Chapter 67

He kissed so fiercely, so irresistibly, so bloody that An Zhe couldn’t breathe at all. He tilted his head but was pressed back again.

He had just been feeling sorry for Lu Feng but now he was shaking with anger. His mycelium was spreading out, his only instinct to resist as he wanted to strangle this person. However, he entered a trance as a scene appeared before his eyes.

A figure fell down in front of him. His heart suddenly flinched as he caught the person, holding him tightly. “An Zhe?”

In a trance, An Zhe realized that this was a fragment of Lu Feng’s memory. He had just drunk Lu Feng’s blood and obtained something. It happened to be the scene where he just passed out.

“An Zhe?” Lu Feng called his name several times in a row but the person in his arms didn’t respond at all. The person just frowned as if he was suffering great pain. Lu Feng didn’t know why An Zhe had suddenly become like this and could only hold on tighter. This person seemed to be suddenly dying—just like this fickle world.

An Zhe realized the feelings of that moment. Right now, his feelings and Lu Feng’s feelings coincided.

Lu Feng was afraid. He was actually afraid. What was he afraid of? Afraid of losing this man in his arms. It was like… if he lost this person, he had lost everything.

An Zhe’s body trembled violently. This man—

What could Lu Feng be so good to him yet so fierce to him?

The strength of the hands on his shoulders briefly awakened him from this scene. His consciousness was split into two halves. Half was being kissed by Lu Feng almost in punishment while the other half was immersed in the past memory, witnessing this man holding him and shouting his name over and over.

However, An Zhe didn’t wake up. He looked so pained, so cute. He was so fragile but bearing such an intense pain.

Lu Feng wiped away the sweat on An Zhe’s forehead and An Zhe subconsciously grabbed Lu Feng’s wrist like a life-saving straw. What was Lu Feng thinking at that moment? He was thinking, ‘I can hurt him, I can do anything as long as he wakes up.’

An Zhe closed his eyes. He was still resisting but he didn’t have much strength. He seemed discouraged and in the end, he could only give up all resistance, letting Lu Feng take his lips and his spirit, his everything.

It was like a long war. The intense emotions of this long standoff slowly exhausted him. Once Lu Feng finally let go, An Zhe leaned against his chest and said nothing. Lu Feng just hugged him, equally silent.

The blank time stretched indefinitely. The Judge and the heterogeneous had nothing to say. In the long silence, Lu Feng suddenly opened his mouth. “How did you become human?” he wondered.

“It is because of An Ze.”

He leaned into Lu Feng’s arms. They had confessed to each other completely and in that kiss that had been driven by each other’s impulses, they had cut each other apart. Thus, he didn’t hide anything. In fact, he wasn’t a heterogeneous. He was useless and couldn’t infect anyone. He was actually a human-infected mushroom.

At this moment, Lu Feng glanced at his mycelium. The white mycelium was still stained with blood from where he had been bitten by An Zhe just now. It turned out that this little mushroom would be very fierce when angry. The blood was disappearing bit by bit as it was absorbed by the mycelium.

An Zhe also looked there. He suddenly declared, “You will die.”

Lu Feng gripped his fingers and asked, “Why?”

“I’m growing in you.” An Zhe was expressionless. I’m eating your blood, your internal organs, your flesh and I’m growing on your bones.”

Lu Feng’s other hand slowly clasped An Zhe’s wrist, fingertips scratching the white skin and leaving a light red mark, much like the white mushroom leaking juices after being broken in the rain. He whispered, “Do you know what you’re talking about?”

An Zhe shook his head, his throat frozen and his eyes full of tears. He looked up at the green moldy wall and the twisted chandelier. The windows had been torn by the wind and rain came in, along with the whine of the wind. He thought that he didn’t know how to define his emotions but if he wanted to stay with Lu Feng, there was really no way. He stared at the sky beyond his reach.

Lu Feng told him, “You’re crying again.”

An Zhe turned back to look at Lu Feng. At this angle, he needed to slightly raise his head. In this way, they watched each other. It was unsure why but looking at Lu Feng, An Zhe laughed. His lips were slightly red and his beautiful eyes were covered with water marks.

Thus, Lu Feng also smiled. He held An Zhe’s face and muttered, “…So silly.”

An Zhe just stared at him. After a long time, he opened his mouth. “Will the base come to pick you up?”

“Yes.”

An Zhe didn’t speak and Lu Feng wondered, “Do you like the base?”

The moment he heard the word ‘base’, the pain of electrocution spread all over An Zhe’s body again. He shivered physiologically and buried himself in Lu Feng’s arms again. Lu Feng hugged him while gently patting his back. “I’m sorry.”

An Zhe shook his head. It wasn’t until three minutes later that An Zhe moved again. He looked up at Lu Feng and held hands with him tightly.

He seemed to be waiting for something, Lu Feng thought. He had an idea and did it. Lu Feng leaned down slightly and kissed An Zhe again.

There were no intense actions and no resistance. It was a deep, quiet kiss.

An Zhe’s soft lips no longer resisted. During the interval where they took a breath, Lu Feng gazed at his expression. He was gasping lightly and quickly, his eyelashes slightly lowered and the water droplets on his eyelashes shimmering lightly. An Zhe’s hands clung to Lu Feng’s shoulder with a type of timid, gentle innocence. Due to his whiteness, it was close to compassion. There was a divinity in the compassion—like some type of spiritual charity that he wanted to give at this moment.

Yet he was still crying. Lu Feng kissed his tears away, as if this would erase all the sorrows between them.

In the end, the rain outside gradually stopped. In the evening, the sky was shining with a cloudy yellow light.

An Zhe knelt on the bed. His fingers trembled as he hugged Lu Feng and slowly laid him flat on the bed.

Lu Feng’s eyes were closed. He had fallen asleep and his breathing was even. Nothing could wake him now. It was easy to do this. During the kiss, a part of the tip of his tongue turned into soft mycelium and the colonel couldn’t detect this.

The sleeping Lu Feng couldn’t capture him anymore, couldn’t hold him. An Zhe smiled. In fact, Lu Feng never captured him. An Zhe suddenly understood this. Leave or stay, he had to decide for himself.

Suddenly—

An Zhe’s vision darkened and the pain struck violently. The last mycelium also broke. Something was separating from him, like a human losing his arm or an eyeball. However, it wasn’t this, it wasn’t something insignificant. The existence of the spore was far more important than limbs or organs.

His body suddenly became empty. It was a deeper and emptier voice than the loss of the immature spore. It was like his connection with the world was suddenly cut off. The most important thing to him had come out and he only had a broken and decaying body. It was a shell of a body.

An Zhe suddenly felt choked up. At this moment, he was convinced he heard fate whispering in his ear like a demon. He looked ahead, raising a trembling hand.

Just before this moment, he thought he had a choice. He really thought he had a choice. However, once it happened, he found he had no choice.

He was completely astonished.

The spore came out of his body and was held in his hand. An Zhe gazed at the little white thing and finally managed to smile at it.

“…I’m sorry.”

He continued, “I… what am I going to do? Do you want to follow me? I might not be able to… support you.”

The spore’s mycelium just touched his fingertips. An Zhe knew it didn’t understand. Then the next moment, the spore’s mycelium suddenly moved slowly in one direction. They left An Zhe’s fingers, falling down onto the surface of Lu Feng’s black uniform and continuing to crawl forward.

An Zhe looked at this scene. It wasn’t the first time the spore had made such a move and An Zhe couldn’t help smiling. “Why do you like him so much?”

The spore stopped on the edge of An Zhe’s hand and scratched his fingertips again, unable to speak. An Zhe gently sighed and placed it on Lu Feng’s body. After being put down, it used its soft mycelium to crawl onto Lu Feng’s chest and spontaneously entered his pocket. It seemed happy, as if it had long wanted to do so.

An Zhe watched this scene. He couldn’t understand why the spore was so close to Lu Feng or why things had come to this point. He took a piece of paper from his backpack, placed it on the coffee table and wrote on it.

“It is mature and not the same as before. You can raise it in a place where it is always wet.”

“It needs a lot of water and is afraid of rodents and insects.”

“If you are doing research, don’t let it be hurt too much. Don’t let it die.”

“Thank you for taking care of me all this time.”

“I’m going.”

Leaving the note aside, he reached into Lu Feng’s front chest pocket and took out the bottle filled with the tracking agent, opening the lid. The pale green liquid poured out and flowed down through the gap in the floor. Finally, he let go and there was a clear sound as the bottle was smashed against the floor.

As if making a crucial decision, he reached out to remove the badge from Lu Feng’s chest, placing it in his pocket. He carried his backpack and took one final glance at Lu Feng before walking out of the room.

Xi Bei saw him and asked, “What are you going to do?”

An Zhe replied, “Go out and see what happens.”

“Okay.” Xi Bei seemed to have regained a bit of calmness. “Be aware of your safety.”

“Yes.”

He pushed open the rusty security door and took one step back. Then he glanced back into the room, looking through the skeleton on the sofa to the door of Lu Feng’s room. The grey door seemed to hold a silent appeal. If it was possible, if he had no worries, he would’ve liked to stay beside Lu Feng like the spore. However, this wasn’t possible.

He closed the door and walked upstairs. The stairs were so high and his body seemed to have lost all strength. It took him a long time to climb to the top floor and after going through the opening, he arrived on the roof of the building.

After the rain, the air outside was horribly cool.

The artificial magnetic field had disappeared for a few days and the atmosphere was thin. As early as when the Lighthouse was still active, he heard human scientists predict that this year’s climate would be extremely unusual and winter would come at least three months early.

—The winter of his life was coming.

The moment his spore had matured, the instructions from his life instincts flashed and he received the instructions from fate. Just as he never saw the mushroom who raised him from the moment he landed on the ground, he was doomed to fail to protect his mature spore.

The outside was dry and hurricanes were blowing all the time. Monsters were scary and in the Abyss, there were rodent monsters and arthropod monsters. The spore might accidentally be trampled on by giant monsters or be affected by fighting. At the last moment, An Zhe could only choose to believe in Lu Feng.

It was because An Zhe was going to die.

The life of a mushroom wasn’t very long. He was already considered one of the longest. Everyone had a mission and once he finished it, he completed the meaning of being alive. For a mushroom, raising the spore was the only mission.

An Zhe shook slightly in the cold wind and he hugged his arms. There was no more need to feel. His body was crumbling. He had seen dead mushrooms before. When their spore fell, their cap would gradually break, curl and then wither. Finally, all the tissues, the mycelium, the stem and the roots in the soil, they would all melt into a pool of dark liquid. Then they would be eaten up by everything else in the soil.

He would start to experience the process he had witnessed countless times. He didn’t know how long this process would take but it must be soon, before humanity was completely destroyed. Previously, he really wanted to return to the base with Lu Feng, no matter what happened next.

However, let Lu Feng think he was still alive in the wilderness. The Judge had seen too many deaths.

There was a broken garden on the roof. He sat in the flower bed, hugging his knees as he faced the east and watched night fall and the sun rise. This place wasn’t too far from the base. The bee had only flown for a day.

It was as he expected. Once the sun shone above the city through the early morning mist, heavy armoured vehicles arrived at the square in front of the community. They must’ve been clearly told the situation because they had enough heavy weapons. To some extent, it was enough not to be afraid of monster attacks. For example, the huge flying eagle hovered in the sky and stared at them but didn’t dare to move further.

The grey clouds, the flying eagle, the sprawling ruined city and the armoured convoy was like a scene from a dream. The wind made a sharp noise again.

An Zhe watched the figures of Lu Feng and Xi Bei step out of the building. After a brief negotiation with the military, they got in the car. An Zhe could vaguely see the figure of the doctor. Once the door closed, the convoy immediately started and left the ruins. When Lu Feng left, would he look back at the city from the car window? He wouldn’t know that the place where An Zhe was going to was the Abyss. He would go back to the cave and find An Ze’s bones. It had all started there and it would end there.

Facing everything that was destined to die, Lu Feng had Lu Feng’s fate and he had his own fate.

It was over.