An Zhe sank into a dream.
He had dreamed this kind of dream a very long time ago—on the day he left Lu Feng.
Sometimes, although it was clearly daytime and he was awake, he would suddenly sink into dreamland again. They were probably the hallucinations of a dying man, but he didn't mention them to Pauli. The inexplicable bloody coughs, high fevers, and various aches and pains had already consumed too much of Pauli's mental energy.
In the dream, his body was divided into two, much like the leech in the past. One half was at the Highland Research Institute, while the other half was at some unknown place, free from pain and free from the cumbersome human body.
In the dream, he had neither eyes nor ears, no nose or any human perceptivity. It was the same kind of feeling as when he was just born, buried in the rain-soaked soil—mushrooms had their own senses, which could not be described in human language.
He knew that he wasn't far from Lu Feng. This must have been a delusion caused by him leaving Lu Feng, but it did not hinder him from getting closer to Lu Feng in his dream.
This dream wasn't always happy, either. Sometimes, he was put into a sealed container, accompanied by an ice-cold liquid. At the very beginning, it was Dr. Ji at his side, and then later it was always Pauli, along with… many others who came and went.
He had nothing to do. If Lu Feng was nearby, An Zhe would wrap around him, but if not, he would soak in the liquid, thinking back on his own life.
Those distant memories floated to the surface—in the soil, in the rainy season, in the winter, and in the base.
He would get a little closer to Lu Feng when he recalled certain things, and Lu Feng's fingers would touch his hyphae. It seemed as though he had managed to stay together peacefully with this man at last. He was on the edge of wakefulness the entire time, but he didn't wish to wake up. In the real world, he and Lu Feng could never be like this.
But after he thought back on his own memories for the hundredth time, there was no dream he could dream, so he chose to wake up.
He discovered that he was still alive.
When he thought back to that day now, he no longer remembered it. The fluctuation of emotions had made many other places go blank.
He only remembered that he was standing at the door and that Lu Feng had turned around amidst a patch of lush spring greenery—he locked eyes with him in that manner, not able and not daring to step forward. He had dreamed too many dreams, and he had tried scooping up the fragile full moon in the water too many times.
Until Lu Feng walked up to him.
When this man wasn't around, he had cried many times. Sometimes his heart would violently tremble when thinking of him, but now, when he truly met with Lu Feng, the corners of his lips curled up in spite of himself.
He reached out to touch Lu Feng's shape. He couldn't tell anymore if he had gotten thinner or if he had become haggard—it had been too long. He hadn't met with this man in far too long.
It wasn't until then that tears slid down from the corners of his eyes. He withdrew his hand and looked blankly at Lu Feng before being wrapped up in a frontal hug and having the tears wiped from his cheeks. He rested against Lu Feng's shoulder, voice hoarse as he softly called out his name.
"It's me." Lu Feng said.
The people in the laboratory had congratulated him. Unexpectedly, Pauli had brought a man back from the dead—he couldn't imagine the involved principles at all. The people in the laboratory told him lots of words like genes, frequencies, samples, and such. It was all incomprehensible to him, but human technology had always been very miraculous, so he simply accepted it.
Three years had already passed since he jumped into the Simpson cage.
The outside world had calmed as well.
The age of genetic disorder ended with the single toll of a bell. His frequency was transmitted all over the world, but whether it was for good or ill could not be determined, for all tangible things were infected by the frequency at that moment and stabilized. People were always people, and a monster was always that type of monster. Polymorphic mutations could occur, but the dominant consciousness was always that one that had been in control when the bell tolled.
As for why this was the case, Pauli's explanation was that after many experiments and comparisons, the frequency obtained by the Simpson cage approached a definition of matter itself.
For example, when facing an apple and an orange, humans knew that this was an apple and that was an orange, but the apple itself did not know it was an apple, and the orange itself did not know that it was an orange either—they themselves would never know. Only humans knew.
Just like how cicadas did not know of spring or autumn, humankind's field of biology was only a flawed superficial analysis of the surface. They also had no way of knowing what constituted themselves or what defined them as humans—it was a framework that four-dimensional creatures could not understand.
However, by means of the Simpson cage's analysis of elementary particles, they briefly glimpsed a negligible reflection of the truth and glimpsed traces of the true meanings, then grasped some noteworthy frequencies. In this symphony of the universe, humankind was the musical note that was most easily destabilized by other creatures, whereas he, a mushroom that somehow had its own consciousness, was the stable frequency that could contain everything. When this stability was bestowed upon the entire world, a brief peace arrived.
"This is chance," Pauli said. "Chance is destiny, and living is fortuitous."
When An Zhe heard that, he had just been fed a piece of peeled apple by Lu Feng.
With only a single bite, the freshly picked apple gushed with juice that was sweet and slightly tart. He forgot what he was about to say, and Lu Feng fed him another piece.
"Then what about oranges?" he asked. "What do oranges taste like?"
Lu Feng had said, Wait until autumn.
Pauli invited them out along with their apples and future oranges.
On the way back to his room, An Zhe ate half of an apple and left the other half for Lu Feng. He had intended to cut it into pieces for the Colonel, but Lu Feng did not let him touch the knife.
On this matter, An Zhe did not argue with the Colonel. If the other party were not Lu Feng, he actually would not really have wanted to cut the apple. He was drowsy, for it was time for an afternoon nap.
But he could not sleep. As he held a tablet, he scrolled downward. Stored within it were the documents he had scraped together from various places over the ten days since he woke up. The electronic version of Alliance Daily, the research records copied from Dr. Ji's computer, the laboratory manuals copied from Pauli's computer, along with many other similar things.
Lu Feng sat down at his side, and he swiftly turned, not allowing the man to see. Lu Feng let out a soft chuckle, then cut up the remaining half of the apple and fed it to An Zhe.
Although the apple was very tasty and the Colonel very good-looking, An Zhe did not want Lu Feng to be next to him while he was reading the documents. He was always paranoid, thinking that Lu Feng was looking at his screen.
But the hateful thing was, when he woke up, he discovered that Lu Feng had taken over the room he used to have at the research institute. Everything in the room was identical to the way it was before he died, but its owner had changed.
He tried to have Lu Feng move into the room next door, but Lu Feng expressionlessly told him, If you don’t want to share a room with me, you can continue sleeping in the tank of nutrient solution.
Leaving An Zhe at a loss for words.
It had been three years. The past three years had not softened this man's character at all, not even the slightest bit.
As a result, he could only share a room, a desk, and a bed with the Colonel.
In the end, he got paranoid to the point where he could no longer continue reading the documents and so drowsy that he had to sleep.
"Boring." On the bed, with Lu Feng holding him from behind, he dazedly stared at the white walls.
The Colonel's voice was like snowpack just beginning to thaw. "Where do you wish to go?"
"I wish…" An Zhe looked at the wall, slight confusion in his gaze.
He had somewhere he wished to go.
And it was a place that, apart from himself, only Lu Feng knew about. He hadn't mentioned it even to Pauli.
"I wish to go find An Ze," he murmured.
In the cave where everything began, An Ze's bones were still waiting for him. He had many things he wished to say to An Ze. He remembered every word that An Ze had said to him. An Ze had said that he was someone whose life had no meaning. He wished to recount the Northern Base's dramatic changes to An Ze, and he wished to tell him of the source of that last bell toll.
If he hadn't met Lu Feng or An Ze, none of that would have happened. Just like that, destiny tossed and turned within countless coincidences.