Little Mushroom

It crossed the road covered by yellow sand and came to the neighbourhood. It was only a few hundred metres away and the soft feet rubbed against the road, making rough sounds.

On this smooth, grey-white membrane, no ears or eyes could be seen. There were no tentacles or breathing holes. How did it perceive the world? Hearing, vision or sound waves? This would determine how they should escape.

Xi Bei stuttered, "What… what to do?"

Lu Feng was silent. He walked to the window and reached out to push it. The window seemed to be frozen or rusted. When it pushed it the first time, it didn't move. His arms became taut and force was exerted. Then the window made an extremely ugly squeaking sound and a small triangular gap was opened.

The black muzzle protruded from the gap but the colonel wasn't aiming at the monster. It was at the opposite street. There was a slight noise—a silencer was used—that couldn't be heard from beyond 10 metres away. The bullet left a fleeting silhouette on his retinas and the next moment, it hit the window of a building on the next street.

The bullets he used in the field were different from the ordinary humans used when judging humans. The warhead made of depleted uranium alloy had penetration and crushing strength on the armour-piercing level.

There was a loud noise as the entire glass broke and fell down to the ground. The monster's movements paused. Lu Feng raised his gun and fired a few more times. Broken glass fell in the direction he aimed.

The monster did hear it and the creeping feet changed direction. It seemed to stop moving for a while before slowly moving toward the location of the sound. After three minutes, it stopped again, gave up on his direction and continued to walk toward where they were.

Xi Bei subconsciously stepped back, his face pale. "It… it… can you fight it?"

Lu Feng's thin lips twitched slightly. He stared at the monster with narrowed eyes, his expression calm and terrible. The next moment, he reached out and removed the silencer. Then he pulled the trigger!

"Bang! Bang! Bang!"

A series of blasts exploded violently in the area around the monster. In the city that was too quiet, the sound was as shocking as thunder.

The monster was stuck in place again but at that time, a sharp chirp was suddenly heard at the other end of the city.

Then a huge shadow rose from that direction. A hawk-like bird flew across the sky and stretched out wings that were dozens of metres in length, gliding faster than a bullet as it dived straight toward the white monster!

The monster made a high frequency scream as the white membrane cracked and dozens of thorn-like tentacles stretched out and tangled around the eagle's beak.

There was a deal sound as the eagle's steel-like wings pierced the monster's body. The monster was in pain and the tentacles shrank back like they were electrocuted. The flying eagle took the opportunity to withdraw and immediately flew upward. Once away from the attack range of the tense group of tentacles, it circled around in the sky before swooping down again with the harsh sound of the wind. Its sharp beak was inserted directly into the centre of the white monster's body.

Suddenly, white and flesh-pink liquid splashed out. The sharp beak bit something and the white monster twisted and struggled frantically. Its body was so loud that the surrounding houses trembled and the ground shook. In this grey human city, two unimaginable monsters were biting at each other like this.

The ground hundreds of metres around them was covered with a dark slime. This battle ended with the white monster completely unrecognizable, the internal organs gone. The flying eagle held a string of organs in its mouth as it turned and flew away.

An Zhe sighed with relief. Only then did he understand Lu Feng's intention behind firing so frequently. There wasn't necessarily only one monster in this city. He exposed the location with the sound of gunfire, attracting other monsters.

He heard Xi Bei ask, "You… how did you know there was that bird?"

Lu Feng pulled back his gun, put on the silencer and turned around, his series of actions flowing cleanly. "I didn't know. I made a gamble."

An Zhe looked in the direction where the flying eagle had disappeared. In this case, a flying monster seemed to show unparalleled advantages. They escaped death and didn't talk anymore. In the silence, an old voice was suddenly heard.

"It's almost time." The grandfather's voice was hoarse. "I'm 60 years old and that is enough."

Lu Feng glanced in the direction of the old man and asked, "When?"

The old man opened his mouth as he stared at the distant sky with an irrational and crazy look. "Come… when it comes."

"What is coming?"

"Unimaginable, unimaginable…" His voice was filled with dying hoarseness. "It is bigger than everything and invisible. In this world… it is coming soon."

Lu Feng's voice was low. "How do you know?"

"I'm dying… I can feel it, I can hear it." His voice was slow, like a whisper elongated countless times.

"What can you hear?"

"I hear…" The old man spoke intermittently. "Chaos—"

As he spoke, the old man stared up at the dark sky above the city. An Zhe followed his gaze. The sky was so low, horribly low, as it hung heavily above the horizon. The aurora was so bright and the green light was also lower, mixing with the dark clouds. Lu Feng had said the reason why the aurora was so bright was because the base had made the frequency of the artificial magnetic field stronger in order to resist distortion.

"People grow on the ground and die on the ground. The sky…" The old man looked peaceful, his voice gradually becoming lighter and quieter. "The sky will only get deeper and lower."

Once the last words came out of his mouth, he slowly folded his hands together. His eyes slowly closed.

Xi Bei's legs softened and he knelt down in front of the old man, placing his hands on the skinny knees. "Grandpa? Grandpa?"

There was no response. The old man's chest stopped moving. He had left. Death was in an instant.

Xi Bei started crying as he buried his face in the old man's knee.

Once he finally raised his head again, An Zhe whispered, "Are you okay?"

"I'm… okay." Xi Bei stared blankly at this grandfather's face and murmured, "Grandpa previously said that he isn't afraid of death. He said that everyone alive has their own mission. His mission was to protect everyone in the mind. To watch the mine survive until this day, he already… it is okay."

Xi Bei looked up at the old man's face, his withered, dusty face. His white hair was messy and tangled in some places. In the dark underground, no one could live decently.

He muttered, "I… I'm going to find a comb."

He got up in a depressed manner and went to the other room. A late life was dead.

In this room, this was another long-dead life. An Zhe turned to look at the sofa in the living room that had a skeleton on it. Its flesh and blood should've naturally rotted because the sofa was covered with green, yellow and brown mottled traces, which were traces of mold growing.

"It started out as super bacteria and fungi and viruses were breeding in human cities. They infected everyone without distinction and the cities were full of corpses. Anyone who has visited the ruins in the wilderness would know about this." The words once spoken by Poet rang in his ears.

He looked out the wind. Dead buildings, a dead city and buildings full of skeletons. Each skeleton was a dead life.

Lu Feng saw that An Zhe's gaze was still so calm as he looked into the distance. However, under the reflection of the dark sky, the subtle movements in this quiet and beautiful face combined together to present an indescribably light, smoke-like sadness.

Lu Feng watched the city and stated, "When the human bases were built, there was a comprehensive search and research. The strength of the base wasn't sufficient and many small cities didn't receive timely rescue."

An Zhe stared at the endless buildings that were like the ocean. It would take at least several hours to walk from one end of the city to the other. He gently wondered, "Is this a small city?"

"Yes."

An Zhe's eyes widened slightly.

A city that was extremely big in his view was just a small city that was too late to be rescued for the humans. So how magnificent was the human world before the age of disaster? He didn't know.

Since there were scattered humans around this city who were struggling to survive the disaster, were there more places where countless people who hadn't been rescued continued to struggle, despair and die? This city was full of skeletons and the base wasn't safe or peaceful. The entire human world was full of crying.

Such a grand world was gradually falling. Imagining this scene, he seemed to see a huge sunset gradually sinking into the black horizon at dusk, a protracted death. In this dead silence, there was the sound of something falling to the ground in the bedroom next door.

Lu Feng called out, "What happened?"

There was no answer, only Xi Bei's trembling gasps. Lu Feng frowned, held his gun and turned to walk over. An Zhe followed closely.

The room was empty. There were no monsters or enemies. Only Xi Bei's back was facing them, trembling violently. At first, An Zhe thought he was crying. Then after walking to his side, An Zhe saw he was staring at a comb in his hand.

It was difficult for An Zhe to describe the wooden comb but it wasn't one but two fused together. There was the most common type of wooden comb. It had a 10 centimeter handle and fine comb teeth. The handles of two equally common wooden combs grew together closely, as if carved from the same piece of wood. The comb teeth were tilted 45 degrees, one of the left and one to the right like a two-headed snake.

However, if they were two ordinary combs at first, how did they fuse together?

Wood, a piece of wood, was the most common and safest thing. Yet due to this appearance that was beyond common sense, it brought the most unparalleled terror.

Lu Feng strode to the dresser where Xi Bei had obtained the comb. This was obviously a woman's room before the era of disaster. On the ivory dressing table, there were countless bottles, jars and large and small tools.

Lu Feng reached out to wipe the dust on the mirror. He wiped off one layer but there was another layer below. The dust seemed to grow inside the mirror. The mirror was always foggy, distorting their figures into a black mass.

An Zhe saw this and suddenly remembered when he climbed the wall of the outer city. The sand had fallen down but sand was still inside, as if the wall had become a mixture of sand and steel.

Lu Feng no longer looked at the mirror. His eyebrows furrowed as he glanced over the large and small makeup tools. Finally, he reached out and grabbed a pair of long, rusty tweezers. No, they weren't tweezers because the metal tweezers had already come in contact with a plastic eyebrow trimmer. They were glued together and the 'X' shaped cross-linked parts were integrated into one in a seamless manner. It was unclear if it was steel, plastic or a brand new material that humans didn't know about.

Xi Bei's fingers trembled and the comb fell to the dusty ground.

"This city…" he said. "Is there anything strange? We… let's go."

"It isn't this city," Lu Feng told him.

He stared at the glued tweezers and eyebrow trimmer and declared, "The engine."

These words were like a thunderbolt. There were complex mechanical structures inside the engine and once the delicate structures were damaged—

If the interior of the engine also experienced a weird fusion and changed like this comb, the plane crash was destined.

An Zhe leaned over and picked up the comb. He couldn't see any traces of stitching and the carvings on the handle were chaotic and crazy. It was unknown how they mixed together, like the tentacles of the black handwriting in the flight manual.

An Zhe's eyes became bigger. Suddenly, the words that Madam Lu had spoken when she transformed into a queen bee flying in the boundless sky filled his ears. She had said, "Human genes are too weak to perceive what is happening in the world."

"We will all die. All work is futile. It just proves the insignificance and powerlessness of humanity."

These thoughts crossed An Zhe's mind like lightning flashed across the sky.

If, if… when people and monsters, or monsters and monsters had a spatial overlap or proximity, genetic contamination would occur—no, this was wrong, completely wrong.

"Genes…" he muttered. "It isn't genes…"

The problem wasn't the genes at all. Humans thought that genetic modification was the root cause of the pollution. However, pollution was the mixing and reorganization of the flesh and blood between a living thing and living thing. Their own characteristics had changed but this change was done through genetic changes.

If things mutually contaminated each other, if the properties of a living thing changed instantly, why couldn't other objects? What was the difference between a biological body with a DNA spiral and other inanimate matter? Thus, paper and wood would also contaminate each other, as would steel and plastic.

Then it would be the case for all tangible things in the world. It was just that this process was happening gradually. This torrent was just starting. The pollution of genes was a precursor and it was shown to humans.

In these days when the geomagnetic field disappeared, the mixed-type monsters ate wildly and took the genes of other creatures to grow themselves. They were like humans hoarding food to deal with winter. Had they already felt it?

Xi Bei's voice trembled. "In the end…"

He couldn't finish.

What type of era was this? What type of disaster were they facing? What exactly was happening? What was it? What was it?

An electric light cut across the sky. The windows shook and the wind cried out in the distance, making a long noise that poured into the room. Their clothes were blown in an agitated manner.

An Zhe looked up and he and Lu Feng stared at each other, the cold green eyes as dark as the sky outside. The moment they looked at each other, thunder was heard in the sky. The sky became lower and between the vast sky and earth, rain poured down.

In the rain curtain, everything outside couldn't be seen or heard. There was an endless grey, endless nothingness, endless horror.

Madam Lu's gentle voice and the grandfather's hoarse voice overlapped together in An Zhe's ears. "The time is coming."