CHAPTER 261: THE GREAT MUSHROOM

"What do you think you're doing? You dare defy the Crimson Clan? The Ancestral Spirit shall smite you! You'll become the very sustenance for its growth!"

Wang Yu broke the elder's limbs and bound him tightly with shackles forged with rocks. Squatting beside him, Wang Yu used the Perfect Fractal over his eye to scrutinize the elder's decaying form.

"How are you still moving in this state? Is this some curse laid upon your kind by your Ancestral Spirit—something that mutated you?"

Light flickered in Wang Yu's field of vision, conjuring streams of data: the structural integrity of the elder's rotting flesh, whether it could support movement, and details of the paralyzing venomous mist and poison he'd used earlier—spells that had clung to the elder's body but failed to take effect.

The poison hadn't been expended—meaning it hadn't even found a target. The elder's nerves and musculature were wholly different from those of a normal human being.

"This is a blessing granted to us by the Ancestral Spirit, you damned outsider! I will not allow you to defile the name of our great Ancestral Spirit! You shall be nothing but fodder—nourishment for its rebirth!"

Despite the rhetorical question, the elder snarled back with unwavering zealotry, his fury palpable at Wang Yu's suggestion that his grotesque condition was some form of aberration.

Wang Yu rubbed his chin thoughtfully. Was this old man truly deluded, or just playing dumb? Did he not realize his life now dangled by a thread? No—perhaps the rot had eaten into his brain as well. That would explain the fanaticism.

"Take me to your Ancestral Spirit," Wang Yu said suddenly. "I wish to become its nourishment."

He wanted to see just how far gone the elder's mind really was.

"Very good. I will take you at once to return to the embrace of our great Ancestral Spirit. That way—the Crimson Clan dwells yonder."

The masked elder agreed without hesitation, confirming Wang Yu's suspicion that he was quite mad. Rotating the only joint Wang Yu had not dislocated, his neck, he pointed in a certain direction.

"Is he luring me into a trap? Or has he genuinely turned into a fool..."

Wang Yu narrowed his eyes. The elder's ready compliance didn't set him at ease.

Fingering the rune-engraved mana stone in his pocket, Wang Yu decided it was worth investigating. After all, he and Avia had already prepared a contingency—an emergency Gate of Phases formation of the highest priority, ready to pull them instantly to the outskirts of the Sorensen Mountains.

"Let's go."

He lifted up the elder and began walking in the indicated direction. Avia, still hidden by her invisibility spell, followed behind with the elven ranger Sif, both shadowing Wang Yu at a safe distance.

"This guy really is immune to nerve- and muscle-targeting poisons," Wang Yu thought, again noting the elder's unflinching silence. "His body's already in tatters, so vital points barely matter anymore. I suppose that is a kind of blessing... albeit a grotesque one."

There was something distinctly unnatural about the elder. Even with all his limbs broken, he showed no pain—no reaction whatsoever.

Just to be sure, Wang Yu broke a shard from his starsteel blade and sliced it lightly across the elder's back.

The razor edge parted ruined flesh with disturbing ease, revealing deeper layers within.

The elder continued to mutter incoherently, seemingly unaware his back had been sliced open.

Beneath the rotted skin and sinew, beneath the yellowed bones, Wang Yu discovered something... strange.

Delicate white filaments had taken root in the tissues—trembling, twitching tendrils that crawled across muscle and organ alike. Though fine, their sheer numbers gave them the appearance of a dense web, resilient, knotted, and alive.

These tendrils pervaded the elder's entire body. It was as though the spaces between his flesh had been deliberately left empty to allow for this alien growth.

"So this is what replaced his nervous system... That's why he can still move—and why the venom didn't affect him."

Wang Yu muttered to himself, staring at the pale, fibrous mass sprouting within the elder's body like fur.

"Hm?"

His Perfect Fractal continued its analysis. What it displayed caused Wang Yu to pause.

"Fibrous... alive... and other organic traces—wait, this is... a fungus?"

Cross-referencing the lens's display with what little Earth biology he remembered, Wang Yu judged that these white fibers were fungal mycelia—magically altered and brimming with arcane energy.

The elder's external decay was likely a consequence of these invasive threads. His movements were orchestrated by the mycelium animating his corpse.

He may once have been human—but now, Wang Yu realized, he was something else. A mushroom man...

"So this ‘Ancestral Spirit'... what the hell is it? Some kind of colossal mushroom? Is that why they worship it?"

Wang Yu found the notion equal parts absurd and unsettling. What kind of deity "blessed" its followers by turning them into mushroom zombies?

"Wang Yu," came Sif's voice through the wind, "the forest ahead is... strange. There's plenty of life force, but almost no plant life whatsoever."

Wang Yu's sharp vision scoured the dense woodland—and there it was: a carpet of white, clinging to the forest floor like the filaments he'd seen inside the elder.

"Fungal mats... But we've seen no trace of corruption in the Sorensen Mountains—where are all these bizarre lifeforms coming from?"

Wang Yu slowed. The thick fungal web blanketing the forest floor raised his guard.

"Hurry!" the elder snapped. "Did you not say you wished to be fed to the Ancestral Spirit? Why do you hesitate? Go on! Our clan's sacred ground lies just ahead!"

Wang Yu ignored him. Avia had leapt silently onto his back, her invisibility protecting her from the mycelium. Sif, ever nimble, moved among the branches overhead.

His boots pressed into the spongy ground. The fungal growth was dense and springy.

The grass and underbrush had vanished, overtaken by the white web, which absorbed all nutrients in the forest for itself. Even the trees bore signs of infection—fungal strands wrapped around their roots, piercing their trunks and draining their strength.

Though tall, these trees looked sickly—completely devoid of the wild, vigorous energy found in the outer woods.

"A tree farm?"

The idea surfaced unbidden in Wang Yu's mind. It was almost like a plantation. The fungi cultivated the trees, allowed them to draw from the soil, only to harvest their strength.

This forest, Wang Yu realized, was a farm. The trees were crops.

Oddly, the mycelium did not react to his presence. It neither snared him nor dragged him down—perhaps because he carried the muttering elder like an offering.

"Oh great Ancestral Spirit," the elder intoned, "I return bearing sustenance! May you feast and grow, ever expanding your reach through famine and hunger!"

His devotion was fervent, obsessive, as though he could not wait to see Wang Yu devoured alive.

"Wang Yu," came Avia's whisper beside his ear, "something is saturating this forest with mental energy. It's not especially strong, but it's overwhelmingly vast. It blankets the entire area."

"Mental energy?"

Wang Yu frowned. He activated the Chariot's power as he stepped lightly over the mycelium, heightening his awareness. His mind reached out, alert for any sign of danger.

"There's something up ahead."

He paused. The Chariot had detected presences among the trees, shapes now emerging from the gloom. Like the elder, their flesh was torn and rotting. Red sinew glistened beneath gaping lesions.

"Brothers and sisters of the Crimson Clan! I bring offerings for our beloved Ancestral Spirit!"

The elder called out to the others before Wang Yu could even make out the figures fully, announcing his "cargo" with gleeful urgency.

As they stepped closer and Wang Yu saw them more clearly, he found that they were indeed "mushroom folk."

Like the elder, each wore a mask. Some bore human features; others were orcs, still others dark elves. But all were the same in one respect: their bodies were ruptured and festering. From every wound, white tendrils spilled forth, twisting upward to form a variety of grotesque, distinct fungal caps.

These fungal growths gave them a different air from the old man who had greeted them. Though he had called these creatures his "kin of the Crimson Clan," they resembled mushroom folk far more than he did.

"..."

These figures did not respond to the elder's rambling. Behind expressionless masks, they silently observed Wang Yu and his companions and their incessantly chattering guide. They watched them continue deeper into the Crimson Clan's territory—toward the resting place of their so-called ancestral spirit.

"They're already dead," Wang Yu said quietly. "That outer shell is just a husk. The real master is what's inside—the mycelium."

The truth had become evident the moment Wang Yu extended the power of the Chariot through one of their bodies.

Like his ripples, the Chariot could not penetrate living bodies; it could only sense the essence of non-living matter. The fact it passed through these husks unimpeded told him all he needed to know: the bodies were corpses, and the mycelium within was in control.

"No wonder that old man's mind is rotting—he's more than halfway gone already. Soon, he'll be nothing but a fungal puppet, a shell of flesh animated by threads."

The deeper they ventured, the more of the masked mushroom folk they encountered—stationed between trees, their bodies rotting and slack, yet filled with writhing life beneath the surface. They watched, motionless, with eyes that were no longer their own.

"Collective consciousness," Avia's voice murmured in Wang Yu's ear. "Their movements are too synchronized. It's not many minds—it's one. They're all extensions of the same will, the ‘ancestral spirit' they speak of, whose mental energy cloaks this entire forest."

Wang Yu nodded, his gaze narrowing. Each fungal being turned its head at precisely the same speed, in exactly the same manner, as if they had been copied and pasted. One mind, many vessels.

"Sentient fungi, born of a massive fungal network?" he murmured. "Fascinating. No wonder their ancestral spirit could reach us. Its awareness spans the entire forest."

They pressed forward until something vast loomed into view.

It was a mushroom: colossal, towering over ten meters high, with a thick stem over three meters in radius. From its cap, a fine powder fell like drifting ash—spores, red and white in color, warning of danger even to the untrained eye.

"Oh, great Ancestral Spirit! Accept this nourishment! Let it be my honor to offer you sustenance!"

The old man fell to his knees, shouting with crazed reverence. To him, the privilege of feeding the ancestral spirit was the highest of honors.

"...Well, I'll be damned," Wang Yu muttered. "The bastard really is just a giant mushroom."

He had joked about the possibility earlier. Now, standing before this titanic fungus, he realized he'd been right.

Most ancestral spirits were either great beasts or ancient trees. This thing, like a cross between plant and beast, was something entirely novel to Wang Yu, Avia, and Sif.

"There's a mental signal trying to reach you coming from that mushroom," said Avia. "I'll use Perfect Fractal to translate its thoughts into text and project them to your vision."

Wang Yu ignored the old man's ecstatic babbling and flung him aside, sending him sprawling onto the white fungal carpet. He focused instead on Avia and nodded.

It wasn't that he couldn't receive psychic messages without Roland's key—rather, the signal was too faint, too garbled.

Unless someone screamed in his ear, like the Lady of the Night had done, it was all a blur of whispers and static. Anything softer than that was like the buzz of mosquitoes.

"Being of great vitality, join our Crimson Clan."

The ancestral spirit's message bloomed into his vision—words, not sound, thanks to Avia's spell.

"Why would I join your clan? What would make me do so?" Wang Yu answered aloud, his voice firm.

"It is the only way to survive the coming famine. That is why the others joined."

So it could hear him, then—and its responses continued to appear in text.

"Famine?" Wang Yu caught the word immediately. His instincts stirred. This was tied to the corruption. He was sure of it.

"Join our clan, and you will survive the famine."

"What is the famine?" he repeated.

"Become one with us, and you will endure the famine."

"...Great," Wang Yu muttered. "It can think, but it's also an idiot. Either that, or it has a one-track mind. It can't even define its own damn apocalypse."

He raised an eyebrow and sighed. There was no use pursuing that line of questioning.

"And how would I join your clan?"

"Consume this."

The giant mushroom shifted. Something fell from its underside and landed at Wang Yu's feet—a round, palm-sized sphere covered in tiny, tightly-packed pores. Mycelium tendrils wriggled in and out of the holes in a nauseating rhythm. This was... a living spore.

"If I eat this, I'll end up like the rest—dead on the outside and a puppet inside."

Wang Yu didn't touch the grotesque thing.

"They merely chose, of their own will, to become one with me."

The mushroom responded instantly. It seemed incapable of understanding just how horrifying its words were.

"You sound just like that lunatic—the Font of Life, Erphine. If he's a deity that governs life, what are you? A deity of mushrooms?"

"Not death. Unity."

The mushroom didn't understand him; it was just repeating itself.

"I refuse," Wang Yu said flatly. "I will not join your clan."

"You do not have the right to refuse."

The mushroom's words appeared cold and emotionless, but Wang Yu could feel the fury behind them.

The giant mushroom began to tremble. Spores burst into the air in clouds, drifting toward him. The white fungal carpet at his feet writhed and surged, tendrils slithering up his legs.

In the distance, the mushroom folk stirred. Their twisted bodies broke into a clumsy, unnatural charge. The elder, oblivious to the danger, shouted with joy—his god was moving, and to him that was everything.

Flames erupted. Wang Yu's expression didn't shift. His right palm burst into ghostly green fire—Cursed Fire, scorching and spectral.

On his shoulder, Avia manifested a sphere of radiant flame, Blazing Radiance.

If he had learned anything from all the fighting he had done, it was this: hairy beings feared fire, and large beings feared tight spaces.