Chapter Fifty-Eight: Rapid Evolution

“Don’t you have three? Just cut off the other two and see if you can make up for it.”

“What the hell! You can do that?”

“If you grow them back, can you really retract them again?”

Seeing the comments, Li Shan was momentarily stunned, but quickly understood and began to try. Soon, his hunger value started to rise, but the cost was that, aside from his main body, the other two main stalks withered rapidly.

When everything was reabsorbed, each main stalk returned twenty-five points of hunger value. Combined, that was fifty points—more than enough for him to wrap his mycelium around the sapling’s roots and digest them.

This crisis was temporarily resolved.

Li Shan waited a moment, and once his hunger value returned to a safe level, immediately began to grow a new main stalk beneath the sapling.

“Hm?”

As soon as this new main stalk grew, Li Shan noticed something was off.

The rate at which his hunger value decreased was now as fast as when he had three main stalks before.

“What’s going on?”

Puzzled, he looked up and saw the blazing sun beating down above him, and instantly understood the reason.

Fungi usually grow in dark, damp environments. The fact that he hadn’t died outright under this sun meant he was already one of the more resilient types.

“If that’s the case, it’s going to be tough to break even with just a single mycelium absorbing nutrients.”

Watching his hunger value slowly drop after stopping one mycelium from absorbing, he said, “If I want to develop quickly, I need to evolve genes to resist sunlight or speed up growth.”

With that, he activated the absorption ability of two mycelia. Once his hunger value was full, he withdrew one mycelium and sent it underground toward another nearby sapling.

This sapling hadn’t given him any genes, so he could only put his hopes in the next one.

With plenty of resources this time, the whole process went smoothly, and he soon reached the root of another sapling nearby.

He began absorbing right away, replenishing the hunger value he’d spent, and hoping to gain new genes.

While he waited, he grew another main stalk.

This time, though, not under a tree, but in a crack beneath some stones. Growing directly under the tree was convenient, but the consumption was just too high for him right now.

Once the new main stalk was grown, Li Shan immediately controlled the mycelium beneath it to extend underground, following the path of the previous mycelium.

Now they absorbed nutrients together, so even when one mycelium was free, his hunger value continued to rise.

Repeating this process, the number of main stalks under the stone crevice quickly grew to seven, plus one under the tree—for a total of eight.

Four mycelia absorbed nutrients, while the other four explored the remaining saplings, attempting to absorb from them and see if he could trigger devouring.

[Notification: You have devoured an Alien Lotus Tree]
[Your mycelium has become tougher]

When Li Shan devoured his eleventh sapling, a notification finally appeared.

At that moment, his mycelium began to change. The white color quickly faded to a pale yellow, and its toughness greatly increased.

If his mycelium had been like spider silk before, now it was more like grass roots—requiring real effort to pull apart.

“Guys, I’ve gotten tougher,” Li Shan immediately announced to his livestream audience.

“What good is being tough? Planning to jab someone?”
“Enough with the hard or soft talk. Hurry up and expand—I want to see how the Demon Old Man turns the tide.”
“Old Demon, do you see something moving over there?”

Noticing the comments, Li Shan focused on his surroundings, and after a careful look, found something odd in a pile of gravel.

There, a group of insects the size of fingernails, resembling a cross between ants and pangolins, were active.

After a moment’s hesitation, Li Shan extended a mycelium toward them.

He wanted to see what kind of genes he’d get from devouring insects.

The mycelium slipped quickly beneath the gravel, where countless gaps made it easy to extend. He didn’t attack right away, instead observing the insects’ movements for a while.

He set a simple trap with his mycelium along one of their main routes.

The armored ants had no idea a mushroom would target them as prey.

Sure enough, one soon wandered into the mycelium trap, completely unprepared.

Without hesitation, Li Shan controlled his mycelium to grab the armored ant’s six legs, making sure it couldn’t escape, then wrapped its body layer by layer.

At first, the armored ant struggled fiercely, but perhaps due to the toxic nature of his hallucinogenic spores, its resistance faded quickly, until it finally lay still.

Relieved, Li Shan thought how lucky he’d been to have evolved tougher mycelium earlier; otherwise, he wasn’t sure he could’ve subdued the armored ant.

Once it was completely helpless, Li Shan secreted corrosive substances through his mycelium, breaking down the exoskeleton so he could devour it.

[Notification: You have devoured an Armored Ant]
[Mushroom cap keratinization]

Maybe his luck was good—his first armored ant was a success.

Li Shan immediately checked for changes.

Soon, he noticed a thin layer of pale blue armor had formed on his cap, making it no longer fragile as before.

In short, he’d gotten even tougher.

“Guys, I’m not just tougher now—my resistance to sunlight has also increased a lot,” Li Shan said to his stream, noticing that a single mycelium’s nutrient absorption now matched the consumption of the main stalk under the sun.

He didn’t check the comments, but instead used his newly evolved abilities to rapidly expand outward from the grove.

Soon, little blue mushrooms dotted the lawn, the shrubs, and the rocks. The vegetation near them quickly turned yellow and withered wherever the mushrooms appeared.

Throughout this process, Li Shan kept getting new gene notifications:

[Notification: You have devoured Bluebell Grass]
[Mycelium growth speed has increased]

[Notification: You have devoured Baihui Tree]
[Acquired chlorophyll]
[Can perform photosynthesis]

[Notification: You have devoured Dandelion]
[Can spread spores through pollen dispersion]

[Notification: You have devoured Black Scorpion]
[Your toxicity is evolving in unknown ways]

...

After devouring all the nearby life, Li Shan’s appearance was completely transformed.

His mushroom color had shifted from pure blue to deep blue, and his size had grown from palm-sized to as large as a basketball.

The underside of his cap had also changed—whenever the wind blew, clouds of yellow spores drifted down, shrouding the area in mystery.

Gazing at the mushroom colony that now covered the whole region, Li Shan proudly said to the stream, “Brothers, from here on out, this game is mine.”