Little Mushroom

At the end, he saw Lu Feng's face. He had never seen such a distressed look on the colonel's face before. However, he couldn't say anything. There was darkness in front of his eyes and his body was empty.

Gently—something in his body broke.

So painful.

Then came the second one.

He tried to figure out what was happening. Finally, his consciousness seemed to find a light spot in the void and he saw what was going on. The thin, snow-white mycelium had stretched to a point of near-transparency, fragile to a thrilling level. There was a sharp pain and it broke.

His spore.

The mycelium in his body was connected to each mycelium of the spore. Now the mycelium was breaking one by one. It wasn't done by himself but by the spore actively leaving—no, it wasn't this.

It was time for maturity and the life instincts were separating them.

An Zhe couldn't stop it. It was hard to say if there was a deep relationship between a mushroom and its spore. Their relationship wasn't like human parents and children but he still didn't want the spore to leave him so quickly. It was so dangerous outside. If the spore left him then it would die if it encountered something—especially Lu Feng.

However, he had lost all his senses and couldn't say anything. He could only speak to the spore in his heart.

'Don't come out. Don't come out. It's too dangerous.'

The fear of death peaked when there were only three mycelium remaining.

'Don't come out—please.'

He sweated as he opened his eyes. The ceiling was in front of him and he blinked slowly. The next moment, his spirit stirred.

—It was still here.

He could still feel the spore in his body and the three mycelium teetering to hold it, as if the spore had finally decided to heed his request. The next moment, the doctor's voice entered his ears. For a moment, he thought he had returned to the base but then he realized this voice was coming from the communicator.

After correcting the distorted copper wire, Lu Feng had contacted the base. It might be wrong but in this moment, An Zhe felt lost.

"…I can tell you with certainty that humans are finished." The doctor's pessimistic voice came from the communicator. An Zhe moved and found that he was lying in Lu Feng's arms, wearing his coat. Then Lu Feng saw that he woke up.

He seemed to want to say something but An Zhe used his eyes to tell this person to focus on the call. Then he weakly pressed his forehead against Lu Feng's chest.

"This isn't a predictable disaster at all. It is a mass extinction. I can tell you that all living things, all non-living things and all the laws of physics will become extinct."

Lu Feng told him, "I saw the fusion of matter."

"It isn't fusion. Our latest definition is distortion, which is an overall distortion at the micro level. Did you know that a silicon atom has changed to become something we don't know under the microscope? It isn't genetic pollution at all. It is a change at the quantum level. We can't observe anything. According to the principle of uncertainty, we can't overcome it. We can't overcome it using 10,000 years of science and technology progress. We can only accept death.I…I… at present, we only know that the magnetic field can protect the planet from this change. After the two bases increased the strength of the magnetic field, the distortion temporarily stopped. Still, you know that the situation is always worsening."

It was as if nervousness was making him babble. "IN the past, we would only be infected through serious injuries and later it was minor injuries. It became an infection as soon as we were touched and then contactless infection. I thought this was the worst situation. The result? The basic structure of this world is in chaos and it is obviously a process of gradual strengthening. The world is becoming more and more chaotic. Now our magnetic field can temporarily block it. Then what? Our magnetic field has a maximum intensity of 9 and it is currently at 7. It is almost the end. Tomorrow, the day after tomorrow or six months at the latest, our artificial magnetic poles will be damaged due to distortion."

"The base wants you to come back but in fact, if you want to find somewhere to spend the rest of your life then I won't stop you," the doctor said. "It's almost over."

"I know."

The doctor suggested, "If you haven't found An Zhe then don't look for him. Let him go, let yourself go, live well and die well. We are going to die anyway. Even if you bring the sample back, we can't study the results. This isn't something that science is capable of, although the base still wants the last glimmer of hope."

There was a pause before the doctor spoke again, "I'm sorry, I collapsed. I was infected by the base's pessimism. Don't listen to my words just now. You must take that sample back. Since that sample is inert when it comes to infection, it might be inert to the distortion. This is the final breakthrough, the last hope. Either you die outside or you bring it back. However, according to An Zhe's performance when he suddenly disappeared, he might be a heterogeneous with very strange abilities and form. You must be careful."

The doctor's self-deprecating tone and miscalculation of An Zhe's strength made An Zhe's lips curve but at the same time, he understood that the base was still clinging to his spore.

"Have a good rest," Lu Feng told the doctor. "I have sent coordinates to the United Front."

He hung up the communicator before glancing at An Zhe. Lu Feng asked, "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine."

"What just happened?"

An Zhe shook his head.

"You don't know?"

An Zhe whispered, "No, I can't tell you."

He suddenly noticed that Lu Feng's eyes were so cold they were frightening.

"En." Lu Feng's fingers moved smoothly along An Zhe's hair, his voice light. "So you can't tell me where the sample is either."

An Zhe lowered her head. He had nothing to say about the spore. It was that way in the past and the same now. In this world, the quiet time was in vain. Like the end of a dream, he and Lu Feng finally returned to a few days ago.

The Judge and heterogeneous, pursuer and defector. He wouldn't hand over the spore and Lu Feng wouldn't let him go. He didn't want to look into Lu Feng's eyes and he changed the topic, "Is the base's situation currently bad?"

"Yes."

"Then you're going back?"

"I'm going back."

"But the doctor said… there is no hope," he whispered.

He immediately realized the folly of his words. Even if the base was about to perish, it was impossible for Lu Feng to not return. After a long silence, Lu Feng declared, "I'm a person of the base."

An Zhe's lips thinned. Lu Feng belonged to the base, just like he belonged to the Abyss. They couldn't live together peacefully. Lu Feng had already sent coordinates to the United Front while An Zhe refused to say the location of the spore. It wasn't difficult for him to imagine what would happen to him next.

He stared at Lu Feng. Thanks to the rain curtain outside, the light was dim. He couldn't see Lu Feng, nor could he understand Lu Feng.

The world was changing and becoming crazier. Even the doctor said that it was the end for humans. At the last moment before humanity's death, what was Lu Feng thinking? An Zhe didn't know and just watched Lu Feng quietly.

"I sometimes feel that if the base was to perish in my lifetime," Lu Feng's voice was low. "Everything that I did before…"

He stopped and didn't speak, his mood fluctuating like a ripple on the water before soon freezing.

"There might be a miracle." An Zhe could only say this sentence gently. It was the only thing he could think of to comfort Lu Feng.

Lu Feng looked down at him. "Do you think it's possible?"

"Yes. It's like… it is like the world is so big but your plane happened to crash beside me." He continued, "If not, you would be dead."

If Lu Feng had died, An Zhe wouldn't be safe in the human city right now and everything would be different.

However, he saw Lu Feng just looking down at him. An Zhe was lying in his eyes and Lu Feng looked like this. He gazed down at An Zhe and there was only a cold chill in the green eyes without any temperature. "Do you know how big the world is?"

An Zhe thought about it. In his limited memory, he hadn't travelled a lot and hadn't seen many things. He was just an inert mushroom. However, the world must be huge so Lu Feng's plane falling in front of him must be a miracle.

Thus, he slowly nodded. He wanted to make Lu Feng happy but now Lu Feng was looking so scary. Seeing Lu Feng's expressionless face, An Zhe couldn't help shrinking back a bit.

"You don't know." Lu Feng's voice was cold. "I didn't happen to fall in front of you. It was because I was supposed to find you."

"No." An Zhe couldn't stand these eyes and wanted to leave, but he was held by Lu Feng. He muttered in a hoarse voice, "There were many planes that day. You went to kill the bees. You accidentally… accidentally met me and wanted to capture me."

"Already killed." Lu Feng's voice was calm.

An Zhe's eyes became wide. He trembled. "…Who?"

"Her."

An Zhe only heard one syllable. He didn't know if the word was him, she or it but there was only one possibility for the word spoken from Lu Feng's mouth. (Remember, Chinese has a lot of gender neutral terms)

Madam Lu. He had killed Madam Lu himself.

An Zhe couldn't breathe and his chest moved up and down a few times.

Lu Feng looked at him, fingers reaching the side of An Zhe's neck. The index finger and middle finger were brought together, pressing against the fragile and warm carotid artery. There were no traces of emotional ups and downs in his voice. "My last task is to kill you. The order from the communicator, didn't you hear it?"

An Zhe heard it.

His pressed neck was slightly sore and he reached out a hand to grab Lu Feng's wrist but he couldn't push this person away. He had to speak with a sore throat, "But the world… the world is so big. You couldn't know where I was."

Lu Feng stared at An Zhe.

The An Zhe held in his arms was so small. The doctor said that An Zhe must be abnormally powerful if he could escape from the baes an in instant but Lu Feng knew him. An Zhe was so fragile and so small that everyone seemed able to harm him, whether physically or mentally.

Lu Feng couldn't clearly hear the words. He only saw that An Zhe's eyes were red, as if desperately trying to show that this was an accident, a coincidence. He seemed to be trying to deceive himself into believing something, so as to excuse this.

Lu Feng reached to take something out of his uniform pocket. It was a thin glass bottle the length of a thumb, filled with pale green liquid and a label attached to the middle. The label had a barcode and a series of numbers printed on it.

An Zhe looked at this thing and wondered, "What is this?"

Lu Feng replied lightly, "A tracking agent."

An Zhe heard the name. He remembered that Lily once said that she was hit with a tracking agent. Human names were always simple. The moment he heard this name, he knew the usage.

"The Lighthouse said that by irradiating the tracker with a special frequency pulse wave, it can obtain a characteristic frequency. After irradiation, the tracker is divided into two parts. One part is injected into the target's body and the other part is stored. The stored tracking solution is injected into an analyzer and it can indicate the direction of the tracking field with the same frequency, no matter how far away."

An Zhe closed his fingers around the cold little tube, holding it in his hand.

"Did you hit me with a tracker?" His voice trembled slightly. "When did you do so? I… I didn't know."

As he spoke, a thought crossed his mind.

His voice was lower. His throat was sore and he was almost speechless. "Have you long suspected that I'm a heterogeneous?"

"You passed all the judgment criteria so I didn't kill you." Lu Feng's voice was even colder as he opened An Zhe's fingers, pulled out the tracker and placed it back in his pocket. "However, I must be responsible for the security of the base."

An Zhe stared at him, tears slipping down from a corner of his eyes. He thought Lu Feng would wipe it off but Lu Feng didn't. The line of water became cold on his cheeks. Lu Feng spoke very little but it was enough to show his personality. He had mercilessly killed Madam Fu who was a queen bee.

He knew what type of man the colonel was from day one. Perhaps Lu Feng's kindness to him in the past few days was just a fleeting illusion.

After resuming communication with the base, where did An Zhe get the self-confidence that Lu Feng had been treating him in a special manner, thinking that Lu Feng would let him go?

Lu Feng watched An Zhe's eyelashes gradually lower before An Zhe finally leaned against his chest, closing his eyes. The soft water in the eyes of this little heterogeneous was also covered up. He seemed to be broken after everything was honestly confessed, Lu Feng thought.

—Just like everyone he had killed.

An Zhe's eyes opened again. He looked up, voice so low that Lu Feng had to lean closer to hear it.

"When Madam Lu became a queen bee, she completely lost her mind. Before that, she told me… she doesn't hate the base, she just wanted to experience a new form of life. She doesn't hate you."

In this deadly silence, Lu Feng didn't speak. Time passed and just as An Zhe was about to touch Lu Feng's cheek to confirm this person was alive, he saw Lu Feng's cold lips slowly curving up.

His voice was very light but certain. "She hates me."

An Zhe stared into his eyes. Madam Lu said that Lu Feng would never get what he wanted, that he wouldn't die well and that he would eventually go mad.

"Why?" An Zhe questioned.

"After I was born, her relationship with my father was discovered by the base and she could no longer meet him at will. I killed her father and killed many of her children. When her little daughter escaped from the Garden of Eden with her help, the daughter met me. In fact, just across the street from where you and I met Lily, she was standing there to meet her friend."

Lu Feng rarely spoke such long sentences. An Zhe was accustomed to listening to every word that came from this person so by the time Lu Feng finally finished speaking, he was almost out of breath.

The silence lasted three seconds. "There were very few things that made her happy in life but they were all ruined by me. She hated me like everyone in the base."

Looking at him, An Zhe opened his mouth. In the end, he knew what he wanted to say.

"I don't hate you," he declared.

There was a long silence.

"Why?" Lu Feng's hoarse voice suddenly entered his ears.

"Why… what?"

"Why are you…" Lu Feng stared at him. "Why can you always forgive me?"

An Zhe stared up at him but didn't see the cold Lu Feng.

The colonel's voice trembled imperceptibly and he asked again, "Why?"

An Zhe wanted to explain it but he couldn't. He didn't have the IQ of humans, nor did he know the many languages they spoke. He had to think about it for a long time.

"I know you," he eventually said.

"You're not even human." Lu Feng's fingers were gripping his shoulders, eyes still so cold but something collapsing in his voice. Lu Feng almost trembled as he asked, "How do you know me?"

This person had to ask.

An Zhe couldn't say anything and desperately shook his head.

He was pushed step by step into a dead end by Lu Feng and wanted to cry again. He didn't know why this person was so bad and why this person didn't hesitate to dissect everything. An Zhe himself was like a judge wanting to acquit a prisoner, only for the prisoner on trial to keep stating his crimes. This man had to be tried or sentenced to death. He wanted to make An Zhe hate him.

An Zhe didn't know why things had reached this point. Obviously, at the beginning, they were just talking about whether the base could survive. The world was so large. Wasn't it a miracle that Lu Feng fell before him?

Lu Feng said no, all of these things were deliberate and inevitable. But no, it really wasn't.

"Still…" He raised his arm to Lu Feng and the human fingers slowly changed. The snow-white mycelium climbed Lu Feng's black uniform and over his epaulettes and silver spikes. Tears continued to fall from An Zhe's eyes. He couldn't see Lu Feng's expression and only knew that Lu Feng's hands holding him were shaking as they held him tighter.

He knew that Lu Feng must've recognized him as the mushroom rolling in the Abyss and his voice choked, "Still, I met you…"

In this broad world, Lu Feng had to go to the Abyss. In such a big Abyss, An Zhe had to roll over the empty plains. They shouldn't have met. He had never harmed anyone or any animal. He just wanted to raise his spore quietly and didn't want to be so angry or sad. Why was there a human such as Lu Feng in the world?

This human was holding him so hard as if to kill him. An Zhe leaned back against the bedpost, struggling desperately but his struggle had no effect at all. Even so, he was unwilling to escape as mycelium because he wasn't willing to show weakness.

He desperately bit Lu Feng's neck with all his strength. The moment the blood poured into his mouth, An Zhe stopped.

'What am I doing?' he thought.

However, he didn't have a chance anymore. This moment of hesitation was enough for Lu Feng to regain the upper hand. His shoulder was held tightly and his back hit the bedpost as his jaw was forcibly lifted by one hand.

—Lu Feng kissed him.