“I have never seen such a gentle, calm child before.” Polly closed his eyes as he remembered the past. “He came to Earth from an unknown place, as if to suffer. Yet human suffering didn’t harm any of his essence. I don’t have much time left. I just want to see him alive again before I go.”

In the long silence, they stared at the laboratory behind them.

Across the wall, young assistants were busy recording data. They were busier than ever, as if it was a special day today. Looking through the window, a transparent square cabin that was like a crystal coffin was placed on the white ground. Inside the crystal coffin was a pale green nutrient solution. In the nutrient solution, snow-white mycelium was growing and spreading, intertwined with each other and forming a snow-white cocoon that faintly had the shape of a human body.

It grew very quickly, from a spore the size of a jujube pit to a soft mycelium polymer, like the young bird that suddenly turned into a human baby. One day, it showed a human body. On countless nights, Lu Feng leaned over and stared at the familiar outline through the filaments.

“Is this him?” he asked Polly Joan.

“He is an asexually reproduced mushroom and there is no difference between his body and the spore. I can only tell you that there is no difference in the genes and the frequency is the same. They are the same in a biological sense.” Polly smiled and spoke softly, “Ancient legend has the story of a phoenix gaining new life in fire. In fact, it is true for those creatures with simple structures. Death is a new life and reproduction is the way to continue life.”

“…Will he remember?”

“I don’t know.” Polly shook his head. “It depends on whether the soul or memory also has an established frequency. A mushroom knows from birth what type of nutrition it needs. Where does this memory come from? I tend to think that based on the unknown measure of the universe, they are the same creature. You don’t have to worry about it.”

Lu Feng gazed at the distant sky with always cold and calm eyes. “I hope he forgets it all.”

“Why?”

“The human base and I have only caused him pain. I hope he never feels this.”

Polly shook his head. “How do you know what the world is like to him?”

Lu Feng’s voice dropped gently. “Thus, I will accept all results.”

Polly didn’t speak. In the silence, an instrument in the laboratory suddenly made a loud sound. The experimenters shouted and there was the sound of ping-pong objects falling to the ground. The voices came on and off so that the people outside knew what was going on inside.