Chapter Five: The Zombie Tree

As the sound of hooves drew nearer and nearer, Xiang Jiuxi peered through the swirling dust and finally saw the predator’s form, and was shocked beyond belief.

“That’s... that’s a bull?”

Beneath the dust, a frenzied wild bull charged toward him, its rage unbridled.

“Moo!”

Seeing its prey just a short distance ahead, the bull raised its head and let out a bellow, revealing a row of sharp fangs.

“What in the world... Aren’t bulls supposed to have flat teeth? How could it grow fangs?”

Xiang Jiuxi could not believe his eyes. He checked again and again, finally accepting that the bull indeed had fangs.

For reasons he could not explain, a tingling sensation crawled across his scalp, and he instinctively tugged his coat tighter around himself. After all, being eaten by a bull was something no one could possibly accept.

Meanwhile, the wild bull had entered its final sprint, its pursuit accelerating sharply.

At that critical moment, Xiang Jiuxi suddenly stopped.

Although escaping the bull was urgent, just a dozen meters ahead stood a colossal tree. He needed to test his theory if he hoped to survive.

Covering his mouth and nose with a corner of his coat, Xiang Jiuxi crouched calmly and scooped up a handful of earth, bringing it close to examine.

The soil here was noticeably wetter, looser, and richer than elsewhere, and its color was not gray-brown, but tinged with a faint green.

He set the earth down and stepped forward cautiously, scrutinizing the towering tree.

Though the tree was lush and green, it lacked vitality. Its branches were stiff, unmoving even in the wind, and there was none of the whispering sound of rustling leaves.

Beneath the tree lay numerous animal skeletons, preserved intact, with no signs of being torn by beasts. Upon closer inspection, a few human skeletons could be seen among them.

Looking even closer, he saw the tree was entirely covered in green—not leaves, but green spores clinging to the trunk and branches.

“It’s definitely that—no mistake!” Xiang Jiuxi stood up, excitement surging.

“Moo!”

“Caw!”

At that moment, the wild bull had reached him, its horns only three inches from his neck. Victory was within its grasp, and the crows croaked, thrilled.

Xiang Jiuxi seemed prepared for this. He dodged sideways, evading the bull’s sharp horns, then, with lightning speed, drew two pitch-black stones from his pocket and sprinted toward the tree as if in a hundred-meter dash.

“Moo!”

The bull, frustrated at its failed attack, snorted heavily, readying for another assault.

Xiang Jiuxi ran with all his might. The earth beneath his feet was soft, like stepping on powdery snow, his feet sinking ten centimeters deep, and below he could feel some hard, bar-shaped objects.

“Moo!”

His body was frail, and the soft soil slowed him further. He had barely run far before the bull caught up.

At the critical moment, Xiang Jiuxi unexpectedly collapsed on the spot, wrapping himself in his coat and rolling toward the tree’s roots.

The bull hadn’t anticipated this move and, with too much force, crashed headlong into the tree. Green spores cascaded down, swirling in the air.

“Moo! Aaargh!”

Now truly enraged, the bull let out a near-roaring howl and charged at Xiang Jiuxi in a frenzy.

Xiang Jiuxi wrapped himself tightly in his coat like a cocoon, lying motionless beneath the tree roots, resigned. Yet, after a long while, the bull never struck him; even its roaring abruptly ceased.

A secret joy stirred in Xiang Jiuxi’s heart—he must have succeeded!

Peering carefully through a slit in his coat, he surveyed the scene outside. Though he had braced himself, what he saw chilled him to the bone.

The savage bull was suspended quietly in midair, surrounded by waving emerald branches that were continuously stabbing into its body.

As the branches pierced the bull, their color faded instantly, turning gray-black, then evaporating into powder and vanishing.

Most horrifying of all, countless branches shot up from the soft earth like bamboo after rain. Some reached toward the bull, others crept toward him!

...

It was a peculiar fungus, capable of entering an animal’s brain through mouth and nose, seizing control of the central nervous system, manipulating the host’s body and draining its nutrients.

The bones scattered beneath the tree were the remains of creatures once parasitized by this fungus.

Because of these traits, they had earned a terrifying name: zombie fungus.

Xiang Jiuxi recognized the green layer covering the tree’s bark as the zombie fungus’s spores, used for transmission. He had devised a plan to infect the wild bull with them, hoping to slow it down and seize a chance to escape.

But he never imagined the zombie fungus would be so fearsome, able to manipulate even the tree’s branches with such dexterity!

In tens of millions of years of zombie fungus’s existence, there had never been an instance of it parasitizing plants.

Yet, by Xiang Jiuxi’s reckoning, the environment on Earth now resembled the ancient Cretaceous period.

At this stage, mass extinctions ravaged life, not one in ten survived; even mighty dinosaurs perished. It was Earth’s way of selecting life, and those that survived would open the door to a new world.

Thus, Earth’s living things faced only two paths: evolve or perish.

Zombie fungus was no exception. With animals scarce, it couldn’t find a new host before draining the previous one, so it was forced to temporarily cling to the tree.

The tree, unable to perform effective photosynthesis, lost its main source of nutrients and had to rely on minerals to sustain itself. Over time, the soil grew increasingly barren, and the tree would ultimately wither—a fate shared by most plants.

But this situation was different.

As the zombie fungus parasitized the tree’s surface, it brought with it rotting animal corpses, which enriched the soil and became essential for the tree’s growth.

Thus, the tree and zombie fungus formed a subtle bond of mutual dependence, more intimate than that between crow and bull. They had merged into one: a zombie tree.

Judging by the scene before him, the zombie tree had abandoned growing its trunk, channeling all nutrients into evolving its roots, giving rise to so many agile tendrils.

Xiang Jiuxi felt a surge of admiration. So, whether beast or plant, all fought desperately to survive in this barren apocalypse.

Moved by his own emotions, his desire to live grew exponentially.

Peeking through his coat, Xiang Jiuxi saw the bull’s body completely enveloped by green spores, all signs of life gone.

It had no chance—the bull’s heavy breathing had caused it to inhale enough spores from the start, and its body had been unconsciously seized by the zombie fungus, which struck without warning.

Xiang Jiuxi, however, was different. From the beginning, he had covered his mouth and nose, slowed his breathing to the lowest possible rate, so even though he inevitably inhaled some spores, it was within manageable limits, letting him stay conscious.

Yet the situation was far from optimistic. The dense green roots had encircled him in an impenetrable barrier; no escape route could be seen.

Strangely, the zombie tree did not seek to attack, but merely confined him beneath its roots, gently shaking its tendrils to scatter green spores in the air.

To Xiang Jiuxi, this was akin to a feline toying with its prey—the zombie tree was curious about its inability to possess the human before it.

It seemed to possess a consciousness of its own!