All People Plant Zombies: I Can Add Passives to Plants

Potato Mine's body sank slightly into the muddy water, like an old stone squatting in a puddle.

Its two large front teeth protruded from the curtain of rain, gleaming from the wash of rainwater as it stared toward the depths of the second row.

But Potato Mine did not explode.

Like a silent sentry crouched on a field ridge, it judged that this wave of threats had passed, then withdrew back into the soil to wait for the next moment worth detonating.

Lin Yue's gaze lingered on it for a moment. His lips moved slightly, but he made no sound. Still, he quietly made a note of it in his heart... Reliable.

Then the commotion by the pool pulled his attention away.

"Splash~"

The sound of water splashing rang out.

The surface of the fourth row had been still for less than a minute when fresh, larger ripples spread across it.

Something was moving beneath the water, stirring up the silt at the bottom and turning the entire pool a murky bluish-gray.

Though he could not see the Zombies in the thick fog, Lin Yue had clearly heard three splashes just now.

Cattail's tail spikes had already turned.

Its target shifted away from the second row and precisely locked onto the foremost Zombie in the pool's dense fog.

The first spike shot out a beat faster than usual. The sound of it piercing flesh was brief and crisp—"Tap."

The rapid attack was followed by the sound of the Zombie sinking underwater.

The second Zombie had just emerged from the fog when three rapid-fire spikes struck it at once. Its entire head snapped back, spraying rain-mixed water into the air. When it floated back up, it was already motionless.

The third Zombie watched its companions fall one after another before its eyes, yet it still pressed forward toward Lin Yue.

Brains were right within reach.

Cattail's attack speed had already stacked up, reducing the interval between firing and impact to the point where it was almost impossible to perceive.

Two spikes caught up from diagonally behind. One pierced the back of its neck, and the other sank beneath its shoulder blade. From the moment the third Zombie appeared to the moment it sank into the water, it had not even moved half a tile forward.

The entire process took less than twenty seconds.

The pool fell silent again, leaving only the fine white noise of raindrops striking the water.

Seeing that the pool Zombies had been dealt with, Cattail then switched its attack direction to the first row.

In the first lane, flaming peas never stopped for even a moment.

Peashooter's barrel grew slightly hot from its continuous fire. Rain striking the muzzle raised a wisp of thin white smoke, only for the heat wave from the following fireballs to sweep it away.

Torchwood's flames burned even more fiercely than usual in the downpour. The purplish-red fire in the center of its stump hissed whenever rain hit it, but showed no sign of being extinguished.

Yes, one unit of wood.

Lin Yue had added wood.

One enormous pea after another, wrapped in flames, pierced through the rain curtain and vanished into the depths of the fog. What came back were unceasing dull impacts and crisp sounds of bodies breaking apart.

Standing beneath the eaves, Lin Yue shifted his gaze from the pool to the first lane, then from the first lane to the sixth.

The battle rhythm in the sixth row differed somewhat from the others—quieter, but with longer intervals between each sound, and far greater commotion whenever one came.

Lin Yue knew that the three devouring plants were taking turns according to their own rhythms, like a silent assembly line in operation.

Snap Pea's... green flower head swayed slightly in the rainy mist, then the entire plant instantly plunged into the ground and vanished without a trace.

Only a round pit with neat edges remained on the lawn. Within seconds, rainwater filled it with mud, leaving no sign that a living plant hid beneath it.

Lin Yue stared at the pit and silently counted to three.

"Pfft—"

At the eighth tile of the sixth row, Snap Pea's green flower head suddenly shot out of the ground.

Its flower head had opened to its fullest extent, its tooth-like structures clamped tightly around an entire leg and half a torso of a Zombie.

That... large green mouth bit down on its prey like a bear trap springing from underground, dropping back beneath the earth. In midair, it completed the entire sequence of "bite-pull-sink," dragging the Zombie, which had not yet fully stopped breathing, back underground.

Only a slowly closing dirt pit and a small strip of cloth washed apart by the rain remained on the lawn.

Toadstool watched the entire scene from behind, its cap tilted upward.

The flecks of gold scattered across its golden mushroom surface glittered in the rain. Its cap tipped slightly forward, as if saying, "Oh, so that's how it's done."

Then Snap Pea emerged from the soil once more and returned to its original position. It still held a Zombie in its flower head, its edges slightly closed as it turned toward Toadstool and gave it a smug expression.

Lin Yue had no idea why he could see such rich expressions on a plant.

That little motion—Snap Pea's flower head tilted two or three degrees to the left, while the front edge, like a chin, lifted slightly. The entire motion was smooth and brief, carrying the confidence of, "Kid, see that? That's called efficiency."

"Gulp."

Chomper beside it swallowed what was in its mouth. The base of its throat bulged, then settled again. It then turned half its stalk slightly, as though listening to the movement ahead.

Had it heard something?

Chomper gestured toward Toadstool behind it.

Toadstool seemed to receive some kind of signal. The entire golden mushroom leaned forward, fine strands of mycelium drooping from the edge of its cap like a frog extending its tongue.

Standing under the eaves and watching this scene, rainwater streamed down Lin Yue's temples. He suddenly realized that these three plants were communicating in a way he could not understand at all.

Snap Pea had finished its task, Chomper had swallowed what was in its mouth, and Toadstool was waiting, judging, and adjusting its angle.

They were like three independently operating machines linked by the same invisible chain. Who acted, who took over, and who finished the job—all information was conveyed in silence.

"Tap—"

Toadstool's mycelium shot out.

Those fine golden threads were almost invisible in the curtain of rain. Their trajectory could only barely be traced through the patterns of raindrops pushed aside.

The mycelium passed through the fog, through the rain curtain, across the four-tile stretch from the third to the seventh tile of the sixth row, then wrapped around something in those gray-white depths.

The mycelium suddenly tightened, like a bundle of ropes being pulled taut in an instant, stretching into a straight line.

A dull dragging sound came from deep within the fog. Something was being hauled toward Toadstool by the mycelium.

Lin Yue gripped the Wooden Mallet, his knuckles turning slightly white.

The sound in the fog drew closer and closer—it was the scrape of feet sliding over wet mud as something was forcibly dragged forward.

At some point, the gray-white fog was ripped open by a slit, and an intact Pole Vaulting Zombie was dragged out of it by Toadstool's mycelium.

Its long pole was still wedged beneath its arm, and its gray body carved a shallow groove through the puddles as it was dragged along.

Its face was still intact—grayish-white eyes half-open, mouth slightly parted, as if it had not even had time to make a sound while being dragged.

The mycelium wrapped around its waist, abdomen, and left shoulder, tightening ever more firmly and binding both its arms securely.

In that instant, Toadstool's cap opened wider than Lin Yue had ever seen... It was nearly a full size larger than he had imagined... Its cap opened suddenly like an upside-down umbrella, scattering a ring of fine golden light through the rain.

Beneath the mushroom cap, a huge mouth filled with dense tooth-like structures was revealed.

Pole Vaulting Zombie was pulled by the mycelium directly above that huge mouth.

Toadstool's cap closed.

There was no sound... Or rather, Lin Yue heard nothing through the rain curtain... He only saw that Pole Vaulting Zombie's entire upper body had already been swallowed inside the cap. Its legs kicked twice outside, then vanished behind the closed golden canopy as well.

Toadstool's cap closed again, returning to its previous round, half-shut posture.

Its surface bulged slightly, as if slowly digesting what was in its mouth. The golden flecks continued to glimmer in the rain as though nothing had happened.

The entire process took less than two seconds.

Lin Yue stood beneath the eaves, rainwater dripping from his chin onto the tops of his shoes and spreading into a small dark wet patch.

Looking at the three devouring plants, he suddenly found himself at a loss for words.

He was not frightened. He was simply choked up by how smooth their entire coordination had been.

"Impressive..."

He finally squeezed the words out of his throat.

His voice was not loud, and the rain even swallowed half of it, but he heard it clearly himself.

Lin Yue leaned against the doorframe, his soaked sleeve clinging coldly to his skin, yet he did not feel cold.

He watched the backyard shrouded in rain and fog, watched them fire in turns, cover for one another, and cooperate with the effortless understanding of childhood friends.

Potato Mine: "Bang!!!"

When the sound came from the fifth lane, Lin Yue was just shifting his gaze away from the pool.

That sound differed from those in the other lanes—not the dull sound of footsteps stepping into puddles, nor the scrape of bodies dragging across mud, but a slightly muffled knocking sound made by metal striking something hard: "Clang... clang... clang..."

It was as though a Zombie was holding up a broken sheet of metal and advancing into the yard one step at a time.

"Pfft... pfft... pfft..."

The spores from five Puff-shrooms wove a gray-white barrage through the rain curtain, densely striking the gradually sharpening silhouette at the edge of the fog.

When mushroom spores hit an object, they made fine impact sounds. The soft fungal bubbles attacked continuously, producing an unending series of pops and sputters.

The combined firing rate of the five Puff-shrooms was enough to turn a Zombie into a sieve within five seconds, but that silhouette did not stop.

Its steps were slow, but they were never interrupted. It continued advancing with every step, while the clanging object shielded it from most of the spores' impact.

Lin Yue's gaze locked onto that silhouette.

"Screen Door Zombie!"

The broken screen door before the Zombie gradually emerged from the fog... Rusted iron wire had been woven into a barely intact mesh, riddled with holes of various sizes. Several wires had already snapped and hung loose from the edge, swaying back and forth.

The Zombie hid behind the mesh, revealing only a grayish-white skeletal arm gripping the frame at its edge.

Screen Door Zombie.

In the game, Screen Door Zombie, commonly known as the Screen Door Emperor, could reduce damage endlessly as long as the attack had no piercing effect, no matter how high that damage was.

An ordinary Peashooter needed four or five extra shots to break the mesh, while Puff-shroom spores were even less effective against it due to their scattered impact points.

"Screen door in lane five. Cattail, give them a hand."

Lin Yue's voice seemed insignificant amid the rain, but as soon as he spoke, Cattail's tail spikes had already turned toward it.

Cattail's attack speed had stacked for nearly two minutes during the pool defense and had now reached a rather terrifying level.

Red spikes shot continuously from the tip of its tail, nearly forming an unbroken red line in midair. They arced over the fourth row, made a tiny turn, and precisely struck the broken screen door held by Screen Door Zombie.

"Clangclangclangclangclang—"

The sound of spikes striking the mesh was as dense as a series of hammers pounding against steel plates.

The already unstable mesh split down the middle the moment the spikes hit. Iron wires burst apart from the crack to either side, and the second volley punched straight through the upper half of the mesh...

Three or four rusted wires snapped. Half the entire screen door collapsed inward and hung from the Zombie's elbow.

With its protection gone, Puff-shroom spores took advantage of the opening. Five rapid shots struck its legs at the same time.

Screen Door Zombie's legs broke the moment the first volley of spores hit.

It knelt in the muddy water, the broken screen door slipping from its fingers and crashing to the ground with a clang.

The five Puff-shrooms adjusted their firing angles at once. The second rain of spores precisely covered its upper body, from shoulders to chest to neck.

When it toppled over, its head faced the backyard. A final muffled gurgle, like its windpipe had been blocked, squeezed out from the depths of its throat and was drowned by the rain.

Screen Door Zombie had barely made it out of the fog.

Its corpse fell on the second-to-last tile of the backyard, still nearly two tiles away from the Puff-shrooms.

But the Puff-shrooms did not stop attacking.

The footsteps coming from the fog never ceased... More Zombies were pouring in through the fifth lane, one after another, leaving dark silhouettes in the dense mist.

"Pfft... pfft... pfft..."

The five Puff-shrooms continued firing at a steady rhythm. The density of the spore clouds nearly blocked that narrow lawn path with a gray-white wall.

Every Zombie that tried to pass through that wall had its knees and shoulder joints shattered by focused fire the instant it stepped into the third tile. After falling into the muddy water, it was finished off and cleared away by the following rain of spores.

"Splash—"

At the same time, the sound of something falling into the water came from the pool.