Chapter 977 Dot
The little fox suddenly stood up and let out a low roar from its throat. Its amber pupils shrank into needle points and it stared at the mushroom greenhouse soaked in moonlight at the foot of the mountain.
"Tongwei! Come quickly!" Aunt Wang's scream tore through the night sky. When Qi Tongwei rushed out of the door, he ran into an old man staggering from the threshing ground, his gray hair sticking to his sweaty forehead, "The greenhouse... there is something in the greenhouse!"
The plastic film rustled in the night wind. The moment Qi Tongwei lifted the curtain, the smell of humus and the strange blue-green fluorescence hit him. The mushrooms that should have been dormant grew wildly like umbrellas, and sticky black liquid oozed out between the gills, winding on the ground into strange totems. Even more terrifying was that the surface of the cap had lines like a human face - the distorted facial features were looming in the fluorescence, like a soul trapped in the mycelium.
Zhang Dazhu rushed in holding a searchlight, and the beam of light suddenly shook violently when it swept across the mushroom bush. "This, this is exactly the same as the mildew disaster three years ago!" His voice trembled, "But it wasn't so weird back then..." Qi Tongwei squatted down, and just as his fingertips touched the mushrooms, the little fox suddenly pounced on him and bit his sleeve, whimpering anxiously.
The village committee held an emergency meeting overnight, and the projector projected the image of hyphae under the microscope onto the wall. The hyphae, which should have been pure white, were entangled with dark green patches, looking very much like cursed blood vessels. The technician pushed his glasses and said, "This is not an ordinary mold. Tests show that it contains unknown toxins, and..." He paused, "The growth frequency of these hyphae is completely contrary to the laws of biology."
Qi Tongwei was alone at the planting base late at night with an infrared camera. In the camera, the mushrooms were expanding at a speed visible to the naked eye under the moonlight, and the facial lines of the people gradually became clear, which was somewhat similar to the former village chief who was held accountable for the pollution incident. What was even more strange was that every time the camera was pointed in a certain direction, the screen would be disturbed by snow, as if some force was preventing the truth from being recorded.
The little fox suddenly jumped to his feet, its tail pointing to the back mountain. Under the century-old locust tree there, several dark shadows were wriggling. Qi Tongwei held the flashlight tightly and moved closer, and found that they were several villagers covered with mycelium, carving strange symbols on the ground with dead branches. "They are controlled by the fungus." The little fox's voice was filled with rare fear, "Just like the polluted land three years ago, it is backfiring."
The next day, collective hallucinations broke out in the village. Some people claimed to have seen their dead relatives crawling out of mushrooms, and some people muttered to themselves in the air. The health center was crowded with villagers vomiting and convulsing, but the examination report showed that everything was normal. Qi Tongwei looked at Aunt Wang curled up on the hospital bed, and kept muttering: "We were wrong... We shouldn't have been so eager..."
The crisis alarmed the expert team in the provincial capital. The ecology professor who led the team stayed in the greenhouse for three full days. When he left, he looked solemn: "This is not just pollution, but the revenge of the ecosystem on human over-demand. You forcibly changed the growth cycle of mushrooms, abused industrial nutrients, and broke the balance of the mountains and forests." He pointed to the old locust tree in the distance, "The tree rings show that this land has experienced three large-scale fungal disasters, each accompanied by excessive human intervention in nature."
Qi Tongwei began to look up the county annals, and the yellowed pages recorded a legend from the Ming and Qing dynasties: if mountain people cut down ancient trees and plundered wild mushrooms during the rainy season, they would encounter a "mushroom nightmare" - their minds would be devoured by the mycelium and eventually turned into nutrients for the forest. The seemingly accidental mold disaster three years ago was the beginning of the village's large-scale development.
Under the professor's advice, the village began to return farmland to forest. When the bulldozers roared and knocked down the greenhouses, Qi Tongwei found a large amount of undegraded plastic film buried underground, with black mycorrhizae wrapped around it like blood vessels. Little Fox led the villagers to plant native fungi in the forest, using mushroom sticks cultivated by ancient methods to replace industrial nutrients. But the strange phenomenon did not stop - in the mountains and forests late at night, there was often the sound of plastic tearing, and spots of light like human faces would still flash in the mushroom bushes.
On a rainy night, Qi Tongwei found the diary of the former village chief hidden in the interlayer while sorting old account books in the warehouse. The handwriting was smudged by water stains and could barely be recognized: "Those people said that using chemical fertilizers can increase production tenfold... But I always feel that something is watching us..." The last page was full of twisted mycelium patterns, and the date was exactly three days before the mildew disaster broke out.
When the village gradually recovered its natural ecology, Qi Tongwei erected a stone tablet under the old locust tree, engraved with the four characters "Tao follows nature". But every moonlit night, he still saw the blue fluorescence at the site of the greenhouse and the faint sound of weeping from the mushroom bushes. The little fox said that this was the memory of the land, which needed the sincerity of several generations to heal.
Today, tourists still come to visit the ecological plantation, but no one knows what secrets are buried beneath those greenhouses.
The sound of the scriptures startled the birds in the forest, but it could not disperse the faint blue lingering in the humus soil - after the heavy rain last night, human facial patterns appeared in the mushroom bushes again, this time it was a child with a grin.
"Secretary Qi is performing a ritual again?" Zhang Dazhui passed by with a hoe on his shoulder, his tone was three parts awe and seven parts sarcasm, "Why not spend more time on receiving tourists? Last week, a group of guests complained to the Cultural and Tourism Bureau that the homestay was too trendy." Qi Tongwei looked up and saw faint dark green veins on the other's neck, like hyphae running under the skin. Since the fungus disaster, half of the people in the village have developed this strange mark.
The launch meeting of the ecological plantation was held on time at 10 o'clock. The leaders of the Provincial Department of Agriculture, media reporters and research teams filled the newly built viewing platform. Qi Tongwei stood in front of the display board, with neatly arranged ecological greenhouses behind him and the distorted shadows of old locust trees reflected on the glass curtain wall. "We use the traditional basswood cultivation method and do not use any chemical agents..." Before he finished speaking, there was a sudden commotion in the audience.
The research student pointed in the distance and screamed. Qi Tongwei turned his head and saw a blue-gray mist rising from the abandoned greenhouse site. Hundreds of mushrooms broke out of the ground, and the human face patterns on the mushroom caps were as clear as photos. What was even more horrifying was that these "human faces" were chanting in unison: "Give me back my land...Give me back my land..."
The little fox behind the display board suddenly jumped out, with a golden halo around it. It drew a talisman in the air, and wherever the talisman went, mushrooms exploded and black liquid splashed on the white shirts of tourists. The scene got out of control in an instant, the reporters' cameras shook wildly, and the leaders raised mineral water bottles as weapons. Qi Tongwei closed his eyes and chanted the Great Compassion Mantra. The deep Buddhist sound penetrated the noise, and the fog began to slowly dissipate.
"This is a stress response of the ecosystem!" The provincial expert wiped his sweat and explained, "The toxins remaining in the soil resonate with the resentment." But the tourists didn't buy it, and the video fermented online as a "mountain village supernatural event". The Cultural and Tourism Bureau ordered the suspension of business for rectification. Zhang Dazhu led people to smash the glass of the ecological greenhouse: "Instead of these ghosts and gods, it is better to resume fertilizer planting!"