But the Abyss was so big, he couldn't find him, and nobody was willing to accompany him in his search, so it would forever be an unattainable wish.
"But I can't find him," he mumbled. "I can't do anything, and I don't remember where I left him."
"I can," Lu Feng said into his ear. "Let's go find him."
An Zhe opened his eyes wide.
Everything was like a dream. The next day, after they bid farewell to Pauli, their armored vehicle was airdropped by a transport plane into the exact middle of the Abyss. The crew commander was the PL1109's pilot. Before bidding farewell, he had insisted that they remember to search for traces of Hubbard and Tang Lan as well. Ever since the war in which monsters laid siege to the research institute, they both had been confirmed missing. Now, the only thing they were certain of was that although Tang Lan had suffered heavy wounds, he was still alive—their bodies were nowhere to be found for miles around.
"I strongly suspect that they went off to recuperate, then got lost, and then laid eggs." After putting the facts together and making one last deduction, the crew commander flew the transport plane away.
Lu Feng opened the armored vehicle's door and helped An Zhe down. The ground was covered with velvet-like grass that rose past their ankles. An Zhe looked into the distance. In the late spring, lush greenery stretched through the Abyss as far as the eye could see. Primeval winds shook the branches and leaves, and the sounds of birds flapping their wings traveled from afar. He had come to this place again.
He looked at Lu Feng. Lu Feng had come here with him, which surprised him even more.
He asked, "Why have we come here?"
Lu Feng lifted his eyebrows slightly. "Didn't you want to come?"
"For a very long time," An Zhe said. "Don't you only do things for the sake of humankind?"
"The Trial Court has been dissolved." Lu Feng looked at him. "If there are more wars, or when they need me, I'll return to the base then."
Those cold green eyes contained neither suffering nor resentment, or anything else. It was like he had lost something, yet also as if he had been relieved of a heavy burden.
An Zhe reached out and plucked a soft fallen leaf from Lu Feng's shoulder, then found himself effortlessly wrapped in Lu Feng's embrace.
"Now I wish to be with you," he heard the Colonel say in the silence.
"… Why?" he asked in a small voice as he hugged Lu Feng and rested his chin on Lu Feng's shoulder.
He didn't say plainly what he was asking, but he knew that Lu Feng would know. It seemed that the two of them had never needed to say much but still understood each other.
He knew that he liked Lu Feng, but he didn't know why Lu Feng would like him.
Lu Feng took one step forward, and An Zhe ended up with his back pressed to the car. He looked up at Lu Feng.
Those eyes were still as quiet and clear as when they first met at the base's gates.
Lu Feng looked at him for a long time.
Throughout those three years, he often dreamed of that day.
Back then, Lu Feng's soul was deeply trapped in a thorny mire, at the edge of losing control and unable to do anything about it.
And in that state, he met An Zhe.
An Zhe was a person, a xenogenic, and a monster. Lu Feng should have killed him, yet he also should not have. He was everything that could not be defined, the wildest possibility, and was like all the people in those pools of blood that had come before him.
"Why did you walk into the Simpson cage?" he suddenly asked.
An Zhe slowly searched his thoughts, then shook his head.
"I don't know," he said.
Then An Zhe asked in a small voice, "So you don't know either?"
"I do know," Lu Feng murmured, putting his forehead to An Zhe's. "Because you're a little mushroom."
This perfunctory reply made An Zhe lift his gaze in discontentment, but after seeing everything surging in those cold green eyes, his gaze softened in spite of himself.
In the Abyss, all things grew.
In fact, he remembered every word Pauli had said.
The entire universe was a place of constant disturbance, and the consciousness of humans were ephemeral lights and fragmentary shadows produced within a brief period of stability. A story was taking place in a book, but the book was currently being burned to ashes. The frequency of the magnetic field was like cold air, resisting the scorching heat. His frequency turned its pages into asbestos, allowing it to keep intact within the blaze.
But the flames still burned. They were unknown waves, unpredictable disturbances. They would still continue to come, either hotter or change into a completely unfamiliar form entirely.
Perhaps it would be the very next second, perhaps it would be ten thousand years from now.
But—
It did not matter.
They had all already received an outcome beyond their wildest hopes.
Leaning against the car, he smiled at Lu Feng.
Lu Feng leaned down and kissed him on the corner of one eye, then turned to one side and began calibrating the compass and navigator.
While he was fiddling with the compass and navigator, An Zhe continued flipping through his own documents. He had already gone through nearly all of it earlier, so before five minutes had passed, he completely finished reading everything that was left. With a click, he pressed the lock screen button.
At that point, Lu Feng had also finished what he was doing.
They started from the south. In front were lakes, to the east were jungles, and to the west were bogs.
"Where to?" Lu Feng asked.
"I don't know." An Zhe's attitude was somewhat negative.
"Let's go east," Lu Feng said.
"Why?"
"I don't know where your cave is," Lu Feng said, putting aside the navigator. "But I do know where I met you for the first time."
It was better when he hadn't said that. Once he did, An Zhe's mood completely soured.
He looked up at Lu Feng, his eyebrows slightly furrowed and the rims of his eyes red, about to start crying.
Showing a rare baffled expression, Lu Feng cupped An Zhe's face. "What is it?"
"You don't like me at all," An Zhe said, frowning.
Lu Feng said, "I do like you."
An Zhe raised his voice. "Then what about my spore?"
Lu Feng didn't mention the matter of the spore to him at all. An Zhe was so fierce in the past, he didn't dare to ask of his own accord. He could only search everywhere for news, wishing to know where that inert sample had gone.
But it wasn't anywhere. It wasn't until he searched to the very end that he saw something about "inert extract" from scraps of the news along with a photo showing a snow-white spore the size of only a jujube pit inside a glass bottle.
Now, Lu Feng didn't mention it, and traces of the spore were even scarcer.
There was only one possibility, which was that it had been killed.
Upon hearing those words, a hint of a smile appeared in Lu Feng's eyes instead.
An Zhe was so angered that he could not speak coherently.
"It got smaller and smaller in your care." His vision misted over, and he was on the verge of crying. "You killed it."
Lu Feng said, "I didn't."
"You did!" An Zhe grabbed his arm, a lump in his throat. "You weren't good to it at all… Give it back to me."
"It still exists. Don't cry," Lu Feng said. "What is the spore to you?"
"It's…" An Zhe strove to describe it in human language, but he couldn't. He could only say, "It's just my spore."
"Is it very important?"
"Yes, it is." An Zhe was almost shaking with anger. "I can die, but I must plant my spore. I only gave it to you because I thought you would raise it properly."
"Is it even more important than your own life?"
"… Mm-hm."
"To any creature, its own life is the most important."
"The spore is the most important," An Zhe unrelentingly argued. "It's not like you're a mushroom. You wouldn't understand."
"Okay." Lu Feng's voice still contained a very gentle smile. "So it's your child?"
An Zhe bit his lip. A mushroom's world had no parents or children, no kinsfolk, not even friends. Every single type of mushroom in the Abyss was different from the other mushrooms. He had no way of using human relationships to describe the relationship between himself and his spore. Unable to say that it was his child, he could only say, "I gave birth to it."
"I raised it."
"You didn't raise it properly at all."
"Hm?" Lu Feng said. "Then why is it that at the Lighthouse, even though it saw you too, it only floated to my side of its own accord?"
An Zhe had just been brooding over Lu Feng killing the spore, but now that the past was brought up again, he instantly recalled how the spore acted so traitorous.
Both of them were no good.
Unsure of what to say, he could only reply, "But I gave birth to it."
Lu Feng smiled again.
The world spun.
An Zhe was pressed firmly against the car.
Lu Feng's fingers skated over his abdomen, and in that weakest and softest place, the cool fingertips sparked a shudder.
An Zhe softly gasped for breath.
Lu Feng lowered his head and gently spoke into his ear.
"Let me see you give birth to another one."