He let out a gentle sigh, placed the shell casing into the beast-hide backpack left by Aaron Carter, then bent down to pick up the clothes that Aaron Carter had once worn. A bloodstained, grayish-white long-sleeved shirt, black stiff suspenders, and black leather boots.

After finishing all this, he walked toward the mouth of the cave. As he moved, the slightly loose clothes rubbed against his skin, faint currents traveling from the nerve endings buried in his skin to his central system. Using a human form for the first time, Adam Carter was not accustomed to it. He furrowed his brows and rolled up the sleeves of the loose shirt.

The cave was long and winding, its walls piled with vines. They pressed against each other, and as Adam Carter passed by, they receded like a tide, coiling atop the cave ceiling.

After three turns, the wind blew in, very damp. Mushrooms pushed aside the withered vines hanging at the cave entrance. Mushrooms—his own kind—filled his vision, stretching from near to far, as far as the eye could see. They seemed to reach up to the sky, and everything was silent, utterly still. Under the cover of the caps, dim daylight filtered in; the sky was gray, flickering with chaotic green glimmers. Adam Carter smelled rain, mist, shed snake skin, and the scent of decaying plants.

It was still evening. He sat down beneath the cap of the nearest gray-white mushroom at the cave entrance and took out a dark yellow map from his backpack. The map was covered in patches of varying shades, marking the danger levels of different regions. Aaron Carter had once pointed out to Adam Carter the approximate location of their cave—this was the darkest spot on the entire map, signifying a danger level of six stars and a pollution level of six stars. The place was called "the Abyss." On the map, the area of the Abyss was also marked with many strange symbols. Adam Carter followed the index in the lower right corner of the map, checking them one by one. The symbols meant that the Abyss was home to extremely dense mushrooms, man-eating vines, carnivorous shrubs, simple mammalian monsters, hybrid mammalian monsters, ordinary crawling monsters, highly poisonous crawling monsters, winged monsters, amphibious monsters, hybrid polymorphic monsters, humanoid monsters... all these things. At the same time, the Abyss also contained canyons, hills, mountains, abandoned human cities, and the ruins of roads.

North at the top, south at the bottom—his gaze traveled upward. In the upper right corner of this mottled map, there was a pure white area marked with a bright red five-pointed star. To the right of the star was the name of this area: Northern Base.

The green light in the sky grew stronger, and the background gradually deepened to pitch black. Around midnight, Adam Carter could barely make out the shapes of stars in the sky. He knew the brightest one was called the North Star, which could point the way.

So he aligned the upward arrow in the upper left corner of the map with the direction of the North Star, and, stepping on rotting wood, fallen leaves, mycelium, and soil, he walked out step by step.

The night was not dark. In the sky, those shifting green lights—humans called them auroras—illuminated everything ahead. In Adam Carter's vision, there were only mushrooms.

Yellow, red, brown—mushrooms with huge caps.

Small mushrooms, densely clustered on the rocks.

Round fungal bulbs scattered on the ground, which, when mature, erupted with spore clouds like misty rain.

These spores landed and began to split in the damp, leafy soil, growing into spherical bulbs just like their parent bodies.

There were also mushrooms without caps, just white or yellow tentacles, clumped together or radiating apart, floating in the air like seaweed.

But this was not a world of only mushrooms. Vines, moss, shrubs, man-eating flowers, and bizarre trees lurked quietly in the night. Amid the jungle of plants, some dark shapes, some strange forms—beasts, or hybrids of humans and beasts—ran, howled, and fought in the forest: animal against animal, animal against plant, or plant against plant. The rising and falling howls battered Adam Carter's eardrums. Fresh blood of all kinds stained the rocks and soil. He witnessed a pine tree bend its trunk to swallow a long, black-scaled, two-tailed snake, and also saw a toad—a gigantic toad—extend its bright red tongue to snatch a bat with human arms growing from its back out of the air. Five minutes after swallowing the bat, a pair of black wings sprouted from the toad's warty, mucus-covered back, curling limply. This was just one ten-thousandth of what the mushrooms saw; he had long since grown used to it.

Just then, a gray beast approached. It had four eyes, its body covered in scales, feathers, and fur. Its head resembled both a crocodile and a giant wolf, with seven teeth protruding from its lips. It drew close to Adam Carter, its blood-red nose sniffing him all over.

Adam Carter did not move, quietly leaning against a mushroom, breathing evenly, until his whole body had been sniffed.

The huge monster seemed to find nothing, and, dragging its heavy steps, turned and left.

Adam Carter realized that nothing would notice him, even though he was using a human body—perhaps because mushrooms were everywhere here, lacking nutrition and aggression, and sometimes even poisonous. So he and the others seemed like creatures from two different worlds, coexisting in peace.

Perhaps, just as Aaron Carter had said, he was only a very small mushroom.

Chapter 2

Adam Carter walked for a long time.