Everyone Plants Zombies: I Can Add Passives to Plants

A pair of front-line partners was more than twice as reliable together as he was fighting alone.

Lin Yue crouched down and used his shovel to dig a hole at the eighth column of the sixth row. He made it slightly deeper and wider than when he had planted Garlic earlier, because Wall-nut's roots were clearly much sturdier.

He tipped Wall-nut, roots and all, out of the little cart. It felt heavy in his palm.

He placed it in the hole, filled it with soil, pressed it down, and watered it thoroughly.

As Lin Yue patted the last handful of soil flat, Wall-nut opened its determined eyes.

Zombies?

This yard would be protected by me.

Chomper bent its stem over, stretched out its long tongue, and licked its new neighbor. Its purple leaves gently brushed over Wall-nut's head, as though greeting it.

Wall-nut did not dodge.

Or rather, it could not. Slow yet resolute, it could only widen its eyes and stare fixedly beyond the fence.

Chomper seemed to like that reaction. Its whole body swayed, and its leaves clapped twice with a crackle, looking thoroughly pleased, as if to say, "This guy's alright."

Lin Yue crouched beside them, watching the two plants complete their first silent social interaction. An inexplicable sense of pride surged up inside him. He rubbed the wet mud from his fingertips and looked at the panel floating above Wall-nut's head.

Wall-nut (Growing)

Health: 3000 × 2 [4000 after maturity]

Ability: Hard Shell

Thick Shell (Passive, Health × 2)

Passive: Awaiting creation

The moment he saw the panel clearly, his eyes slowly widened.

"Holy... Dave, what exactly did you do?"

It was shocking.

This Wall-nut's base health was actually twice the normal amount.

A normal first-tier Wall-nut had 4,000 health when mature, while this one could have 8,000 even before it had fully grown.

It just needed time to mature.

He gently patted Wall-nut. It felt as solid as slapping a sturdy rubber mat.

Wall-nut seemed to sense his touch and tilted itself slightly, leaning two degrees in his direction.

Lin Yue closed his eyes and focused, preparing to use his talent.

What passive would suit Wall-nut best?

Chomper needed growth potential, the flowerpot needed sustenance, and Wall-nut... Wall-nut needed to be unbreakable.

Only a front-liner that grew harder, thicker, and tougher over time deserved the word "fortress."

In the end, he chose the greediest option.

It would still come into its own later.

"After every full day Wall-nut survives, permanently increase its maximum health, while granting a slight resistance to impact. Given enough time, it can grow into a wall nobody can break through."

[Judging...]

[Judgment passed. The actual effect has been standardized. Please check.]

Lin Yue looked at Wall-nut's panel again.

Wall-nut (Growing)

Health: 3000 × 2 [4000 after maturity]

Ability: Hard Shell

Thick Shell (Passive, Health × 2)

Growth (Passive): For each full day of growth, maximum health increases by 10, size increases slightly, and gains slight impact resistance (reduces additional damage from heavy units)

When Lin Yue saw the line about "slight impact resistance," his heart finally settled.

Although it sacrificed part of the boost to its maximum health limit, this extra impact-resistance attribute was precisely for defending against Dr. Zomboss's car-smashing attacks, Zomboni's crushing, and Gargantuar's overwhelming brute force.

Health alone without resistance meant even the thickest wall could not withstand a single blow from a Gargantuar.

But with this slight impact resistance, once it grew stronger in the future, it could truly become the Wall-nut Family's "Nut Strong." I saw it on Bilibili. A very inspiring Wall-nut.

Wall-nut seemed to sense some new power within itself. Slowly and solemnly, it tilted toward Lin Yue, as if saying "thank you" in its own plant-like way.

Chomper watched from beside it, its leaves rustling twice before it leaned over and nudged Wall-nut's side. The force was neither too light nor too heavy, carrying the friendly air of, "Buddy, I've got your back from now on."

Wall-nut swayed from the nudge but did not dodge.

The sky grew darker and darker.

Lin Yue stood up and stretched his numbed legs. The soles of his feet ached faintly. He looked over the backyard's layout. Apart from the bottom row, all five rows above were empty and bare.

There was no rushing it.

With only the last trace of gray-blue light left on the horizon, Lin Yue left the yard and gathered a pile of unwanted dead branches and broken boards from both sides of the street, then carried them back to the backyard.

Crouching beside the fence, he stuffed the loose gaps in it with dead branches one by one, pressed them tight, then wrapped vines around them twice to secure them.

It looked crude and crooked, but at least it could slow the zombies down. Even one extra second would give Chomper a full chance to swallow.

He had never seen his Chomper eat a zombie before, so he did not know whether it could digest one in forty seconds like in the game.

As he tied the vines, he thought that it would be great if the system could judge those dead branches as "obstacles" tomorrow.

Arrangements made in reality might not necessarily work in the game, but he had heard his father say when he was young that Plant Gardens themselves were half-real and half-rule-based creations. Things from the physical world did indeed work inside them.

Their effects were merely weakened by the "rules."

Even weakened, they were still useful. Better than standing around bare-assed and waiting for zombies to crawl through the fence gaps.

By the time he tied the last vine tight, it was completely dark.

Lin Yue crouched in the yard, looking at Wall-nut in the front row and Chomper in the back.

Even if zombies suddenly appeared tonight, he would not be afraid anymore.

As for zombies appearing in the other rows?

Their ultimate destination was his brain anyway. If necessary, he could just lure them in front of Chomper.

Zombies Came Calling

Meanwhile, elsewhere...

On the Tier Two plant and zombie battlefield...

Not a single intact patch of grass remained on the vast plains.

The ground scorched by fireballs had been plowed open, exposing blackened soil that gave off wisps of smoke. Occasionally, one or two charred plant remains stood crookedly at the edge of craters, their stems as brittle as charcoal sticks that would crumble at a touch.

There were even wrecked cars scattered near many plants.

Several hundred Plant Garden owners were spread along a winding battle line. The front row was packed with Wall-nuts. Some were cracked, some had only half their bodies left, but they still blocked the zombies' advance.

Rows of Peashooters and Snow Peas stood in the middle. Their muzzles spat continuously, their shots weaving into a dense barrage. Many zombies continued advancing against the hail of peas.

Melon-pults were scattered sparsely across the rear. Huge watermelons exploded amid the zombie horde, spraying juice everywhere along with the stench of pulp and shattered bones.

"Watch out! That bastard's throwing cars again!" A bare-chested strong man poked half his body out of the trench, his face caked with a mixture of ash and sweat.

He pointed at a metal car burned down to its frame ahead of them and shouted hoarsely, "That one car smashed six of my melons! Six! Ah... ah... ah! I don't want to live anymore!"

The middle-aged woman beside him did not even turn around. Her lips moved rapidly. "What are you screaming for? Do you have any Ice-shrooms left? Another fireball's coming... Hurry! Get an Ice-shroom up there!"

"We're out of Ice-shrooms..." The man climbed up from the ground, wiped muddy water off his face, and spoke in a voice as dry as sandpaper scraping metal. "Not a single one left."

When those words fell, the entire battle line fell silent for two seconds.

This is exaggerated rhetoric.

Only the bubbling gurgles from the zombies' throats in the distance rolled forward layer by layer, like waves sliding across the beach at low tide.

"Even if they're gone, we still have to fight!" A clear voice broke the silence from behind the ranks.

A woman in a dark gray combat uniform stood from the command post. She clutched a curled-up terrain map in one hand, and a dust-stained red armband was tied around her left arm.

She took two steps forward, her gaze sweeping across the entire battle line, from the breaches all the way to the exhausted Garden owners in the rear.

If Lin Yue were here, he would definitely recognize her... Wasn't that their homeroom teacher?

That usually stern homeroom teacher's face was now covered in ash, with a red burn mark on her temple from flying sparks. Yet her eyes were exactly the same as in the classroom: sharp, composed, and capable of holding the field together.

"Reinforce the front line with Wall-nuts! If you have no Wall-nuts, fill the pits with Potato Mines! Middle-row Peashooters, don't stop! Keep suppressing them! Rear-row Melon-pults..."

If there were no Melon-pults, use other plants to fill in!

Before her words had even faded, the mechanical giant silhouette across from them suddenly let out a deep metallic roar.

Then another fireball blasted free, larger and brighter than the previous ones. Wrapped in a blazing red tail, it resembled a small sun rising from the end of the plains. Even from hundreds of meters away, the scorching heat made people's skin tighten.

Many plants even began to shrivel.

"Estimated impact point: the middle section." Zhao Xiulan stared at the fireball's trajectory. Her lips were pressed into a thin line, but her voice remained steady, as though she were reading from a textbook. "Everyone retreat three rows. Abandon the current position."

"Retreat?" The deputy beside her widened his eyes. "If we retreat, we won't be able to reinforce this section anymore..."

"If we don't retreat, we'll be dead! What formation will there be left to reinforce?"

Zhao Xiulan grabbed the deputy by the collar and dragged him backward. They stumbled into the rear trench and ducked down.

The fireball screamed overhead. When it hit the ground, it exploded with a thunderous boom, and the scorching shockwave blew away half the earthen slope. Shredded grass and clumps of mud rained down on everyone, leaving their backs aching with countless stinging impacts.

When the shockwave passed, Zhao Xiulan pushed herself up from the trench. Half her hair had come loose, and blood seeped from the burn on her forehead, flowing down along her brow bone.

She wiped it with her sleeve and looked at the strip of scorched ground the fireball had forcibly carved across the plains. The plants that had been resisting the zombies there had long since become charcoal.

"The defense line has collapsed..." She took a deep breath, lowering her voice as if speaking to herself. "Notify the Federation rear."

"Hurry and notify them. Prepare to receive the zombie descent..."

Meanwhile, Happy Residential Community.

Lin Yue was curled up on the hard little bed in his wooden cabin, still covered in dirt and plant juice. It was his first night in the Plant Garden. Although the odds of a zombie invasion were extremely low, there was still that one percent chance of bad luck.

He had already encountered reincarnation, so it seemed perfectly normal for his luck to get even worse...

As he drowsily turned over, a string of urgent electronic alerts suddenly exploded in his ears, reaching directly into his brain.

[Tier Two battlefield: part of the defense line has collapsed... Zombies are invading Blue Star...]

[Tier Two battlefield: part of the defense line has collapsed... First-tier Plant Gardens will face more zombie invasions]

Lin Yue's eyes flew open. He shot upright from the bed, his heart pounding. In his memories, after the major nations had united into the Federation...

This should have been the first time a battlefield somewhere had been breached. Before the Federation was formed, breaches had happened often, leading to large-scale zombie descents and invasions across Blue Star.

"Rustle... rustle..." It sounded as though someone was walking through the woods, brushing against bushes.

Lin Yue reached through the darkness for the shovel beside him. His knuckles tightened around the handle, and cold sweat smeared across the wood beneath his palm, making it cool and slippery.

"No..." he cursed under his breath, his throat dry and tight. "No, this is really happening? Didn't they say the chance of encountering zombies was less than one percent?"

There was no response outside the window.

Only the wind suddenly grew stronger, carrying some strange creaking sound that slowly rolled in from the backyard.

It was the sound of wood being crushed and deformed by something hard.

Lin Yue grabbed his shovel and rolled out of bed. His bare feet hit the wooden floor, and the cold made him shudder.

He pushed open the back door. Moonlight slashed across his face, coating the outline of his yard in frosty white. Then he saw a sight he would never forget for the rest of his life...

The row of fences in the backyard, which he had barely patched together with dead branches and vines, was now being violently pried open from the middle by something outside.

A grayish-green hand, its fingernails packed with dirt, reached through the gap. It grabbed half a broken plank and yanked it outward. With a crack, half the fence collapsed completely.

Then came the head.

A rust-colored Buckethead bucket covered its head. The bucket's rim was dented and battered, and through the gap, half a rotting face with curled-back lips was visible.

Buckethead Zombie!