As he spoke, he put the cup up to his lips, but his hand was trembling. Water splashed from out of the cup and landed on the table. The doctor forced down a mouthful, but then his face promptly showed a pained expression, and he bent double and retched continuously.
"I also live in great… great terror. I want to vomit," he said in a trembling voice. "A cold wave has already invaded. Winter is coming. The time when monsters are the most frenzied and most in need of nutrition has arrived."
"We all know that in the eyes of monsters, humans are but a piece of meat dripping with fat. Even when the base was at its zenith, monsters continually tried to attack," the doctor murmured with a smile. "Can you guess… when they'll discover that the human base has weakened to our current state? When will they assemble and storm the human base? … Just like how they grouped up and stormed the Underground City Base."
Lu Feng said, "Calm down first."
"Do you think everyone is emotionless like you? The essence of humans lies in their capability for empathy. Panic spreads exponentially in a crowd, like a virus. At this sort of time, the fact that you are able to keep calm instead proves the… the fearsome extent of your inhumanity." The doctor took a few deep breaths. Sometimes, harsh language could allow people to relax. He looked like he had finally recovered a little. "Please pass on this quality of yours to me through infection. When you can no longer continue working, what are you thinking?"
Lu Feng nonchalantly looked at him. "Humanity's interests take precedence over all else."
The doctor let out a resigned laugh.
After he finished laughing, he took a deep breath. Seeming to have finally calmed down, he came over to the large Petri dish that held the spore.
"They actually think that a little white fungus can save all humankind. This is the funniest thing I've ever heard. In fact, the composition of that fungus is no different from what we use to make mushroom soup." With clear articulation, the doctor repeated the words of outsiders. He resembled a strict teacher who was scolding students with failing grades. "Do you hear me? If things continue like this, they will cook you into a bowl of mushroom soup sooner or later. You must take the initiative to show how you are different from all the rest."
The snow-white hyphae trembled in the nutrient solution, and the spore slowly drifted in Lu Feng's direction. It pressed right up against the inner wall of the glass, as if by doing so it could get closer to Lu Feng.
Lu Feng said in a low voice, "Don't scare it."
"It understands, I bet it understands. Over the past several days, we've fed it countless monster extracts, and it ate them all. An Zhe is a little monster with a polymorphic-class mutation, so it must be the same for his spore as well," the doctor said. "If it didn't have its own consciousness and intellect, it definitely wouldn't escape its imprisonment and sleep with you every night."
"So what about your progress?" Lu Feng frowned slightly.
"It ate so many monster genes, but it's still the same spore. It's absolutely stable. Those gene extracts definitely didn't disappear. I surmise that it can subjectively control the transformation of its own shape, like how An Zhe could change into a human," the doctor said. "If humans can also have this kind of quality, we wouldn't be afraid of the distortions."
"You people wish to use it to infect humans," Lu Feng said. "Are you not afraid of all the infected individuals being taken over by the mushroom's consciousness?"
"We haven't yet reached the point of thinking about this problem yet." The doctor rested his forehead on the glass. "… The key point is that this damned little thing won't infect others at all. An Zhe and it disappoint me equally."
While he was talking, the spore once again floated to the surface of the nutrient solution of its own volition and climbed up slowly, then flowed out from the crevice between the lid and main part of the Petri dish. It fell down and was caught in Lu Feng's hand, where it lazily lay just like a carefree… little fellow.
Its various actions showed that to a certain degree, it was indeed a creature with subjective awareness.
"It is capable of movement and can think, but it doesn't even have a nervous system," the doctor said. "Do you know what this means? I'm a biologist. The phenomenon of distortion made the physicists' body of knowledge collapse, and the existence of this spore destroyed my body of knowledge."
The Arbiter had no interest or need to pay attention to how a biologist's knowledge was destroyed. As he held the soft mass of hyphae in his hand, Lu Feng asked, "How did An Zhe disappoint you?"
"He didn't have any infectivity to speak of, either." The doctor pulled himself together and sighed. "The bed-sharing relationship between you two—you're still a human, without any indication whatsoever of being infected. Your will also hasn't been influenced by him to become kinder, not even by an iota. Just like his spore, he can't infect people."
Lu Feng gave him a flat look, seeming to be contemplating something. Just as Dr. Ji assumed he was about to say something of value, the Colonel said, "I haven't bedded him."
The doctor stared straight at him. "Then you disappoint me even more than An Zhe."
An Zhe woke up from a comfortable dream.
In the dream, he didn't have eyes, a nose, or any of the other organs that all humans sensed with. He seemed to have gone back to a very, very far-off past, a time when he was deeply buried in soft, damp soil. But it was by no means soil. He seemed to be somewhere not far from Lu Feng. His proximity to the Colonel's breaths was even closer than his proximity to death.
After opening his eyes, he dazedly looked at the gray ceiling. This entire time, he had been trying hard to avoid thinking about the people and things in the Northern Base. He could feel the fading of his memories, having almost forgotten the appearances and mannerisms of Poet, the doctor, and Colin. Everything that had happened in that city was gradually disappearing, but Lu Feng appeared with increasing frequency in his dreams.
Sometimes when he opened his eyes, in his disoriented state, he would feel that the man was right at his side. The deep green vine leaves hanging next to the window had not yet withered when they were covered by a layer of white frost, turning them a crystalline color. It was like Lu Feng's eyes were looking at him.
But the icy chill of the outer world swiftly enveloped him again.
Outside the window, leaden clouds hung low over the mountaintops, and the hard ground at the summit bloomed with frost. Winter had arrived.
The people of the Highland Research Institute took extra care of him as always. Ten days ago, he received a knitted woolen scarf and a pair of rabbit fur gloves. Every day, he left the main building while bundled up in these warm things and went to stay in Pauli's laboratory in the white building.