Little Mushroom

The armoured vehicle.

"Congratulations. We will arrive back at the base in 15 hours."

Lu Feng asked, "How is the base?"

"The distortion caused widespread panic and confusion. Some of the precision instruments couldn't be used. Fortunately, the artificial magnetic pole is functioning properly."

"Did the distortion occur when the magnetic poles failed?"

"Yes."

Lu Feng told the doctor, "These days, the survivor and I had been living in a magnetite mine where there is no distortion."

"It is due to the magnetic field. The magnetic field can resist distortion to some extent." The doctor explained. "At that time, the Lighthouse was in chaos. Our last hope was to exchange all the research results with the Dungeon Base but we didn't get anything. All their research was based on biological genes."

"Then I illegally accessed the communication channel with the research institute."

Lu Feng raised his eyebrows.

"After the discussion and combining some clues, such as when the distortion occurred, we thought this might be related to the magnetic field. Thus, we temporarily increased the strength of the artificial magnetic poles. For the time being, we've earned some time for survival."

The doctor leaned against the car seat. "Still, according to the prediction, the distortion will gradually increase and it will beat us in three months."

He paused and looked at the grey sky in the distance as well as the brown eagle hovering in the sky. "It is hard to imagine all the efforts that humans made to survive from ancient times to the present are in vain and to become witness to the event of the total destruction of humans."

He looked back at Lu Feng. "Honestly, you are a lot calmer than I expected."

"How did you get hit?" He added, "I don't know what type of species An Zhe but he managed to slip out of the base's tight defenses. It is normal to miss him. Even if you catch him, you won't be able to keep him. Don't worry about it too much."

Lu Feng didn't speak. He just held out his hand. A soft, snowy little thing rolled out of his sleeve and he looked at it.

Strangely, a soft thought filled his mind. He seemed to have returned to the moment when An Zhe stayed quietly beside him. At night, they slept together. An Zhe always turned his back to Lu Feng but once he was asleep, he would turn over and lean gently against Lu Feng's chest. In the morning, he wouldn't know why. He would furrow those beautiful eyebrows and turn back. Then Lu Feng hugged him from behind.

It turned out that these were the most memorable few days of his life. The snow-white mycelium was affectionately wrapped around his finger.

The doctor froze. "How did you get it? You brought it back?"

"Yes."

"What about An Zhe?" The doctor spoke very quickly. "Did you kill him?"

The spore seemed frightened by this man's sudden loud voice and shrank back into Lu Feng's sleeve. Then after a while, it appeared again and lovingly rubbed itself against Lu Feng's neck. Lu Feng answered, "He left."

"How can you be willing to let him go? What exactly is he?" The doctor's eyes widened. "Can he protect himself?"

Lu Feng touched the soft spore and didn't answer. In the darkness, his side profile was a silent silhouette.

The doctor stared at him and suddenly frowned. "Where is your gun?"

***

The roof.

An Zhe watched the convoy disappearing into the distance before moving his stiff body and standing up from the flowerbed. Yesterday's heavy rain had filled it with water. At this time, some filament-like creatures were wriggling in the water. They had been born yesterday.

Then once the sky cleared up, the accumulated water would soon dry up. Shortly after birth, they would face eternal death. This was true of all living things. Will his spore live longer than these dead creatures? He hoped so.

An Zhe patiently waited for an opportunity. Once the eagle landed, he climbed onto its back. The flying eagle didn't pay any attention to him, perhaps because he was too light and undernourished. An Zhe found a place to wait on its spacious back that was covered in scales, not feathers. There were some intertwined translucent tentacles growing between the gaps in the scales. The eagle hunting around the city. Once it swallowed a vine that resembled flesh and wrestled with a giant monster with bat wings for 30 minutes, it lost and left this place.

An Zhe set the direction of its flight using the North Star. After discovering that the trajectory had deviated, he slipped off. He absorbed the nutrients of the soil for a night and hesitated for a long time before taking out a black gun and a dozen rounds of ammunition from his backpack.

This gun belonged to Lu Feng but he found it in his backpack after Lu Feng left. The colonel often took An Zhe's belongings, including the backpack, for granted so An Zhe speculated that he left the gun in here.

He succeeded in using the sound of gunfire to draw a butterfly-winged monster as a mount.

Three days later, he landed again. As he was looking for the next riding target, An Zhe encountered an extremely ugly monster. This monster had many characteristics of an arthropod monsters and took mushrooms as food. An Zhe wanted to escape but his body was already very poor. Just as he was almost eaten, Lu Feng's gun protected him. He accidentally shot the monster's soft abdomen and when it paused for a short time, he rolled into a muddy stream and fled.

It was cold and monsters who were afraid of the cold started to go south. Of course, they also preyed on each other in the process. Sometimes, there were no traces of life on the plains and only one or two extremely large winners could be met. Sometimes, the creatures were like a black torrent, migrating to the south. An Zhe integrated in with them and flowed down the stream.

10 days later, he finally got on a bird that was flying south. After more than 20 days on the soft back of the flying bird, he saw a long, huge shadow on the horizon, like a scar on this world.

According to humans, the core of the Abyss was a long and narrow fault zone caused by a magnitude 8.0 earthquake during the time of disaster. This place had extremely abnormal radiation and this caused it to give birth to countless terrible monsters. The core fault zone expanded outward and the north of the Abyss was a vast plain covered with a dense forest, filled with all types of mushrooms and countless dormant monsters. To the south was a huge, rolling highland and mountain range.

The bird came to the edge of the Abyss. It was tired and found a dead piece of wood to perch on to rest.

The branches suddenly shook. The bird's feathers shot up and its wings vibrated as it screamed.

It was unknown when but dense black vines appeared on the dead wood and had already firmly entangled around the bird's feet. The snow-white bird flapped its wings as it was dragged to the centre of the densely branched tree. Its beautiful neck was raised high and its pointed and long beak reached out to the grey sky. Then the vines wrapped around its neck and cracked open, the mouth that had sharp fangs biting at the bird's neck.

Blood splattered and the five or six metres long bird was broken into two, small feathers scattered to the ground.

An Zhe held his backpack and landed on the feathers on the ground. He stood up and stood on rotten ground where black liquid was flowing. After taking a few steps, he looked up and saw the bird being eaten by thousands of vines.

Then the vines scattered in a contented manner.

The dense forest, the vines and the giant mushrooms combined to block the light of the sky and the sound of fighting.

This was the Abyss, a place where even people's bones were eaten. There were no rodents or arthropods because they were too weak yet the creatures that were 100 times stronger than them weren't invincible. The soil of the Abyss was so nutritious due to all the flesh and blood that it was soaked in, which might be while the mushroom population flourished.

An Zhe walked through the place. The ground was covered with moss, dead branches and fallen leaves, so soft that it was close to a swamp. Creatures walked on it without making a sound.

He clearly felt that the atmosphere of the Abyss had changed. Usually, killing fights would happen all the time and powerful monsters often strolled the forest to patrol their territory. However, he walked a long way today and only encountered a silent python.

They all seemed dormant.

However, An Zhe didn't care about the coming and going of the monsters. He gazed at the endless place where even the sun couldn't shine.

On his left side was a dark red mushroom 10 metres high. It stood between several huge stones and mucus constantly flowed from the cap. The huge body seemed to be breathing, rising and falling as it took in the air.

An Zhe placed a finger on its stem and felt the texture that was wrapped in mucus. He had never seen such a mushroom before.

Suddenly, his eyes filled with fear as he gazed around in all directions. His pupils shrank and his body was cold. He was shaking.

He couldn't recognize it. He didn't recognize it.

The next moment, his breathing was rough as he ran in a stumbling manner through the dense forest. This was the Abyss, with blood-soaked soil, swamps with black water and monsters watching secretly. It was the Abyss but it was no longer the familiar place from his memories.

The Abyss was so big. How could he find his original home? He tried to recall the characteristic mushrooms that he relied on to remember the route.

Thus, he kept walking, constantly searching while using his legs and mycelium. After a day, after the night and in the morning—however, every plains looked the same and every cave was empty.

There were no clues and no familiar place. He didn't know how many sunsets he saw and how many times he was disappointed by an empty cave.

He didn't know how long it was but he couldn't move and his mycelium was no longer as soft and flexible as before. They were melted and breaking, his human body becoming extremely weak as his life was consumed.

At a quiet lake, a dead rattan tripped him. Sharp stones cut his knees and palms. He knelt down on the ground, burying his face in his palms while shaking. He couldn't find it, he couldn't find the cave.

The life of a mushroom was only one season. The old one died while the new one grew. The appearance of the Abyss changed with new generations of mushrooms. The road he remembered all this time was no more.

He desperately looked at the sky covered by mushrooms and dead wood. He hadn't known things would be like this—so cruel.

Lu Feng was right. He didn't know how big the world was. He couldn't find it unless his life was eternally long. However, he was a mushroom and he was dying. He was destined to die on the way to the cave.

Nothing in the world was eternal. Not even his initial oath.

Salty tears flowed into the small wounds on his face caused by thorns. The pain was sharp but it was far from the despair in his heart. He gasped as he peered into the silent puddle. He was in a trance. There was a sound in the water, an indescribable frequency calling for him to leave and the entire world became blurred and unreal.

Jump down, jump, it will all be over.

There would be no more happiness or pain.

He went to the lakeside step by step under the bewitchment of that call. The water was so clear, reflecting his appearance. He and An Ze looked so much alike that when the waves of water blurred his outline, An Ze seemed to be the one calling him.

He was born without knowing anything and would die without knowing anything. In the Abyss, in this… sad place. As if a switch in his memory was touched, a voice suddenly filled his ears. It was his own voice.

"There on the sad height," the voice gently said. "Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray."

"…Do not go gentle into that good night."

"Do not go gentle into that good night." He had asked, "What does it mean?"

Lin Zuo, the teacher at the Garden of Eden, had replied, "Don't accept the destruction gently."

After a brief pause, the words changed again.

"Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for you are with me." He was softly reciting a poem to someone. That day, they walked a long way together and didn't know what they would meet in front of them.

On that day, in the wilderness, that man walked with him in the darkness while the ancient wind blew. What had that person been thinking then?

In the face of the fate that told his eventual demise, did that person feel the same despair? How did he go on?

He…

An Zhe lowered his head and found that he had somehow taken out the judge's badge. The sharp edges of the badge stung his already bloodied hand. The illusory trance suddenly receded and he took a few steps back. He thought, 'What was I just doing?'

There was a severe pain in his ankle. The stone that had just cut his palm had hit his ankle. He stooped to move the sharp grey stone away, so that other creatures wouldn't trip over it. Then he suddenly found something. There was a dark charcoal mark on the stone, as if it had been written with a scorched tree branch. A crooked, ugly arrow was drawn, pointing southeast.

He fell deep into thought. With his limited knowledge, there were no creatures in the Abyss who could draw arrows. This strange grey stone, he seemed to have seen it once or twice elsewhere in the Abyss. He had just been so focused on finding the cave that he hadn't paid attention.

He looked around and finally chose to go in the direction indicated by the arrow. After walking for a long time, another grey stone appeared abruptly on the flat ground, half buried in the soil and half exposed. The exposed part had an arrow drawn on it.

An Zhe continued to walk. It wasn't only the grey stones that were marked. Sometimes, there were marks on the tree trunks or white bones. After five days, he found that he was walking south of the Abyss, walking near the highlands. The environment of the highlands was dry and harsh so few monsters would go here.

Yet on the same day, he couldn't find any other stones.

He stood blankly under a tree, trying to look around and wondering if he had gone the wrong way. Suddenly—

A small stone hit his shoulder.

"Are you lost?" The laughing voice of a man was heard behind him.

An Zhe turned around to the direction of the man's voice. A tall, slender and handsome dark-haired man stood by a tree, holding a grey stone in his right hand and winking at him. "The road sign is here. I haven't put it down yet."

Looking at him, An Zhe slowly frowned.

"Tang Lan?" He called out a name.

"Do you recognize me?" The man smiled in an uninhibited manner. "I haven't seen you at the base."

"I haven't seen you either." An Zhe spoke after confirming the man's appearance. "I know Hubbard."

The moment Hubbard's name was mentioned, the casual smile disappeared from the man's face.