Chapter 152.2: A Banquet Table for the Plants
Wu Heng didn’t move much in his sleep. One position was enough for him to sleep straight through until morning.
Xue Qi was different—tossing and turning, treating the bed like a stage, as if he had to make sure every section of the audience was accounted for.
Wu Heng woke up in the middle of the night to find Xue Qi hugging him, his face buried in the hollow of Wu Heng’s neck, hot breath spilling all over his skin. That spot had been soaked soft and damp by the other’s breathing.
He shifted slightly, but at that moment, the corner of his eye caught a flash of vivid, glaring yellow. His mind snapped clear instantly, and he sat up.
The tent hastily set up with dripping dieffenbachia wasn’t very secure, so someone was posted outside on night watch to put everyone at ease.
Yet at this moment, that flowing, water-like yellow color was seeping in through the dieffenbachia. Every plant it passed over turned black and withered—and the tent itself began to tilt as its roots softened and collapsed.
But outside, there was no commotion at all.
Wu Heng yanked Xue Qi upright in one motion, then grabbed Shen Ping’an and shook him twice.
“I’m so sleepy,” Xue Qi muttered, collapsing back down.
Shen Ping’an, meanwhile, didn’t react at all.
Those sticky things flowed closer. As the distance closed, Wu Heng realized they didn’t look like water or any kind of liquid—it was more like mycelium.
He thought of the matsutake mushrooms from that afternoon.
So this was where it had been waiting.
He leaned over and grabbed Shen Ping’an’s face, pinching hard, almost viciously—but there was no sign of him waking up. Xue Qi was even worse, completely dead to the world.
The others in the tent were the same.
With no other choice, Wu Heng got up on his own. He positioned himself in front of everyone. Green light flared in his palm, rapidly stimulating the moss on the ground, which surged in the opposite direction, swallowing toward the mycelium.
While the moss and mycelium pushed against each other, Wu Heng strode over to X and Shukui. He bent down, scooped X up in his arms, hooked an arm around Shukui—who weighed well over a hundred jin—and ran hard toward the riverbank.
He tossed the dog-bird onto the boat first. With a sweep of his arm, an entire field of poppies burst up from the shore. The soft plants crowded together, clinging to the wooden boat, black petals blooming one after another. Under the moonlight and rain, they were vivid and beautiful—yet eerily so.
After settling the dog and bird, Wu Heng snapped back to himself and stood on the shore, facing the mountains. His heart nearly skipped a beat—
The entire mountain before him was almost completely covered in bright yellow matsutake mushrooms. Beneath the darkened canopy, they glimmered with a golden sheen, spreading from the foot of the mountain all the way to the peak.
Wu Heng believed he was already strong enough to contend with almost all ability users—but moving mountains and overturning seas? He frowned. He wasn’t a god.
There was no time to think further. Wu Heng ran back to the tent, watching the mycelium surge in from all directions, unstoppable in its advance.
The dieffenbachia loosened and spread, transforming into shields that held firm on the outside.
Wu Heng directly bound everyone with vines. It took little effort—every half-unconscious person was stuffed onto the wooden boats. He even had time to collect all the gear, mats, and sleeping bags scattered on the ground.
Using short ropes, he pushed three boats back onto the river at the same time. He jumped onto the middle one. In an instant, all the poppies vanished, the vines slipping beneath the boats, lifting them as they drifted farther and farther away.
At night, the entire mountain looked like a mountain of gold. With the dieffenbachia and moss no longer blocking them, the mycelium piled up layer upon layer, stacked as high as buildings—yet when it neared the riverbank, it shrank back.
The three boats lay motionless in the middle of the river. Wu Heng stood quietly aboard, watching until the matsutake mushrooms went from rampant growth to complete silence.
The whole mountain returned to its former pitch-black appearance.
As dawn approached—or perhaps once they had left the matsutake’s territory—the others finally began to stir awake.
“My head hurts.” Xue Qi clung to Wu Heng. “It really hurts.”
Shen Ping’an sat straight up. There was a pinch mark on each side of his face, deep enough to show blood vessels. He covered his face first, then looked around—only then realizing he was on a boat, not in a tent.
“What happened?” Jiang Xun shook her head, still groggy.
Yang Xiaoyun stood up outright, completely unaware he was on a boat, and nearly toppled into the river—luckily Wang Ruixiang grabbed him in time.
“The matsutake from this afternoon, this is its territory,” Wu Heng said lightly. “While we were asleep, it tried to attack us.”
Jiang Xun snapped fully awake. “No one’s missing, right?”
“Seems like no,” Yang Xiaoyun said, his head pounding as he leaned over the side of the boat and vomited violently. Wiping his mouth, he turned back. “Then how did we end up on the boats?”
The poppy that had been supporting the boats rustled as they withdrew, pointing—left to right, right to left, top to bottom—at Wu Heng in the middle. Wu Heng gently brushed them away. “Just a small thing.”
Everyone already understood. “Then why weren’t you affected? Are you feeling unwell anywhere?”
Wu Heng shook his head.
“Maybe it’s because he’s a plant symbiont—and a wood-type at that,” Wang Ruixiang said, instinctively reaching up to push his glasses—only to touch nothing. “Did my glasses fall back on the shore?”
The people on the boat looked at him with pity.
Wang Ruixiang placed both hands on his knees and took a deep breath. “I thought the whole world being pixelated was just an aftereffect of the matsutake.”
Wu Heng said, “You can look through that pile of stuff I brought up—your glasses might be in there.”
Everyone had basically survived a brush with death. If it weren’t for Wu Heng, they didn’t even dare imagine what would have happened next. And Wu Heng wasn’t quite what they had thought he was—at the very least, he usually stayed somewhat detached from the group. In a situation like that, putting his own safety first would have matched their impression of him, and they wouldn’t have said a word about it.
But they hadn’t expected that Wu Heng wouldn’t leave a single person behind—he had even “rescued” all their gear along with them.
No wonder Xie Chongyi trusted him so completely. And to think they used to believe this was just a bunch of kids playing house—when in fact, he was braver and more righteous than most so-called adults.
In short, ever since getting to know Wu Heng, they’d been constantly thinking: no wonder.
“Jiang Yi…” Zhou Yi was dazed, his tears falling before the words did. “Jiang Yi didn’t make it up.”
Jiang Xun frowned. “He’s still on the shore?”
“No, I have to go look for him.” Zhou Yi didn’t plan on asking anyone else for help. It was just a body, after all. As soon as he said it, he was about to jump off the boat.
“Zhou Yi!” Mo Zhaohong grabbed him hard. “Jiang Yi was going to be buried in Shenjian anyway. Burial is burial—what difference does it make where? Why are you risking your life like this?”
Zhou Yi’s face was deathly pale, his lips trembling. “He can be buried in Shenjian—but not inside a monster’s mouth.”
“I’m not asking you to go. Don’t worry about me.”
“Zhou Yi, don’t act on impulse,” Yang Xiaoyun said, slumped over the edge of the boat. “You have to understand—an ability user’s powers are granted by nature. You can’t fight an energy source head-on.”
“I don’t care about any of that!” Zhou Yi, usually soft-spoken, had red-rimmed eyes now. He shouted once, then repeated it in a flat, steady tone, “I don’t care about any of that.”
This time, Xue Qi switched to hugging Shen Ping’an. “Brother Ping’an, my head really hurts.”
But Shen Ping’an kept watching Wu Heng. He knew Wu Heng had already made up his mind to go.
“What’s your ability?” Wu Heng asked, looking at Zhou Yi on the neighboring boat, his face streaked with tears.
Zhou Yi stared at the mountains in despair, confused. “Combat power… and invisibility.”
“What do you mean?” Wu Heng asked. He had never heard of such an ability.
Jiang Xun explained, “Zhou Yi’s close-combat ability is the strongest among all of us. It could rival Cao Xian at his top speed. That means, if he gets close to us, we might not even have a chance to use our powers. On top of that, he can turn invisible—the maximum invisibility duration is three minutes and sixteen seconds.”
Close-combat strength didn’t interest Wu Heng, but invisibility did.
Wu Heng stared intently at Zhou Yi. “I can help you, but I have one condition.”
Zhou Yi blinked, staring at the boy in front of him. The boat rocked slowly, yet Wu Heng seemed perfectly steady. Behind his calm, indifferent expression, the surface of the water rippled, inexplicably calming Zhou Yi’s own racing heart.
“What condition?”
“Follow me. Be at my disposal. Do things for me.” Wu Heng said directly.
Before Zhou Yi could react, Wang Ruixiang glanced between the two of them. Just as Zhou Yi was about to nod, he cleared his throat. “Zhou Yi, don’t forget your position.”
Zhou Yi remained expressionless. He reached beside him, took out his sidearm, and dropped it at Wang Ruixiang’s feet. “Do as you wish, Captain Wang.”
Wu Heng already knew the answer. He pushed the dog’s head off his lap, braced his fingers on the boat’s edge, and sent vines swaying toward the shore.
His gray-green eyes traced a ring of dazzling gold as he looked back at the young man whose face was still streaked with tears. “I don’t need you to swear. We don’t need contracts. But since you’ve agreed to my terms, if you betray me, the pain you’ll feel could be ten thousand times worse than death.”
He paused, thinking. “For example… I could dig Jiang Yi out of the ground again.”
With that, his figure dissolved into a shadow. The vines carried him directly to the riverbank.
Zhou Yi shivered all over. He stared blankly at the shore. The boy stood tall, a silhouette against the mountainside. The golden mycelium covering the slope shimmered without restraint. In an instant, it surged across the entire mountain, roaring down toward the tiny, pitiful human at the foot of the slope.
The mountains seemed to melt, casting half the sky in a damp, cold, oppressive yellow.
No one else paid attention to Zhou Yi’s abandonment of his original position anymore—they all focused entirely on Wu Heng.
At first, it looked as if Wu Heng had taken a step back—was he afraid, or what?
But in the next instant, the entire mountain seemed to shudder. Green vines sprouted violently from beneath his feet, surging in all directions. Even the underwater area behind him wasn’t spared—the waves churned and rose.
Tender green growth intertwined with the corrosive mycelium. The vines were simultaneously being consumed and regenerated, with Wu Heng’s light-based ability providing a continuous stream of energy.
Wu Heng’s face gradually drained of color as he maintained high-speed output across three energy channels at once.
“I have to go over there!” Yang Xiaoyun clutched his chest. “Row the boat—I’ll tear this mountain down myself!”
“Do you think the mycelium is this strong on its own? The entire Shenjian is its energy source,” Wang Ruixiang said calmly. “Just because someone else can resist it doesn’t mean you can. That mycelium is poisonous. Wu Heng has healing ability—do you? His light ability simultaneously fuels the plant symbiosis and wood system, and the wood system, in turn, feeds the light system. A normal ability user runs out of energy and dies. If you go, you’ll just make things worse.”
The glowing mycelium, which seemed to be constantly devouring everything, advanced step by step. The proportion of the area held by the vines grew smaller and smaller.
“At this rate…” Xue Qi gasped, his heart pounding like a drum.
The mycelium absorbed energy from the mountains themselves. It devoured and grew stronger, until finally, it became a towering wall of mycelium, tens of meters high, standing directly before them.
Even though they were just plants, Wu Heng could almost hear their roars in his ears.
His hair whipped upward, stirred by a powerful energy wave coming from the opposite side.
Wu Heng raised his hand, palm hovering lightly downward.
His face glowed with golden light, almost translucent, green veins threading beneath his skin. Warm yellow and pale green beams of energy coursed through his veins, all converging into the black pistil at the center of his palm.
“It can end now,” Wu Heng said calmly.
The very next second, the mountains housing the mycelium collapsed instantly. Tens of meters of fungal growth slumped helplessly to the ground.
But this was only the beginning. The lead poppy sprang from the earth like countless ghostly figures, climbing out of the mountain and frantically devouring the scattered mycelium before it could regroup.
Other plants, acting as followers, tore into the mycelium bite by bite.
The golden mycelium that had spread across the mountain dwindled rapidly. Even those at the edges, trying to burrow underground to escape, were dug out and devoured by the poppies.
Black petals bloomed one after another along the branches, vibrant and dripping with color. The fully opened petals didn’t even spare the other plants nearby—they wrapped and shredded them, feeding the pieces to the pistil as fertilizer.
The entire mountain had become a banquet table for the plants—a wild, extravagant feast.