. Both water and land transport had been highly developed. Local agricultural products had no shortage of buyers, and it had also been a transport hub connecting many regions, a prosperous second-tier city.
But now, half of Qing City was underwater. Even as a high-rank ability user, his life was not that good.
Under that person’s instructions, he had used special methods to keep advancing until he reached seventh rank. He had also gathered a large group of ability users under him.
But so what?
A bunch of useless idiots. They could not repair houses. They could not build water towers. They could not grow more varied crops. They could not even fix a tiny fault in a solar panel; the more they repaired it, the worse it got. They were simply a bunch of freeloading trash!
Clearly, he was the boss, yet he felt as though he were living like a primitive man.
The only difference was that primitive people lived in caves, while he lived in ruins constantly corroded by the environment.
It infuriated him to death.
He wanted to go inland, find a more intact city, and live in a more luxurious house. But that person had said that if he left the waterside, it would be much harder to wait for all the zombies crawling out of the water.
For the sake of the upgrade plan, he had to continue staying here with his people to level up.
If it had only been ordinary waiting, that would have been fine. Killing ability zombies, collecting crystals, killing a few fleeing ability users—life would have gone on “simply” enough.
But slowly, he realised that things were nowhere near as easy as that person had first claimed.
The zombie kings who were supposed to be firmly under control began slipping out of control. Their crude base was frequently ambushed by high-rank zombies from all directions. On top of that, the scattered news coming from the distant Butterfly Garden buzzed around them like mosquitoes, irritating them endlessly.
Why was it that they were all living through the apocalypse, yet he and his people had to endure winter cold and summer heat in a ruined city, while those people stayed comfortably in apartment buildings with air conditioning and tablets, casually tending a few potted plants every day and enjoying endless food and drink?
They had sent out quite a few people to gather information. Some disappeared after leaving, with no news at all. Whether they had died or simply chosen not to contact them, they vanished completely.
Others successfully entered D City Base or the territory covered by C City’s Butterfly Garden. After much difficulty, they managed to charge their telegraph machines and send back some information, but the communication channel soon cut off. It was unclear whether D City Base or the Butterfly Garden had discovered them, or whether they had defected.
In short, ever since the Butterfly Garden and D City had voluntarily cut off their official communication channel, Ying Da, the boss of Qing City, had never again received complete information about the current situation there. Now, his mentality exploded once every day.
He did not want to admit that he was afraid the people over there would discover some clue and come looking.
After all, he was a seventh-rank ability user. He also had so many sixth- and fifth-rank subordinates. There was no reason for him to fear that woman and her useless followers.
Yet as the days passed, he still became more anxious every day, clawing at his scalp. And he began killing more and more zombies that had not yet been “raised to maturity.”
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