This was the tone of commanding a battle.
Gu Jiao silently raised her assessment of Little Frost another notch.
Morning at Trade Square. Gu Jiao gathered the whole town for an assembly again.
This time, she hid nothing.
She stood among the several torches in the center of the square, her voice carrying across the entire square.
“A man-eating flower is being raised in the Forbidden Area.”
“In the past three years, everyone who tested positive and was expelled from the town never actually left. They were all sent into the Forbidden Area to feed that flower.”
“That flower has already eaten over three hundred people.”
Silence fell over the square at first.
Then came a buzzing of murmurs.
Someone shouted, “Burn down the Forbidden Area,” their voice sharp as a howl.
Some people cried out the names of their missing loved ones. “Old Man Lao!” “Aunt Wang!” “My brother! My brother Zhou Dazhuang!”
The middle-aged woman who had stopped Gu Jiao on the street yesterday was also in the crowd.
She showed no reaction when she heard the name “Zhou Dazhuang”; she had known her brother was dead since yesterday.
But when she heard the number “over three hundred people,” her legs went weak. She leaned on the person next to her, her face ashen.
Someone tried to run.
A tall, thin man pushed through the crowd and sprinted toward the town gate, but was stopped by the patrol team after only a few steps.
He struggled and shouted, “Let me go! I don’t want to die here!” and was pinned to the ground by Old Zhou, unable to move.
Gu Jiao waited for a moment.
When the crying and shouting subsided, she continued.
“It’s all Anomalies outside. Leave here, and those of you who aren’t strong enough won’t even last a single night.”
“Stay and fight, and there’s still a chance to survive.”
“I need people. Anyone who can carry a weapon, anyone with a craft, anyone who doesn’t want to wait for death. Step forward.”
The square fell silent.
Everyone was looking at Gu Jiao.
No one moved.
Hundreds of eyes, hundreds of emotions—fear, anger, despair, numbness—mixed together, congealing into an invisible wall.
No one wanted to be the first.
Then a voice came from the back of the crowd.
“My old hammer can still swing a few times.”
The crowd automatically parted to make way.
A middle-aged man with one arm walked out. In his fifties, with graying hair, his left sleeve empty, his right hand holding an iron hammer. The hammerhead was pitch black, the handle polished shiny by sweat—it had seen many years.
Old He the Blacksmith. He walked up to Gu Jiao and stopped. Without saying much, he hoisted the iron hammer onto his shoulder.
That hammer looked terrifyingly heavy, but he carried it steadily with one arm.
The second to step forward carried a medicine box on her back.
Sixty-three years old, hair completely white, with even more wrinkles on her face than Old He. She pushed through the crowd and spat first.
“This old woman has lived over sixty years and never seen any Anomaly. Can a measly flower turn the world upside down?”
Old Woman Chen the Pharmacist. Her medicine box was battered, the paint worn off the corners, the bottles and jars inside clinking together.
The third said nothing.
A woman around forty years old walked up to Gu Jiao. Without saying a word, she just nodded.
She wore a faded gray cloth shirt. Her fingers were wrapped in cloth strips, and beneath them, calluses and scars could be faintly seen. Aunt Liu the Tailor.
Old Woman Chen glanced back at the crowd, reached in, and fished out a middle-aged man with his neck tucked in, like picking up a chicken.
“Old Lu! Are you saving those mechanism traps of yours to breed?”
The one fished out was Old Lu the Carpenter.
Forty-five years old, with a bitter gourd face, he didn’t look like someone willing to risk his life.
He was dragged to the center of the square by Old Woman Chen, his face clearly saying “I don’t want to be here,” but under her glare, he forcefully pulled back his retreating steps.
“I… my traps are usable, but…”
“But what?” Old Woman Chen glared.
“It’s that I’m afraid of death,” Old Lu said truthfully.
“Who isn’t afraid of death?” Old Woman Chen snorted. “If you’re afraid of death, don’t live in the apocalypse. Since you’ve lived this long, keep living. Come on.”
Old Lu grimaced and said no more. His carpentry skills were indeed the best in town—the wooden stakes he sharpened could pierce leather armor, and the traps he designed were so intricate even Anomalies had fallen into them.
The fifth person walked out from the very edge of the crowd.
A young man, around twenty-eight, with a gloomy expression, carrying a thick pressed flower album on his back.
He walked to the center of the square. His gaze didn’t look at Gu Jiao; he looked toward the Forbidden Area.
“My name is Meng Qing.”
His voice wasn’t loud, but it was heavy like a stone sinking into water.
Pressed Flower Master Meng Qing. The Pressed Flower Master in Hundred Flower Valley who used the Yin Killing Technique “Soul-Sealing Pressed Flowers” and stood as a tripod with Old Craftsman and Flower Painter—that master was his senior brother.
His senior brother died under the hoe of the Burial Flower Anomaly, leaving not even a corpse.
Five people. Adding Gu Jiao and her patrol team, plus A Jiu, plus White Night and her group of four.
This was the entirety of the manpower to fight the King Flower.
Not many. Pitifully few. But it was enough, because White Peace was there.
Afternoon at Gu Jiao’s residence.
Everyone gathered around. White Peace drew a simplified diagram of the greenhouse on the ground. She had only been there once, but once was enough for her to remember the location of every flower.
“The King Flower is at the deepest point. The surrounding offspring plants are divided into three layers.”
She used her toe to draw three arcs on the ground.
“The outermost layer has about sixty plants. They were planted less than a year ago, the weakest, with short vines and limited attack range.”
“Fire can suppress them but not burn them to death. You have to cut the roots to kill them completely.”
“The middle layer has forty plants. Planted one to two years ago, with longer and thicker vines that actively attack anyone who gets close.”
“If they touch skin, they burrow inside, piercing blood vessels to suck blood. You can’t touch them with bare hands.”
“The innermost layer has twenty plants. Old plants over three years old, each directly connected to the King Flower’s main root.”
“They are the source of the King Flower’s power. To kill the King Flower, you must first sever the connection between these twenty plants and the main root.”
Little Frost crouched beside the diagram, tracing an advance route on the ground with her finger.
She had already roughly understood everyone’s abilities.
“First team, Sister Gu leads the patrol team to clear the outer layer. Bee swarm to lead the way, torches to follow, and root-cutting to finish. Sister Gu, how many plants can your bees attack simultaneously?”
“More than ten plants is no problem,” Gu Jiao said.
“But the bees will also get sucked in when they touch the flowers. They can’t stay in contact with the offspring plants for long. We need to attack in waves and rotate.”
“That’s enough. Ten plants per wave, six waves to clear the outer layer. The patrol team follows behind the bee swarm to cut roots.”
Little Frost looked at Old He.
“Old He, do you have enough iron spikes?”
Old He pulled out a handful of iron spikes from his bag. Each one was as long as a chopstick, the tips tempered with fire, glowing with a cold blue light.
“Forged all night. One hundred twenty spikes. Enough to pin down the vines.”