How to Raise a Baby in an Apocalypse - Chapter 404

An Ran sends out a mental call and opens the car door.

The thorny plant, now a plump thorn ball, reluctantly crawls out of the soil. Its thin white roots creep along the ground, and after stumbling once, it simply rolls forward, tumbling its way to the car door. Its roots hook onto the edge of the car, and with great effort, it clambers inside.

An Ran looks at the mutant plant and smiles. She gives the plump thorn ball some “candy” to soothe its unhappy emotions, holds Doll in her arms, closes the car door, and watches as the vehicle speeds off toward Xiangcheng.

Zhan Lian is driving. Along the way, he glances back at An Ran several times. In his sharp eyes, there’s a flicker of hesitation.

An Ran sits quietly in the back. When Zhan Lian looks at her in the rearview mirror for the nth time, she finally asks, “What do you want to ask?”

“…Are you a god or something?” Zhan Lian grins, clears his throat, and explains, “Actually, I don’t mean anything else, just want to ask… Okay, can you really control plants?”

“Yes,” An Ran replies simply.

“You can make them eat zombies, mice, snakes… so those tree monsters just now—did you make them appear too?”

“As soon as I got to the edge of Xiang City, I lost the ability to control ordinary plants.” An Ran admits the first part but denies the second. If she admits to creating those tree monsters, wouldn’t it mean she ordered them to attack humans?

“Why? Is there something in Xiangcheng that interferes with your ability?”

“It doesn’t affect me.” An Ran shakes her head and thinks for a moment. “I feel fine. There’s no pain, no sense of interference. If there’s any effect, it’s probably on the plants underground—especially the ordinary ones.”

Ordinary plants are too weak. In the face of overwhelming power, they don’t dare to resist!

An Ran rambles on, her words turning into a jumbled explanation. The more she speaks, the more confused she sounds—and Zhan Lian looks just as confused. Clearly, even An Ran herself hasn’t figured it all out.

Still, Zhan Lian gets the gist of it: An Ran can control plants to attack mutant creatures, but near Xiangcheng, she loses that ability. That much is enough for now.

The car moves forward but not far before they run into another human-snake battle. The national highway is completely blocked. It seems the closer they get to Xiangcheng, the more tail-enders there are in Tang Jianjun’s team.

The punk man from earlier is also up front, sweeping mutant snakes off the road with a machine gun. The rattling roar of gunfire fills the world with violent noise.

With the road blocked and copper-skinned zombies closing in from behind, Zhan Lian curses. He turns back to An Ran and says firmly, “Wife, watch the kid carefully, don’t get out, it’s fine, don’t be afraid!”

With that, Zhan Lian jumps out, props himself up with one hand on the roof, and launches into the fray. The rings circling his body spin rapidly, slicing through the snakes near the car.

An Ran quietly opens the door just a crack and lets the fat thorny plant roll out.

The plant is ecstatic. It rolls into the roadside soil, its stubby white roots digging in. Then, it spins its thorns, lashes out at the passing mutant snakes, and happily devours them.