The skin of this thing is black - the color of Anthony's skin. However, at this moment, his human face has been distorted. The place where the eyes used to be is covered with dense brown scales. The nose extends diagonally downward into a huge crack. The mouth protrudes outward, and a long curled black tube extends in the middle.

He stopped and the edge of his wings scraped against the wall of the car, making a sharp sound.

"Anthony, what are you doing?" Huo Sen's dissatisfied voice sounded: "I don't like being watched."

After saying that, he lowered his head again. An Zhe's body sank, and he felt teeth biting his shoulders and neck. The skin was ground by the teeth, and a subtle pain came up. But he couldn't care less, he tensed up and stared at the monster that Anthony had transformed into.

One second, two seconds, three seconds.

The wings behind Anthony fluttered slightly, and his mouthparts rolled in the air.

"Are you scared?" Huo Sen, who was lying on him, seemed to feel the stiffness of his body, and cursed indistinctly, "Why are you pretending?" Then he grabbed his waist tightly and bit his skin hard.

At this moment -

the buzzing sound of the fluttering wings came over, and Anthony's six slender legs fell to the ground, his body leaned forward, sinking and gathering strength, and rushed towards them like a slender spider!

The sound of wind rang in the small space. Anzhe's pupils shrank instantly, and his body changed instantly, switching to the soft and sensitive state of the mushroom itself. The hyphae rolled in the carriage, almost filling the entire space, briefly blocking Anthony's sight.

Then, Anzhe suddenly felt the human body on him stiffen for a moment, coughed a few times, and then his limbs began to panic: "Damn, this is--"

He looked down and saw Huo Sen bit off countless soft hyphae in one bite, and swallowed them into his airway and esophagus, and his expression was horrified and painful when he coughed.

At the same time, countless mycelium strands were cut by Anthony's forelimbs. Mycelium was soft and fragile, without any toughness, and could only buy less than five or six seconds to escape.

Anzhe estimated the distance between himself and Anthony, quickly rolled up his clothes with mycelium, and flowed out from the gap between Huo Sen's body, regaining his freedom.

His snow-white mycelium surged towards the door like a snow-white tide, and turned back into a human state at the door, pressing the switch at the door.

With a muffled sound, the door bounced outwards. Anzhe instantly retracted all the mycelium, stretched out a hand, and pulled Huo Sen's collar outwards. The two fell out of the car together and fell firmly into the sand.

——At least it's safer here than the narrow space in the carriage.

But after a moment, Anthony showed his head from the door, and a sharp buzzing sound sounded. He first flapped his wings to a height of four or five meters, and then suddenly dived down

. Anzhe quickly climbed up the moment he flew up and ran back quickly.

But he saw Huo Sen lying on his back with his eyes scattered on the sand. Anthony's sharp forelimbs pierced his chest in an instant.

——Anzhe had seen too many monsters hunting and escaping methods in the abyss, and knew how to escape. He thought Huo Sen knew it. However, it was not until the moment when the blood splashed that Huo Sen suddenly came to his senses. He screamed, grabbed Anthony's front legs with both hands, and kicked Anthony's body, which had turned into a black pupa, madly, trying to retreat.

The ground exploded, and An Zhe quickly turned his head and saw that the armored vehicle that had originally driven far away suddenly turned sharply and turned around to speed towards this side - Vance finally realized that something was wrong.

He took a few breaths and ran towards the armored vehicle.

Through the car window, he could see Fans' anxious expression. Before he arrived, the door of the armored vehicle had already popped open. When An Zhe passed by the armored vehicle, a pair of strong arms suddenly pulled him up from the ground. He cooperated with Fans's movements and got into the cockpit. Fans quickly threw him to the other side of the cockpit and slammed the door shut.

An Zhe said, "They..."

"It's too late to save them!" Fans turned the steering wheel again, and the armored vehicle turned back to the original direction. He stepped on the accelerator and sped towards the north.

An Zhe leaned back on the co-pilot seat and took a few breaths. After calming down a little, he looked at the rearview mirror - the mutated Anthony and the seriously injured and dying Huo Sen were tangled together and rolled to the ground. Anthony raised his front legs and then fell down suddenly, piercing Huo Sen's abdomen heavily and nailing his body to the ground. Then, this thing raised its head and looked in their direction. About five seconds later, it seemed to give up chasing the armored vehicle, lowered its head, and pierced Huo Sen's head with its slender mouthparts. Huo Sen's body twitched and then completely softened.

The car was driving very fast. After a while, their figures had disappeared among the yellow sand bushes and could no longer be seen.

Fan Sidao: "Anthony has changed?"

Anzhe turned to look at Vance and saw that his eyes were slightly red.

He lowered his head: "I'm sorry."

He was still alive, but Vance had lost two teammates.

"What are you sorry for?" Vance forced a smile: "We often die when we come here to work, we're used to it. Maybe I'll be the next one to die."

But Anzhe did feel guilty. Anthony was infected - if I had told Vance about the few drops of suspected human blood on the ant scales, they might have discovered that Anthony was infected in advance.

He lowered his head and told him about it.

Vance was silent for a while, and his voice became slightly lower: "Anthony did not turn into an ant, he may have been infected before. We encountered a group of mutated wild mosquitoes before we met you."

An Zhe: "And... was he stung by the scales again?"

Vance looked out the car window, and after a long silence, he said: "The pollution level of the second plain is very small, two stars, being stung or slightly injured does not necessarily lead to infection. But if you say you are here, you will definitely be left behind by the team. Many people will not say anything after being injured."

His voice was a little lower: "... because they want to go home."

An Zhe: "What about Huo Sen?"

If Anthony's infection was discovered in advance, Huo Sen might not have died.

"Don't take it to heart, Huo Sen's death was not unjust," Fan Si lit up a cigarette and took a deep puff, "He did a lot of immoral things and killed at least five people. If we were not short of manpower this time, Anthony and I would not cooperate with him. What was he doing at that time? Did he bully you?"

An Zhe did not speak, and Fan Si turned his head to look at him.

In the twilight, the boy's profile looked quiet and peaceful, like a crystal clear water drop. Such a person is now in the dangerous wilderness, and may have unspeakable difficulties, but he did not ask.

Similarly, An Zhe did not know what to say to Fan Si, he was thinking back to the scene before Huo Sen's death. At the beginning, Huo Sen seemed to have lost his mind temporarily, and did not wake up until he was stabbed.

What did Huo Sen do before that?

He took a bite of the mycelium.

An Zhe frowned. He actually didn't know whether he, as a mushroom, was poisonous or not.

Now he suspected that he was a poisonous mushroom.

As they went further, the vegetation became even sparser. There was nothing in the endless desert, except for their armored vehicle driving alone.

At night, when the aurora appeared in the sky again, Vance planned to stop the car and rest. He put out the cigarette on the steering wheel, opened the gate connecting the driver's room and the rest room, and jumped down. His voice rang in the dark rest room: "Sleep first, and then drive for another day and a half to reach the base."

An Zhe came to the gate. In order to have a wide view, the driver's room is located very high, and in order to save space for the storage cabin, the rest room is located lower, very low, and the height difference with the driver's room is more than one meter. He had to jump down.

He stood there and hesitated for a moment. After only three short seconds, Fan Si seemed to see his hesitation and said, "You sit there first."

An Zhe sat down on the edge as he was told, with his legs hanging in the air. Then, Fan Si reached out and grabbed his upper body and helped him down.

An Zhe landed safely and whispered, "Thank you."

"It's okay." Fan Si smiled, his voice full of slow tenderness: "My brother is afraid of heights, and he is always like this. He is about the same age as you."

An Zhe tried to figure out the rules of human communication and asked tentatively: "Did he come to the wild with you?"

"Yes." Fan Si said, "He always came together before."