The Botanical Gatling and the Air Wall

“Not bad!”

Moon Surface praised Chi Xue.

The overconfident Candidate 100 had proven useless, while the quiet Candidate 4 unexpectedly had some real skill.

He really hadn’t seen that coming.

Hearing the compliment, Chi Xue’s cheeks flushed red. She was about to say something.

But then, a huge shadow swept across the distant sky. A piercing high-frequency screech cut through the noise of the battlefield below.

Looking up, the three of them saw a massive flock of silver-white birds.

“There are flying-type monsters too!”

In the garden, Huang Xiu also noticed the anomaly in the sky.

“This is bad.” She narrowed her eyes, her pretty face pale from blood loss.

If they let those silver-white birds get any closer, the already faltering battlefield would collapse instantly, and they would lose all room to maneuver.

Originally, she had focused on close-combat plants to defend the channel. But now she decisively changed tactics, converting the next batch of plants from shields into ranged turrets.

The wound on her palm had mostly healed, but the rapidly dividing cells caused an unbearable itch.

Hesitating for a moment, Huang Xiu cut open her other hand.

Blood splattered. As her void energy drained rapidly, the plants in the garden surged in growth.

In an instant, more than a dozen new mutant plants took shape. Huang Xiu had reached her limit, her void energy nearly empty.

She panted, turned, and looked into the distance.

Under the silver-white sky, the flock of strange birds drew closer, their wings beating.

Their incessant chirping was maddening.

Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!

Projectiles whistled through the air. Tiny fireballs and stones flew from above the botanical garden wall.

— Candidate 100 and Chi Xue had joined the fight.

They also realized they couldn’t let the birds get any closer.

The fireballs burned with intense heat; even small, they packed a punch. And the stones, empowered by [Momentum], hit harder than pistol bullets.

But no matter how powerful, missing was useless.

Birds are swift creatures. With a flap of their wings, the flock scattered, easily dodging most attacks.

Only a few unlucky ones were hit, crying out as they fell.

Not only that, but the mutant plant army on the battlefield below was showing clear signs of defeat.

What had seemed manageable was suddenly hanging by a thread.

“Damn it!” Moon Surface’s heart skipped a beat.

But just then, a gentle female voice came from below the stairs.

“Catch!”

Catch… what?

Moon Surface turned in confusion.

From the garden behind him came a rustling sound.

A massive vine python coiled upright, and a pretty short-haired girl stood on its head.

In her hand, she held something extremely bizarre.

It looked like a Gatling gun, but the barrel was a sunflower disc, and the body was a green sunflower stem.

The vine python flicked its tail, sending several dark objects flying onto the wall.

They were also shaped like modern firearms, but every detail was plant-like.

“I need guns, lots of guns!” The girl grinned.

She raised her left hand, leveling the “Gatling” before her chest, and with her right hand, she pulled the trigger hard.

The sunflower disc spun rapidly, showering golden petals.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

A black serpent swept toward the bird flock.

It was really a gun!

Moon Surface stared, dumbfounded. Could Candidate 122’s power really work like that?

“All-purpose… she really is all-purpose!” In that moment, he truly understood the meaning of Huang Xiu’s words.

He didn’t hesitate. He and the other two bent down to pick up the guns.

They pulled the triggers. Green, brown, and even yellow bullets sprayed out.

Not only that, but the newly mutated long-range plants climbed up the wall and started firing wildly.

In an instant, the botanical garden became a fortress of firepower. A dense network of bullets savaged the birds in the sky.

No matter how agile, the birds couldn’t withstand such relentless saturation fire.

Their cries of pain didn’t stop. The silver-white birds fell like dumplings into a pot.

“Hahaha!”

Huang Xiu was ecstatic, laughing as she fired, her hands steady.

Having once been a man, she had always harbored a wish to defend her country with a gun.

Click, click…

The sound of an empty chamber. The disc stopped spinning.

“A thousand skills, this is a gun!” she shouted, pouring her remaining void energy into the weapon.

Brown sunflower seeds generated one by one inside the disc, quickly refilling the magazine.

This was a new type of mutant plant she had created based on insights from yesterday’s battle on the national highway.

It was a simple, purely lethal weapon modeled after modern firearms.

Powerful, no recoil, generating bullets with void energy. The only drawback was that it required manual operation and lacked intelligence.

The birds were now reduced to a small cluster, but they had closed to within a hundred meters of the garden.

They shrieked, soared high into the sky, flapped their wings, and generated silver-white cones that spiraled downward.

“Danger!” Moon Surface shouted anxiously, but inside he felt like crying tears of joy.

Finally… finally it was his turn to score some points.

He leaped out, raising both hands above his head and rotating them as if smoothing plaster.

Void energy surged within him.

[Bulwark] activated!

In an instant, an invisible, transparent wall of air solidified.

Moon Surface smirked. He had tested his ability before. The air walls were soft-seeming but tough. Even arrows from a compound bow couldn’t penetrate them.

“Come on!” he thought, full of anticipation.

The silver cones spiraled, growing larger in his pupils. Just as they were about to hit the air wall, a massive shadow suddenly flew out from the garden, instantly blocking the sky above the four of them, blocking the light, blocking everything.

Moon Surface looked up, mouth hanging open.

It was a banana leaf the size of a truck, with veins as thick as a person’s arm.

And it was as thick as a Xinhua dictionary.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Spinning cones are best for piercing armor.

They twisted into the banana leaf, tearing through ten centimeters of tough flesh, but eventually lost their momentum.

“Whew! Good thing I reacted fast!” Huang Xiu wiped the sweat from her forehead on the giant snake’s head, panting.

Slap!

Moon Surface’s legs gave out, and he dropped to his knees.