Chapter 90: I love you the most.
She didn’t know where she was.
Both the visible appearance and the invisible heart were annihilated into an endless gray and white mist. She curled up and hugged herself, motionless, neither caring about the outside world nor about herself, as if she had turned into a senseless stone.
In this spiritual world that was on the verge of collapse, she was the only one.
But she didn’t feel lonely. She let her thoughts drift like smoke and enjoyed the blank silence.
A silence as if the world had forgotten her.
It was just that this silence was really short. After a while, a certain consciousness that was clinging to her revived and began to harass her, flicking her nerves, plucking at her perception, and gnawing at her sensitive spots, distracting and occupying her attention.
It was a very strange feeling, like an itch that was stuck in her soul, and it was spreading to her limbs and bones.
It was really naughty, and very insensible.
“Get out,” Cheng Ming said.
Get out and face the accusations, the mess, and all the disgrace she didn’t want to confront for her. After all, what Chu Lanying wanted was it.
“I can’t get out. You’ve trapped us here.”
Her other half was like a ghost surrounding her, hugging her from behind, and kissing her from the front, lying on her shoulder, and drilling into her heart, everywhere, and willfully tearing at her hypocritical peace.
“You’re so timid. You’re scared, you’re scared of seeing Cheng Ran again, you’re scared of facing the crime you’ve committed—you think it’s a sin.”
This voice was dismembering her.
She didn’t know where it came from. It could be from the outside, or it could be from her own heart.
“But when she first created you, it was to complete the foundation’s mission, to use you as a bargaining chip, and to save her biological daughter.”
“And when she saved you later, it was just because her biological daughter couldn’t be saved, and she had transplanted her maternal love to you.”
“Why didn’t she let me appear? With me, you’re too unlike a human, unlike her daughter.”
“You’re just a substitute, Cheng Ming, do you understand?”
Every sentence was very light, but the things contained in them were very wet, cold, and heavy, harsh, spicy, and joking, as ruthless as a god, and as vicious as a devil.
“For the thirteen years she raised you, she didn’t hesitate to use you for experiments to improve the inhibitor, and she let you be tormented by the pain. She was only half your mother, and she was also your researcher and your experimenter.”
“Seven years ago, she abandoned you because she thought Chu Lanying represented the foundation. She didn’t want to hand you over, so you could say she was saving you, but she didn’t tell you anything. She was also afraid that you would hate her.”
“She loved you, but she didn’t face you, and she didn’t accept you.”
It had succeeded.
It had shattered Cheng Ming’s rationality, and her breakdown had materialized. This world had begun to burn, to dissolve, and to collapse and twist illogically.
“Can you get lost?”
She looked up in the weathered ashes. The pained reprimand that should have been full of emotion, but when it came out of her mouth, it was dead silent, with no smoke.
Cheng Ran was already dead. Whether it was love or hate, real or false, no matter how strong the feelings were, there was no basis, and no matter how many questions there were, there would be no answers.
She would never get them in her lifetime.
Only the blood that her mother had left on her had faded in temperature and color, and had evolved into this pale and cold wasteland.
The debris was scattered, and she was a corpse in a collapsed world.
“Alright, then we won’t talk about her,” Xiao Ming rubbed against her, and its spirit was like a Cthulhu monster with countless tentacles that was wrapping her tighter and tighter. The feeling was like a hug, and also like being strangled. It passed through her skin, squeezed into her texture, and reached her deepest part.
And so, she felt suffocated, and at the same time, she felt at ease.
A nauseating sense of security.
“I love you the most,” it said.
Only I accept you—its hidden meaning. Actually, it didn’t care where it was. Anyway, Cheng Ming was there, and any place was the same to it.
But it wanted to be with her forever, to live together, not to die together.
“Yan Rong is waiting for you,” to comfort its partner with a person who would only compete with it for its partner, it was really very reluctant. But it was effective.
“Qu Ying has been locked up,” this was the picture that the mycelia had gotten when they had touched the fish egg in Cheng Ran’s brain. What Cheng Ming could see, it could also see.
“Chu Lanying knows everything. The truth is in front of you. Don’t you want to see it?”
One her was like it had been scattered into countless fragments, and the other “her” was picking them up and piecing them together, using all the adhesives it could think of.
Cheng Ming did not have an obvious reaction and was still as motionless as a stone. But gradually, the storm around her was no longer so rampant, and the gray haze and embers were like snowflakes that were produced and fell, and they accumulated and covered, until the endless sores were filled.
The collapse had stopped.
The fog dispersed, and a vast light pierced through the dust and came from the distance.
She looked up and, after a long time, she slowly stood up.
The world had returned to order. The ground under her feet was as smooth as a mirror, and it was reflecting another figure upside down. The moment she took the first step, the “her” at the bottom of her feet also took a step. When they walked, the silver-white ripples spread out, circle after circle.
It was a thin layer of water.
The water ripples were psychedelic, and the figure in the reflection was like her, but not entirely like her, a non-human, charming siren.
Her dark side, her monster incarnation, her second personality.
The “her” she loved, the “her” she hated, the “her” she had tried her best to deny but had to accept in the end.
Outwards, countless small white flowers were growing on the water’s edge. When they walked into the day together, the daffodils all over the mountains were swaying, as if they were blessing them, as if they were sending them off.
…
She opened her eyes, and the light was a little dazzling.
The day of the dream had extended to reality. She saw a small lamp, like a moon hanging not far away, deep and quiet.
The difference from before was that the original mirror had completely become an electronic screen, and it was even displaying the time, 10:35.
She didn’t know at all if it was night or day.
The mycelia gently and cheerfully rubbed her cheek. Cheng Ming knew that there were many more things in her perception.
However, the first thing she saw when she woke up, she had blocked out those bizarre senses, and had blocked out the attraction of the wonderful other side of the world that she had never seen before. She stared at the empty ceiling, her vision was blank, and her mind was also blank.
The brain was, after all, the most exquisite and mysterious instrument in this universe.
Human psychology, neuroscience, countless generations had spent countless time and had not figured it out. How could there be a medicine that could specifically destroy a certain consciousness? To erase a personality, it could only be done from the inside.
Chu Lanying had wanted to force her to have a mental breakdown, but who would have thought that it would be ineffective. If she broke down, Xiao Ming would only break down with her, and in turn, it was equivalent to giving them an external push, allowing them to integrate from the outside in.
For this result, the culprit seemed to have accepted it even faster than her.
“Calm down, let’s have a good talk,” Xiao Ming was not quiet, and soon, Chu Lanying’s figure appeared in her field of vision.
She came around from the direction of the device that was raising the conidia, and she bent down and brushed away the overly restless mycelia, and touched her forehead.
It sounded a little regretful, but after all, she was a leader who had been through a lot, and she was generally calm and natural.
“I know you have many questions, and I also regret that I didn’t fulfill my mother’s responsibility in your growth process. Now, I hope I can make up for it.”
If it weren’t for her previous actions, she would really have looked like a mother who had just recognized her daughter for the first time, loving and sincere.
Cheng Ming sat up with her help. Compared to her previous weakness, she now felt much better.
The syringe that the other had given to Cheng Ran was probably a nutrient supplement… thinking of Cheng Ran, she turned her head.
The ground was empty, and not a single trace was left.
Cheng Ran’s body had been disposed of.
It was so clean that it was as if she had just had a nightmare, if it weren’t for the fact that she had been changed into a different set of clothes, and if it weren’t for the lingering spasm and swelling in her throat, and her body still remembering the heart-wrenching pain.
Click. The switch was flipped, and Chu Lanying opened the last mirror wall.
All the people in the mirror had disappeared, and the space was suddenly open. A vast laboratory, or perhaps, a storage room. It was a laboratory because there were many high-end instruments and facilities in the back, and there was also a control panel.
However, the first thing she saw was a beautiful scene of faint light. The container was filled with a solution, and when the light passed through, her eyes were filled with a fluorescent blue.
A glass tank stood two or three meters away, and upon a closer look, the familiar luster was not the Wave-Born Floating Flower Algaefungus, but—
Cheng Ming got down and walked forward. The light and shadow in the transparent glass were dancing, and those things were as if they were in a trance and were in sync with her.
They were the egg spores she had given birth to.
It was not like a child’s call to its mother, relying on hormones to lure the latter’s endless devotion, but as if it were a part of her body. She had left some of her perception on them, and they had taken a part of her neurons, which had caused her to lose energy, but her senses had also been extended and expanded.
If they could absorb more nutrients in the future, they might even be able to feed back to her.
This was what Xiao Ming had been feeling all along.
Cheng Ming held her breath. She stood in the square cage of light that was projected by the tank, like a fly frozen in amber.
The ocean of her thoughts was churning and roaring, and she vaguely guessed something.
Of these four mirror walls, one was for her to see Chu Lanying, one was for her to see Cheng Ran, one was for imprisoning the conidia, and one was for containing the newborn egg spores… the first two were her bright and dark past lines, the latter was her controlled present, and the last one was the future.
A fragile, illusory, and still uncertain future.
She asked, “What do you want them for?”
She turned to look at Chu Lanying. After integrating Xiao Ming’s perception and memory, she knew more details and could basically restore a lot of the other’s motives.
But her ultimate goal was still inscrutable.
“Why are you so cold,” Chu Lanying held her shoulder from behind and, at an overly intimate distance, she adjusted her posture, and said with a smile in her ear, “Speaking of which, am I also their grandmother?”
This joke was not funny at all. Cheng Ming looked away, her expression faintly disgusted.
This “person” behind her, this mother who had given her another part of her genes and characteristics, was now overlapping with her, and they were admiring the new “offspring” that she had given a part of her genes and characteristics to.
This scene was really absurd, and strangely divine.
She did not answer, and Chu Lanying could only regretfully give up teasing her, and her gaze, along with hers, focused on that faint blue, and she continued on her own:
“We once envisioned a governance blueprint, and that was to rely on fungi. It has been discovered that some black fungi can use radiation for energy. This is the principle behind the current dangerous sea area still being oxygen-deficient due to eutrophication—”
“You?” Cheng Ming turned her head and interrupted. “You and who?”
The latter smiled, a strange smile.
Meeting Cheng Ming’s gaze, she raised her finger and pointed to the nameplate on her chest, and explained:
“Of course, it’s ‘me,’ and Chu Lanying.”
