Chapter 169

It was getting colder and colder, but the gas in the air finally started to rise up. In the sunlight, those strange masses of air almost seemed invisible. The shade from the trees’ canopies was very thick, so the people shooting mortars shouldn’t be able to see us. Today was our last chance. If this happened again tonight, we would definitely die.

After gasping for breath for a while, I couldn’t help but sigh at the fact that the human body really was exquisite. I felt as if my lungs had been burned from the inside out, but I could still recover. With Kan Jian supporting me, we walked on.

It wasn’t long after that when we heard screams in the distance. The poisonous gas had risen to the place where they had been shooting mortars at us. Many things in the world were like this. If that guy had been magnanimous last night, then I would’ve definitely warned him of the danger. But now we were barely hanging on. I figured that they would be in an even more miserable state than us, so that meant that neither side had won.

At this time, Liu Sang said, “I heard that based on your previous temperament, you would inform those on the mountainside to watch out for the poisonous gas, even if they were trying to kill us.”

“That’s pure fiction. In real life, no matter what stage I’m at, I only care about my friends,” I said quietly. “Naïve doesn’t mean stupid.”

After walking for more than half an hour, the sky was bright and the sunlight penetrated through the canopies. It was exactly how I pictured a forest in Grimm’s Fairy Tales to look. Nature really was the best liar.

Baishe, who was exploring the road ahead, suddenly motioned to us. We stopped and waited for him to come back to us. “Royal poinciana,” he said.

Baishe’s eyesight was very good, so we picked up the binoculars and followed his direction until we saw the tree in front of us. Truthfully, from this distance, I couldn’t tell whether it was a royal poinciana or not. But I had to admit that Baishe’s skills went way beyond the standard.

As I looked through the binoculars for a long time, I figured out why Baishe could see so keenly. The situation under that tree was very special. The forest here was full of ferns that had green, centipede-like branches and broken leaves. They were mixed in with some thorny shrubs I couldn’t name—just thinking of how these things would scratch our festering skin made my heart hurt—but no matter what kind of vegetation, it all just looked like a mass of green from a distance. This forest was full of varying shades of green, but among the shrubs under the royal poinciana, there were many bright colors such as purple, blue, and yellow.

From a distance, the flowers on the bushes under the tree looked as if they had been painted, but when you looked carefully, you could see that they weren’t actually flowers.

As we approached, we gradually saw that they were all fungi. Most of them were only as big as the fingernail of a pinky finger, but there were a few of them that were bigger. The various kinds of fungi were open like umbrellas, but some of them weren’t. These umbrella-like fungi were at the base of the trees and hidden in the crevices of the stones under the bushes. There were countless numbers of them hidden in the crevices, and they all looked like abscesses of varying sizes. There was also a lot of colored moss that wasn’t green or yellow, but more of a dark blue.

When I looked up ahead, I noticed that the forest canopy suddenly became higher and denser, and less sunlight came through. We could see that the forest in the distance was surrounded by vines that were full of small yellow flowers and there were colorful fungi under each huge tree.

It was like this part of the forest was the dividing line between two worlds. We were in the outside world, while the world inside was dark and cold, but colorful.

What was even more amazing was that in the gap between the rocks and roots where these umbrella-like fungi grew, Liu Sang pushed aside the moss to reveal countless broken bones. I didn’t know if they were human or animal.

“Last night’s wind carried the spores of these fungi out from the depths of this forest.” Liu Sang and I said at the same time. We both looked at each other.

“How do we get in?” Kan Jian asked. “There are mushrooms all over the place.”

I shook my head. These colorful fungi were only a small part of the fungi in this forest. I could see countless umbrella-like fungi that looked similar to ear-shaped lingzhi (1) almost everywhere on the chapped bark of these trees. They were covered by a large number of ferns, which seemed to indicate that this part of the forest was very suitable for fungal growth. Liu Sang listened to the area around us and then pointed in a direction, “There’s a stream there.”

<Chapter 168><Table of Contents><Chapter 170>

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TN Notes:

(1) Lingzhi (aka Ganoderma lingzhi) is also known as reishi. It’s a polypore fungus that’s red-varnished and has a kidney-shaped cap. The peripherally inserted stem gives it a distinct fan-like (or ear-like) appearance. Here are a few pics: