Since then, he seemed to be different from his own kind. He could control his own mycelium, he could flow between the jungle ad wilderness and also found the sounds and movements outside. He was a free mushroom.

“Poor little thing.” At that time, An Ze had touched his hair. “Did it hurt when you broke?”

“I forgot.”

An Ze had said, “Let’s call you An Zhe.”

He said, “Okay.”

Thinking of this, An Zhe smiled into the mirror. Once the man in the mirror smiled, he seemed to see An Ze’s shadow again.

“Thank you,” he told the mirror.

An Zhe put down the mirror and sat at the desk. What next?

Thinking this, An Zhe reached out his left hand and gazed at the tip of his finger in the light. The snow-white mycelium quietly started to spread from his fingertips, condensing into a solid body. He picked up the dagger and cut a thin piece. Then he picked it up with his right hand, placed it to his mouth and pushed it in gently, biting it. He had decided to explore if he was poisonous or not.

Soft, sweet and delicious—this was his first impression. The next second, the whole world in front of him shook.

CHAPTER 7

Immediately, he became lighter, floating in the air. The sunlight from the window turned into a vast sea of water and the paper and notebooks on the table turned into a vast expanse of whiteness. An Zhe blinked. He didn’t feel uncomfortable but he felt that all his movements had become very slow and erratic. He couldn’t control his body. It was as if he was flying and was about to fall.

Then—the world before him gradually darkened and he completely lost consciousness.

He was awakened by the cold. Once he opened his eyes and woke up, he found that the continuous grey buildings outside the window were immersed in the golden-red sunset and onto him. He had passed out for at least seven or eight hours. It turned out that the toxicity of his mycelium was to make people sleepy.

The temperature in the room was much lower in the evening then it was in the day time. An Zhe lay on the bed and wrapped himself in a quilt, restoring the temperature. After the numbness from the cold dissipated, he was hungry again.

An Zhe preferred to use mushrooms to absorb nutrients but along the way, he couldn’t find even a piece of wet soil in the entire base. He could only eat food. Human beings were truly troublesome creatures. An Zhe frowned.