Chapter 1586: Chapter 1586: The Price of Symbiosis

The place where they got off was in a dense forest, the overly lush vegetation and mushrooms visible everywhere occupied most of the view, and from any angle, it was impossible to tell whether there had ever been human activity here, though there were some traces left by wild beasts,

Looking up towards the sky from the ground, trees over a hundred meters high were everywhere, and besides the lush branches and hanging vines, there were also some floating things in the air that looked like insect eggs, which seemed to be some kind of fungi, but it was hard to say exactly which kind.

Just in this short moment, when Xu Huo lowered his head again, he found a layer of greenish stuff attached to his protective suit, which at first glance looked like a bunch of bristles, but on closer inspection, those “bristles” were alive, wriggling like worms, with only one end attached to his suit.

“This is a kind of fungus, don’t worry about it,” Chi Xian reminded him beside him, while fanning the green bristles on his own mask, “Just clean it off occasionally, otherwise, if it grows too much, it will affect your vision.”

The other seven had already gone ahead, and the forest was silent. Xu Huo asked Chi Xian, “What do you think?”

“My goal is to find fungi, so naturally, I need to go where fungi are most abundant.” Chi Xian took out his tool, a transparent glass box in which floated a jellyfish-like thing, “This is a fungus-eating creature that can detect the concentration of living fungi, I’ll just follow it.”

As he spoke, he pointed the glass box forward, and the floating jellyfish gently moved inside.

“Want to come along?” He invited Xu Huo, “Anyway, I doubt there’s any instance in this place, why not give me a hand, and we’ll split anything good we find.”

Xu Huo did not refuse, and as he walked in the direction the jellyfish floated, he said, “What good stuff can there be here, it’s all fungi, and half of them are poisonous.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Chi Xian said, “Poisons aren’t something we use every day, but many zones have people who specifically collect these things, and the prices are not cheap, the rarer and stranger the items, the more valuable they are.”

“Didn’t they say these fungi hardly reproduce in other zones?” Xu Huo brushed aside the leaves in front of him.

“Poisons don’t have to be abundant, some people just want a poison with no antidote, and one dose is enough.” Chi Xian wiped his mask again, “Especially evolved fungi are troublesome because they can reproduce in the human body, and it’s hard to eradicate them all at once.”

“Quite a few infamous assassination events involved mutated fungi.”

“So, you’re saying that extremely poisonous mutated fungi are virtually unbeatable.” Xu Huo followed up on his words.

“It’s a matter of luck.” Chi Xian paused to check his direction and continued, “But as long as it’s not in an environment like Zone 013, even if someone took mutated fungi outside, it’s not hard to deal with them, just sacrifice a few people and cut off the infection source.”

Facing as many as hundreds of thousands of fungi, it’s impossible for anyone to manufacture corresponding potions based on their characteristics; the most economical way is to keep them confined in their original place, preventing them from spreading to other zones.

“Everything in the world has its counter, maybe you can find useful fungi or other species around the poisonous fungi.” Xu Huo suggested.

“Many people have tried the method you mentioned,” Chi Xian stopped in front of a tree covered with yellow fuzz, broke off a branch from the side, and shook out some fungi by waving it, and then made a small hole in the tree trunk, “See what’s inside.”

“Another kind of fungus.” Xu Huo glanced at it. The tree’s bark had been completely corroded, and beneath the yellow fuzz was a layer of blue sludge.

“The yellow one is poisonous, the blue one isn’t. In theory, they can coexist, and the blue fungus should restrain the yellow one, but this blue fungus will block the airways and esophagus when growing in the human body, and people die before they can completely cover the yellow fungus.” Chi Xian looked back at him, “The premise of using fungi to detoxify fungi is that humans can withstand this fungus because many mutated fungi can reproduce in the human body, and no amount of antitoxin extracted from fungi is enough.”

“Even if the targeted antitoxin works, no one knows where this critical point is.”

“As far as I know, in the game, there’s no antitoxin fungus that can reproduce in the human body without harming it.”

“People of Zone 013 might evolve abilities to coexist with fungi, but the side effects are evident, and neither ordinary people nor players live long.”

“Evolvers who become players can live a long time, typically living over a hundred years if nothing unexpected happens.”

What Chi Xian said matched the information Xu Huo had read, but Xu Huo’s information channels were at the Level E and D wormhole points, and he was unsure if there were fungi like King Fungus at Rank-B or Rank-A wormhole points, even if they existed, they probably wouldn’t make it publicly known.

“Trading fungi… the risk and reward are disproportionate.” Xu Huo concluded.

Chi Xian just smiled, “I said it’s a hobby, you can’t just do upgrades as a player and nothing else, it’s good to relieve some stress.”

Xu Huo agreed.

After walking for about three more minutes, the two of them found a corpse.

It was a person, dead for quite a while, covered in various fungi, making the face unrecognizable.

Xu Huo proposed using a dagger to cut open the corpse’s chest. The fungi on the surface had just penetrated the skin and hadn’t completely infiltrated the internal organs, but the organs themselves were parasitized by fungi. After the person died, these fungi gradually died as well.

When the floating spore-like fungi dispersed, he said, “This should be a local.”

“Hasn’t been dead for long,” Chi Xian looked around, “Are there really ordinary people living in such a place?”

The two had climbed high to observe the surroundings, but the visible range was not far, and at least within the visible range, it was all the same damp rainforest, with no habitation in sight. It was hard to imagine ordinary people coming and going here with just simple protection.

“Let’s pick up the pace.” Xu Huo stood up and said.

Then the two of them used props to move along the direction the jellyfish floated for half an hour, and they were surprised to find a small village built along the water in the forest.

Calling it a village was generous; there were only six scattered and long-uninhabited wooden houses.

Surprisingly, the seven people who had left earlier were also there, and they had captured a poisonous man covered in various fungi.

The man was kept in a prop, separated by a barrier, and Scarred Glasses was interrogating him.

“Where are the others? Tell us and I’ll give you a quick death.”

The poisonous man kneeling on the ground pointed to his tongue-less mouth and shook his head to indicate he couldn’t speak.

Scarred Glasses slapped him across the barrier, “No tongue, but you’ve got hands, point!”