Chapter 40 - "The most Memorable Few Days of His Life."
Armored vehicle.
"Congratulations on making it back. We'll return to the base after a fifteen-hour drive. "
Lu Feng asked, "How is the base?"
"The distortion has caused widespread panic and confusion, and some of the precision instruments can no longer be used. Fortunately, the artificial magnetic pole can operate normally."
"Do distortions appear when the magnetic poles don't work?"
"Yes."
Lu Feng said, "Over the past few days, some survivors and I were living in a magnetic iron mine, and no distortions occurred there."
"It's because of the magnetic field, which can resist distortion to a certain extent," the doctor said. "At the time, the Lighthouse fell into chaos. With the last glimmer of hope, we and the Underground City Base exchanged all the research results from over the years, but we got nothing at all. All of their research was also grounded in biological genes."
"Then I once again illegally accessed the communication channel that's connected to the Institute."
Lu Feng raised his eyebrows slightly.
"After joint discussion and the combination of some clues such as the point in time when the distortions occurred, we believe all of this may be related to the magnetic field, so we've temporarily increased the strength of the artificial magnetic pole," the doctor said. "It's effective for now, and only by doing this have we gained some time to cling to life."
The doctor leaned against the vehicle seat. "But according to the calculations, the distortions will gradually strengthen, then defeat us within three months."
He paused and looked at the distant mist-adorned sky as well as the circling brown eagle, then said, "However, to know that all efforts humankind have put forth to survive from ancient times until now were futile and become a witness to humankind's complete extinction is actually also a kind of unimaginable honor."
He looked at Lu Feng again. "To be honest, you're a little calmer than I had imagined."
"What, did you get hit?" The doctor said. "I don't know what kind of species that An Zhe thing was, all slippery like a fish. He could even escape from defenses as tight as the base's, so it's normal to not have been able to capture him. Even if he was captured, we wouldn't be able to keep him, so don't take it too much to heart."
Lu Feng said nothing.
He held out his hand.
A soft snow-white thing rolled out of his sleeve.
He looked at it.
Strangely, a soft train of thought flooded his mind. It was like he'd returned to some moment when An Zhe was quietly staying at his side. After night fell, they slept together. At first, An Zhe had his back turned to Lu Feng, but as he slept, he would always roll over and gently rest against his chest. When morning arrived, after waking up, not even An Zhe himself knew why this would be the case— at that moment, he would furrow his fine and beautiful eyebrows, then turn back again. Then Lu Feng held him from behind.
Surprisingly, those turned out to be the most memorable few days of his life.
The snow-white and soft hyphae affectionately wound around his fingers.
The doctor was stunned. "You got it back? You were actually able to get it back?"
"Mm-hm," Lu Feng said.
"Then what about An Zhe?" The doctor spoke extremely quickly. "Did you kill him?"
The spore seemed to have been startled by this person's suddenly raised voice. After shrinking a bit, it dove back into Lu Feng's sleeve.
But a while later, it reappeared at his collar and affectionately rubbed against his neck.
Lu Feng said flatly, "He left."
"How could you be willing to let him go? What exactly is he?" The doctor's eyes widened. "Can... Can he protect himself?"
Lu Feng touched the spore's soft hyphae with his fingers and did not reply. Beneath the gloomy daylight, the profile of his face was a silent silhouette.
The doctor examined him, but then he suddenly frowned. "Where's your gun?"
———
An Zhe stood on the rooftop.
As he watched the motorcade disappear into the distant sky, he moved his stiff body, standing up from behind the flower bed. Yesterday's rainstorm had filled the flower bed with water, and some thread-like creatures were currently wriggling in the water, newly born as of yesterday.
But after the weather cleared up, the accumulated water would soon be dried out. After a brief new life, they would face eternal death.
All creatures were like this.
Would his spore live longer than these ephemeral creatures? He hoped this was the case. An Zhe waited patiently for an opportunity. When the eagle landed, he climbed onto its back. The eagle paid him no heed, perhaps because he was too light and too lackingin nutrients. An Zhe found a place to stay on its wide back.
What really covered the surface of the eagle's body were not feathers, but scales, and in the crevices between the scales were intertwined translucent feelers. The eagl foraged for food in the city. After it devoured a meat-like vine and struggled for half an hour against a giant monster with bat wings, it lost the struggle and left the place.
An Zhe marked its flight direction against Polaris and his map. After discovering the departure from that trajectory, he surreptitiously slipped away, and after taking root in the soil and absorbing a night's worth of nutrients, he hesitated for a long time before removing from his backpack a pitchblack gun and a dozen or so bullets.
The gun was Lu Feng's, but it was only after Lu Feng had left that he discovered it in his backpack. The Colonelwould often make use of his belongings as though it were completely natural, including his backpack, so An Zhe guessed that it led to him leaving the gun behind.
Using the sounds of gunfire, he successfully attracted a monster with butterfly wings to serve as a means of transportation.
Three days later, he landed again. When looking for the next target to hitch a ride on, An Zhe encountered an extremely ugly monster with a centipede-like body. It had many characteristics of ants and arthropod-class monsters, and it fed on mushrooms. An Zhe wanted to escape, but his body was already in very bad shape. Just as he was about to be completely eaten, Lu Feng's gun protected him. He had accidentally struck the monster's soft belly, and when it briefly paused, he took advantage of that moment to roll into a muddy brook and escape.
The weather was getting cold, and those creatures who feared the cold began to travel south. Of course, they also preyed on each other in the process. Sometimes, across the boundless plains, there wasn't even the slightest trace of any living thing save for the occasional one or two extremely massive victors, and sometimes, social animals migrated southward like a black torrent. An Zhe blended in and drifted down the stream.
Ten days later, he finally got an indomitably southwardflying bird. After more than twenty additional days, from atop the bird's soft back, he saw a massive, long, and narrow shadow on the horizon, like a scar on the world.
According to humans, the Abyss's core was a long and narrow fault zone created by a magnitude 8 earthquake during the Great Calamity Age. The radiation there was extremely abnormal, which gave rise to countless fearsome monsters. Further out from the core's fault zone, to the north of the Abyss lay a vast plain that was densely covered with vegetation, full of various kinds of mushrooms, and a hibernation place for countless monsters, and to the south stretched a belt of rolling highlands and mountains.
The bird came to the edge of the Abyss and, tired out from flying, rested on the branch of a huge dead tree it found.
The tree branch suddenly began to tremble. The bird's feathers bristled, and it flapped its wings and screamed—
At some point, masses of black vines had appeared on the branch, and they had securely bound the bird's feet. Amidst the sound of fluttering wings, the snow-white bird was dragged to the center of the branch-laden tree. Its graceful neck arched high and its long pointed beak reached out toward the gray sky as it struggled, but a vine wrapped around its neck. Then the sturdy vine split open, and a fanged mouth bit its neck in two.
Blood went spraying, and the five- or six-meter-long bird's body was split into two. Tiny feathers and bits of down fell all over the ground.
Holding the backpack in his arms, An Zhe fell to the ground together with the feathers. He got to his feet, stepping upon the rotting ground that overflowed with black water. After staggering a few steps, he looked up and watched as the bird was devoured by thousands of vines.
Satisfied, the vines scattered.
The dense vegetation, vines within the forest, and giant mushrooms blocked out the sunlight as well as the sounds of combat.
This was the Abyss, a place where a human could beeaten and the bones wouldn't be regurgitated. There were no rodent-class or arthropod-class creatures here because they were too weak. But those creatures that were hundreds of times stronger than them were by no means invincible either—the soil of the Abyss was rich in nutrition because it was saturated with flesh and blood, which may have been the reason why mushrooms could flourish.
Across uneven terrain, An Zhe walked in. The ground that was covered with moss, dead branches and fallen leaves was too soft and close to the swamp, so when animals moved over it, they made no noise.
He clearly felt that the Abyss's atmosphere had changed. Usually, slaughter and fights happened at any given moment and powerful monsters often roamed the jungles to inspect their territories, but throughout his entire journey today, he only ran into a silently slithering python.
They seemed to have all gone into hibernation.
But An Zhe paid no heed to the comings and goings of the monsters.
He blankly stared at this boundless place where not even sunlight could shine in.
To his left was a dark red mushroom ten meters tall, settled amidst several massive rocks. Mucus that smelled like blood continually oozed from its cap, and its giant body seemed to breathe, rising and falling in the air.
An Zhe laid a finger against its stem and felt it get wrapped up by the mucus.
He had never seen a mushroom like this before.
Fear suddenly filled the expression in his eyes, and he averted his gaze to look elsewhere. Just then, his pupilsdilated, his body went cold, and he began to tremble.
He didn't recognize where he was.
He did not recognize this place.
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Then, heaving for breath, he sprinted pell-mell through the jungle. This was the Abyss. The blood-soaked soil, the waterlogged swamp, the monsters lurking in the dark—the
Abyss was still the Abyss, but it was no longer the familiar place from his memories.
The Abyss was so big, just what did he have to do to find the place from before?
He strove to think back, but he could only remember those distinctive mushrooms. Back then, he relied on them to remember his route.
So he kept walking and searched constantly, using both his legs and his hyphae. Night came after day, and after night came morning again, but every single plain seemed familiar, and every single cave was utterly empty.
There were no clues and no familiar places whatsoever. He didn't remember how many times he'd seen the sun set or how many times he'd been disappointed by empty caves.
After some time had passed, he could not walk any further. His hyphae, no longer as soft and dexterous as before, were dissolving and breaking off, and his human body was likewise weakening apace with the depletion of his life.
At a quiet lakeside, a withered vine tripped him.
A sharp stone sliced open his palm. He knelt on theground and buried his face in his hands as he trembled all over.
He couldn't find it. He couldn't find that cave.
A mushroom's life had only one season. They would die when they got old, and new ones would grow again. The face of the Abyss changed constantly with the intergenerational replacement of mushrooms. The original road, the road he had firmly committed to memory—was no more.
Surrounded by mushrooms and dead trees, he looked at the sky in despair. He didn't know. He didn't know that things would be so—so merciless.
Lu Feng was right. He had no idea how big the world was. He couldn't possibly find it, unless his life was as long as
eternity itself. But he was a mushroom, his existence ephemeral.
He was destined to die while searching for that cave.
Nothing in the world lasted forever.
Not even the very first promise.
Salty tears trickled over the tiny bramble-inflicted cuts on his face. It hurt all over, but it was far from covering up the despair and collapse in his heart. He took a deep breath and blankly looked at the pool to his side.
He fell into a daze.
In the water, there seemed to be a voice, an indescribable frequency calling him to leave. The entire world went out of focus.
Jump, jump, everything is over.
Happy things, painful things, they're all no longer needed.
Under the bewitchment of the voice's call, he walked one step at a time to the lakeside, where the water was so clear that his reflection showed. He and An Ze looked so alike, when the ripples blurred the lines, it seemed like it was An Ze in there calling to him.
However one was born in ignorance was likewise however one would die in ignorance. In the Abyss, in this... sorrowful place.
As though a switch in his memory had been flipped, a voice suddenly sounded in his ear. That was his own voice.
"There on the sad height," the voice murmured, "Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray."
"... Do not go gentle into that good night."
"What is the meaning," he asked, "of 'do not go gentle into that good night'?"
Lin Zuo, the teacher of the Garden of Eden, replied, "Do not meekly accept destruction."
After a short pause, it changed again.
"Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for You are with me." He softly recited verses to someone. That day, they had walked a long way together, not knowing what was up ahead.
On that day, in the wilderness, bringing him along in thenight, what had that person been thinking while walking amidst the sounds of the primeval wind?
Facing the impending strange fate, did that person alsohave the same despair in his heart? How did he continue walking?
He...
An Zhe hung his head and discovered that he had once again gripped the Arbiter's badge in his hand at some point. The badge's points and edges pricked his already bloody hand.
The illusory daze instantly fell back, and he backpedaled a few steps.
He thought, What was I doing just now?
Sharp pain traveled up from his ankle, for the rock that had just cut his palm now struck his ankle.
He bent down to remove the sharp gray stone jutting from the flat ground so that it would trip no other creature, but then suddenly noticed something.
There was a jet-black scorch mark on the stone that seemed like it had been made with a burned branch, forming a crooked ugly arrow that pointed southeast.
He fell into deep thought. According to his limited knowledge, the Abyss did not have creatures that could draw arrows.
And as for these kinds of strange gray rocks, he seemed to have seen them once or twice before in other places within the Abyss, but he had been single-mindedly searching for the cave, so he had paid them no heed.
He looked around and finally chose to go in the direction indicated by the arrow. He walked for a very long time, and yet another gray rock appeared, jutting out from the flat ground. Half of it was buried in the dirt and half of it was exposed, and there was an arrow on the exposed portion.
An Zhe continued walking. Not only gray rocks were marked. Sometimes, there would be marks on tree branches or white bones as well. After five days passed, he discovered that he had been continually heading to the southern part of the Abyss, approaching the highlands, where the environment was dry and harsh and where few creatures would go.
But on the same day, he could not find any other rocks.
He stood blankly under a tree and put great effort into scanning the surroundings, wondering whether he had gone the wrong way.
Suddenly, a pebble struck his shoulder.
"Are you lost?" A smiling male voice sounded behind him.
An Zhe turned around. Unexpectedly, he heard a human's voice again.
A willowy and handsome black-haired man was standing next to a tree, a gray rock in his right hand. He blinked at
An Zhe and said, "The guidepost is here with me. I hadn't put it down yet."
While looking at him, An Zhe slowly frowned.
"Tang Lan?" He called out a name.
"You recognize me?" The man's smile contained nonchalant and carefree undertones as he examined An Zhe. "I haven't seen you at the base before."
"I haven't seen you before either." After double-checking this person's appearance, An Zhe said, "I know Hubbard."
The moment he spoke Hubbard's name, the laid-back smile vanished from the man's face.