Chapter 135
Since the Eternal Life Abyss said it wanted to eat these then these mushrooms must be edible for it.
However, the mushrooms in the stairwell were bright and colorful. Some carried a faint fluorescence. One had a red top covered with white mold, making it look like a cauliflower. They all look highly poisonous.
However, Si Chen looked carefully and saw that the poisonous-looking mushrooms had signs of having been bitten and chewed. On the other hand, the harmless-looking white round mushrooms in the corner were full and intact.
This meant two things. First, there was something in this passageway; maybe the mycelium lifeform that had escaped from the glass case. Second, chewed mushrooms were edible. Since they didn’t poison others, they certainly can’t poison an Eternal Life Abyss.
Si Chen made sure that he had his gloves on tight, no skin exposed, before picking the mushrooms.
He picked a little of each kind of mushroom that had been bitten and put them all in his backpack.
He’ll make mushroom soup for the Eternal Life Abyss after they make it out of here. His last experience sharing sensations with the Eternal Life Abyss due to the Abyss Field Mint was still fresh in his mind and he didn’t want to risk getting poisoned by fungi in the museum.
The mucus secreted by the hyphae pooled on the ground. Si Chen walked into the stairwell, flashlight in hand. Beneath his feet, it was a little slippery, as though lubricating oil had been spread on the floor.
There were no lights in the passageway. The further down he went, the taller the hyphae; they were almost stuck to Si Chen’s face. Si Chen could only move forward while burning his way with the flamethrower. In order to prevent the fire from spreading out of control, he had to create an isolation zone before proceeding with each burning.
He grabbed a handful of hyphae, holding it in his hand like straw. Using a knife, he dug out the layer below. He then threw it aside.
The quarantine suit Si Chen was wearing was resistant to high temperatures and would not burn. But while cutting the hyphae, a lot of mucus got on the gloves.
He wore two layers of protective gloves but he still felt burning pain on his palms.
The mycelium subjected to the scorching fire bent and shriveled, shrinking to a fraction of its original size. It sizzled like fried pork and exuded a burnt aroma like grilled mushrooms.
Amidst the sound of popping oil, Si Chen’s sharp ears caught a slight noise coming from above his head. It was messy, as if something was crawling on the ground.
Si Chen took out the sniper rifle, looking towards only entrance. He turned on the energy sensing mode of his prosthetic eye.
His breathing became extremely slow, his whole body merged with the darkness. The ash from the burning mycelium fell onto his goggles but he made no move to wipe it off.
The prosthetic eye had detected energy fluctuations. In Si Chen’s vision, a lizard-shaped orange-yellow halo was quietly lurking, as if waiting for Si Chen to make a slip up.
Apex predators often appear in the form of prey.
Si Chen’s tense body slowly relaxed. The weapon in his hand made a slight clink as it hit the metal railing.
The lizard suddenly shot down from the ceiling like an arrow.
The lizard was massive, nearly three meters long, with metal-hard scales covering its body. Bullets pelted its body but only blew off a few scales.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
Si Chen threw away the gun and clutched his dagger, driving it into the lizard’s eye.
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He reached out and gripping the lizard’s upper and lower jaws. The Eternal Life Abyss directly pushed aside the prosthetic eye and goggles. Slender black tentacles penetrated the body of the great lizard. Even so, the lizard did not die. More and more hyphae burst out from its body.
Among all the mushrooms that emerged, only the ones attached to the lizard’s spine were different. They were reddish in color and pulsed weakly like blood vessels.
Because he was now missing his only seeing eye, Si Chen’s vision was pitch black. He could only rely on intuition and what little he could fathom with his original eye to determine the position.
With a swipe of the dagger, he cut the off the red fungus from the lizard’s back. This blood vessel-like hyphae spurted out a stream of mucus with a burst of the fragrance unique to wild mushrooms.
The big lizard pressed against him was now completely motionless. Not only that, the white threads that had exploded also gradually shrank. It quickly rotted and deteriorated, exuding yellow-green pus.
The Eternal Life Abyss swallowed the red fleshy mycelium into its stomach, just like noodles.
Si Chen took out the flashlight and started looking for his prosthetic eye that had fallen on the ground.
The Eternal Life Abyss came over, held the sides of Si Chen’s face with two tentacles and sucked all the spores and hyphae from his face into its stomach.
This was to prevent Si Chen from being invaded by the mycelium. Though it looked like the Eternal Life Abyss was holding his head and chewing his face off.
Thanks to the scentless saliva secreted by the Eternal Life Abyss, Si Chen felt much better.
Si Chen found the prosthetic eye that had fallen on the ground, wiped it off and put it back into his eye socket.
After being an Evolutionary for so long, frequently subjected to dirt and mud, his mysophobia has almost entirely been cured.
The Eternal Life Abyss did not go back in. Instead, it wrapped itself around Si Chen’s neck, making several “squeak” sounds as it did so.
Si Chen shone the flashlight on the lizard’s body. Only a layer of skin was left, the rest had turned to mycelium. No blood when cut, no pain when injured.
Si Chen grew pensive. “It seems that the key to these mycelium lifeforms is this type of core plant that controls the nerves.”
Mycelium Sheng Wu, who had attached itself to Shen Yanxing’s body, was also a similar lifeform.
This lizard should be the mycelium life form that had escaped from the museum display case.
But after so many years, it was unknown whether other individuals had split off.
Si Chen started burning mushrooms again. The Eternal Life Abyss didn’t want to return inside Si Chen’s body. It wrapped itself around him and pulled out a few pieces of grilled mushrooms from the flames.
The flames finally reached the basement door.
Si Chen had followed these stairs down to the very the bottom. The stairwell suddenly turned broad and bright. Si Chen faced a metal wall five to six meters high.
Si Chen raised his flashlight and shone it on the wall. On the edges of the metal gate, red hyphae climbed up; some had withered, while some were still alive, crawling slowly upwards.
The light shone off the reflective surface of the wall, illuminating the Serpent Staff Gene logo was etched in the center of the door. Si Chen, this once 996 beast of burden for the Serpent Staff Gene Group, was all too familiar with this logo.
Si Chen spotted the combination lock in the corner.
He walked over and entered the password Dr. Sheng had given.
Fortunately, Sheng Wu hadn’t lied to him on this point.
This basement must not have been opened for a very long time. When it began to move, the sound of the gears turning was particularly jarring, like the rumbling of an old model machine.
The lights in front of the basement door turned on instantly and the sudden light made Si Chen squint his eyes uncomfortably.
This was Dr. Sheng’s storage room but the first thing that came into view was a living room. The sofa was covered with mold. Hyphae covered the floor, intertwined like spider webs.
Both the floor and furniture covered in mycelium were somewhat faded.
There was a body seated on the sofa. The body is covered with green fuzz. The person appeared to have died a very long time ago. Judging from the body shape, it had probably been a woman.
In addition, there was a handwritten letter on the coffee table.
Si Chen used the short knife to scrape aside the mold and pulled the letter out.
-Hello, welcome to the underground storage room. Since you were able to open the basement door, you probably saw Dr. Sheng’s hologram.
-I was right next to him when he recorded that video.
-I am an employee of Serpent Stick Gene. I guess you could call me its CEO?
-After he finished recording the video, he asked us survivors to hide in the basement. He said that if he makes it out alive, he would open this door. As you already know, the doctor didn’t come back.
-This basement has 3 floors and accommodated a total of 400 employees. It is equipped with a fully automatic air self-purification system, a system to collect surface water, and a food storage containing nutritional paste. It might not taste good but at least it meets the body’s nutritional needs. Even this paste is made from mushrooms. When I reincarnate, I hope it is to a time and place without any mushrooms.
-Because we are mycelium men, we were virtually immortal. But as time went by, our degree of transformation into mushrooms increased.
-Finally, one day, one of my colleagues woke up only to be completely transformed into a bunch of little mushrooms.
-That should be during our 107th year underground.
-Later, more and more of my colleagues turned into mushrooms. King oyster mushrooms, bamboo mushrooms, lion’s mane mushrooms, tea tree mushrooms, wood ear fungus, porcini…All delicious mushroom but I buried them all. Just thinking about where they came from made me want to puke.
-More and more people died and the development of slime mold solvents to kill the mycelium stalled.
-Was there even any point in developing this? The only remaining humans in the world were here in this basement. While we had preserved the human gene pool to ensure that humans could be produced through cloning technology after the world returns to normal, this idea seems so meaningless. After all, our world is doomed.
-During the later stages, some employees had left this place, saying they would try their luck with a Space Fold. Perhaps they could find their way to other worlds. I gave them my utmost blessing. But once they left, they could not return to this place lest they bring in dangerous spores from outside.
-The Gene Museum, once the place of hope for mankind. We had attained evolution through mycelium capsules…
-Now, this basement has turned into a grave mankind left for ourselves; the museum above, our tombstone.
-Unfortunately, as the energy reserves dwindled, more and more of our equipment broke down; this basement is no longer suitable for ordinary people to survive in.
-I am the final survivor, surviving alone for thirteen hundred years. I don’t know what I’m living for; maybe this is punishment for wanting “immortality” and “evolution”.
-Finally, I am about to die. I can feel it, the fungi breeding in my body.
-Visitor, I have left gifts for you.
-See the safe next to the water dispenser? The password is the same as the password to open the door. Inside are some gene medicines and mycelium capsules left over from the time when Serpent Staff Gene flourished. I have already used the solution to eliminate the toxicity in them (but I have not conducted any experiments with it).
-Also, a bottle of slime mold solution that may eliminate the mycelium (if it has not already deactivated) but in terms of quality, the one on the third floor of the museum is better. It’s a pity that we hadn’t had time to take it with us.
-Why did I not try it myself?… I don’t have the courage to open this door anymore. What’s more, even if all the mycelium die, what can I do, all alone, undying, in this world?
-What kind of mushroom will I be after I die? If you can, please burn paper money for me. It’s very important to me.
-Take care not to burn the wrong paper money. My name is Si Jujiu.
Si Chen’s eyes were firmly drawn to these last two words.
There are very few people with the surname Si and his adoptive father Si Baihua is one of them.
He and his brother have the same surname Si; his older brother’s name is Si Zhou and his name is Si Chen.
The Si Family is very small. He has never met any relatives.
Every New Year, there had only been him, his brother, his father and his mother at home.
But there had been one New Year’s Eve dinner, when his adoptive father mentioned that he had a sister, their aunt, who had died many years ago.
Their aunt’s name was Si Jujiu.
Si Yuan, um… your appetite is very impressive 🫢
Now almost full family in this Space Fold
Thank you for your translation 💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙
Si Chen’s family is getting more interesting
Aw man, that must’ve felt real weird/emotional meeting your dead aunt in another dimension (space folds are technically parrel universes right?)
Thanks for the chapter~~~