Adam Carter is a mushroom, and his lifelong mission is to nurture a spore of his own.

One day, he lost his spore.

He searched the world for a long time, and finally saw his familiar spore on the news.

Adam Carter, in despair, knocked on the door of a certain colonel in the human military.

"Sir, hello. Is your research going well? When you're done, could you return my son to me?"

The colonel looked indifferent: "Your son?"

"The one I gave birth to QAQ"

Colonel: "The one I raised."

"Really, sir, he's my biological child QAQ"

"Give birth to another one and let me see."

Adam Carter: "Ying."

Chapter 1

The cave was dim and damp, illuminated by the faint glow emitted by plants.

Vines twisted along the stone walls—dark green, deep purple, pitch black—like tangled masses of writhing snakes.

A black flying insect stumbled in, with six hard wings and three mouthparts.

The next second, a huge, deep purple bulge suddenly appeared among the tangled vines. It split open quickly, like a mouth gaping wide, and in the next instant snapped shut, swallowing the insect whole.

The mass of vines slowly writhed, the bulging part gradually retracting, returning to its original state.

A sound like fluttering wings echoed in the cave. A drop of viscous fluid, trailing translucent filaments, fell from the cave ceiling and landed with a splat in the sticky moss on the ground. The moss squirmed minutely, and the glistening drop was quickly absorbed, vanishing from sight.

In the corner—illuminated by the green glow of fungi. From the cracks between rock and soil, white surged out like a tide, covering a large area: snow-white mycelium. It grew, spread, extended billions of tendrils, finally writhing toward the center, merging, gathering, elongating—a form appeared. A foot stepped onto the thick, soft moss, which sank and swallowed it, leaving only a snow-white ankle exposed.

Adam Carter looked at his own ankle—a human limb, supported by bone, muscle, and blood vessels. The joints could move, but were not flexible due to the constraints of the skeleton. The keratin layer formed nails, rounded and translucent, a degenerate remnant from the sharp claws of beasts.

He lifted his leg and took a step. The moss, previously pressed down, was cool and elastic, and after he left, it gathered back together, standing upright like earthworms.

This time, he stepped on something else—a human skeletal arm.

In the dimness, Adam Carter looked at the skeleton.

Fungi and vines had already taken root deep within its bones. Dark green vines coiled around the pelvis and leg bones, and small, brightly colored mushrooms grew from the ribs like blooming flowers.

Glowing mushrooms sprouted from its hollow eye sockets and sparse teeth, their green light like scattered sand, hazy in the cave's mist.

Adam Carter gazed at it for a long time. At last, he bent down and picked up a backpack made of animal hide lying beside the skeleton. The items inside had not been tainted by the damp: a few pieces of clothing, human food and water, and a blue chip about half the size of a palm, engraved with the numbers: 3261170514.

Three days ago, this skeleton was still a living human.

"3261170514," the young human's voice was hoarse and broken, the cave's ghostly green glow illuminating his face. "That's my ID number. This is my ID card. Only with it can I return to the human base."

Adam Carter asked, "Can I help you get back?"

The human smiled, his right hand limp at his side, the chip rolling from his fingers and vanishing into the uneven moss. He leaned against the mountain wall, raised his head, and pressed his left hand to his chest—there was a huge wound there, gray-white bone spurs piercing from his chest through to his back. The surrounding skin was already ulcerated, part of it gray-white, with wispy flesh covering the bone spurs, another part showing a dark green hue, and with each breath, gray-black turbid fluid dripped continuously downward.

He gasped a few times and said softly, "I can't go back, little mushroom."

His shirt was soaked through, his skin pale, lips cracked, and his body trembled irregularly.