The few new researchers were busy tormenting the test subject when the lights throughout the laboratory suddenly went out.
Everyone froze.
“W-What happened?”
“Did the power go out?”
Cold sweat began to bead on the new researchers’ foreheads. Memories of what had happened before surfaced in their minds, and they rose to their feet, visibly tense.
“Why did the power suddenly go out?”
“I don’t know...”
“Maybe a circuit breaker tripped. I’ll go check.”
“I’ll go too.”
They hurried to their feet, eager to leave the laboratory. The researcher who had gone too far was startled to see them scattering so quickly. “Hey, you’re leaving me here by myself?”
“W-Wait for me!”
Panicking, he scrambled up and rushed after them. But it was too dark to see anything, and he suddenly tripped over something and fell hard. By the time he recovered, the others had already left the laboratory, their footsteps fading into the distance. A rustling sound came from behind him, making the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. He didn’t even dare look at what he had tripped over and scrambled toward the exit on all fours.
After the last person had left, Tang Xiao waited another five minutes. When no one returned, he finally emerged from a hidden corner.
The laboratory was pitch-black, exactly as it had been when he first entered 428’s territory.
Honestly, if he had a choice, Tang Xiao would have turned around and left. But he knew that if he didn’t do something now, everything he had done before would have been for nothing.
Once his eyes adjusted to the darkness, Tang Xiao took a deep breath, saved his game, and stepped into the danger zone with every nerve drawn taut.
The moment he entered, something seized his ankle, yanked him to the ground, and dragged him deeper into the room.
“428!” Tang Xiao cried out, gripping his weapon tightly. But the next moment, he raised his head and met those countless orange-yellow eyes.
The mass of mycelium continued to gather and spread, rising and falling like a chest with every breath. Its orange-yellow vertical pupils stared fixedly at Tang Xiao, brimming with murderous fury. The mycelium, which had been gathered into a small clump, spread out in an instant until it nearly covered the entire room—completely at odds with the weakness 428 had displayed only moments ago.
Tang Xiao could even hear the bones in his ankle cracking beneath its grip.
And so, he understood almost immediately: it had been pretending to be weak. The reason... was probably to make those people lower their guard.
If that was true, then 428 was far more intelligent than anyone had imagined.
Of course, holding a grudge and taking it out on him was only natural.
“Listen to me! I’m not one of them!” Tang Xiao hurriedly called out. “Remember? We’re partners. I came to help you!”
As he spoke, he saw not the slightest flicker of hesitation in the monster’s eyes. Instead, the emotion in them gradually faded, returning to the same state as during the previous runs, when it had devoured him again and again.
This was bad.
A chill ran through Tang Xiao. He knew he was gradually losing the monster’s trust.
He had to do something to make up for it.
***
‘I’ll protect you. I’ll help you grow.’
Liar.
Looking at the conspicuous white lab coat Tang Xiao was wearing, 428 thought, How had it forgotten?
He was one of them too.
Those people in white lab coats had injected it with countless drugs, subjected it to all kinds of strange experiments, and repeatedly cut open its body with sharp scalpels.
But if that were all, it could still barely endure it. 428 had almost no pain receptors, and it had gradually grown accustomed to the suffering.
And beyond its instinctive desire to survive, the strongest longing engraved into 428’s genes was to evolve.
But it didn’t know how.
Only what the people in white coats described had ever come close to its idea of evolution. For that reason, it endured experiment after experiment. Yet the researchers who had once praised it as a masterpiece of the Creator, marveled at the uniqueness of its life form, and declared that it would become something new and great... were all gone.
In just a few months, their eyes had begun to grow shifty. They subjected it to more and more experiments, became increasingly irritable, and started cursing at it.
In the end, they abandoned it, labeling it a failure—a piece of trash, a useless thing.
It had thought he would be different.
When 428 first saw that unusual young man in the laboratory, some strange attraction had made it regard him as food, as prey. But in that dark kitchen, and later in that laboratory, the way the young man looked at it had been completely different from everyone else’s.
But now it seemed those words had been nothing more than lies.
He had only humored it to stay alive.
...He was just a liar.
The moment the young man stepped inside again, 428 stopped suppressing the longing buried deep within its soul. It wrapped its mycelium tightly around the young man’s ankle, just as it had when it first captured its prey, and dragged him toward its mouth.
The young man’s clothes became disheveled as he struggled, revealing a stretch of pale nape.
The mycelium was drawn to it almost instantly.
The neck was a weak point for nearly every mammal, something 428 had learned through countless hunts. Acting on instinct, it wrapped its mycelium around the young man’s throat.
Yet almost in the same instant, it felt the prey beneath it go rigid, then slowly relax.
“...All right.”
The captured prey stopped struggling.
Instead, he raised his eyes and looked at it helplessly with those dark, affectionate peach-blossom eyes.
“Eat me.”
What... was he saying?
The young man straightened and spread his arms. Under 428’s bewildered gaze, he willingly offered the hunter his most vulnerable spot.
“I know you’re uneasy.”
“In your eyes, I’m human too—one of the people who experimented on you.”
“I’m no different from them. I admit it. I want to see you evolve into your ultimate form too.”
“But there is one difference.”
“I will never give up on you.”
The young man gently stroked the monster’s blood-red mycelium with his palm and said softly, “I’m sorry I came so late.”
“To make it up to you...”
Tang Xiao tugged open his lab coat with his fingers, revealing the pale, sharply defined line of his collarbone beneath.
“You can devour me right here. Get stronger.”
“...”
At that moment, 428’s neurons sent out an error signal.
Unable to understand.
This was the first time prey had approached a hunter’s claws and teeth of its own accord and willingly offered its vulnerable neck.
The utterly inconceivable act threw 428’s immature mind into complete confusion. Its intelligence had only recently awakened; it was nowhere near capable of understanding a creature as complicated as a human.
With no resistance from its prey, devouring it should have been delightfully easy.
But for some reason, 428 felt an ache of emptiness inside.
N-No, that wasn’t right.
Don’t forget.
He was a liar.
The mycelium remained motionless for a long time, but at last it wrapped itself around the young man’s body.
Its soft strands carefully slipped past his delicate clothing and into the narrow space between fabric and skin, their tips piercing his pale flesh.
Tang Xiao’s expression didn’t change. He had already activated pain suppression. Since this wasn’t the fusion from the run with the monstrous tree, but rather a process of decomposition and devouring more like the first run, he didn’t even feel that horrifying itch.
If he had to describe it, it was a strange sensation of watching his own flesh turn gray before slowly shriveling away.
428’s devouring process resembled decomposition in nature, only accelerated to an extreme degree.
The experience people normally underwent only after death was something Tang Xiao had already gone through two or three times while still alive.
It was rather interesting.
He didn’t even bleed, because the mycelium was sucking at his blood vessels as well.
A faint scar remained from the time his wrist had been cut open. A few strands of mycelium rubbed against it with obvious fondness before slowly climbing toward his chest.
Just as the mycelium was about to pierce him, Tang Xiao reached up and caught it.
“Don’t rush into my organs or limbs,” Tang Xiao said quietly.
As the mycelium twitched in displeasure, he guided it downward toward his abdomen.
“This part is more nutritious. See? I’m not resisting. I’ll let you eat until you’re satisfied.”
And so, the mycelium was pacified, slowly sliding from his palm to the skin of his abdomen.
Putting a leash on a ferocious beast required an extraordinary amount of patience.
Give it food.
Give it warmth.
Let it vent its unease.
Only then could you seize it when it was at its most unguarded.
Tang Xiao’s gaze swept across 428’s mycelium, which grew increasingly vivid as it absorbed nutrients. Its magnificent color no longer looked anything like veins. It was more like a gemstone filled with flowing pure red, occasionally reflecting brilliant flashes of fire.
428’s original state resembled an animal, yet also a plant.
But perhaps it was only his imagination; Tang Xiao couldn’t shake the feeling that it was gradually becoming more human.
The suspended project materials he had looked up earlier flashed through Tang Xiao’s mind.
A flesh-and-blood factory that transcended the laws of biological evolution.
That was the secret of the most dangerous King of Fungi in the Fungal Kingdom.
That was also why there were so many bizarre creatures in the wild.
They were the King of Fungi’s handiwork.
Through some unknown method, It had accelerated the evolution of species, transforming even ordinary animals into monsters, then controlling them through fungal parasitism.
And now humans were attempting to master that secret.
Unfortunately... the project had failed long ago.
428 had never demonstrated the ability to freely select genes.
The King of Fungi’s spores could freely absorb the genes of plants or animals and incorporate them into themselves, but they couldn’t choose which genes to take.
That was precisely why 428 had grown into such a bizarre form.
Nor had it evolved the ability to control other fungi, something humans had dreamed of for a long time.
But now, things seemed different.
Because he was so close, Tang Xiao could even see that something resembling organs had genuinely begun to grow behind the mycelium.
On closer inspection, the number of orange-yellow eyeballs was gradually decreasing, while structures resembling vocal cords had appeared in the necklike area.
That was it.
It was evolving at an astonishing speed in an impossibly short period of time.
Tang Xiao had never imagined he would witness this process firsthand.
He could barely tear his eyes away.
His fascination with abnormal creatures, which he had thought had already cooled, flared back to life like embers suddenly reigniting.
He couldn’t help widening his eyes, watching this growth that defied the laws of nature unfold before him.
The fear in 428’s heart was gradually soothed by the warm flesh.
Its entire body felt languid, as though it were soaking in warm, damp, dark soil.
Its orange-yellow vertical pupils remained fixed on the young man’s dark eyes, only to discover that there was no fear in them at all—not even the sharpness from before.
Instead, they were filled with a strange fascination.
428 had occasionally seen that look in the researchers’ eyes, but never before had it made it feel so strangely at ease.
And yet the emptiness inside it wasn’t soothed.
Instead, within those dark eyes that seemed deep enough to drown it, that emptiness occupied more and more space.
For a moment, it even overwhelmed its instincts.
The movements of the mycelium became slower and slower.
Just then, a human voice suddenly came from outside.
“Huh? Where did those people go?”
The mycelium stopped moving.
428’s sluggish thoughts finally cleared for a moment, and it stared fixedly through the glass window.
The darkness couldn’t hinder its vision.
The little monster clearly saw a man in a white lab coat approaching from outside, heading straight toward this room.
There was no time.
428 instinctively looked at Tang Xiao, only to find that the young man showed no sign of struggling or calling for help.
He merely looked at it calmly, with even a hint of urging in his gaze.
“...”
Its reason prevailed.
It knew the man in the white coat would soon turn on the lights, and many more people would come.
If someone died here, it would quickly be dealt with.
More importantly, it couldn’t devour Tang Xiao here.
If it did, it might never see him again.
The mycelium slowly, reluctantly released its prey.
Tang Xiao lay on the floor with his head lowered, as though he hadn’t realized what was happening.
So the mycelium insistently wrapped around him and carried him toward the exit.
Only then did the young man react.
He took a tentative step forward.
Nothing stopped him.
Beneath Tang Xiao’s bangs, his eyes trembled, and an almost imperceptible smile appeared at the corner of his mouth.
In the darkness, he clutched his communicator tightly in his palm.
It was still on the text-message screen, with Rocky listed as the recipient.
It seemed he had won his gamble again.
Tang Xiao took another two steps, moving closer and closer to the exit.
But just as he was about to leave, he felt resistance behind him.
Mycelium had wrapped around his ankle.
Tang Xiao’s heart, which had only just settled, leapt again.
He turned around and saw that the terrifying mass of blood-red mycelium had taken on the faint outline of a human figure in the darkness.
The blood-red figure split open beneath the chin, revealing a mouth that had only just finished evolving.
It opened its mouth wide and kept moving it, like a mute attempting to use its vocal cords for the first time.
“Xi... xi... ao...”
“Xi... ao... Xiao.”
Xiao Xiao.
Tang Xiao’s pupils slowly contracted.
For the first time, an expression of surprise completely outside his calculations appeared on his face.
It was trying to call his name, struggling to use its voice for the very first time.
Earlier, when those people had bullied it, it had used its not-yet-fully-evolved throat too...
To call for help.