Chapter 14 There are Abnormal Creatures in the Community (2)
This wave of energy, filled with comfortable warmth, flowed back. Ye Nai let out a comfortable sigh. His body, cooled from the rain, warmed up, along with the minor discomforts caused by his period vanishing together.
Seeing that everything was settled, Ye Nai did not dare to stay longer and made a detour home.
Upon arriving home, he began cleaning first. Six people were living in a house smaller than 60 square meters, filled with daily clutter. If he didn't tidy up, there was no place to step.
While he was mopping the floor in his parents' master bedroom, his dad, Ye Yu, who was scrolling through his phone in the living room, suddenly shouted.
"Ye Nai!"
"What's up?" Ye Nai hurried out with the mop in hand.
"In our building group chat, they're saying something happened in the community."
"What happened?"
"Seems like there are mutant plants and mutant beasts around?"
"What?! Did someone see them?" Ye Nai put down the mop and was about to grab his dad's phone, "It's hard to just listen to you report. Let me see."
"Hey, hey, hey, don't snatch it, I'm still looking. Don't you have a phone?"
"I'm not in that group."
"Here, take your phone, and I'll add you to the group."
After some hustle, Ye Nai finally joined the building group chat and started flipping through the fresh scene photos with his card phone.
The site was damaged; a long, intact ridge of soil was smashed into several segments.
Although it was still raining outside, the residents, armed with umbrellas, came to see the commotion, surrounding the exercise area in three layers inside and out.
There were genuinely many layers, both inside and outside because the residents of the buildings next to the site took photos from a high vantage point. After being circulated through various building group chats, not just our community saw it, but also relatives and friends, and some were even uploaded online.
"The scene is all destroyed; what can we still make out?"
"Psh, if we can't make anything out, surely experts can, right?" his dad remarked while poking around on his phone.
"What are you doing, dad?"
"Sending it to my colleagues. It's been so many years; having a mutant beast in an urban community is really rare."
"Are you actually hoping for mutant creatures in the city? Had enough of the good life?"
"Nonsense, I was just saying."
"Oh, and here I thought you found life too plain and were looking for some excitement."
Ye Nai rolled his eyes at his dad, put the phone in his pocket, and continued mopping the floor.
After finishing cleaning and checking his phone again, the group chat had updated to the latest version.
In the photos, figures of police and inspectors appeared, and the area was cordoned off with police tape.
A few more new photos came in the group chat; the TV station's outside broadcast vans had also arrived.
Ye Nai calmly lurked in the group chat, watching the excitement. He was certain, no matter how those people investigated, they definitely wouldn't trace anything back to him.
In the afternoon, everyone who had gone to work or school came back, making the group chat even livelier. They all speculated about where the dangerous creatures under the ground had gone.
Residents who had been watching the excitement at the scene broadcasted it live in the group chat, and Ye Nai, along with everyone else, saw an important message.
After a preliminary examination of the scene, the dangerous creature was identified as an annelid, but there was no sign in the surrounding soil of it having left or having surfaced. It was as if the ground had simply bulged with a mound of soil and then it had disappeared on the spot.
Disappeared on the spot, you say? It was directly grabbed from underground by the Fungal Mycelium and taken into the Fungal Space.
In the course of the day, it had almost completely decomposed, with only a segment left, which was entirely covered by the Fungal Mycelium. It was indistinguishable whether it was the head, the tail, or the middle; that large entity had been reduced to just this bit.
Watching the spectacle hadn't interrupted the household chores. By the afternoon, a big bowl of egg-braised pork had been prepared. The family discussed the strange event in the neighborhood at the dinner table, which was also being reported in the news. The news reminded nearby residents to be cautious and to contact the police at any sign of anomaly.
As residents of the neighborhood involved, the family was also concerned about safety; however, while they were worried, they felt it unnecessary to move to another place out of fear.
"These mutant beasts come and go unseen. Where can you hide? What if we move somewhere else and another one appears there? Shuffling back and forth, it's better just to stay at home," Ye Nai's father, whose legs were now disabled, naturally opposed the hassle.
"You talked about that unknown creature suddenly disappearing in the soil..."
"...could it be that the thing itself has the ability to move through space?"
The twin brothers boldly guessed, successfully frightening their parents and sister. Ye Nai kept her head down and ate without responding.
"Oh, eat, eat, don't spout nonsense and scare everyone," their mother, Yu Qing, smacked each son on the head, effectively ending the conversation.
After the meal, everything returned to normal, and Ye Nai finished up the household chores for the evening.
The following morning, she checked the Space, and the annelid creature had completely decomposed, leaving no trace behind.
The buzz in the building's group chat had faded considerably from the day before. Residents close to the incident's location saw that the inspection personnel had worked overnight, and the police tape was removed just as dawn broke. With no more excitement, naturally, fewer people were chatting.
Ye Nai saw the message on her phone and once again released a large amount of spores from the balcony.
She did not do it to gain the incessant trickle of energy fed back by the Fungal Mycelium, but just to protect the neighborhood she lived in.
Everything at home was normal through the morning, but during lunch, as she was cooking noodles for her father using the leftover meat soup from the day before, the energy feedback from the mycelium showed anomalies again. Before Ye Nai could release more spores to investigate further, another prey appeared in the Space.
It was identical in type to the previous day's annelid creature but was much larger. Yesterday's creature had coiled once in the space; today's was thicker and longer, coiling more than three times.
Ye Nai was puzzled, wondering how it had been tranquil before when now, two days in a row, abnormal creatures had appeared in the neighborhood.
Thank goodness her Fungal Mycelium was powerful. Otherwise, these adept burrowing mutant creatures would've brought the neighborhood down underground.
Moreover, it was strange that they kept appearing continuously and were all of the same type of creature.
Somewhat worried, Ye Nai reached toward the kitchen window, exhausted her strength, and released a large wave of spores, creating a safety perimeter around her building. She then let the surplus mycelium follow the direction of the energy to hunt.
She then continued with her chores, first letting her father eat his lunch.
Just as a delicious bowl of noodles was placed on the table, another prey appeared in the Space.
It was still the same kind of annelid creature; the two stacked on top of each other filled almost half of the Space. If another one appeared, it would no longer fit.
"Damn, two of them?"
Before Ye Nai's surprise had subsided, more semi-transparent, ball-shaped objects continuously plopped into the Space, as if it were laying eggs.
Each one that dropped was quickly encased in a thick layer of Fungal Mycelium, now resembling more of a fluffy ball.
"Shit, laying eggs? Building a nest?"
Ye Nai broke out in a cold sweat, muttered under her breath, wheeled her father out to eat, and then focused on finishing her own meal, not looking at how many "fluffy balls" had piled up in the Space.