They are not at all interested in what kind of monster troubles there might be in this city, nor do they have any intention of searching for any materials here; they just want to hurry up and repair the track to leave.
An eerie rolling sound suddenly echoed through the quiet, damp streets, sounding somewhat muffled. Everyone’s gaze focused as they saw a black spherical object slowly rolling out from the dim area ahead.
"Watch out!" Ning Jing shouted, shielding Ah Bai and the others behind her.
As the sphere approached, everyone realized under the weak glow of the night light mushrooms that it was actually a human head covered in fungi!
Instantly, more rolling sounds emerged, as an increasing number of human heads rolled out from the darkness. These heads seemed to possess a certain life, rolling towards corners of the street, electric poles, city flower beds, and advertising boards before coming to a stop. Then, they slowly turned their faces, covered in moist fungi, waxy and pale, using their eyes to ’peer’ at these outsiders.
Watching this scene made KIKI’s skin crawl. She softly called out to Lin Xian, ready to use telekinesis to make a run for it at any moment.
The group refrained from using any light sources, making their movements quietly. Lin Xian surveyed the surroundings, and soon enough, these fungus-covered heads were gazing at them from every corner of the street.
"It seems like they might be human live heads; but whether the fungus parasitism puts them in a state of being biological or non-biological is unknown," Ding Junyi chimed in, her gaze fixed on a nearby fungus-covered head, saying, "The best approach is to bring back a few samples for research."
Upon hearing this, Lin Xian felt a sharp pain in his trigeminal nerve, thinking that bringing things like that onto the train would mean no rest for anyone.
Back to the current situation, the increasingly bizarre circumstances made everyone tense up. Lin Xian pondered for a moment, then raised his hand to repair and equip a distant streetlight with a battery. With a snap of his fingers, the abandoned streetlight began to glow dimly and flicker.
This was a big problem, as all the human fungi on the street started to ’crack, crack, crack,’ twitching violently, prying up the fungal mats stuck to the ground, tugging at decayed legs joints, some walking, some climbing, advancing like puppets towards the streetlight. Then a peculiar scene unfolded; these human fungi began swirling around beneath the streetlight, gradually massing together, causing their fungal threads to grow wildly. Within seconds, they completely covered, enveloped, and climbed over the streetlight, intertwining into a biological dome that directly enveloped the light at the top. After just a few moments, the battery Lin Xian installed rapidly decayed, the electric energy vanished without a trace.
The street darkened once again.
Everyone was shocked by this scene, their faces drastically changing. Ning Jing immediately said, "Good thing we didn’t let these creatures climb onto our train..."
"Seems kind of fungus can rapidly devour energy," Luo Yang frowned, "and if attacked, it causes violent explosions; it’s really tricky."
Lin Xian felt a chill in his heart; these creatures were too eerie. Should they climb onto the Infinity, who knows what kind of trouble they’d cause; they were practically the nemesis of machines. The most frightening thing was how these spores floated in the air so subtly, making it incredibly hard to guard against if inhaled by people.
"The human body also possesses biological energy."
At this point, Ding Junyi said, "It seems that these fungal spores are even more dangerous than viruses, not easily solved with physical methods."
Lin Xian glanced at everyone, suddenly feeling a headache coming on, "Darn it, if these fungal spores land on us and we can’t clean them off, how will we go back?"
Unexpectedly, this problem didn’t worry Ding Junyi; "There are many methods to inactivate fungal spores. We can use the ozone room in the laboratory for fumigation or ultraviolet inactivation through the clean bench—but the premise is..."
She said this while looking at the glowing fungal mat by the roadside, "That these things are genuinely fungi and not some strange Dark Creatures."
"Director Ding, look." At this moment, KIKI pointed at those fungus-covered heads around the street corners staring at them, "These aren’t attracted to the light; they’re just watching us."