Kaidan Game Train: Abide Rule or Die!
Chapter 551: The Fungus Waves at You

"But there doesn’t seem to be any other way up there," Zhuo Wangsun looked around.

The place they were in was actually a giant elliptical cavity, with a narrow fissure both in front and behind, but they were mostly blocked by fungal filaments. They had probed it before with objects, and it was at least several meters thick and sticky, making it impossible for people to pass through.

"I’m not seeing things, am I?" Siming suddenly pointed at a certain spot above, "There seems to be a person waving at us."

"There’s a figure!" the female player shouted with her hands shaped like a megaphone, "Who are you, have you found a way out?"

The figure did not respond, continuing to wave in a steady pace and then turned and disappeared behind the stone wall.

"That shouldn’t be a person, right?" Zhuo Wangsun subconsciously looked towards Xu Huo, noting the difference from the figure they had seen in the Mist Forest earlier — this one was much more agile and even waved!

It was too far and too dark for them to see clearly, but Xu Huo could see everything clearly. It indeed wasn’t a person, just a human model constructed from fungal filaments. The details were not realistic, but its ability to mimic waving and walking movements was astonishing. The mutation had reached an incredible level.

"It’s not with good intentions, should we follow?" the female player asked for their opinion, not taking Zhuo Wangsun’s words seriously.

"Four against one, we stand a chance," Xu Huo said before accelerating back the way they came.

The four of them raced to the spot where the figure had stood, and looking around, they discovered it standing again on the upper side, maintaining the same gesture of waving at them.

The four exchanged glances and gave chase once more, only for the figure to appear a third time even higher up.

Finally, when they returned to a spot more than ten meters above the ground, the figure dived into the fissure ahead.

Xu Huo went over, lifted the fungal cocoon with his sword, and discovered a passage over a meter high. One could pass through by bending over. Although he couldn’t see deep inside, there was airflow, indicating it was a throughway.

Without waiting for the other three, he walked in first.

This corridor was only about ten meters long, and after passing through, they were astonished to find another round cavity, similar to the one they had seen before, with the figure still waving at them.

Zhuo Wangsun and the female player emerged one after the other and, seeing the figure, were infuriated. The latter said, "What exactly does he want to do?"

Zhuo Wangsun said, "I think it’s deliberately leading us into a trap. Maybe we should retreat first?"

"Give me a hand!" cried Siming, still in the corridor. Zhuo Wangsun instinctively grabbed his outstretched hand but nearly got pulled back himself. It was Xu Huo who pressed down on him and then pulled Siming out.

The Siming that was pulled out was covered in white fungal filaments, with a candy-floss-like sticky substance protruding from his back, and the corridor behind him had obviously been blocked — by the filaments on his body!

Zhuo Wangsun tried to chop them with his knife, but it stuck to them, so he told Siming to take off his protective suit. Unfortunately, it too was stuck to the outside of his suit, and he couldn’t take it off. Moreover, as soon as the filaments on his feet connected with the ground, they seemed to trigger a growth instinct and began to grow along the floor!

Siming couldn’t walk and didn’t dare to fall down, saying anxiously, "I have Cleansing Potion, let’s see if it works!"

He took out the Cleansing Potion with his other hand that was free of fungal filaments, and Zhuo Wangsun quickly opened it and poured it over him, causing large patches of filaments to fall off like fur.

Unfortunately, one bottle wasn’t enough; only half of the filaments came off.

Siming looked at the three people beside him, "I can buy it, I have White Notes."

The female player handed him a bottle, and Zhuo Wangsun also took one, and it was only then that they washed off all the mycelium from his body. The shed mycelium didn’t die, though; instead, it began to grow from the ground and in the blink of an eye, joined with the thick mycelium wall behind them.

As they stepped back, Zhuo Wangsun said with a mixture of shock and doubt, "If we were just a moment slower, we’d have grown into it and never come out, right?"

Siming was similarly frightened, and when he looked towards the figure still waving at them from a distance, he set up his gun and swept the area with gunfire. All he heard was the sound of bullets hitting stone walls and dirt, and then the figure fell down. At the same time, the mycelium behind him gushed down like water being drained, quickly covering him and dragging him in.

By the time the four of them got there, the figure had been completely swallowed by the mycelium.

Siming, unable to contain his anger, swung his knife wildly at it, but in the end, he only lost a knife without seeing the real person.

Still furious, the female player put her hand on his shoulder and pointed under the overhanging rock, "Look."

They looked down—there stood another person, still waving at them.

The female player rubbed her face, "It seems closer this time."

Both Siming and Zhuo Wangsun had grim expressions.

At this moment, Xu Huo took a couple of steps forward, drew his sword, and with a sweep, the Sword Qi cut through space and cleaved the figure in two. Instantly, it was swallowed by the mycelium.

"I saw it clearly this time," the female player said. "It’s hollow inside!"

"What on earth is that thing!" Zhuo Wangsun had been wanting to ask. "It lures us into a trap without saying a word, and knows how to cut off our retreat and hide its tracks. Can fungi do that?"

"Could there be someone hiding in the shadows targeting us?" Siming chimed in.

"It’s unlikely," Xu Huo looked around. "The mycelium is very active; it wouldn’t be hard for it to devour a few people. If other players wanted to kill us, they wouldn’t need to resort to these roundabout tactics."

"Could it be possible that the fungi have become sentient?" the female player scoffed.

"It’s imitating us," Xu Huo said, his voice growing heavier. They had encountered this "figure" only twice before, but its ability to imitate had improved dramatically. Whether it was Zhuo Wangsun falling into a pit on the ground or the repeated enticements to go deeper just now, the goal was to learn by imitating.

He splashed alcohol and set fire to the passage ahead; once the tunnel was burnt through, he went over and saw that, wrapped in the mycelium on the stone wall, there was a person. You could barely make out the face through the thin fungal membrane:

"Siming!" the female player exclaimed, then turned back to look at the Siming standing behind her, "Are you real or fake?"

Siming was astonished, but before he could defend himself, Xu Huo across the way cut off the mycelium-enshrouded head with his sword.

The empty head deflated like a balloon without the support of the neck, turning into a soft mass hanging inside, which was then consumed and obscured by the tightening fungus.

Zhuo Wangsun swallowed hard, "They’re imitating humans more and more convincingly."

"Do you think they’re deliberately luring us down here to eat us and then go out disguised as us?" the female player speculated wildly.

Xu Huo had no answer to that.