Everyone Plants Zombies: I Can Add Passives to Plants

Lin Yue walked over, bent down to pick up the money pouch from the ground, untied it, and found five gleaming gold coins inside.

He slipped it into his pocket, then turned around and crouched before Wall-nut. He reached out and gently touched the fresh bite marks on its leaves, his fingertips slowly tracing the edges of the cracks as if touching a wound that would not heal easily.

"Does it hurt?"

Wall-nut's leaves swayed slightly, as though it were saying it did not.

But Lin Yue knew it had to hurt. Plants were not stones; they could feel things too.

Lin Yue remained crouched in front of Wall-nut for a long time, until the edge of the crack beneath his fingertips became slightly moist... That was the repair fluid Wall-nut secreted itself, and it had already begun slowly healing the wound.

"I'll treat you to Deluxe Dave Special Fertilizer later." Lin Yue's voice was low. His palm lingered on the leaves atop its head once more. "The most expensive kind, with Dave's upgraded version added in. All you can eat."

Wall-nut's leaves finally spread completely, and its round head gently rubbed against his palm.

After confirming that zombies would not appear for a while, Lin Yue headed to the Zen Garden, partly to collect gold coins and partly to buy some items.

Marigold dropped another gold coin behind him with a ding. The snail slowly crawled over and pushed it into the pile of money, gathering it along an arc.

He counted today's earnings.

Sunlight reserves: 600. Gold coin reserves: exactly 1,000.

Marigold was absolutely today's MVP. Even if others planted Marigolds too, without the Zen Garden's doubled growth rate, they could not possibly match his production efficiency.

Half a bag of the three bags of fertilizer had been used today. To reward the remaining plants, Lin Yue bought another six bags of fertilizer from Dave, leaving him with only 200 coins—just enough to buy a new rake.

He leaned against the doorframe, closed his eyes, and let the sunlight fall across his eyelids.

He ran through all of today's battles in his mind—Zombies, Conehead Zombies, Buckethead Zombies, wave after wave without pause, at an absurdly high frequency.

Yet even so, he had held on. Chomper had eaten four zombies, its health rising from 200 to 330, and its body had visibly grown a full size larger.

After being fertilized just now, the number on Wall-nut's panel jumped, becoming a reassuringly solid figure...

8020.

Lin Yue stared at that number for quite a while, the corners of his mouth slowly curving upward.

It had matured. Wall-nut was now even better than Tall-nut.

The other plants had also grown up one after another, looking much the same as mature plants. However, the plants transplanted into the backyard did not grow the way they did in the Zen Garden.

Back when the plants had been placed in the Zen Garden, they would drop gold coins and other items every time they advanced to the next stage of growth.

That did not happen in the backyard, though fortunately, their effects had not been reduced.

As for the empty potted plants in the Zen Garden, Lin Yue planned to grow some ordinary plants for the time being and sell them after returning to the real world.

Or he could hand them over to the authorities in exchange for merit points, which would be very helpful for getting into a good university.

As the sun neared the horizon, Puff-shroom in the fifth row shook its cap a few times atop its flowerpot and slowly woke up.

Puff-shroom: "Where are the zombies?"

Lin Yue: "This mushroom is ready to take the stage the moment night falls."

Only Thirty-Six Left

Crimson King... activate.

After repelling that wave of zombies, no zombies came visiting for the rest of the night.

The next day, early morning.

A burst of commotion came from the street.

The moment Lin Yue pushed open the garden gate, he saw the scene outside.

His footsteps came to an immediate halt.

The gray stone-paved street, which had been packed with seventy or eighty people yesterday, was now completely empty.

Wind blew in from the end of the street, carrying a faint, fishy stench mixed with burnt and rotten smells. It rolled over his feet and slipped through the open wooden door behind him.

Several crows perched atop the fence of the opposite courtyard, tilting their heads as they watched the quiet street. Every now and then, one let out a short caw before falling silent again.

Scattered figures emerged from their respective courtyards, slowly gathering toward the center of the street.

Every face was gray, like autumn leaves struck by frost, their curled edges ready to crumble into dust at any moment.

They walked slowly. Some leaned against the walls, some hunched over, and some had dried dark stains on their school uniforms... black stains, not mud.

Lin Yue made a rough count.

Including himself, fewer than forty living people had emerged from their courtyards.

More precisely, after waiting so long, only thirty-six people had appeared.

Luo Chen, his future brother-in-law, was crouched beneath the streetlamp in the middle of the road. His knees were drawn up, his arms resting on them, his head lowered, his forehead pressed into the bend of his elbow.

A large patch of dark brown stained the front of his dark blue school jacket. One cuff was torn open, exposing the white lining inside, half of it filthy.

As Lin Yue approached, he heard a sound.

Luo Chen was laughing.

The laughter was squeezed out from the depths of his chest, muffled, like a bell sunk underwater being struck from outside. By the time the sound reached the surface, it had already warped. "Ha... hahaha... hahahaha..."

His shoulders jerked as he laughed. He curled up beneath the lamp post, trembling, fingers clutching the hem of his clothes until his knuckles turned white. He repeated "They're all dead" several times, his voice gradually going from muddled to clear, then from clear to hoarse. "They're all dead... haha... they're all dead... ha..."

The people around him stood several steps away. No one stepped forward.

Several students from No. 2 High School turned their backs, their shoulders trembling slightly;

A girl with glasses crouched on the ground with her face buried in her palms, the back of her head raised and her back twitching;

If Lin Yue remembered correctly, this girl had been the one who asked Luo Chen to trade Peashooter seedlings yesterday. She had survived as well.

Zhao Lei stood at the edge of the crowd in silence. Only now did he truly realize how dangerous the place his father had been in all along was.

He had been wrong.

Luo Chen was still laughing.

The laughter echoed through the empty street, struck the gray mist surrounding the courtyards on both sides, and bounced back.

Then a dark figure rushed out from the crowd.

A man standing a full two meters tall strode across the street. His army-green work vest was stretched tight across his body, and his exposed forearms were as thick as other people's thighs.

He grabbed Luo Chen by the back of the collar with his left hand and yanked him up—lifting him from the ground like a skinny cat—then raised his right hand and slapped Luo Chen twice across the face, backhand and forehand.

Slap—slap—

The two sharp cracks exploded through the street.

Luo Chen's head snapped from side to side. His glasses tilted crookedly, and he froze in place.

The man withdrew his hand, breathing heavily as he glared at him. "Are you awake now? If not, I'll give you two more."

As he spoke, he raised his arm again. That huge hand clenched into a fist, its thick knuckles like a row of stones.

"Stop! Stop! Wang Gang." Luo Chen raised a hand to block him, his voice hoarse as sandpaper scraping iron. "I'm over it... I'm fine now."

The man released his collar and took a step back.

Wang Gang. It seemed Luo Chen knew him. That made sense—they were from the same school, after all.

After steadying himself, Luo Chen pushed his crooked glasses back into place. He took a deep breath, then another, closed his eyes for two seconds, and opened them again. The bloodshot veins beneath his eyes remained, but his gaze was no longer as scattered as before.

He turned and swept his eyes across the crowd. His gaze moved from one face to the next, taking in every expression hanging there.

The crowd was quiet.

Thirty-six people stood together. From a hundred the day before yesterday to thirty-six today, the death rate had exceeded sixty percent. That number would count as horrific among any group of newcomers.

Most lowered their heads, their eyes fixed on the thin layer of gray dust beneath their feet. Only a few held their chins high. What lay in their eyes was no longer fear, but something sharpened by hardship, blunt and hard.

Lin Yue, on the other hand, looked completely different from everyone else, appearing relaxed and leisurely.

Lin Yue looked over the others who had survived.

One figure in the crowd held Lin Yue's gaze for two extra seconds.

Zhao Lei.

Zhao Lei, the one Lin Yue had smacked in the back of the head with a shovel the day before yesterday, who had crouched at the outermost edge of the crowd with his limbs drawn in like a hibernating snake.

He was actually still alive.

His complexion was several shades paler than before, his cheekbones slightly more prominent, and his lips dry and peeling, but he stood straight.

His shoulders were not hunched, his back was not bent. If anything, he stood even straighter.

The moment Lin Yue saw him, Zhao Lei's gaze swept over as well.

Their eyes met in the air for an instant.

Zhao Lei neither avoided him nor smiled. He merely lowered his eyelids in greeting, then looked back toward the front of the crowd.

Waiting for the people with real authority in the neighborhood to assign tasks or provide information.

Luo Chen cleared his throat. His voice was steadier than before as he pulled a kraft paper envelope from his back pocket.

Dark brown, half-dried sticky stains covered the envelope. One corner was torn, as though someone had forcibly ripped it out of something's mouth.

When he unfolded the envelope, Lin Yue caught a faint but pungent stench of decay drifting off the paper.

"I found this on a... special zombie yesterday."

"That zombie was conscious. It threw this letter into my courtyard, then left."

Luo Chen turned the letter around and showed it to the crowd.

Several crooked lines were written on the paper, as though someone had scratched them on with fingernails. The strokes were rough and hurried:

"To everyone: We will launch an unprecedented attack on this neighborhood. We hope you will voluntarily hand over your brains. Signed, Football Zombie."

The crowd fell silent for three seconds, as though frozen by those words. Then, like the first crack splitting a block of ice, whispers surged out from every direction, fragmented and impossible to suppress.

"Football Zombie..."

"The one that runs three times faster than a Zombie?"

"We can't even gather enough Peashooters now. How are we supposed to stop it?"

"No matter which lane it appears in, we won't be able to block it."

Luo Chen did not respond immediately.

He folded the letter and tucked it back into his pocket, then raised his head. His gaze swept over the crowd. "We don't know when the zombies might suddenly appear, which is why we need to prepare in advance."

He paused, his gaze falling upon the empty courtyards shrouded in gray mist.

Those ownerless courtyards marked as "occupied" had mist that was thicker and heavier than normal. Faint dragging footsteps and muddled panting could be heard from within.

"Our top priority is to form groups of three and clear out the occupied Plant Gardens."

Luo Chen's voice landed steadily on the street like a stone dropped into a swamp. "Every ownerless courtyard contains leftover zombies. If we don't clear them out, they'll keep producing new zombies."

"It will also affect the merger between other neighborhoods and ours. You don't want to be restricted everywhere once you enter someone else's neighborhood, do you?"

Clearing Out the Neighbors

Luo Chen took a breath, his voice lowering. "Anyone short on sunlight, buy seeds from people with Sunflowers. Even if you can only get a few seedlings, plant them first. Don't worry about whether they can grow up. Right now, sunlight is life."

The crowd began to move.

They scattered in small groups. Some lowered their voices to talk, while others approached classmates they knew.

Most of them were students from No. 2 High School. They saw each other every day under normal circumstances, and even standing together in silence now, they were still closer than complete strangers.

Lin Yue held Bai Qingfeng's hand as they stood at the edge of the crowd. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Zhao Lei walking toward Luo Chen. There was also the tall man who had slapped Luo Chen awake earlier—Wang Gang, apparently.

"What about us?" Bai Qingfeng's voice came from beside him, softer than usual, as though she were afraid that speaking too loudly might disturb something.

Her other hand gripped the hem of her school uniform, her fingertips tightening slightly.

Lin Yue looked at the No. 2 High School students forming teams, then at the neighboring courtyards swallowed by gray mist. Three empty houses with crooked address plaques sat silently on either side of the street.

At the entrance of the courtyard on the right, the edge of the gray mist swayed slightly, as though something were moving within.

(It was similar to the fog mode in games. Occasionally, the shadows of zombies inside could be seen.)