The cave is dark and damp, illuminated by the faint fluorescence emitted by the plants.

The stone wall is wrapped with vines, dark green, deep purple, and thick black, like large, entangled snakes.

A black flying insect stumbled in. It had six hard wings and three mouthparts.

The next second, a huge dark purple bulge suddenly appeared among the entangled vines. It opened quickly, like opening a mouth, and closed it in an instant, swallowing the flying insects into its belly.

The vines slowly squirmed, and the bulging part gradually recovered and returned to its original state.

There was a sound like flapping wings in the cave, and a drop of mucus dragged a translucent filament down from the top of the cave, falling into the sticky moss on the ground with a splash. They squirmed slightly, and this drop of shining mucus was quickly absorbed.

It was completely absorbed and disappeared on the ground.

Corner - a corner illuminated by the fluorescence emitted by green fungi. From the gaps between rocks and soil, white pours out like a tide, covering a large area, and is snow-white mycelium. It grows, spreads, and stretches out by billions

The tentacles of the plan finally squirmed toward the center, closed, gathered, and elongated, and a shape appeared. One foot stepped on the thick and soft moss, and the moss sank and swallowed it, leaving only the snow-white ankle exposed.

An Zhe looked at his ankle - a human limb, a limb supported by a skeleton, muscles and blood vessels. The joints can move, but they are not flexible due to the limitations of the bones. The cuticle forms the nail, which is round and transparent and is a product of degeneration.

From the sharp claws of beasts.

He raised his legs and took a step. The moss that had been dented by being stepped on was moist and elastic. After he left, it gathered back together like an upright earthworm.

This time, he stepped on something else, a human skeleton arm.

In the darkness, An Zhe looked at the skeleton.

Fungi and vines have taken root deep in its bones. Dark green vines are wrapped around the hip bones and leg bones. Tiny, brightly colored mushrooms grow on its ribs, like blooming flowers.

Fluorescent mushrooms sprouted from its empty eye sockets and sparse teeth, and the green light was like fine quicksand, blurry in the fog of the cave.

An Zhe looked at it for a long time. Finally, he leaned down and picked up a backpack made of animal skins next to the skeleton. The items stored inside the backpack were not contaminated by moisture, including several pieces of clothing, human food and

Water, and a blue chip half the size of a palm, with the number engraved on the chip: 3261170514.

Three days ago, this skeleton was a living human being.

"3261170514," the young human voice was hoarse and intermittent, and the green fluorescence in the cave illuminated his face, "My ID number. This is my ID card. Only with it can I return to the human base."

An Zhe asked: "Can I help you go back?"

The human smiled, and the fingers of his right hand dropped softly to his side. The chip rolled out of his hand and disappeared into the moss. He leaned against the mountain wall, raised his head, and pressed his left hand on his chest -

There was a huge wound there. A gray-white bone spur penetrated from the chest to the back. The surrounding skin had festered. Part of it was gray-white, with flocculent flesh covering the surface of the bone spur. The other part showed a dark green color. As the wound

The rhythm of his breathing was up and down, and gray-black turbid liquid was dripping down.

He took a few breaths and said softly: "I can't go back, little mushroom."

His shirt was stained, his skin was pale, his lips were chapped, and his body was shaking erratically.

An Zhe looked at him and didn't know what to say. In the end, he just muttered the young human's name: "Anze?"

"You have almost learned human language." The human looked down at his body.

In addition to pus and blood stains, there are also snow-white mycelium on this body, which is part of Anze's body. The mycelium grows windingly and tightly adheres to the wounds on Anze's limbs and torso. The original meaning of mushroom is

To stop the bleeding of this dying human, but out of instinct, the hyphae also absorbed and digested the fresh blood flowing out.

"Can you learn so many things by eating my genes? The pollution index in this place is indeed very high." The human said.

Fragments of knowledge unfolded in Anze's mind. After five seconds of conversion, he knew that the pollution index meant the transformation speed of genes. Now, genes from humans were flowing into Anze's body along his blood.

"Maybe... when I die, you can eat all my body... and you will get a lot of things." Anze looked at the top of the cave, twitching his lips: "Then I seem to have done something meaningful.

Although I don’t know whether it’s good or bad for you.”

An Zhe didn't speak, and moved his whole body in the direction of Anze. He hugged Anze's shoulders with his newly grown human arms. A large amount of mycelium came over and piled up next to Anze, supporting his crumbling body.

.

In the silent cave, there was only the sound of dying humans breathing.

After a long time, Anze finally spoke again: "I am a person whose life is meaningless."

"...There is nothing outstanding, so it is normal for them to abandon me. In fact, I am very happy not to return to the human base. It is the same as the wild place. It is a place where only valuable people can survive."

.I have wanted to die for a long time, but I didn’t expect to meet such a gentle creature like you, little mushroom, before I died.”

An Zhe didn't know the meaning of those terms, such as value and death. He just captured that term again, human base.

He leaned on Anze's shoulder and said, "I want to go to the human base."

Anze: "Why?"

An Zhe raised his left arm slightly and waved his fingers in the air, as if he wanted to grab a piece of empty air, but he couldn't grab anything.

Just like his body.

His body is empty.

A huge hole emerged from the deepest part of his body, which could not be filled or healed. What followed was boundless emptiness and panic, which haunted him day after day.

He organized human language and said slowly: "I lost... my spores."

"spore?"

"My...seed." He didn't know how to explain.

Every mushroom will have spores in its life, some have countless, some have only one. The spores are the seeds of mushrooms. They will grow from the gills, scatter with the wind to any place in the jungle, take root on the ground, and become

It becomes a new mushroom, and then the mushroom will gradually grow up and have its own spores. Raising the spores to maturity is the only mission of a mushroom in its life, but it lost its only spores.

It's far from mature.

Anze turned his head slowly, and Anze could hear the clicking sound of his bones rotating, like an old human machine.

"Don't go there," the human voice said hoarsely, speaking faster, "you will die."

An Zhe read the word again: "...death?"

"Only humans can enter the human base. You can't escape the eyes of the inquisitor." Anze coughed a few times, then took a hard breath: "Don't go...little mushroom."

An Zhe said blankly: "I..."

The human hand suddenly grabbed An Zhe's hyphae, and he used a lot of strength, and his breathing became more and more rapid.

"Obey," Anze slowly closed his eyes after trembling violently and gasping. His voice was very low, "You have no attack power or defense. You are just...a very small mushroom."

Sometimes, Anzhe regrets telling Anze that he is going to the human base.

If he hadn't told Anze, Anze wouldn't have spent his last time trying to stop him. He might still be able to listen to Anze tell a story, and maybe he could take him out of this dark cave and go there for the last time.

Look at the changing auroras in the sky. But Anze's eyes will never open again.

The short-term memory dissipated in the air, just like Anze's life suddenly disappeared in this world. There was still only a snow-white skeleton in front of Anze.

However, he still had to go against Anze's wishes.

——He slowly spread his fingers.

On the delicate skin and light lines on the palm of his hand, lying quietly was a brass-colored, metallic round tube-shaped bullet case. It was very heavy and had some incomprehensible but unusual lines on it - this was what he had lost.

I found the spores in that area and haven't put them away since I got them.

If there is still a one-in-10,000 chance that he can recover his spores, then this one-in-10,000 chance rests on this cartridge case, which is a human creation.

With a slight sigh, he put the bullet casing into the animal skin backpack left by Anze, leaned down and picked up the clothes that Anze had worn. A blood-stained off-white long-sleeved shirt, and a black hard suspender.

Pants and black leather boots.

After doing all this, he walked out of the cave. The slightly loose clothes rubbed against his skin as he walked, and tiny currents were transmitted from the nerve endings buried in the skin to the center. It was not the first time for An Zhe to use the human body.

Adapting. He frowned and rolled up the sleeves of his loose shirt.

The cave is long and winding, with vines piled up on the cave walls. They push each other. When An Zhe passes by, the tide recedes and they are entrenched at the top of the cave.

After three turns, the wind blew in and it was very humid. The mushrooms pushed aside the dead vines hanging down at the entrance of the cave. Mushrooms, their kind, were endless in the field of vision, from near to far. They seemed to be as high as the sky, and everything was quiet.

Quietly. Under the cover of the umbrella, dim skylight came in. The sky was gray, flashing with some messy green luster. An Zhe could smell the smell of rain, mist, snake sloughs and decaying plants.

It was still evening, so he sat down under the umbrella of the gray-white mushroom closest to the entrance of the cave, and took out a dark yellow map from his backpack. There were different shades of color on the map, marking the degree of danger in different areas.

Anze once pointed out the approximate location of the cave where Anzhe and the others were. This was the darkest patch on the entire map, meaning an area with a six-star danger level and a six-star pollution level. The name was "The Abyss". On the map

, the area where the abyss is located is also marked with many strange symbols. An Zhe followed the index in the lower right corner of the map to check one by one. The meaning of those symbols is that the abyss is filled with extremely dense mushrooms, man-eating vines, and man-eating shrubs.

, simple breast-feeding monsters, hybrid breast-feeding monsters, ordinary reptile monsters, reptile poisonous monsters, winged monsters, amphibious monsters, hybrid polymorphic monsters, humanoid monsters... these things. At the same time, there are canyons in the abyss.

, hills, mountains, abandoned human cities, road ruins and other landforms.

Going north and south, he looked all the way up. On the upper right side of this mottled map, there was a pure white area, marked with a bright red five-pointed star. The name of this area was written on the right side of the five-pointed star:

Northern base.

The green light in the sky became more and more abundant, and the background color gradually became darker and darker. At midnight, Anzhe could barely make out the stars in the sky. He knew that the brightest one was called Polaris, which could point the direction.

So he pointed the upward arrow in the upper left corner of the map in the direction of the North Star, stepped on the dead wood, fallen leaves, mycelium and soil on the ground, and walked out step by step.

The night is not dark. In the sky, those changing green lights - humans call them aurora. The aurora illuminates everything in front, and Anzhe can only see mushrooms.

Yellow, red, brown mushrooms with huge caps.

Small, densely packed mushrooms on the rocks.

Round fungi are scattered on the ground. When mature, they emit spores like mist and rain.

These spores fall to the ground, begin to divide in the moist leaf litter, and grow into spherical fungi like their parent bodies.

There are also mushrooms that have no caps, but only white or yellow tentacles, bunched together or separated radially, floating in the air like seaweed.

But this is not a world with only mushrooms, vines, moss, shrubs, man-eating flowers and strange-shaped trees quietly lurk in the night. Among the jungles of plants, there are some dark shadows, some strange shapes, beasts,

Or a mixture of humans and beasts, running, howling, and fighting in the jungle, animals fighting with animals, animals fighting with plants, or plants with plants. High and low howls hit Anzhe's eardrums, stones and

The soil was mixed with fresh blood of various colors. He saw a pine tree bending its trunk and swallowing a long snake with black scales and two tails. He also saw a toad - a huge toad with a long bright red tongue.

A bat with a human arm on its back was caught in the air. Five minutes after swallowing the bat, a pair of black wings grew out of its back covered with knots and mucus. It curled up softly. This was just what the mushroom had seen.

He has long been used to this sight.

At this moment, a gray beast walked over. It had four eyes, its body was covered with scales, feathers and down, its head looked like a crocodile or a huge wolf, and its seven teeth were exposed outside its lips. It came closer

An Zhe sniffed him with his blood-red nose.

An Zhe didn't move, leaning quietly next to a mushroom, breathing evenly until his whole body was smelled.

The huge monster seemed to have found nothing and turned away with heavy steps.

Anzhe realized that nothing would notice him, even if he used a human body - maybe because mushrooms are everywhere here, have no nutrition, are not aggressive, and are sometimes poisonous. So he and them seemed to be

Creatures from the two worlds live in harmony.
Chapter completed!