Chapter 143
The mycelium man in front of him suddenly launched an attack.
It opened its mouth and spit out slender golden threads of mycelium.
Before Si Chen’s groggy brain had time to think, his body had already reacted on its own. He dodged instantly, rolled on the ground and found a weapon that suited him.
A rock.
Si Chen held the rock tightly and more memories poured into his mind.
Not only those from Sheng Wu but also from He Jinglin.
Because of the unprecedented continuous rainstorm, Sheng Wu and Yi were trapped in the mountains.
He Jinglin was a high school classmate of Sheng Wu. Neither his grades nor his family background were not good. After graduating from high school, he had already joined society. Chef’s assistant, construction worker, salesman; he had worked in everything. He was nothing like the scientific research dog that was Sheng Wu, who spent all his time in the laboratory.
Although He Jinglin didn’t say anything, Sheng Wu knew that the way he looked at him was filled with both envy and attachment.
Sheng Wu enjoyed this secret power, the power to be loved over another person.
During the period of while they were trapped, the heavy responsibility of finding food and water fell on He Jinglin.
In the beginning, both of them were very optimistic and would even cheer each other up. They believed that rescue would come for them soon.
However, landslides, food shortages, lack of drinking water, a persistent low fever… difficulties came one after another and gradually, a feeling of despair tacitly spread between them.
The rations they’d brought with them were gone. He Jinglin started looking for food.
During that time, the two of them ate everything they could in the mountains.
Finally, He Jinglin set his sights on the mushrooms in the mountains.
He grew up in the countryside and knew that many mushrooms were actually poisonous and should not be eaten. But death by starvation seemed a more horrific way to die than death by poison. More than a month had passed and they had both lost significant weight. Their faces were sallow and sunken.
He Jinglin would first test the mushroom himself and if there was no obvious abnormality, he would pick the mushrooms to take them back and share them with Sheng Wu.
Sheng Wu had taken a tumble and broken his leg before. He was recovering from the injury and could not go out. His heart was full of worries. One moment he was worried about his own inflamed and pus-producing injury; the other moment he was afraid that He Jinglin would encounter some danger outside and even more, he worried that He Jinglin would never come back.
But Sheng Wu was not someone good with words and in front of He Jinglin, he always remained aloof.
Sheng Wu knew what He Jinglin thought about him but he wasn’t going to expose him. He looked down on people like He Jinglin but he enjoyed the benefits he brought.
In a closed, high-pressure environment, the smallest things can lead to heated arguments.
Finally, He Jinglin couldn’t stand Sheng Wu’s mood swings and decided to pack up and leave by himself.
He never actually thought about abandoning Sheng Wu.
Sheng Wu had been suffering from a low fever and a broken leg. With the heavy downpour showing no signs of letting up, He Jinglin knew that if he didn’t look out for him, Sheng Wu would essentially be waiting for death.
He Jinglin just wanted to go and calm down for a couple of days. Before leaving, he even left tomorrow’s rations for Sheng Wu, a few bird eggs he’d found while climbing a tree today. He nearly fell off the tree getting those.
Unbeknownst to him, while he was packing his backpack, Sheng Wu was behind him, staring at him and thinking about something.
He Jinglin had been completely defenseless that when the rock hit the back of his head, he didn’t even realize what had happened.
There was a buzzing in his mind and then his back felt hot first, then cold.
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.
It was the hot blood flowing out and then slowly cooling down.
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By then, Sheng Wu had already gone crazy once before.
It was his survival instinct that made him eat the mushrooms growing on He Jinglin’s body.
The Serpent Staff Mushroom not only healed his mind but also cured his physical injuries.
What was even more ironic was that on the seventh day after he killed He Jinglin, when Sheng Wu had been contemplating whether to commit suicide, the rain stopped.
It has nothing to do with the rain stopping. It was simply that Sheng Wu hated to die.
He abandoned He Jinglin. He took away the mushrooms growing on his body and left the body behind.
Even though they had known each other since junior high school, they had only been in each other’s memories for 10 years. For Dr. Sheng, who lived for hundreds of years, this old friend was nothing more than a stinging embellishment in his memory.
For He Jinglin, those ten years had been half his life.
He Jinglin died and the fungi growing on his body decomposed it. He died, but many years later, he was resurrected in another way.
“Mother plant.”
The mother plant has no emotions, no intelligence, only instinct and some fragmented memories.
The rock in Si Chen’s hand struck the mother plant square in the face.
The facial features on that face were blurred, covered with all kinds of mushrooms, layers upon layers, like blooming flowers.
Unexpectedly, the mother plant did not struggle and allowed the rock to hit its face.
Si Chen showed no mercy and used all his strength in every blow. The stone hit the ground with a dull thud.
Pale pink liquid flowed out of the smashed head. It wasn’t blood but fungal mucus.
The strands of mycelium were like vines, winding up along Si Chen’s fingertips; the thin threads passed through the gaps between his fingers, as they were holding hands, fingers interlocked.
Si Chen heard the mother plant whisper. “It’s alright.”
These words weren’t meant for him.
Si Chen’s fused part belonged to Dr. Sheng’s mycelium threads. He wasn’t not Sheng Wu, but in this memory, he played the role of “Sheng Wu”.
The mother plant might know it too but that didn’t matter.
Si Chen bit the mother plant’s neck. At the same time, the mycelium threads on the mother plant’s body also pierced into Si Chen’s body.
To plunder, to devour, to possess.
This was a war for survival.
Silent and intense.
Si Yuan didn’t follow but since splitting it in half, Si Chen’s body had begun to transform into the Eternal Life Abyss.
His pupils gradually turned blood red. Black blood seeped out from this pores, poisoning the spores that wanted to take root and sprout in his body.
Because of the presence of the Eternal Life Abyss, Si Chen rarely personally ate.
But to devour is the instinct of every Eternal Life Abyss.
A deep bloody seam opened on his back and two tentacles came out. They looked a bit more delicate than Si Yuan’s current tentacles. The only difference was that these tentacles used to grow on the Eternal Life Abyss’ body, but now they grew on Si Chen’s.
One tentacle pierced the mother plant’s heart and the other strangled its neck.
…
…
In the third floor laboratory.
All slime molds, as though they’d all taken steroids, were reborn and died in a very short period of time. Draining the pond to get all the fish, all the energy they generated had been transported to the “mother plant” in amber through the mycelium network.
In the center of the laboratory, Si Chen lay on the ground, still wrapped in slime mold, like a fossil sealed in amber.
Si Yuan freely crawled in and out of the gelatinous slime mold. From time to time, it would swallow some of the newly grown golden mycelium strands.
In the amber, mycelium of two different colors were intertwined. The golden mycelium that had firmly had the upper hand was losing step by step; every time it came into contact with the parasitic spores, a large area withered as if poisoned.
If one were to observe more carefully, you would find that the amber wrapping Si Chen was becoming smaller.
They were being absorbed.
In the first floor of the museum.
The seriously injured Sheng Wu returned to the museum.
He was back to his red mycelium form, like a slender centipede crawling on the ground.
Because he had absorbed a lot of energy substances before, Sheng Wu had not yet turned back into a “plant”. He knew that he urgently needed to replenish his energy and regain his vitality.
Therefore, even though he knew that the mother plant on the third floor and had probably been awakened, Sheng Wu still took this risk and returned here.
Sheng Wu harbored hope in his heart. Previous experience has convinced him that the mother plant would not attack others of its kind, the “mycelium men”, but would only attack other lifeforms. In the eyes of the mother plant, he probably belonged to its “kind”.
He needed to devour all the mycelium lifeforms stored in the museum, to restore himself to his best condition. Then he had to find a way to get that body back before the Space Fold ended.
People who have died once before, do not see through life and death, rather, they may become even more afraid of death.
“Damn it,” the red mycelium cursed. “And he said it wasn't his. They’re the same breed!”
Sheng Wu never expected that the child Song Ziyu was carrying would be so special. An Eternal Life Abyss’ restraining effect on mycelium made it seem like mycelium’s natural enemy.
“I had been too hasty. Fortunately, I still have a lot of time… Unfortunately, these people are too wary and too smart. I hate smart people.”
Sheng Wu muttered to himself.
Not only did he gain nothing this time, he also suffered heavy losses. His body’s energy consumption had reached over 70%!
If he doesn’t replenish his energy, let alone finding another body to parasitize, he might not be able to survive the next few decades.
It crawled its way to the second floor. Because of the fierce fighting before, many parts of the second floor were reduced to ruins.
The undigested mycelium lifeforms lay limply on the ground.
Dr. Sheng made his way to his favorite “immune cell” and lovingly touched the fuzz on the corpse with his mycelium threads.
He said, “Xiao Mi, dad has raised you for so long. It’s now time to repay dad.”
Xiao Mi was the name he had given to this cell.
After saying so, Sheng Wu inserted the red mycelium threads into the huge sphere and sucked the liquid inside.
The pus caused this thin red line of mycelium to swell as if filled with water. The skin stretched, making it shiny and slippery.
He was more leech-like than leech.
As he was feasting, gaps suddenly appeared in the ceiling above and golden mycelium threads came out of the gaps.
Their target too was the mycelium life forms on the second floor. The slime molds and mycelium on the third floor could no longer support the energy consumption of the mother plant.
It was the real mother plant and when it spread, it was more arrogant, faster and unbridled than Sheng Wu.
Of course, Sheng Wu was included on its list of food reserves.
Sheng Wu’s voice was filled with horror. “No!—Don’t!”
He struggled to escape but the golden mycelium threads quickly wrapped around his body, greedily demanding its belated reward.
The red mycelium gradually developed lignified patterns. Sheng Wu’s body changed from soft to stiff.
He struggled wildly but the golden mycelium strands had intertwined into an airtight net. All mycelium life forms were prey caught by this big net.
“No…no…” His struggle became weaker and weaker.
Sheng Wu knew that if he was swallowed by other mycelium, he would truly die.
But he still has so many unfulfilled schemes and ambitions.
Before his eyes appeared his fleeting life.
Sheng Wu originally thought that his deepest memory was either the moment he spoke as the leader of the human survivors; or the time when the Serpent Staff Gene was first established.
Unexpectedly, what he saw was actually a day long ago when he was studying in middle school.
The teacher said that there was a new student joining their class.
He Jinglin stood on the podium. His school uniform was old and faded after many washings. Supposedly, it had been bought for cheap from a graduate.
Sheng Wu heard that he was from a single-parent family. His father cheated on his mother, transferred all his property and got divorced. He has been living with his poor mother.
Sheng Wu also heard that he had been bullied in his original class because he refused to let his roommate copy homework. The teacher couldn’t stand it and asked that he be transferred to a better class.
The teacher looked around, pointed to the back row and said, “Go and sit there.”
His new classmate was a little shy, put down his schoolbag carefully, lowered his head and said to Sheng Wu: “Hello, my name is He Jinglin, I transferred from Class 6… I hope we can become friends in the future.”
“Clang”.
A dry red branch fell from a gap in the mycelium net. Thus, his life ended.
It wasn’t that the mycelium net had gotten bigger and looser. Rather, the mother plant realized that it could no longer absorb any nutrients from this red mycelium.
The mother plant threw away this piece of garbage.
Justified ending
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And so Sheng Wu’s life ended. In some way I’m happy that it was He Jinglin who did it. Parasitized him as Sheng Wu did in life to He Jinglin.
finally!! goddamn he was one of the worst kind of people 😒
It suited him to die this way. I’m sorry about He Jinglin😔
Thanks for the update 🌹
Finally this crazy fungus is dead
🕯️