An Zhe looked up at Lu Feng with a frown. He was unhappy, the rims of his eyes reddened, and he did not speak to Lu Feng. Grabbing Lu Feng's wrist, he forcefully tried to move it aside.
But the man was far stronger than him, so An Zhe couldn't pull it away at all. After trying a few times, he simply turned his fingers into hyphae and wrapped them around Lu Feng's wrist, pulling it outward. But the strength of his soft hyphae was even less than that of his human form, breaking with even a bit of force.
"Don't pull," Lu Feng said into his ear, his voice low.
An Zhe ignored him.
Lu Feng laughed softly, then parted the snow-white layers of hyphae with a feather-light touch and once again laid his fingers on the skin of An Zhe's abdomen.
"Do you have any more?" he asked.
"I don't." An Zhe's tone was hostile.
He already had his spore dug out once by this man, so how could there possibly be a second time? Furthermore, he truly did not have any new spores now.
The strange thing was, although the original spore had clearly been lost and there was no new spore in his body, that feeling of something being missing had also left him. The hole in his body that could never be filled was gone, and his mind was no longer constantly preoccupied with the missing spore—just like a long time ago, when he had just been born. When he woke up, he could not have been any more whole.
An Zhe looked down at his hyphae, his snow-white, soft, dexterous, and well-defined hyphae. Slightly stunned, he put his other hand to his abdomen and touched them. Then Lu Feng held that hand as well. He could not help but think of his time at the research institute. He would shut himself up in a deserted room and carefully change part of his limbs back to hyphae, and what would be revealed after the human skin and bones disappeared was a tangled dark gray mass. The original hyphae had shriveled and liquefied. Before long, his entire body would turn into a puddle of black liquid and dry up on the floor or in a corner; this was how a mushroom died. Every time he got to that point, he would turn them back into human form as though he had received an electric shock, then look out the window at the endless night sky and at the deep nighttime of his own life. The tremendous fear that every creature felt when directly facing death shrouded him as well. He would feel the bone-deep chill of it, tremble, close his eyes, and wait for everything to slowly dissipate before walking back out to live with the people of the research institute like a normal human.
Of these things, Lu Feng knew nothing.
For some reason, this knowledge made the rims of his eyes sting. Recalling the fear and despair from that time, he once again looked up at Lu Feng, his heart suffused with a feeling of hurt even stronger than before.
Lu Feng clearly understood his expression.
"You're crying for real?" The hand that the Colonel had held his shoulder with moved up, touching the corner of his eye. "What's the matter?"
An Zhe shook his head. "In any case, I'm not giving it to you."
With that, he struggled to escape Lu Feng's grip, but he was restrained in another way, and the two of them toppled over onto the grass! He found himself pinned down beneath Lu Feng.
The thin, soft mid-February grass rose past him. Springtime came to the Abyss extraordinarily early this year. An Zhe turned his head and looked to the side. A plump, pure white mushroom had just unfurled its cap. Its gills were not yet fully open, but presumably it would not be long before thousands of spores would fall from the cap and diffuse outward like fog.
Other mushrooms had many spores, but he only had one, and it was gone to boot. He bit his lip.
He heard Lu Feng say, "Don't be afraid."
He said nothing, and Lu Feng continued. "I don't want the spore."
"Then what about my spore?" An Zhe asked.
"You wish to know?"
"I do."
Lu Feng scooped up a few strands of hyphae.
"Other mushrooms all have many spores," he said. "Why did you only have one?"
"I don't know," An Zhe said.
"When did you know that you were a mushroom?" Lu Feng asked.
An Zhe thought hard, then said, "Since a long time ago."
"Was there a catalyst?"
"It was raining."
"What else?"
"I snapped in half, but I didn't want to die yet."
"Did it hurt?"
An Zhe shook his head.
Lu Feng asked, "Is there anything else?"
An Zhe could only think of one thing. "It was raining,” he repeated.
Lu Feng seemed to think for a while. Then he asked, "You can fuse with many creatures. Are you able to distinguish exactly how many you've fused with? No matter if it was active or passive?"
An Zhe shook his head. He had indeed come into contact with many creatures either actively or passively, but he did not know if he had obtained their genes. The sole time was when he completely absorbed all of the blood and tissues from An Ze's body, unconsciously obtaining the ability to turn into a human.
He heard Lu Feng ask, "Have you seen snakes before?"
An Zhe nodded, for he had certainly seen snakes before.
"Snakes shed their skin. The original skin is discarded, and it crawls out from there," Lu Feng said. "Many creatures can do the same."
For a while, An Zhe did not know what Lu Feng wished to express, so he merely listened.
"But Mr. Pauli said that this is still very different from your form of life. Some single-celled eukaryotes have an additional trait," Lu Feng said. "When the environment is hostile, it will stop growing, and the main parts of its body will form a sporocyst and fall into a deep sleep, only to come back to life in a suitable environment."
An Zhe frowned. He seemed to understand what Lu Feng was saying, yet he also seemed to still be unable to accurately express it.
"Furthermore, you are a fungus. Although you aren't the same species as them, you're all living things with simple compositions."
Feeling that what Lu Feng was saying was not flattering, An Zhe pushed the man away.
Lu Feng did not move. He only looked at An Zhe, a hint of a smile in his eyes. "It still hasn't occurred to you?"
An Zhe looked at his hyphae as he asked in a small voice, "Are you saying that my… my spore grew into me?"
Strangely, after saying it, he did not feel surprised at all. Perhaps he simply said something ordinary.
He became lost in thought as he contemplated the whole thing.