When Schiller climbed the hill again, Pamela was already waiting there. She looked much better than before. Sure enough, debt aged people.
Schiller looked into the distance and found that the forest was growing much better than before as well. Apparently, while preventing fires, Pamela had adjusted the proportions of plants here to make the forest healthier.
Without waiting any longer, Schiller said, "Help me find a particular flowerpot in that high school."
"A flowerpot?" Pamela asked, puzzled. "What's so special about a flowerpot? Does it have some kind of unusual pattern?"
Schiller shook his head. "There's a drainage hole in the bottom."
Pamela was speechless. "What flowerpot doesn't have a drainage hole in the bottom? Without one, the roots would rot... Fine, fine. I'll try."
With that, she began controlling all the plants inside the boarding high school not far from the forest, making them lower their heads to inspect the flowerpots beneath them.
After looking for quite a while, Pamela said, "The school probably bought these flowerpots in bulk. They all look more or less alike—ordinary white plastic gardening pots with a hole in the bottom."
"Can you sense whether there's a foreign object in the soil of any of them?"
This time, Pamela concentrated longer than ever. She was clearly using the Exhaustion Method to eliminate possibilities, but it was not easy. Plant roots had no sensory cells, so to determine whether there was a foreign object, she had to force the roots to grow rapidly until they filled the entire pot. Wherever their growth was obstructed was where the object lay.
But that took considerable strength. After checking them, Pamela dropped onto the ground and said, "There are seven or eight suspicious flowerpots. They're scattered across pretty much every floor."
"Can you dig the objects out?"