Little Pink Starfish

“Shhh-shhh.”

The sound wave seemed to stir a ripple in the air. In that instant, An Zhe realized it wasn’t using eyes to locate them, but sound.

Several limbs wriggled as it moved this way.

“Bang!”

A gunshot rang through the night sky. Wind brushed past An Zhe. Lu Feng had climbed to a higher rock with unimaginable speed and fired the first shot.

The rustling stopped. The eyeballs on its body slowly rotated. A muffled, intermittent howl came out—it must have pus-filled tracts inside, An Zhe thought.

The second shot hit an eyeball on its upper right.

The howling intensified. An Zhe’s eyes suddenly widened.

Blood.

Black-red blood spurted from the wound—not oozed, but sprayed.

Lu Feng fired several shots in quick succession. The rupture widened, and blood sprayed like a fountain. The monster’s cries grew many times louder.

An Zhe looked up at Lu Feng. The man’s gaze was calm, as if everything was within his expectations.

Then he looked back at the monster—its wings trembled. Its body was too heavy to fully take flight—it flailed madly, charging straight at the rock Lu Feng stood on. A loud crash, the rock shook, dust and debris fell, but Lu Feng stood motionless above it, looking down at the mass of flesh.

The repeated impact made it bleed faster. It was like a punctured waterskin. An Zhe watched the unimaginable scene unfold and began to suspect that this monster’s body was made almost entirely of liquid.

After the tenth hit, the noise weakened, and its massive body slowly collapsed to the ground.

But blood wasn’t all—chunks of tissue and oddly shaped organs oozed out from the gaping wound. Heart and lungs merged into a semi-solid flow. An indescribable stench filled the area. Even in the Abyss, monsters didn’t have such bizarre internal structures.

An Zhe: “…?”

His mind blanked. He looked up at Lu Feng. Lu Feng raised a brow slightly and jumped down to his side. “What’s wrong?”

An Zhe: “It died too easily.”

“Mhm.” Lu Feng holstered his gun, spinning the stock lightly in his pale fingers before returning it to the holster at his waist. “Just like that.”

An Zhe stood in deep confusion, even starting to wonder what would happen if he were shot. He felt a bit afraid.

Lu Feng glanced at him, a faint smile in his eyes, then turned to walk ahead.

The monster’s ugliness had exceeded An Zhe’s imagination—but so had its weakness. In the Abyss, there were plenty of huge, hideous creatures, but the mess of meat here clearly didn’t match the usual rule that the uglier the monster, the stronger it was.

Its corpse lay slumped on the dune, black-red pus seeping out, staining the soil dark. The same pus also touched nearby shrubs. First it hung like a dewdrop, then a minute later it contracted and merged into the branches—absorbed.

Lu Feng glanced at his watch. Thirty minutes after confirming the monster’s death, he approached it. An Zhe followed, though he was still limping slightly.

Under the aurora, its grotesque body reflected a strange metallic sheen. Despite being assembled from parts of different creatures, all the components were tightly connected—grown from within. Thinking back to how it swallowed the black bee, An Zhe realized: when it ingests a creature’s genes, it instantly grows the corresponding organs.

After observing the monster for a while, Lu Feng said, “Let’s go.”

An Zhe asked, “Where to?”

“There may be more of these things here,” Lu Feng said. “We need to find a safer place.”

An Zhe looked around. There was nothing in sight but dusty desert. He asked, “Where?”

“There are ruins ahead,” Lu Feng said.

An Zhe thought—why didn’t I see ruins when I was flying?

Then he remembered: he had ridden a bee, while the colonel had traveled by plane. Of course, his view would have been broader.

Then Lu Feng asked, “Can you walk?”

An Zhe: “I can.”

He wasn’t a mushroom afraid of pain.

—Though it did hurt a bit.

The colonel gave him a glance and said, “Come here.”

In the end, An Zhe ended up back on Lu Feng’s back. He held his neck and buried his face in his shoulder, feeling Lu Feng’s breath and the movement as they walked. The hilly terrain was suited only for quadrupedal crawling creatures. The sandy ground gave way underfoot, unsuitable for skeletal and muscular exertion. It seemed only many-legged snake-like species could move freely here. Much of this world was unfit for human activity. Walking here consumed a lot of energy—and carrying someone consumed even more. But Lu Feng didn’t seem to mind. In An Zhe’s limited memories, the colonel—though taciturn—was never stingy.

In silence, An Zhe looked back. Beneath the boundless darkness, on the snowy white sand, their footprints formed a trail—like profound symbols.

Suddenly, he remembered that corridor in Eden—several white officers gathered in someone’s room, reciting poetry, the leader holding a silver cross. The geomagnetic field had vanished, the power was out, yet their faces were serene—as if finding some kind of support.

He softly recited to Lu Feng a line from their poem:
“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”

Lu Feng’s voice seemed to carry a trace of warmth in the cold:

“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,” An Zhe continued, “and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

“They were religious,” Lu Feng said.

An Zhe asked, “God?”

He remembered that in the articles An Ze wrote for the base, there had been words like “God” or “divinity.”

Lu Feng gave a faint “mm.”

An Zhe asked again, “What about you?”

Lu Feng didn’t answer.

He said nothing. In the still night, only the unsettling wind could be heard. An Zhe recited every poem he had memorized from children’s books and elsewhere to Lu Feng—simple ones, complex ones—until he reached “Do not go gentle into that good night.” Then he started over.

He and Lu Feng had no real conversation, nothing much to talk about. He just wanted to make the lifeless, oppressive night feel a little more lively—this was the only way he could think of.

The wind was strong; the sound quickly scattered—but they were close enough that An Zhe knew he could hear.

After all the poems had been recited again, they had walked a long time.

An Zhe didn’t know what kind of training the colonel had gone through in the military, but he knew this road and this night were too long. So long it felt like a lifetime, walking to the world’s edge—or the end of their lives. The energy consumption far exceeded human limits.

Quietly, he turned parts of his body into light mycelium. Fearing the change was too minor, after a while, he changed a bit more.

Finally, he heard Lu Feng speak: “Do you know why that monster died so easily?”

An Zhe didn’t know why Lu Feng suddenly brought this up. He paused his recitation. “No.”

“Low-level mutations are gene pollution. High-level mutated monsters are divided into two types,” Lu Feng said, “Hybrid and polymorphic.”

“Hybrids carry features from multiple organisms. But the coexistence of genes needs a buffer period.” Lu Feng kept walking and continued, “When a new gene is acquired, it conflicts with existing genes. During this period, the gene chain undergoes violent changes—its internal structure is chaotic—making it easy to kill. Highly intelligent hybrids wait a long time after ingestion, only acting once their genes stabilize. That one earlier wasn’t smart.”

An Zhe: “What about polymorphs?”

“Polymorphs are the highest-level mutations—very rare, mostly found in the Abyss. Their mutation isn’t gene coexistence but free conversion. Like changing from a bee into a plant… sometimes only partially.”

“Polymorphic gene sequences are more stable than hybrids,” Lu Feng said mildly. “But even so, ingesting too much at once affects their sanity. The Tribunal once recorded a case: a polymorph switching between animal and plant failed to transform fully, and all its organs fibrotized. It died instantly.”

An Zhe felt a little afraid and hugged Lu Feng’s neck tighter.

He had a feeling the colonel’s words carried deeper meaning.