Chapter 139: White Mycelium |
At 12:48 AM, Bai Mu brought the three children into his house.
He hadn't forgotten to retrieve what originally belonged to him. On the way back, he used the Hand of Walrider to snatch his compressed biscuits back from the vagrants.
Although he only recovered three bags of biscuits, beggars could not be choosers. In these desperate times, not a single crumb of food could be wasted.
Upon returning to the living room, he kept the lights off, opting instead to light a candle and place it on the small coffee table.
The boy who remained awake was named Leon, the eldest of the three siblings. According to him, his brother Sam was half a minute younger. They were eleven-year-old twins in the fifth grade.
Their little sister was two years younger. Her name was Katie, a nine-year-old currently in the third grade.
Leon explained that the two vagrants had broken in by prying open a window. They hadn't knocked, but their forced entry had made enough noise to jolt him awake.
He had quickly roused his brother and sister, hoping to sneak out through the front door, but the vagrants had caught them in the act.
Naturally, three children were no match for two adult men. Lacking the strength to fight back, they were easily subdued and tied up. One of the men then pressed a kitchen knife against their little sister's neck, demanding to know where the food was hidden.
Leon sat on the mattress, his head bowed low. His brother and sister lay beside him, their breathing now steady, though they showed no immediate signs of waking up.
"Drink some water," Bai Mu said, handing a cup to Leon. "At least you are safe here."
Leon silently finished the water. Bai Mu offered no words of comfort, simply tossing a pocket knife in front of the boy.
"Hold onto it. It might make you feel a bit better," Bai Mu suggested.
Whenever Bai Mu felt uneasy, he would grip the handle of his gun. Just having a weapon in his hand was enough to calm his mind.
Leon picked up the pocket knife and tightly gripped its handle.
Bai Mu wasn't sure if it actually helped, but the boy's expression did seem to soften a fraction.
Leon stayed by his siblings' side for the entire night. He never slept; after brushing so closely with death, anyone would find it hard to close their eyes. From time to time, he would wander over to the window to stare at his burning home.
The fire raged until just past 3:00 AM. The entire house, along with the surrounding lawn and yard, was reduced to charred ash. It seemed no one cared about the blaze. While the flames were at their peak, Bai Mu had watched a military vehicle drive past on the asphalt road. The soldiers merely observed the inferno from the distant safety of their truck. They did not care if anyone inside was burning to death, nor did they care how the fire had started.
Everything felt suffocatingly apathetic. The soldiers lingered in front of the burning house for barely ten seconds before driving away without a second thought. Day six, 10:00 AM.
Katie and Sam finally stirred from their unconsciousness one after another. Just past 9:00 AM, Bai Mu had summoned Lucy, obtaining six 300-gram cans of yellow peaches and a 500-gram bag of chicken sausages—all ready-to-eat rations.
As the first meal for these three children in their Survival After Disaster, Bai Mu opened a can of peaches, boiled a bucket of seafood instant noodles with three sausages, and tore open a bag of potato chips.
Before the disaster, the vast majority of parents would have dismissed such items as pure junk food. But now, it was undeniably a sumptuous feast.
They had fruit, chicken sausages, savory instant noodles, and crispy butter-flavored potato chips.
Bai Mu handed each of the three children a bowl and evenly divided the instant noodles among them.
They clutched their forks, eagerly devouring the noodles and slurping the broth. Little Katie, the youngest, even began to shed tears as she ate.
It took them half the day to process their new reality. The three of them stood by the window together, staring silently at the charred ruins of their home for a long time.
Bai Mu didn't disturb their grieving process, but over the course of their meal, he laid out the ground rules for staying in his house.
First, he would distribute all food and water himself. They were not permitted to eat or drink anything without permission.
Second, no shouting or roughhousing indoors. They could ask him for whatever they needed, but they were absolutely forbidden from touching his things.
The children accepted his rules without complaint. They had no other choice. If Bai Mu kicked them out, they would be as good as dead. Out there, nobody would care if they lived or died.
Living under another's roof, the three children were incredibly well-behaved. They stayed quietly in the living room and politely asked Bai Mu for permission whenever they needed to use the bathroom or get a drink of water.
Bai Mu intentionally avoided acting overly affectionate. Boundaries had to be established on the very first day so they knew whose word was absolute in this household. He didn't step outside at all that day.
Once night fell, he ordered the children to stay in the living room while he retreated to his bedroom to open the observation box.
On the second day of infection, the scaly patches on the gray rat's skin began to subside. The fungi had taken root deeper within its flesh. The amount of droppings in the box hadn't increased; the creature had neither eaten its biscuits nor relieved itself.
It had lost all normal biological functions of a rat. Furthermore, Bai Mu noticed that its behavior was entirely uncharacteristic of a rodent.
A strange gleam of intelligence seemed to flicker in its dark eyes. It sat perfectly still, silently staring at Bai Mu's mask as if scrutinizing the man before it.
Beneath his mask, Bai Mu furrowed his brows. The mushroom's white mycelium had crept out of the box and was slowly reaching toward the floor. An intense feeling of dread washed over him. He immediately whipped out his lighter, torching the intrusive threads until nothing remained.
After a moment's hesitation, he decided to dispose of the gray rat with fire as well.
He first attempted to kill it using physical force, driving a pocket knife through its tiny brain and heart. Yet, its eyes continued to dart around. Even after severing its limbs, the detached appendages continued to writhe and squirm on the floor, much like an earthworm chopped in half.
As expected, blunt force and physical trauma were simply not enough to kill the infected creature.
Left with no other options, Bai Mu poured the last remaining drops of gasoline from his Molotov cocktails into the observation box and sparked his lighter. Though the gray rat didn't immediately die, it could no longer move. The roaring flames soon reduced both the rat and its mycelial tendrils to fine ash.
He then resealed the original mushroom inside a small airtight glass jar, strictly classifying it as an extremely hazardous object.
Being infected by this fungus didn't just twist a creature's biology; it seemed to birth some kind of abnormal 'consciousness.'
Bai Mu had a sneaking suspicion that if the white mycelium was allowed to connect to the ground and spread, something terrible would happen. For instance, a massive horde of Doppelgangers could instantly pinpoint his home and come knocking at his door.