Chapter 1
At dawn, sunlight fell softly over the waking city. In the downtown urban village, hardworking small-business owners were already setting up their breakfast stalls. Nine-to-five office workers streamed out of their apartment buildings, grabbing fried dough sticks and buns from roadside vendors on their way to the subway.
As soon as the fried dough hit the hot oil, it sizzled, bringing the bustle of everyday life to the morning.
In a rented apartment in one of the residential buildings, a phone woke Tang Xiao, who had only just fallen asleep after staying up half the night.
Tang Xiao lifted his head groggily and looked at the phone beside him. The caller ID read Little Li. It was a video call, too.
A slender, long-fingered hand swiped across the screen, and a handsome face he’d known since childhood appeared.
“Those dark circles are awful. Did you stay up late again last night?”
“Mm. Double gifts last night.” Tang Xiao yawned. His dark circles were bad enough to qualify him as a national treasure.
Li Mu clicked his tongue on the other end of the call. “Your roommate said you skipped class yesterday?”
While opening a game, Tang Xiao replied in the hoarse voice of someone who’d stayed up too late, “Are you really that bored, with time to keep tabs on me?”
“A little. The project at the lab I’m working at failed recently, and the boss is in a foul mood. Luckily, we got some unexpected results during the experiment, so we’ve switched to working in that direction... Wait! You still haven’t answered me!” Li Mu had barely avoided being sidetracked.
Tang Xiao switched the phone to his other hand. “Don’t worry. I know what I’m doing. Besides, I’m not counting on this major to make a living. I just need to graduate.”
“Yeah, I guess. If things really don’t work out, you can always go work at your family’s company...” Li Mu muttered on the other end. Seeing that Tang Xiao had made up his mind, he couldn’t be bothered to say more. His childhood friend wasn’t exactly going to starve. “If you really want to be a gaming streamer, you should try a game that’s been huge lately. It’s incredibly difficult, and even a lot of professional players have failed. If you can beat it, you might become famous overnight.”
At the mention of a difficult game, Tang Xiao grew interested. “What’s it called?”
“Fungal Era.”
Tang Xiao closed the game he’d just opened and checked his inbox. It was full of spam, but one email caught his eye at once.
Fungal Era invites you to join the closed beta.
“They really did send it,” Tang Xiao muttered as he began searching online for information about Fungal Era.
Strangely, although the game had sparked widespread discussion online, very few videos or images had surfaced. After searching for a while, Tang Xiao found only some basic information. Supposedly, the game took place in a world overrun by fungi, where humanity struggled to survive in scattered survivor bases.
Suddenly, Tang Xiao’s hand froze on the mouse. His finger stopped just before scrolling past.
It was a rare image that had made its way online. In it was a strange, blood-red little thing.
A red life-form about the size of a dinner plate.
Yes, a life-form. Some people even questioned whether it could be called an animal, because it had no normal fur or skin. It was obvious at a glance that it could not have come from nature. What could be seen with the naked eye resembled muscle fibers, gathered into an irregular ball. As the fibers pulsed, several hidden eyeballs were exposed, staring toward the camera with an evil, ferocious gaze.
With just one glance, Tang Xiao was bewitched by the strange life-form.
He had unusual taste. Fluffy things that most people adored held little appeal for him. Instead, he liked creatures that ordinary people found terrifying, like newborn aye-ayes and star-nosed moles.
He was fascinated by their absurd, otherworldly beauty—something beyond human imagination.
His phone’s photo album was mostly filled with high-definition pictures of Lovecraftian creatures. When he’d filled out his college applications, he’d inexplicably put biology as his third choice, because deep down he’d wanted to seek out the eerie creatures that might—or might not—exist on Earth.
Of course, once he was actually assigned to the major, he learned that real biology was nothing like what he’d imagined. The various monsters in games, on the other hand, were much more to his taste.
After staring at the picture for five minutes, Tang Xiao slowly let out a breath and tapped Save.
He was already looking forward to the game.
...
Three days later, the full-dive helmet arrived.
Tang Xiao immediately put it on and started the game.
The login screen was fairly unremarkable, a futuristic shade of tech blue. There was no character creation and no class selection, only a disclaimer.
“This game is currently in closed beta. If you experience any discomfort while playing, please exit the game immediately. There is currently no respawn function, so proceed with caution.”
“Please treat this world as your second life.”
That was an interesting disclaimer.
Tang Xiao hadn’t spent the three days waiting for his game helmet doing nothing. He’d looked up all sorts of guides and information online. Supposedly, the game was monitored entirely by AI and wasn’t restricted to any established style of play. It was essentially a completely free and realistic sandbox game, and even each player’s main quest was different.
Most importantly, the game was hard. Extremely hard. According to complaints from players, there was no respawn mechanic at all. If you died, you were dead. Some people were even killed by monsters as soon as they entered the game, without knowing what had happened.
A high-difficulty game. It had undoubtedly piqued Tang Xiao’s interest.
His lips curled beneath the helmet. He tapped the button confirming he’d read the disclaimer and started the game without hesitation.
“May you survive in safety, and enjoy the game.”
A cold, mechanical voice sounded in his ear. Tang Xiao opened his eyes in the darkness...
“Hurry up. Take off your clothes.”
Was it going to get intense right from the start?
Tang Xiao looked around and found himself in a room decorated in cool tones, something like a changing room or a disinfection chamber.
“Take off your clothes and disinfect yourselves.” There was another person in the chamber, wearing a white lab coat like a researcher, with a badge pinned to their chest. They glanced coldly at Tang Xiao, who still hadn’t moved. “Are newcomers this useless these days? How did someone so dazed even get picked?”
[Ferdinand Babbit, Researcher for the Third Eye Organization]
Tang Xiao’s mouth twitched. He had no choice but to follow everyone else’s lead, disinfect his hands, take off his jacket, and put on the lab coat that had been prepared for him.
Once everyone had finished disinfecting themselves, the guards left. Babbit led them toward the corridor outside, explaining the situation along the way:
“You’re fortunate to have been selected by the Third Eye to work as experimental assistants. There are many rules in the laboratory...”
Tang Xiao listened for a while and finally gathered some information.
The character he was playing was a low-level employee who had just joined this research institute—a future lab drone.
The Third Eye, meanwhile, was a notorious evil research organization in the game, a gathering place for mad scientists who specialized in all sorts of biological weapons.
Who would’ve thought he’d be dropped right into the boss’s lair as soon as he logged in? What was this, hell mode from the very beginning?
It looked like the main quest would take place in this research institute. What was it? Destroy the institute? Or go undercover?
As Tang Xiao wondered how to trigger the main quest, Babbit had led the group into the laboratory’s central area. A sly smile crossed his face. “You’re lucky. You’ll get to see this before it’s disposed of.”
“Take a good look, newcomers. This is one of the experimental subjects in the Third Eye’s main research project. If this project succeeds, the whole world will tremble beneath His might.”
Everyone looked up curiously. Tang Xiao did, too, gazing into the area enclosed by bulletproof glass.
At first glance, his pupils contracted. The game’s real-time monitor showed his heart rate rising.
It was even more to his taste than he’d imagined.
A photograph and seeing something with your own eyes were ultimately two different things.
The little blood-red monster slowly writhed on the other side of the laboratory’s bulletproof glass, leaving behind sticky strands as it moved. Only when he saw it with his own eyes did Tang Xiao realize that those fibers weren’t muscle at all, but threadlike strands resembling fungal hyphae.
Like delicate blood vessels, they had peeled away from the inside of its body and skin, exposed separately to the air. Between the clumps of hyphae, orange-yellow vertical pupils could just barely be seen. Like a Newtonian fluid, they could appear on any side of its irregularly shaped body.
Bizarre and uncanny.
Fungus? Animal? Plant? It was impossible to say. It seemed to share the traits of all three, yet was entirely different. It completely contradicted everything he’d learned about biology. None of the existing biological classifications could contain it; it seemed to exist entirely outside the realm of science.
There was even a fear that seemed to rise from deep within their genes, screaming at them to stay away. Everyone’s expression changed, as if they’d encountered a natural enemy higher up the food chain.
Tang Xiao’s expression changed, too. A flush crept across his cheeks, and the muscles around his eyes twitched involuntarily. Reason and madness pulled at each other: reason told him to get away, while madness clamored for him to move closer.
To take a better look... at this beautiful monster.
Tang Xiao took an unconscious step forward, standing out from among the newcomers. He didn’t even notice the ventilation system working slowly overhead.
The airflow shifted at that very moment.
The monster paused for two seconds.
To everyone’s astonishment, the plate-sized thing shot from the corner of the laboratory and slammed into the bulletproof glass almost instantly.
Several newcomers standing nearby jumped in fright, nearly crashing into the lab tables behind them. Tang Xiao also snapped out of his entranced state. On the transparent glass wall, the mass of blood-red fibers writhed. The eyeballs pressed against the glass and rolled around as the creature sniffed like a wolf that had caught the scent of meat, using olfactory receptors—if it had any—to detect every scent molecule in the air.
The hairs on the back of Tang Xiao’s neck stood up. His heart rate spiked, nearly triggering a warning from the game.
What was it... smelling?
Tang Xiao unconsciously retreated into the crowd. The newcomers around him whispered among themselves, but he couldn’t feel the slightest bit of safety.
Because that strange orange-yellow vertical pupil was staring straight in his direction.
Tang Xiao’s palms began to sweat. For some reason, when he met the blood-red monster’s gaze, his whole body nearly broke out in goosebumps. The single eye held an intense emotion that any human could easily understand—so evil and ferocious that Tang Xiao’s heart sank lower and lower.
It was an overwhelming... greed and hunger.
At that moment, even though the monster was locked inside the laboratory, Tang Xiao didn’t feel safe at all. Instead, he felt as if he were the prey trapped in a cage, about to be cleaned, plated, and served as the monster’s dinner.
Everyone present was breathing heavily with fright. The blond man asked curiously, “Dr. Babbit, is this bulletproof glass sturdy? Can you see out from inside?”
“No, you can’t,” Babbit said gravely. “Don’t worry. This entire experimental area is made of the strongest materials. Even the vents are made of PESA material... There’s no way it can smell us.”
“PESA material...” The blond man relaxed at those words.
Babbit strode over to the control panel and pressed a button. A powerful electric current suddenly surged through the inner pane of glass. The monster clinging to the wall was instantly burned by the heat and pulled away from it.
“It’s always been half-dead. I don’t know why it’s so excited today. All right, don’t worry. 428 can’t break out of this cage. It’s just a failed specimen. They’ll dispose of it in a few days.”
[Main Quest Unlocked]
As Tang Xiao’s gaze met the eyeballs across the room, a game panel suddenly appeared.
[Main Quest: Raise 428 to become the King of Fungi and max out 428’s affection.
Reward: Title: “Keeper of the King of Fungi” (Note: Holding this title grants partial control over fungal creatures)]
Tang Xiao froze. What was this? Who was 428? This monster?
Wait, was this some kind of dating game? And the romance target wasn’t even human? Had the gaming world really gotten this wild?
“You said it was a failed specimen? Isn’t it part of the main research project?”
Just as Tang Xiao was reeling from the sudden main quest, the blond man from before asked another question.
“I said if. Unfortunately, the experiment has failed. We’ve wasted too much time, and the higher-ups have run out of patience. This experimental subject will be disposed of, too.” Babbit didn’t look particularly regretful as he spoke. “When I said ‘main project,’ I meant the shared goal of this research institute. There are plenty of related laboratories. This is just one of them. But that’s not something you need to worry about. We don’t know which laboratory you’ll be assigned to yet.”
Hearing that, the others immediately relaxed. No one wanted to waste their lives in a laboratory that was bound to be shut down. They still dreamed of getting promoted and earning a raise.
Tang Xiao, however, furrowed his brow. Dispose of it? What would happen to his quest if they did?
But he didn’t have time to think about it. After this little interruption, Babbit no longer wanted to stay there. He led the newcomers elsewhere. “Come on. I’ll show you the other areas.”
The others eagerly followed Babbit out. Tang Xiao brought up the rear. A strange tugging sensation made him look back at the last moment before the door closed.
The monster, its blood-red hyphae clumped together, was lifting most of its body off the cold floor. Its orange-yellow eye had been scorched black from pressing too close to the glass. The eyeball had sunk into the fibers, but the tips still writhed in the air, inching toward the doorway—toward the place where Tang Xiao stood.
Tang Xiao felt a faint tingling at the back of his head. He hurriedly turned around and caught up with the group.
And so he missed the blood-red monster slowly crawling up into the ventilation duct after everyone had left.
The material sealing the joint, which should have been incredibly sturdy, began to slowly dissolve under the acidic substance released by the monster.