Chapter Thirty-Six: Mushrooms, Birds, and the Wind

Eastern Cliff Grotto.

Another day of map-running had come to an end.

Lin Bo hung his wind chimes from the crossbar of the training target, spread a tarp on the ground, and sat cross-legged in meditation.

The sea breeze blew in steadily, causing the seven hollow iron pipes of varying lengths to sway and strike against one another, producing a crisp, melodic chiming. The sea wind was boisterous, but when the chimes began to sing, their high-pitched, clear language completely drowned out the murmurs of the airflow. It was the sea breeze that was forced into silence.

A moment later, Lin Bo emerged from his state of suspended animation, having successfully captured the True Name Rune of the wind. This was, of course, a significant gain, yet it ran counter to his original goal. The mage sighed; the sea breeze was so fierce, and the wind chimes were but such a small set, yet the contrast was so stark that the victor was unexpectedly the unassuming iron tubes. He wanted to say to the sea breeze, "You useless thing!", but deemed it impolite and let it pass.

Lin Bo did not abandon his idea. He merely reasoned that perhaps the wind force was not strong enough to overpower the crisp clanging of the iron pipes. If he were to find terrain capable of producing a venturi effect, where the gale whistled in a rage, it could likely suppress the buzzing of the metal.

Earlier that morning at the shipwright’s, Lin Bo had also had an idea: since he could not find peace of mind while using iron tools to chisel wood, why not let the Iron Guardian perform this work while he tied one end of a silk thread to the tool and held the other in his hand, using the "Surface-Touch Internal-Peering" method to eavesdrop on the True Name? Regardless, there was always a way.

The Night Watchman stood up and walked toward the atrium.

The grotto was now equipped with wiring, and energy-saving lamps were placed at regular intervals, so the cave was no longer pitch black. The basic framework for the mushroom greenhouse had been assembled, and the finishing touches would be complete in a day or two. With a week left before the hurricane hit, there was plenty of time to spare.

A dim lightbulb was suspended from the top of the shed, simulating the light intensity of an overcast day. After a week of care, the mycelium in the culture medium had begun to sprout fruiting bodies. Milky-white mushrooms grew out from the surface of the wooden boxes, poking their heads out tentatively.

This was the time to feed biomass to the mycelium. The fungal culture would absorb biological genetic information and incorporate it into its own genome. As the genetic information of these exogenous organisms was interpreted and expressed by the mycelium, corresponding mimicry mushrooms would grow on the fungal mat, appearing similar to the absorbed organism on the outside while remaining fundamentally the same in internal composition.

Providing the culture with sufficiently diverse biological genes to form a massive genetic information library was a necessary step, and for any player cultivating an omnipotent fungal strain, it was not difficult.

The real difficulty lay in the subsequent screening process.

After the mycelium was subjected to specific stimuli, in order to adapt to the environment or meet the player's requirements, it would select gene segments with various traits from the gene library to grow corresponding mimicry mushrooms. However, biological genetic information was far too complex—a mountain of useful and useless traits, a veritable "mountain of excrement." In such a situation, the fungal culture picking unqualified gene segments was inevitable.

This step was like a chef picking ingredients from a warehouse; if the customer's requirements were vague, the chef's selection would be more random, and there was no guarantee whether the resulting dish would be delicious or inedible, toxic or safe. Therefore, the more clearly and directionally a cultivator could stimulate the fungal culture, the closer the final mushrooms would be to their requirements. *Professor Fungoid’s Fungal Agronomy* devoted a large portion of its pages to describing how to directionally screen for traits.

This process was far more complex than Father Mendel’s pea planting.

The book recorded hundreds of technical specifications for cultivating mushroom varieties. Among them, one of the most effective agricultural techniques was to establish communication with the fungal culture, a method highly touted by Professor Fungoid.

There were many different ways to establish a communication channel with the culture. The orthodox path was to cultivate the Fungoid race. Fungoids were a type of magical creature that could produce a special kind of psychic spore; organisms that inhaled these spores could establish a consciousness link with the Fungoid. Directing the Fungoids to cultivate the required mushroom varieties was the most carefree method, but it was not without its hidden dangers. After all, as sentient beings, Fungoids could develop animosity toward the cultivator, leading to the two sides parting ways, which often ended in a great battle.

Aside from cultivating Fungoids, there were other means, such as Druid magic, which also possessed methods for communicating with plants; this was likewise a superior agricultural technique.

However, if a player lacked spellcasting abilities, they had to consider some rather cold and ferocious strategies. For example, one could feed biological nerve cells to the fungal mat to cultivate a "Brain Mushroom," endowing the culture with the ability to think, and then guide the mushroom's consciousness by applying chemical and electrical stimuli to the Brain Mushroom to cultivate the desired strain.

This was essentially the fungal version of a "brain in a vat." It sounded cool, but this technique actually had many flaws. First, the threshold was quite high; stimulating a brain in a vat was a profound science that *Fungal Agronomy* did not detail, requiring the player to purchase and study it separately. Second, the intelligence of the Brain Mushroom was weak, and improving it was difficult, so the results of selecting and breeding strains could only be described as barely satisfactory. Third, in order to think, the Brain Mushroom consumed massive amounts of nutrients, snatching food from other cultures, which made the effort somewhat counterproductive.

The omnipotent fungal strain had countless advantages, but precisely because of the high difficulty of cultivation, there were not many players in the Comprehensive Network community who could successfully walk this path.

Lin Bo did not dare to make any guarantees; he could only take it one step at a time.

He placed his hand on the fungal mat, feeling the fluctuations of the cell fluid flowing through the mycelium, listening to their whispered murmurs.

"Grow... eat wood... wood is tasty... a bit thirsty..."

The Night Watchman crushed some raspberries he had picked earlier and sprinkled them onto the fungal mat.

"Eat, store genes... tasty... drank my fill..."

The murmurs of the fungal culture were crisp and sharp, layered with noise, sounding like a group of children. Lin Bo listened for a while longer, and mycelium had already quietly spread along his palm, with tiny threads climbing onto the mage’s fingers.

"Hello... hello... feeder... like..."

Lin Bo smiled slightly and replied in the magical language, "Hello."

After gaining the "Listener of All Things" trait, as long as the mage learned the corresponding language, he could communicate with everything. Lin Bo had grown accustomed to the murmurs of the wind and the sea; perhaps the timing was right, as he could grasp one or two new magical words every day, and he already possessed the preliminary ability to greet them.

The fuzzy white fungal mat seemed to be stirred by an invisible wind, with a large area imperceptibly leaning back, before happily clinging more mycelium onto Lin Bo’s palm, murmuring in a clingy manner.

"Like... please eat... mushroom!"

In the corner of the fungal mat, a blue-black mushroom emerged. The surrounding mycelium accelerated its supply, rapidly ripening it. With speed almost visible to the naked eye, the blue-black mushroom grew quickly, stopping only when it reached the size of a ping-pong ball.

This mimicry mushroom detached itself, emitting a fresh, fruity fragrance. Lin Bo picked it up and tasted it; the juices were rich, and the flavor complex. The lingonberries, blackberries, and blackthorns he had fed the mat were all reflected in this mushroom, and the medicinal properties had also undergone new changes through the combination.

[Skill Check Successful]

The Pharmacist's Tongue-Knowledge proficiency increased slightly.

"Delicious."

Praised, the mycelium swayed gently. Lin Bo wanted to tease them, so he praised them several times in a row. Each time, the feedback of joy from the mycelium was maxed out; they did not feel perfunctory in the slightest.

"Thirsty... tired... like feeder... request feeding..."

The Night Watchman gently brushed the mycelium off his hand, sprinkled some fertilizer water into the culture medium, and, confirming they had received sufficient nutrients, continued to build the mushroom garden.

At a quarter past two in the afternoon, Lin Bo finished his work for the day. He still had the urge to eavesdrop on the True Name of steel, and considering that patients from Stone Tower Town might take advantage of the sunny weather to visit the lighthouse, he did not linger.

"(True Word) Wind."

The mage stood at the entrance of the grotto and activated the Word Spirit. The howling sea breeze converged, swirling and blowing around his body. He tried to urge the wind force; the surrounding air currents became increasingly turbulent. The seagulls perched at the cave entrance to rest were sent spinning in a daze, screaming as they fled from this dangerous fellow.

The atmospheric density was low and thin, and the total amount of airflow Lin Bo could sense and mobilize was limited; he was ultimately unable to lift himself up. With his current Word Spirit ability, he could only command one True Name at a time. Since he could not ride the wind, Lin Bo did not force it. He put on his mask, recited his own name, and leaped up along the cliff.

The seagulls, left in a mess by the gust of wind, took to the air, circling and crying between the blue sky and the sea.

On the northern sea, a small steel motorboat was heading toward the pier of Stone Tower Town. The group of people on board were basking in the bright autumn sun, chatting about rumors of sunken treasure and ancient coins.

Suddenly hearing the cries of the gulls, they looked toward the direction of the sea cliff.

"It’s seagulls, little white things, how cute," the dignified lady said, shielding her nose and mouth with a whalebone folding fan.

"This is also a beautiful sight of the natural world," the archaeology professor from the Capital University handed over a brass telescope. "Take a look at them."

The lady took the monocular telescope and first observed the white lighthouse standing on the cape—humans were always fascinated by these buildings erected in the wilderness—before she turned the lens toward the sea cliff.

She let out a cry of surprise, lowered the telescope, and stared blankly, then hurriedly raised it again.

"What is it?"

"I think I saw someone rock climbing, but now they’re gone."

The professor peered into the distance. "At such a distance, the telescope cannot see the specific scene clearly. You may have mistaken a uniquely shaped rock for a human figure; this is a psychological effect."

Viscount Pearl, who was accompanying them, looked toward the sea cliff, refusing to believe that anyone could scale such a precipice. "It might have been some kind of bird."

The lady laughed at her own ignorance and agreed with her companion’s explanation.

"That’s true. On such a steep and dangerous mountain, only the birds can go."