Chapter 32: Fungus God
Chapter 32: Chapter 32: Fungus God
"Just as I thought. You’re the Fungus God!"
Zhu Ge took a deep breath, surveying the carnage on the ground.
A fungus!
A Fungus God!
This was a god born of fungus!
Zhu Ge had been wondering just what kind of god could hide in the village undetected.
After all, the birth of both gods and Ghosts was tied to death; they were formed from the spirits of the deceased.
Furthermore, gods seize the spirit, while Ghosts bewilder the soul.
Ghosts required a sufficiently strong soul, whereas gods needed an abundance of ’po’—corporeal spirit.
’Po’ is emotion.
Some City Gods, for instance, only ascended to godhood after accumulating enough Power of Faith from the worship of the masses.
But Jianshan Village never worshipped any gods. So how could this one have formed?
The answer was mushrooms.
Many people had a very special relationship with mushrooms.
They were delicious, fragrant, and far easier to gather than hunting game or harvesting fruit.
At the same time, people held a certain reverence for them, born from the fear of eating a poisonous one.
Combined with the joyous celebrations during events like the Mushroom Festival, it was enough to generate a massive amount of emotional energy.
This was what led to the birth of the Fungus God.
’The aura Mr. Chong mentioned flashing in the west must have been the Fungus God’s ascension to godhood.’
It was perfectly normal that the Scholar and the others hadn’t noticed its ascension.
As for how the Fungus God could control so many people?
"You’re not just a Fungus God. Your true form must be a species of parasitic fungus, like cordyceps."
Zhu Ge’s voice was grave. "You use parasitic methods, spreading spores into living beings to paralyze their nerves and control their actions!"
"But you’re inherently weak. Even if you’re beyond the Shrine Prison Realm, you’re probably still no match for a Confucian Scholar of the Cultivation Realm!"
To quantify the realms, both the Shrine Prison Realm and the Cultivation Realm were part of the First Realm, while the Fungus God had already stepped into the second.
However, because its innate nature was inferior to the Human Race, the Fungus God had to hide in the shadows and manipulate things from behind the scenes.
Otherwise, it would have been easier to just forcefully enslave everyone.
"Now that I’ve seen through to your true form, you’re no longer a threat!"
Zhu Ge’s eyes shone brightly.
’Fungus and spores!’
He’d figured it out because of what Mr. Chong had said about natural enemies.
Many things in the natural world functioned this way.
For example, praying mantises and horsehair worms, or cordyceps fungi.
Mr. Chong’s inexplicable fear of entering Jianshan Village was clearly because cordyceps were the bane of insects.
There were certain fungi in nature that specialized in controlling living creatures.
For instance, a fungus called Ophiocordyceps unilateralis could release over thirty thousand spores per second to reproduce.
If just one of those spores landed on an arthropod like an ant or a cockroach, it would begin to devour it.
The mycelium would extend from the exoskeleton into the muscle tissue and then deeper, directly affecting the central nervous system, including the brain and spinal cord.
It would use its own bioelectricity to replace the host’s.
The fundamental way the brain controls the body is by sending bioelectric signals through the nerves to the limbs.
But the fungus directly supplanted the creature’s nervous system. Both the central and peripheral nerves were replaced by mycelium.
The creature was turned into a living puppet that only knew how to obey the mycelium’s commands.
In nature, after controlling an arthropod, Ophiocordyceps unilateralis would command it to climb to a location with the ideal temperature, humidity, and light for its own growth and germination.
Then it would begin to grow and sprout, draining the host of all its nutrients.
In his previous life, this type of fungus was generally not so harmful to humans.
But this world was different.
That was why Zhu Ge was certain that the god before him was the Fungus God.
And this particular fungus could truly be called a zombie-fungus!
This zombie-fungus had seized an opportunity to absorb the emotional energy of Jianshan Village and ascend to godhood. It then lay dormant, only invading after the Scholar left.
That was how Hua Liusha’s body had fallen under its control.
The other villagers were the same, turned into walking corpses under the spores’ influence.
And given the fungus’s abilities, even altering memories wouldn’t be difficult.
However, just as Zhu Ge thought, fungi were inherently weaker than other living beings. Even with a higher realm, they weren’t necessarily stronger.
It was like an ant and an anteater of the same realm; the anteater would almost certainly be superior.
The limitations of its true form meant that even though the Fungus God was now a realm higher than a Scholar, it could only hide in the shadows.
Zhu Ge even suspected that the Fungus God was merely a spiritual entity, and its strength was entirely dependent on its host.
"You know quite a bit... In this body’s memories, you don’t seem this clever."
Hearing Zhu Ge’s words, Hua Liusha’s eyes crinkled into a smile. "I never would have thought a life-and-death crisis would make you so sharp, Brother Zhu..."
As her voice fell, Hua Liusha gave a gentle wave of her hand.
In the next instant, the villagers who had collapsed to the ground stood up one by one, rising like puppets on strings.
"I didn’t want to let these lovely uncles die," Hua Liusha said with a smile.
"But since you’re pushing me so hard, Brother Zhu, I’ll just have to harvest them early!"
Zhu Ge’s face was impassive. "You didn’t want them to die? You wanted to turn them into puppets that would generate emotional energy for you for the rest of their lives!"
That was the Fungus God’s real plan!
As long as a creature was alive, it would produce emotional energy.
The people of Jianshan Village were all alive, all had body heat.
Yet there was no trace of that emotional energy. Clearly, they had all been turned into tools for the sole purpose of supplying the Fungus God.
’The living dead... a fate worse than death itself.’
"What’s wrong with being puppets? You, on the other hand, didn’t even flinch when your parents died horribly right in front of you. How cruel!"
Hua Liusha sneered. "Someone so unfilial should just go and die!"
The next moment, the controlled villagers lurched toward Zhu Ge with their heads lolling, like a horde of zombies.
"Ma Laizi, wake up the others! Then hold these villagers back!"
Zhu Ge had, after all, practiced martial arts for a few days, and with his background in manual labor, he easily forced back the ones who got close with a few kicks.
These zombies, who could only be described as walking corpses, were nothing more than mobile flesh with almost no combat ability.
While kicking back the zombies, Zhu Ge shouted quickly to Ma Laizi, "The people still on the ground are the ones who broke free from the fungus’s control!"
"Wake them up, then stop these zombies!"
’This is a Fungus God, not a fungus demon!’
’That means even if it can control a human body, a sufficiently strong bioelectric surge from a person’s own mind can break them free.’
’Simply put, it’s a battle of wills!’
But in that battle, only four or five people in the entire village had survived. All the others had become nourishment for the Fungus God.
’But four or five people is enough!’
"Got it!" Ma Laizi’s expression was tense, but he didn’t falter.
He quickly took a few long strides, hoisted two long benches, and swung them around to force back several of the zombie villagers.
Then he ran to a young man’s side and kicked him. "Little Black Egg! Wake the hell up!"
The young man’s face was contorted in pain, but he miraculously opened his eyes at the sound of Ma Laizi’s voice.
Ma Laizi didn’t wait on the youth named Little Black Egg, but continued on to wake the others.
"Big Belly Dog! Dammit, did you drink my liquor for free the other day? Get up!"
"Xiaozhanglei! Xiaozhanglei, your wife is dead! If you’re a man, get up and take revenge!"
"Dammit, Wang Family’s Little Curly Hair, you coward! I still owe you two taels of silver! Don’t you dare get up right now? Get up and I’ll pay you back!"
"Xiaolimei! Wake up! If you don’t, I’ll drag you home and make you my concubine!"
"Sui Niang! Are you abandoning your daughter? She’s still so young, how will she live without her mother?"
Ma Laizi went down the line, using a mix of fierce and insulting tones to rouse everyone, and the effect was surprisingly good.
At least three or four people had already woken up.
In the process, Ma Laizi also managed to keep the zombie villagers at bay.
Just then, Hua Liusha approached Zhu Ge with light steps. "Brother Zhu, you don’t really think stopping these villagers is enough, do you?"
Zhu Ge didn’t stand still. He dragged the blank-faced Yu the Scholar with him, dodging around.
Perhaps because the power of the Confucian Dao within him was suppressing it, no mushrooms had appeared on Yu the Scholar’s body.
However, by the same token, Yu the Scholar hadn’t regained consciousness. Instead, he seemed to have completely devolved into a vegetative state after his spirit was seized.
"Heh, you keep calling me ’Brother Zhu,’ ’Brother Zhu.’ Who’s your brother, you old mushroom?"
Zhu Ge retorted without mercy, all while rapidly moving toward the north side of the village.
Toward the north side of the village, and the bridal chamber!
"Hua Xiaomei! Come out!"
"Hurry and marry me so we can consummate our marriage!"