Planting Zombies for All: I Can Add Passives to Plants

Ninth Federation—Ninth High School—Classroom in the Rainstorm.

The rain outside was gentler than the one at Happy Residential Community. There was no thunder, no churning black cloud cover. It simply fell in a fine, dense curtain, striking the glass and merging into winding trails of water that shattered the daylight outside into fragments.

The atmosphere in the classroom was rather... oppressive.

The classroom was completely different from how it had been a month ago.

A month ago, it had been crammed with desks and stools. Textbooks with curled pages and densely packed notes had been piled on the desks. Zhao Xiulan had stood at the podium, chalk dust drifting in the sunlight. Below her, forty-two young, nervous faces had watched her, yet there had still been light in their eyes.

Now, blankets covered the middle of the classroom floor, while chairs had been stacked against the walls for the waiting parents.

Yet there were not even enough people to fill all forty-two chairs. Even orphanage directors and caregivers had come to receive them.

Parents.

Some had graying hair. Some had sunken eye sockets. There were even doctors in white coats, ready to treat the students the instant they appeared.

They crowded together, clutching empty water cups in their hands. Their anxious eyes were fixed on the open stretch of floor at the front of the classroom. Every system notification made dozens of hearts clench and loosen at the same time.

In a corner of the classroom, a middle-aged woman in an old gray sweater held another empty chair in her arms. Her fingernails dug into the gap along the wooden edge, her knuckles turning white.

The man beside her kept rubbing his trouser leg. Sweat from his palm had soaked a small dark patch into the deep gray fabric.

An open textbook lay on the empty chair between them, with a name written on its cover in ballpoint pen...

They were waiting for their child.

"Teacher Zhao—" A man stood up from the front row. He kept his voice low, but he could not suppress the anxiety in it. "You said... you said... how many of them can come back?"

Zhao Xiulan stood beside the podium, both hands braced against its edge.

She was still wearing the neatly pressed dark gray business suit from a month ago, but her face was now haggard. The old wound on her cheek had formed a light brown scab.

She opened her mouth, her lips moving slightly as her gaze swept across the parents' tense, frightened faces.

She could not give them an answer right away.

Nor could she answer at all.

No one could make such a promise.

After the defeat on the second-tier battlefield, she understood better than anyone what the collapse of that defense meant.

She had been half a frontline commander. Every Zombie that had poured into those children's yards had been connected to the command decisions made then.

All she could say were those cold figures... "a thirty percent survival rate," "delayed follow-up support."

Every reason held up when examined separately, but taken together, none of them allowed her to stand straight at the podium and tell those parents, "Your child is fine."

Slap—

The man who had asked the question suddenly raised his hand and slapped himself across the face.

The crisp sound was especially clear in the silent classroom. Several parents nearby froze and turned to look at him.

He lowered his hand. One side of his face had turned red, but his gaze was steady, and his voice had calmed. "Teacher Zhao, don't put pressure on yourself. I believe in the children... They'll come back."

"Right, we have to believe in them..."

The others also clung to hope and began chatting about everyday matters to distract themselves.

The fingers Zhao Xiulan had clenched around the podium edge loosened for a moment.

Her eyes warmed in that instant. She turned her face aside and pretended to look out at the gray-white curtain of rain beyond the window.

Homeroom teachers were naturally prone to tears. Now, she had merely forced herself to grow up. She could not easily expose her weakness in front of others, so she could only endure it.

She had already received the notice from the First Federation.

The responsibility had been placed entirely on her shoulders. The wording had been severe, every sentence pointing to "improper command."

As for her superior, the true commander in charge of the defense deployment, he had long since transferred his household registration and fled to the First Federation.

Old Xia had stood up in the Ninth Federation and slammed the table once, then pulled out page after page of logistics records showing that the Ice-shrooms and Jalapenos the Third Federation should have delivered on schedule had been delayed by a full four days—and four days were enough for an entire defensive line to collapse.

Zhao Xiulan understood better than anyone that the real breach had been higher up, but rumors and blame still pressed down layer upon layer. Words could kill people.

[ Ding, the newly promoted Plant Garden homeowners of the 20th–26th cohorts are about to return to the real world. ]

[ Guardians, please prepare to receive them— ]

The system notification suddenly sounded in the ears of everyone across the Blue Star Federation.

The scraping of chair legs against the floor merged into a piercing screech. Dozens of faces turned toward the empty space in the middle of the classroom at once, and someone instinctively held their breath.

[ Return procedure initiated— ]

Several seconds of emptiness.

The classroom was so quiet that they could hear rainwater sliding down the windowpanes, as well as the hurried, suppressed breathing of a mother in the corner.

Then light appeared.

Platinum-white particles of light spread from the center of the floor, filling the open area of the classroom like water. Then human silhouettes gradually condensed within that white glow.

The first figure to appear was covered in soot, his school uniform jacket nearly unrecognizable in color.

Large burn marks stretched from his shoulders to his waist, and the edges of his hair had been singed curly and yellow. He looked as though he had just been flung out of the center of an explosion.

(Cherry Bomb: Was I awesome or what?)

The instant the white light dispersed, Wang Mao's body pitched forward. His knees slammed into the floor with a dull thud, but in the next second, he braced himself against the ground and pushed himself back up instead of collapsing completely.

A figure in a dark green military uniform appeared almost at the same time. One white-gloved hand swiftly caught his elbow from the side, while the other held a roll of already-opened medical gauze.

Wang Mao looked at the soldier before him and recognized her at a glance—his older sister.

His parents had not come to pick him up?

He would not complain, since they were both on the front lines, but it still hurt so much...

"Don't move." Her voice was low and steady as she helped Wang Mao lean against a chair, then crouched down and began cleaning the edges of the scalded flesh that had curled outward on his arm.

Wang Mao's entire body trembled faintly. Every time the gauze brushed his wound, all his muscles tensed, but he made no sound. He merely turned his head toward the window so no one could see the expression on his face as he endured the pain.

His father had said that soldiers had to be strong. He wanted to become a soldier.

There was also a girl curled up on a folding chair in the corner.

Her school uniform was spotless, her hair neatly tied up. There was not even a scratch on her body.

But she was trembling nonstop, both arms wrapped tightly around her knees as she curled herself into a tiny ball. Her lips moved as she repeated several indistinct words over and over. "So many... Don't come over... Don't come over..."

A middle-aged woman in a sweater rushed out from the crowd and dropped to her knees before the chair. She cupped the girl's face with both hands and pressed her forehead against hers. "Xiaomi... Xiaomi, it's Mom... It's Mom! Don't be afraid... Mom is here."

The girl's body stiffened. Her scattered eyes slowly focused and met the familiar face before her.

Then, as though some lock inside her had been released, she suddenly threw her arms around her mother's neck and buried her face in her mother's shoulder. Her crying went from restrained to unrestrained, each sob muffled against the fabric of that old gray sweater.

"Waaah!!! Mom... Xiaomi was so scared... Xiaomi almost died... Waaah!!!"

The classroom fell quiet for a while.

There was only the girl's crying and the fine white noise of rain pattering against the windows.

Li Xue's gaze slowly swept over the open space. Her lips moved. Where was Lin Yue?

Where was her son?

Until—

The third figure in the corner finally fully emerged from the white light, but the posture made her already-suspended heart seize violently.

Lin Yue had appeared headfirst!

Survival Rate: 5%

Lin Yue had appeared with his head facing the floor.

Lin Yue—seemed to have seen the great beyond—

He lay facedown directly on the classroom floor, completely soaked through. Rainwater had darkened his entire back, while his left arm was curled at an unnatural angle beside him. A large patch of pink showed through the sleeve, flesh turned outward, and bone was even faintly visible.

His face was as pale as water-soaked paper, his lips purple.

When Lin Xiaotian and Li Xue saw Lin Yue appear, they were relieved at first. But upon seeing how badly injured he was, their hearts clenched.

Lin Xiaotian and Li Xue shoved through the crowd from the farthest corner. The instant Li Xue touched Lin Yue's left arm, her hand jerked back as though burned—it was the instinctive reaction of someone whose heart ached beyond measure.

Especially the heat radiating from Lin Yue's body. Even through his clothes, they could feel waves of fever pouring off him.

She gently turned Lin Yue's upper body over and laid him on his side on a blanket. When her palm touched his forehead, the heat beneath it made her entire face go pale.

It was probably forty-two degrees...

"His head is so hot..." Her voice was restrained, but the end had already changed pitch. "Old Lin... what do we do?"

Lin Xiaotian crouched beside him, looking ten years older than usual.

He quickly scanned the wound on Lin Yue's arm, where flesh had turned outward, then hurriedly took out an Energy Pea glowing with green light from inside his clothes.

Energy Peas were not something ordinary people could obtain. Lin Xiaotian had exchanged for it only after donating nearly thirty Tall-nuts to the military over the past month.

Of course, he had traded military merits for them.

A few seconds later, a pea the size of a baby's fist, its surface shimmering with emerald-green light, was placed in Li Xue's hand.

But Lin Yue's teeth were clenched too tightly, and every muscle in his body was tense as iron. Li Xue tried to bring the pea to his mouth, but she could not get it in no matter what she did.

"Old Lin—his jaw's clenched too tight—"

Lin Xiaotian crouched down. With one hand, he pried open Lin Yue's jaw, and with the other, he forcibly stuffed the emerald-green pea inside. Then he unscrewed a bottle of water and poured half of it down the corner of his mouth.

Old Lin had plenty of ways to deal with his own brat.

The pea slid past his Adam's apple wrapped in the flow of water. Lin Yue's neck bulged slightly, as if he felt discomfort in his throat.

In the revolving lantern of his memories... the great beyond was approaching... Wang Mao appeared before his eyes... His throat felt uncomfortable.

Something was wrong!!! There was a problem!!!

Relying on sheer willpower, Lin Yue forced out a roar...

"Get the hell away from me—this isn't Chengdu!!!!!"

The battle roar came without warning.

Lin Yue's right arm suddenly shot up and flailed wildly through the air. His eyes flew open at the same instant he shouted. A trace of disorientation remained in his pupils for half a second, but his voice was loud enough for the entire classroom—even the entire hallway—to hear.

Lin Xiaotian, crouching beside him, was rocked backward by the roar, his butt nearly hitting the floor.

He froze for a second, then grinned. The smile carried the rough warmth of immense relief. "...This Energy Pea really is miraculous. Though the effect... why does it come with an embarrassment buff?"

It took Lin Yue a full three seconds to focus his gaze on the face before him.

Stubble, messy hair, an old dark gray T-shirt soaked by rain, and a pair of eyes that looked ready to cry but were stubbornly holding it back—they were too close, close enough for him to see the fine lines at the corners of his father's eyes, made especially obvious by sleeplessness and anxiety.

Slap—

His usable right hand landed precisely on that stubbled face.

The force was not heavy, but it was loud enough. Then, using the recoil from that slap, he pushed himself halfway up, shoved aside the old man blocking his view, and toppled into his mother's arms.

Damn old man, didn't he know he was poking him?

"It's enough that you came back alive." Li Xue wrapped her arms around his shoulders. When she touched his wet back covered in mud, her face filled with heartache.

Li Xue's voice came from beside his ear, low and carrying the nasal note of pain and relief mixed together, the kind only a mother could understand.

When her fingers touched the edge of the wound on his left arm, where flesh had curled outward, they trembled involuntarily. That hand stopped there and did not continue touching him, as though she feared hurting him.

This was... flesh from her own body...

"How did this happen..." Li Xue's voice trembled faintly at the end, but she did not finish the question.

Lin Xiaotian wiped his face, rubbed at the slap mark on it twice, then crouched in front of Lin Yue again. His voice returned to its usual teasing tone, but the undertone was far heavier than before. "Didn't I tell you to watch your safety? That arm of yours—were you doing cosplay?"

"Just a minor injury." Lin Yue leaned against his mother's embrace, his right arm still draped over her shoulder. He tried to maintain an air of calm confidence that said, "I'm fine," but pain from his left arm crawled upward along his nerves, making the muscles at the corner of his mouth twitch uncontrollably.

Black Football Zombie—I will never forgive you—

He turned his head and glanced at his father, then added in a hoarse voice, "Just a medal."

Lin Xiaotian watched him grimacing in pain while still pretending to be tough. His lips moved as though he wanted to curse him, but he swallowed the words back down.

(Lin Xiaotian: I have to hold it together.)