The icy air, thick with the pungent aroma of rust, rotting fungal carpet, and gunpowder, filled Pei Du's nostrils. He half-knelt on the damp, cold concrete, gasping for breath. Each breath felt like swallowing scalding gravel, burning his spore-infested throat. Xu Shuangyao collapsed beside him, also desperately trying to breathe in the filthy "fresh" air, her body shaking uncontrollably with exhaustion and fear. They had just emerged from the living hell of the pipe, contracting and strangling like a giant intestine. Behind them, from the entrance, barely blocked with rubble and broken metal pipes, came the heart-pounding thud and the rustling sound of mycelium multiplying furiously. Like an enraged beast, the living pipe struggled to break through its barriers and drag its escaping prey back into the abyss.
Temporarily freed from the sweltering sewage, a greater terror loomed like an icy veil, enveloping the vast transfer pumping station nestled beneath the ruins of the city. Long abandoned, its massive steel pumps stood rusted in the shadows like the skeletons of dead prehistoric beasts. The ground was coated in a thick layer of dust and an unknown, sticky substance, while the walls were covered in patches of dark green and silver-gray bacteria, slowly but surely eating away at the metal and concrete like some malignant skin disease. The broken dome let in a few faint rays of daylight, barely illuminating the dense, indissoluble cloud of spores suspended in the air. Like a living gray mist, they slowly drifted and squirmed within the faint beams of light. Deathly silence reigned here, yet beneath that stillness lay countless subtle, eerie sounds: the rustling of mycelium, the subtle popping of spores, and... a low, sticky, incomprehensible whimpering coming from the darkness on all sides.
The fungus master awoke. Its will, like an invisible, cold, heavy leaden cloud, weighed heavily on every corner, seeping into every inch of the air. Pei Du could clearly "feel" the millions of "gazes," filled with pure evil and devouring desire, piercing through layers of barriers and locking onto them like venomous snakes stalking their prey. This was no longer a sanctuary, but a hunting ground in another form.
"Ugh..." Xu Shuangyao let out a suppressed groan of pain and struggled to her feet. Her face remained as pale as paper, and the dark red light of the Crown of Thorns flickered faintly, each flicker causing her slender neck to twitch slightly, as if bearing an invisible weight. The aftermath of the excruciating pain from the symbiotic connection still raged deep in her spine, like countless icy needles piercing her bone marrow. Even more unbearable were the fragments of her consciousness that lingered—the cold rain alley in Pei Du's altered memories, the suffocating fear of that rough, greasy hand, and... the soul-chilling absurdity of "herself" sleeping in the incubator. These fragments of memories that did not belong to her clung stubbornly to her mind like filthy oil, causing intense mental pollution and discomfort. She subconsciously tried to expel these "impurities," but the moment her mind touched them, it triggered a sharp stinging pain in the symbiotic connection.
"Don't move!" Pei Du growled, his voice hoarse as sandpaper. He suddenly reached out and roughly grasped Xu Shuangyao's shoulder, which was trying to prop itself up. The force was so great that she groaned and fell to the ground again. His eyes were like a tempered blade, vigilantly scanning every dark corner of the pumping station, every shadow cast by the huge water pump. His right hand subconsciously clenched into a fist, his knuckles turning white from the force. The wound on that hand looked even more hideous after being separated from the sewage, and the edges of the flesh took on an unhealthy grayish-white color. However, deep within the wound, beneath the swirling flesh, the dark red lines that coiled like living things were clearer and more dazzling than when they were in the pipe! They seemed to have received some kind of nourishment, their color becoming deeper and more viscous, and even faintly revealing a very faint, dark red luster like embers, and... seemed to be spreading along the edge of the wound, extremely slowly and unstoppably to the healthy skin around it!
The price of power was branded upon his flesh and blood in the most direct and horrifying way. Every pitiful increase in power brought by using symbiosis only added fuel to the fire of erosion!
Xu Shuangyao's gaze was fixed on the dark red lines spreading across Pei Du's hand, her pupils constricted with fear. As the former "creator," she knew better than anyone what this meant—an irreversible profound mutation had begun, and Pei Du's time was being consumed at a visible rate! "Your hand..." Her voice trembled uncontrollably.
"Shut up!" Pei Du interrupted her abruptly, glaring at her fiercely. He didn't need to be reminded. In addition to the pain of torn flesh, the wound also felt a tingling and burning sensation that penetrated deep into his bones, as if countless ants were gnawing at his bones, constantly reminding him of the horrific changes that were taking place. He just wanted her to be quiet now, and he needed to concentrate every bit of his energy to deal with this living purgatory. "Listen!" He lowered his voice and listened attentively.
Besides the faint thud of settling spore dust and the thuds of distant pipes, a new, more disturbing sound was coming from deep within the pumping station.
“Ho…ho ho…ho ah…”
A deep, sticky, wheezing sound like the strains of an old bellows, interspersed with incomprehensible, bestial roars. The sound was filled with pain, frenzy, and a primal desire for destruction. It wasn't just one voice, but many! They came from different directions, forming an eerie echo in the vast, abandoned pumping station.
"Wild Fang..." Pei Du's heart sank, his eyes growing colder and sharper. Those desperate criminals ultimately couldn't escape the initial wave of mental contamination and spore erosion from the awakening Fungus Master. Instead of being assimilated by the silver fungus skeleton, they were transformed into something even more twisted and violent—Fungus Puppets.
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