Chapter 176

From Kraft's perspective, the body that had been hunched over the desk, seemingly identical to other fungal-parasitized shells, suddenly moved as the three approached to examine the decoy jewelry box.

It lifted its head, raised its upper body, and a thin red glow—like a blood smear—spread rapidly across the desk surface. The light source was something he recognized: a rough mineral stone fixed to a metal base, swinging against its chest, illuminating a face that should not have been capable of expression.

Its nostrils, nasal septum, and lips had been completely decomposed, yet the facial muscles twitched unnaturally without atrophy, their voids filled by fungal tissue.

It propped itself up with one hand—a simple motion revealing swollen muscles beneath scaly fungal layers, yet executed in a posture utterly unlike the other shells, and distinctly human.

Something never imagined occurred: while its kind retained only skeletons and minimal muscle for one-time movement, it possessed a fully functional respiratory system, drawing air into its chest cavity and expelling it in a high-speed spray of spore-laden mist tinged with hallucinogenic hues.

Kraft dragged Ma Ding and Kuop backward, but the weight of armor and two bodies severely slowed them; they could not match the speed of the spreading mist, and despite all their effort, failed to escape its encompassing range.

In the final second before losing consciousness, his mind echoed with the fading, burning pain along his airway—and that string of sounds resembling human speech.

【It is conscious】

…

…

Ma Ding felt his arms again—after roughly ten breaths.

It had been some time since he awoke, yet he made no movement, kept his eyes shut, striving to recall how he had ended up here.

There was no answer. His thoughts were a slurry of sensations: suffocation, falling, like hunting alone deep into the forest, the path behind swallowed by thick mist and fallen leaves, his mind wandering until he forgot what he had been chasing.

Judging by experience, he likely had fallen into a deep pit—long descent, yet the sensation of his arm beneath him remained.

He continued feigning sleep for a while, convinced he had not been captured by the pit's digger. As fine sensations returned, the rigid, uncomfortable pressure of his armor against his body reassured him—he was still protected, and his limbs felt unbound.

He quietly gathered strength, eyelids parting just a sliver, observing his surroundings.

A near-absent, thin light outlined swollen shapes—hard to determine if they were overlapping light patches or real entities. They filled his entire field of vision, so numerous they made the space feel cramped—neither brick, stone, or beams of a building, nor branches of forest trees.

Ma Ding rolled over, discovering the ground was unnaturally soft and slick, difficult to grip, covered in a thick layer of moss. Through his glove, he felt a vague, dense, velvety texture.

Like a blanket magnified many times over, yet far thicker—so thick he could not feel the surface beneath.

A completely alien sensation—he found nothing in his past experience to compare it to, especially since his instinct told him it was a living, plant-like growth.

This feeling did not exist in his prior understanding, deepening his sense of disorientation.

His eyes could not help but open fully, adjusting to the light; the ambiguous shapes grew clearer, revealing in the dimness rich colors previously hidden but impossible to ignore.

Not light reflections—they were solid objects filling the space. His hand, trying to sweep them away, actually touched contours that grew more distinct as his color vision returned—closer than he imagined. The cramped, unyielding pressure and the resilient texture under his fingers felt like falling into a giant cow's stomach, the floor beneath him brushed by cilia stirring digesta.

He scrambled to his feet, putting distance between himself and the "giant moss." These things brushed against his armor's seams, swaying slightly in rhythm.

At that moment, his eyes, fully adapted to the dim light, finally saw them clearly.

【Mushroom Solitaries】

Enormous mushroom solitaries, as large as mill wheels, sprouted from every crevice, obscuring the space's original form. The "moss" beneath his feet was a carpet of fungal caps, motionless without wind. The light came from arched windows half-obscured by protruding caps and hanging filaments—the only familiar structure in this bizarre place.

A stained-glass prayer window. The fog in his mind cleared slightly; memories poured down through this opening. Ma Ding realized where he was: the church, the striking box, the warning shouts beside him—and then… pulling, surging mist.

Matching the window's position, he deduced the exit direction and planned to leave the prayer chamber overrun by mushroom solitaries. Every moment here felt twisted and unnatural, eerily similar to the interior of that heretic's chest—except now, the building's organs were the ones stained.

The fungal carpet silenced footsteps, yet the clanking of his armor amplified in the profound silence. He instinctively paused, listening—unable to tell if his noise was absorbed by the towering fungi or carried to some distant, echoless place, heard by something growing in the dark.

But Ma Ding did not want to remove his armor; it was his most vital source of security here. He chose to move slowly, taking small steps that still produced noise, reaching the door, gripping the loose metal handle, and pushing gently.

The handle sank with the entire surrounding patch of rotting wood; a cup-shaped cluster of solitaries growing on the door's surface tumbled down. This disrupted a precarious balance—the flaking paint on the door's surface split and burst, the entire door collapsing before him, its fragments feeling like waterlogged, stale bread.

The debris and sound scattered together, revealing the church's main hall.

He had not returned to a normal building as he expected—the larger space gave the mushroom solitaries even more room to grow. They expanded without restraint: tall stalks lignified, gaining strength to support their immense weight. Caps opened like umbrellas, their surfaces hardening into dense, dark nodules resembling acorns on a canopy, while the increasingly dense carpet of fine Rong was the meadow of this fungal forest.

Even this alone would not have shaken his spirit, hardened by days of extraordinary encounters. What truly filled him with primal terror was the ribbon-like clearing in the center of this fungal forest—where massive solitaries had been crushed and shattered, leaving behind tracks on the torn carpet that defied any imaginable mode of locomotion.

They resembled the intertwined paths of enormous serpents, stretching from the open main entrance to the pulpit.

On that pulpit, amid the most luxuriant surviving fungal Rong, deep grooves marked the surface—as if licked by a long tongue studded with sharp teeth. Dark red, dried-blood-like residue splattered widely, obscuring the pulpit's original color.

The scene triggered a mental blank—he could not comprehend how an entire church had become this, nor what had created the crushed fungal paths. He stood frozen, then realized something worse than a room or church being overrun had occurred—and the dread, delayed as if from another life, finally arrived.

No longer caring about noise, Ma Ding turned and sprinted toward the prayer chamber's window, prying aside the fungal clusters to look outside. Colorful, shadowy outlines of mushroom solitaries covered every house and alley, towering over rooftops and treetops, thriving under a light that could not possibly be moonlight. The tallest, likely "mature" and hardened portions bore black-red mineral-like granules on their caps.

And the most terrifying thought was confirmed in the most direct way: a wild and flourishing world—limited entirely to mushroom solitaries.

Another light entered his vision—coming from the vast fungal caps outside the village, replacing the forest. Their mineral-like nodules flared in patches, emitting distant, hazy red light; some dimmed as neighbors ignited, the entire glow moving toward the church. Sounds reached him even at this distance.

This light triggered a memory—he had seen these before. Roughly polished and mounted on metal bases, hung on the heretic's chest. When they lit up, it meant only one thing.

【The Angel Approaches】

Ma Ding felt he should draw his weapon, or at least run—but his body and mind reacted not at all. The fragile, uncertain faith and hollow honor that had sustained him now seemed to have sprouted their first fungal spot—or perhaps the Church's descriptions had never been real, and those who died for it would not ascend to any heavenly realm.

In contrast, what the "Orthodoxy" had shown was far more convincing. He had walked the path of the chosen, guided by some force toward pilgrimage, witnessed unimaginable "miracles," and entered another world—where their angels were approaching the beholder. But the true other world and its angels were not beautiful.

It was a fear beyond death: all consolations about death proven lies, death itself possibly not an end to suffering. The collapse of faith, the terror without even a defined object, nearly erupted as hysterical screams. He no longer cared about concealment—there was no escape from such unknowns.

A hand reached from behind, clamping hard over his mouth, forcing him down to the ground, away from the window.

"I remember I told you yesterday not to shout, to find a quiet hiding spot," a whisper came at his ear—Ma Ding recognized Kraft's voice. "I knew no one would remember."

"But this is too much. Wandering around in full armor, knocking down a door—wait another minute and I'd have caught you singing opera with that thing?"

The rapid shift left Ma Ding stunned; he mechanically repeated the words that terrified him, unconsciously shifting the heretic's term: "Orthodoxy… the Angel…"

"Forget the angel. Good thing too—if not for this, I wouldn't have found you. Now hurry and take off this damn armor." Kraft glanced out the window; Ma Ding couldn't see his face, but his voice carried no panic—this calm seemed to spread through sound.

Seeing Ma Ding's sluggish response, he personally began unfastening the armor. Fortunately, he had worn his grandfather's armor before; the design hadn't fundamentally changed in decades—or else he'd be staring helplessly at a metal canister on the floor.

"And then?" asked the knight, like a crab stripped of its shell, unable to comprehend what could possibly be done against another world and "angels."

"Then we figure out what this 'angel' really is, find my squire, and get back." As he spoke, the knee guards were already removed; Kraft turned to the arm guards. "Don't ask me how. If you want to drink honey beer again, move."

A hope—or a command—moved his numb body to join the disassembly. It didn't solve the core problem, but gave a temporary goal—and that was exactly what was needed.

"Good. Next, we go upstairs."

"Why?"

"Because I've already searched below." Before leaving, Kraft pressed against the window ledge, observing the glowing red mist one last time—it had reached the village's edge, its source hidden beneath layers.

Must admit: these mushroom solitaries were terrifyingly vigorous—but they also offered great advantages.

No need to fear footsteps; the ubiquitous velvety fungal carpet allowed bolder movement, as long as one avoided swollen wooden objects—most already collapsed under their own weight, a few like the door Ma Ding tried to open, crumbling at the slightest touch.

Their route followed their earlier search pattern. Kraft even casually picked up a net of oil jars from beside a hall pillar. Ma Ding couldn't fathom why such items existed here—or how Kraft knew they'd be there—until they found Kuop silently crouched behind a door upstairs, hammer in hand, as if waiting for ages. He finally confirmed: these master and servant had prior experience.

"And now?"

"Now, we go to the study." With clear purpose, Kraft headed straight for the study. If any location held the epicenter of this disaster, the deepest point corresponding to the body that had lifted its torso—apparently possessing sentience—was the prime suspect.

His instinct proved likely correct: as they neared, the corridor's mushroom solitaries grew denser, nearly blocking all passage, forcing them to squeeze through gaps between colossal fungi.

When they arrived, flickering red light from the village houses now reached the window ledge, rippling across the ceiling draped with hanging mycelium.

Unlike the empty desk in the real world, this one bore repeated, layered scratches from cleaning away fungal growth, and several scattered manuscripts—paper and handwriting strikingly familiar.

This time, Kraft carefully observed the surroundings—no lurking figures—and gently lifted the few manuscripts, poorly preserved but far better than those outside.

Their paper matched the one Jiazaishengdianlide, bearing the same torn edge—clearly ripped violently from a book. The handwriting flowed in connected strokes, likely from a personal journal, with irregular paragraph breaks. Slight variations in letter width and height suggested multiple writing sessions, not one continuous entry.

【A Research Draft】

It detailed how the author repeatedly dreamed of falling asleep in his room, sensing a strange "attention." Driven by curiosity, he deemed this recurring phenomenon a pattern worth studying, and began recording it.

Most entries afterward described daily dreams, gradually becoming more detailed and lengthy—from single sentences to paragraphs, eventually establishing evaluation criteria: time, dream self-awareness, awakening time.

He also sought others with similar experiences, to prove it wasn't a personal mental breakdown. Results were poor: either their cases didn't match, or they faked it to collect his payment. He finally found a suspected case from another city—only for correspondence to mysteriously cease.

He invited friends to stay overnight—but none reported similar symptoms.

The record continued. On the second page onward, a startling new evaluation criterion appeared at the end.

【Brightness】

White light—the white light illuminating the dark dreams.