However, this wasn’t only a world of mushrooms. There were vines, moss, bushes, man-eating flowers and strange-shaped trees quietly lurking in the night. In the jungle of plants, there were some dark shadows and some strange shapes. Beasts or mixtures of beats and humans ran in the jungle, howling and fighting. Animals fought with animals, animal fought with plants or plants fought with plants. High and low howling hit the eardrums while the stones and mud were mixed with fresh blood. An Zhe saw a pine tree bend its trunk to swallow a snake with two tails. He also saw a giant toad stretch out a long, bright red tongue to grab a bat with human arms from the air. Five minutes after swallowing the bat, a pair of black wings grew from its back. This was only one of the thousands of scenes the mushroom had seen and he had grown used to it.

At this moment, a grey beast came over. It had four eyes and was covered with scales, feathers and fur. The head was like a crocodile and a giant wolf. Its seven teeth were exposed to the outside and it leaned close to An Zhe, sniffing him with a bloody nose.

An Zhe didn’t move. He quietly leaned against a mushroom and breathed evenly as his entire body was sniffed. The huge monster seemed to get nothing and dragged its heavy feet away.

An Zhe realized that nothing would notice him, even if he used a human body as a shell. Perhaps it was because mushrooms were everywhere, nutrient-free. They weren’t aggressive and were sometimes poisonous. Thus, he and the creatures of this world lived in peace.

Maybe it was as An Ze said. He was just a little mushroom.

CHAPTER 2

An Zhe walked for a long time.

After many days and nights passed, the distance he moved on the map was only the size of a human’s little fingernail. He was an entire finger’s length away from the Northern Base. He didn’t have the human means of transportation and didn’t know how long it would take him to get there.

Finally, he smelt the damp and dark air fading away and felt the soil under his feet becoming harder.

In the evening, the sun sank like a deep red eye. The distant black hills accepted it and the sun gradually disappeared. The twilight and aurora floated together. An Zhe unfolded the map and tried to identify the characters and symbols.

He had just walked past a dried up river that was the boundary of the Abyss. After the boundary was a place called the ‘Second Plains.’ It had three stars in danger level and two stars in pollution level.