Chapter 165: Chapter 153: The Lively and Bustling Space

Flora Bloom followed her father and the others back to their assigned residence. She, Caleb, Lisa, Caleb Bloom, and Jade were in one apartment.

Neal Wallace, Ethan Monroe, Mark Sterling, and Fakeryu were in another.

Cynthia Grant, Lucia, Maeve Preston, Shelly, and Selina shared a third.

Sherman Lynch, Irvin Holden, Ethan Warren, and Joel Bloom had the last one.

Upon entering her apartment, Flora Bloom immediately frowned. The comparison was brutal.

After experiencing the luxury of the villa, the apartment in the mid-rise building felt incredibly cramped, especially the lighting. It was daytime, and natural light streamed through the windows, but the apartment’s poor orientation meant that even then, some corners remained in shadow.

So, the two-bedroom, one-living-room apartment couldn’t hope to match the brightness of the villa with its overhead lights turned on.

When Caleb Bloom explained the building’s water and electricity rations, Flora couldn’t help but call the base stingy. Still, she mused, ’for a base this large, allocating resources to everyone can’t be easy.’

Water wasn’t an issue for Flora Bloom at all—it was the electricity that was the problem. She could use the generator in her pocket dimension, but there were too many prying eyes here. She had just seen someone scale the building to the fifteenth floor with their bare hands to jimmy open a window!

But a villa cost ten thousand Crystal Cores a month! If they paid that, her group would have no Crystal Cores left to level up.

"You’re a grown woman, so why are you acting like a child? Strength is more important than comfort right now. If we use these Crystal Cores to get stronger, we can just go out and hunt for more, right?" Caleb Bloom had already thought this through. He couldn’t spoil his daughter when she was being petulant. Once their Superpower Levels were higher, it wouldn’t be hard for them to go out and harvest Crystal Cores from zombies.

Besides, the little pets in his daughter’s dimension were no slouches. For their group, earning Crystal Cores wouldn’t be difficult.

"You’re right. We can wait a few days," Flora conceded. The apartment was a two-bedroom, one-living-room unit with a small study off the living room. Flora cleared out the study and moved in her bed and other furniture from her old Janton apartment. Her parents took one of the bedrooms, while Caleb and Lisa took the other.

Having survived ten years of the apocalypse, Flora Bloom knew that a place like this to rest was already a luxury.

The villa was comfortable, true, but they would have to wait until they had more Crystal Cores. Her thoughts drifted to Morgan Sterling’s warehouse, which was overflowing with Crystal Cores. ’Did the guy raid an entire zombie nest?’ So many Crystal Cores—at least a hundred thousand, if not more.

’When will I ever be able to collect that many Crystal Cores?’

After they returned, Caleb settled Big White on the balcony, while Flora Bloom tossed Little White into her pocket dimension.

Her dimension was no longer the desolate place it had been when she first acquired it. Now, it was bustling with activity.

Vert and the Golden Cicada were each munching on a huge tomato. By the river, Big Kong and Small Kong pecked at grains in a pile of wheat, while Monkey One, Monkey Two, and Monkey Three chattered and scampered about, playfully chasing each other with peaches. Meanwhile, the massive Carapace had dug a burrow by the riverbank and was curled up inside, fast asleep.

With the military truck gone, the couple of acres of fields by the river lay empty, and Flora Bloom felt an urge to plant something. Using her spiritual power, she guided bags of fruit and vegetable seeds, scattering them over the Spirit Field on one side of the river. On the other side, she planted more wheat.

After she was done, she irrigated the fields with spiritual water from the river.

Flora Bloom then noticed a few vibrant green shoots in the mud near the foxtail grass by the river. Peering into the soil with her mind’s eye, she saw that they were leftover peach pits, which had sprouted and pushed their way through the earth.

The single earthworm that used to live underground had moved its home to the other side of the river. Now, beneath the Spirit Field, a mud ball had formed. Countless tiny, white, soft, worm-like creatures crawled all over its surface and within it.

Judging by their segmented bodies and the distinct raised bands near their heads, they were a whole brood of baby earthworms.

Flora Bloom didn’t know the first thing about earthworm reproduction, but seeing life flourish and multiply in her dimension filled her with a unique joy.

After returning to the dimension, Juggernaut resumed its position, lying motionless across the river. The river itself was the liveliest spot. The few ocean fish she had placed there had all grown considerably.

A large colony of pearl oysters had buried themselves in the gravel at the bottom of the river. Flora Bloom could see that the largest one—the one she had harvested a pearl from before—had already recovered and was now forming several new, rice-sized pearls.

Finally, there were the chickens, geese, and pigs in the pen near the thatched hut. They were all in high spirits, occasionally wandering out for a stroll before returning to their shelters to rest.

But there was one strange thing: none of the eggs would hatch. Neither the unidentified eggs she had collected from the mountain near the horse farm nor the chicken and goose eggs from the village had shown any signs of hatching.

Even the mantis eggs Vert had laid and Juggernaut’s four eggs lay silently by the river, completely still.

Flora Bloom used her spiritual power to probe the life signatures within the eggs. They hadn’t spoiled; in fact, each one pulsed with a strong Life Force. So why weren’t they hatching?

Inside Vert’s egg sacs, the baby mantises were perfectly formed, yet they remained motionless, as if asleep, refusing to break free.

’Could it be that the offspring of evolved creatures just need more time to incubate?’

Deciding not to dwell on it, Flora Bloom withdrew her spiritual power, closed her eyes, and quickly drifted off to sleep.

Back in the mid-rise building, the four families of Flora Bloom’s team rested, with no one venturing out. They were completely unaware that Flora’s killing of the three men in the quarantine room had finally brought the simmering conflict between the base’s three main factions to a boil.

After breakfast, Quinn led a team to District 09 of Morhaven to scavenge for supplies. They entered a shopping mall, but while they were inside, someone sealed and locked all the exits. 𝕗𝚛𝚎𝚎𝐰𝗲𝗯𝗻𝚘𝚟𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝕞

Just as they were about to leave with their scavenged goods, someone smashed the mall’s alarm system, and the blaring siren drew in a massive horde of zombies.

Soon, the entire building, inside and out, was swarmed by zombies. Quinn had no choice but to order everyone to retreat to the rooftop.

The team of thirty barricaded the only door to the roof, cutting off the zombies’ advance but also trapping themselves on their only escape route.

District 09 was a suburb only fifteen kilometers from the base. Morgan Sterling had led a clearing operation there before, so the zombie population wasn’t as dense as in the city center.

A round trip from the base to District 09 took two hours at most. A thirty-man supply team leaving in the morning should have been able to make it back well before nightfall.

But when night fell and there was still no word of Quinn’s team, Morgan Sterling knew something was wrong.

He summoned a subordinate. "Find out who else left the base today besides our own people. And while you’re at it, find Weldon Sawyer. Tell him to come see me tonight."

"Yes, Chief."

Morgan Sterling sat alone on the sofa, his face a grim, shifting mask of emotions. If he wasn’t mistaken, Heath Holden and Seth Warren had finally made their move.

He had established the Morhaven Safe Base with his original followers, but as the base grew, his own faction’s numbers were stretched thin.

Seth Warren and Heath Holden led the two largest factions in the base after his own. He had allowed them to grow, assuming it wouldn’t be a problem. He controlled most of the resources, so he believed they would continue to compete against and restrain each other for his favor, never posing a threat to his own position.

But yesterday’s incident in the quarantine room had been a wake-up call. Why was it one of Seth Warren’s men who had rushed to inform Heath Holden that his uncle had been killed?

It could only mean the two factions had been secretly conspiring for a long time.

The incident with Flora Bloom had simply given them a convenient excuse to openly cooperate. And now, they had made a move against his supply team.