I Can Add Passives to Plants

[Judgment failed... Cattail has no desire to fight. Please rewrite to suit the host's personality.]

Lin Yue froze for a second, then opened his eyes and looked down at Cattail.

The little pinkish-purple thing was tilting its head and "glaring" at him. Its cat-ear leaves were slightly raised, and it opened its mouth again, huffing at him.

It seemed curious why Lin Yue had interrupted its rest.

"You..."

Lin Yue crouched before it with a helpless laugh and poked the tip of one of its leaves. "Who would've thought you were such a lazy cat?"

Cattail's cat-ear leaves shot upright. Its round eye-spots widened, its little head tilted back, and its mouth opened even wider than before. "Huff~ pfft!"

It spat out a breath of oxygen, its trailing tone carrying a hint of anger.

It seemed to be protesting in its own way: Humans bad. Brain judgment... huff!

"Alright, alright." Lin Yue withdrew his hand and shook his head with a helpless smile.

Then another idea occurred to him... The talent's judgment rule was that it "must suit the host," while a plant's "personality," put simply, was its logic of existence.

It had to suit both the plant's combat style and personality.

Lily Pad was naturally lazy and disliked taking the initiative in battle. The little cat had inherited that trait, so the system definitely wouldn't accept forcibly giving it a "warlike" passive.

But what if... he tempted it with something else?

Plants were plants, after all. There was always something they liked. Sunlight? Water? Some special formula that only Dave knew?

But it didn't matter. It was fine if he couldn't think of anything now. He had plenty of time to figure it out slowly.

When the time came, he could see whether Dave's shop had anything tempting?

(Dave: Achoo! Who's thinking about me?)

Lin Yue decided to put Cattail aside for now and turn his attention to Sunflower.

Sunflower (Growing)

Health: 100

Ability: Produce sunlight

Passive: Awaiting creation

He stared at the panel for a while.

His first thought was to double its output, but Sunflower's efficiency dropped drastically at night and on rainy days. That was already an ironclad rule acknowledged in the Plant Almanac.

What if he could make Sunflower squeeze out an entire day's output during daylight hours?

Sunflower's growth was ultimately built upon the underlying logic of "photosynthesis."

Then the passive that best fit its nature would be "maximize photosynthetic efficiency."

[Passive: While exposed to sunlight during the day, produces one large Sun every two hours. Each Sun contains 50 units. The stronger the sunlight, the stronger the effect.]

[Judgment passed... Actual effect has been standardized.]

As soon as the new panel appeared, Lin Yue was delighted. Under normal daytime conditions, one Sunflower was basically equivalent to six, not to mention under the blazing sun.

One Sunflower could produce fifty units of sunlight every two hours, equal to the output of six ordinary Sunflowers.

In other words, planting this single Sunflower in his yard was practically no different from other people planting an entire row.

1 = 6.

What a bargain.

More importantly, sunlight was the foundation of a Plant Garden. During rainy weather, when the sun had not appeared for a long time, plants would become listless.

At that point, all it took was injecting one unit of sunlight into a plant to restore its vigor.

More importantly, after growing new plants, many Plant Garden owners did not bind them to their own Plant Gardens.

Instead, they turned them into Plant Cards. With a Plant Card, one could quickly obtain a companion plant by using sunlight.

The most typical examples were the respectable soldiers fighting on the front lines. They were also the ones who used Plant Cards the most.

His gaze fell upon the Marigold in the corner.

The pale golden flower head stood quietly there, its petals thin and translucent, their edges slightly curled. Its smiling face even had two front teeth.

In the game, Marigold was synonymous with a "money-printing tool." Once planted, it would occasionally drop silver coins and gold coins. If one was lucky, even diamonds could pop out.

And in the real world, the Federation's monetary system did indeed recognize coins produced by gardens... silver coins were worth 10 yuan, gold coins 50 yuan, and the rarest diamonds were worth 1,000 yuan each.

Of course, 10 yuan in Federation currency was not equal to one silver coin.

The exchange ratio should have been around 100:1.

A thousand Federation credits could buy one silver coin, and even then, it was something with a price but no market.

He bent down and pinched the edge of Marigold's flower head. The little thing seemed startled awake by his movement. Its flower head swayed lightly and spat out a sparkling point of light.

"Ding~"

A silver coin rolled out from beneath the flower head, bounced off the rim of the flowerpot, fell to the ground, and rolled twice before stopping beside the snail shell.

The snail that had been dozing inside its shell all this time rarely extended half an antenna, touched the edge of the silver coin, then slowly retreated again.

Lin Yue bent down and picked up the silver coin. His fingertip brushed across the patterns on its surface. It was cool, carrying the scent of plant sap.

Looking down at Marigold's round smiling face, he came up with the simplest passive description.

[Passive: Blessed by fortune... Extremely lucky, unbelievably lucky...]

[Judgment passed... Actual effect has been standardized.]

With this Marigold around, he probably really would not have to worry about money in the future.

"Hehehe..." He chuckled softly while squatting on the ground. Realizing he was laughing like an idiot, he hurriedly cleared his throat.

Next was Puff-shroom.

Its grayish-brown cap was still curled up, its edges slightly rolled inward like an old umbrella that had not been opened.

But the information on its panel was enough to make Lin Yue take it seriously. Puff-shroom had an extremely high approval rating throughout the Federation. It had the shortest growth cycle of all plants, and Plant Cards could be used without sunlight. It was widely made into plant cards and circulated throughout the market.

On those resource-starved frontline battlefields, Puff-shroom was the cheapest source of supplementary firepower.

More importantly, its method of reproduction was simple: before turning it into a card, one only had to lightly pat its mushroom cap. After a while, new Puff-shrooms would sprout from the ground.

One mushroom could become a patch of mushrooms.

A patch of mushrooms could become a field of mushrooms.

It was one of the plants with the highest survival rates.

Lin Yue looked at the Puff-shroom quietly squatting in its pot. The Federation had given it a label... "the king of cost-effectiveness."

As for its passive, Lin Yue had not thought about it for the time being. Mainly because he truly did not know how to make use of Puff-shroom.

Finally, Peashooter.

When Lin Yue's gaze fell upon the last plant, his hand paused.

Peashooter (Growing)

Health: 110

Attack: 110

Ability: Big Pea, Knockback

Passive: Awaiting creation

Description: This Peashooter was descended from the Peashooters Dave cultivated during the early resistance against the zombies. It was now the seventy-seventh generation, with exceptionally excellent genes. It would absolutely never choke itself while spitting peas.

"..."

Lin Yue stared at that description for a full five seconds, his mind buzzing.

The seventy-seventh generation.

A descendant of Dave's Peashooters.

Its genes were so exceptional that it "would absolutely never choke itself while spitting peas." That description would have been laughable on an ordinary Peashooter, but Lin Yue knew what it meant.

Dave's earliest Peashooters were ancestor-level combat units in the entire world of Plants vs. Zombies. To maintain an "excellent" genetic rating through seventy-seven generations showed that this little thing had a much stronger foundation than ninety-nine percent of the Peashooters on the market.

That was Crazy Dave. The fact that he could cultivate one plant through so many generations already said a great deal.

He rubbed his eyes and read through the panel's information again.

Big Pea. The peas it spat were a full one and a half times larger than those of an ordinary Peashooter.

That meant its projectile kinetic energy was greater at the same attack level, its penetrating power was stronger, and its impact on zombies was more pronounced.

Knockback... That ability made his head buzz.

In the game, there were only a handful of Peashooters with knockback effects. Iron Pea from the fusion version counted as one, and Primal Peashooter from Plants vs. Zombies 2 counted as another.

Ordinary Peashooters simply did not have this trait. The Federation's textbooks had never even mentioned the words "knockback" appearing in the skill slot of a standard Peashooter.

Knockback was a unique effect only high-tier plants possessed.

Yet it was right there, floating clearly on the panel.

He took a deep breath.

He did not yet know how strong the knockback would be, but as long as it could trigger reliably, even a weak knockback effect would be an enormous tactical advantage on the frontline.

Every step a zombie was knocked back gave the plants in the rear another second to attack.

One second could mean the difference between a Wall-nut being bitten one extra time or one fewer time.

"When the time comes, who would dare say the pea clan has no emperor?"

Lin Yue muttered to himself, his voice low.

Suddenly, he imagined a future day when this little thing stood on the soil of the backyard and spat out a Big Pea, knocking a Gargantuar back two steps. The mere thought of it filled him with an indescribable sense of satisfaction.

(Gargantuar: Who keeps talking about me...)

The passive direction he envisioned for Peashooter naturally settled on the word "growth."

An ordinary Peashooter's attack power was fixed. It could never break free of that limit.

In most people's hands, Peashooter was merely transitional. In the future, it would be upgraded into Repeater, Snow Pea, or even Gatling Pea.

But what if this Peashooter could continuously accumulate attack power over time?

Even if it only increased by a little each day, the accumulated gains over time would still become a considerable qualitative change.

And it was such an outstanding Peashooter.

He closed his eyes and focused.

[Passive: Continuously accumulates power each day by absorbing sunlight, slightly increasing pea attack power.]

[Judgment passed... Actual effect has been standardized.]

When he saw the panel again, he nodded in satisfaction.

Although the system had standardized the daily increase as "minuscule," that "minuscule" amount would be amplified further on the foundation of peas one and a half times larger.

Quantitative change piled upon quantitative change would eventually become qualitative change.

He even began calculating how much its attack power would rise after one month if he fed it enough sunlight every day.

What about two months later?

What about half a year later?

Wouldn't that be comparable to Divine Waterdrop?

Dave, I admit you were still a little useful.

Just then, an extremely soft "ding" came from the corner.

Lin Yue turned his head and saw Marigold's flower head sway slightly. A glittering gold coin slipped out through the gaps between its petals, landed on the dirt, and bounced once with a crisp sound.

The snail beside it slowly poked out half its body. Its antenna touched the coin's surface and gave it a light rub...