"Hey! What are you doing?" The elite ant shouted with soulsense.

Shi Xin had begun tunnelling into one of the walls, accidentally squishing a few mushroom crops as the cat-sized ants scampered away.

At that very moment, the elite was about 300 metres away.

Mei watched as lightning arched across its armour, making parts of it glow with heat.

It tensed, as if preparing to charge.

BANG!

The disciples yelled as a massive shockwave shook the glassy sphere. The loud sound of air rushing could be heard, the vines above swaying in the violent winds swirling through the chamber.

Wha-what just happened?

Mei quickly shook off her disorientation and looked outside. Beneath her feet, she could still feel the glass tremoring intensely, numbing her feet.

Outside, the massive armoured ant had been flipped onto its back, its massive legs pointing in the air and twitching as electricity continued to pulse around it.

It was unconscious?!

...what was with the suicidal way these ants fought? They were more like arrows than soldiers!

When they said each elite could defeat 10 nascent soul elders, was that only assuming the elders were standing in a straight line? Mei snickered.

Shi Xin shook his head and continued tunnelling, quickly closing up the hole behind them.

"I won't run out again!" the little mushroom said. "The outside world is scary and dangerous!"

Before it was the stone wall of a cavern, covered in countless silky white strands.

"Good child. But don't worry about the outside world... a day will come where we can roam freely." the wall said. "But if you ever feel the urge to adventure again, do ask our ant friends to accompany you, little one."

"Okay! Thank you, ancestor!"

...

In the next moment, the wall exploded into debris.

"Great ancestor!" the mushroom cried out.

A glassy ball tumbled out of the hole.

Mushroom was about to shout angrily, until it suddenly sensed... the souls of humans inside, the ones that caught it earlier!

"Ahhhh! Help me!" it ran away.

"What happened?" soulsense boomed from the wall.

"The wall can talk?" Liu Qiang said in surprise.

"There seems to be a massive spirit within the earth we tunnelled though." Shi Xin said.

"Some kind of earth spirit?"

"No."

The grey spirit reached out and picked up some of the dislodged rock, staring at the white strands.

"This is mycelia... I suppose that makes sense."

"Mycelia? What's that?" Liu Qiang asked.

"It's-"

"It's the actual body of a fungus!" Wang Wei chimed in. "The mushrooms you see are actually the fruiting bodies of mushroom, to spread their spores far and wide!"

He continued to explain for the next minute, seeming a little proud of himself.

"Rude of you to interrupt me." Shi Xin said. "But it is indeed as he says. This is the source of the demonic mushrooms."

The boy looked away sheepishly.

Right. Mei forgot Wang Wei had extensive studies as a noble.

She looked upwards to the walls and saw clusters of mushrooms growing higher up. So everyone once in a while, a "newborn" demonic mushroom would fall from the wall? Must be weird having a "sentient wall" as everyone's parent...

"Strange... the little one ran away..." the cavern walls mused.

"It didn't notice us? We literally just busted a hole through it!" Liu Qiang said.

"Fungi don't have nerves, so they can't feel pain. Weird how it doesn't seem capable of soulsense though." Shi Xin mused.

Following the panicking little mushroom, they soon arrived at a strange village. Most of the homes were carved into the cavern walls, with ladders and staircases for accessibility. Around this little village, there was not a single plant in sight, not even a sprig of grass.

A stream ran roughly 30 metres away from the wall, flowing with crystal-clear water that practically sparkled.

It was almost like a line that divided the village from the rest of the cavern... for on the other side, there were three massive pits. One was full of all sorts of scraped weapons and tools, the other two mostly empty, save for the magma that lined their depths.

Mei stared in awe. There had to be tens of thousands of weapons in it alone! Where were they coming from?

Meanwhile, the little mushroom stumbled across the stream and into one of the houses.

Shortly after, a pair of huge mushrooms wandered out, each 2 metres tall.

They stood tall on two stocky legs, their bodies grey and with a rock-like texture. In place of arms, each of them had rings of tendrils growing out of their stalks with fingers at their tips.

Each of them held 6 weapons, one of them holding maces and the other holding daggers.

Yikes...

"Humans? How did they get here?" one of the big mushrooms said.

"How would I know?" the other said.

"We have come as visitors, hoping to trade!" Shi Xin said. "The ants have allowed us entry!"

"What? This has never happened before." the mace mushroom said. "I don't trust you humans! If that's the case, why aren't any ants escorting you to explain the situation?"

Yeah, this obviously wasn't going to work.

"If you don't trust us, we can trade from here, away from the houses." Shi Xin said.

"Wait, let me smell you." the dagger mushroom said.

What?!

The mushroom walked over cautiously, then leaned its gills close and puffed its cap.

"Weird... I smell some danger pheromones on you, but they were overwritten by visitor pheromones..."

More words Mei had never heard of...

"Ah, we accidentally dug into one of their tunnels while trying to visit so we were attacked." Shi Xin said. "But once it was cleared up, they took us around their nest."

She poked Wang Wei while the elder spirits tried to convince the mushrooms.

"What the heck are pheromones?"

"Oh, they're just-"

Wang Wei explained ants essentially left various messages with smells they secreted, in this case, to identify friend and foe.

"...they talk through smells?" Mei looked at him with a strange look.

"I guess you could say that, haha."

...

Come to think of it, why the heck were nobles teaching their children about mushrooms and ants? Priorities?

...

"We'll accept your explanation for now... strange spirit." the mace mushroom said. "Follow us, we'll take you to the elder."

They stashed their weapons away.

The dagger mushroom poked at the "hamster ball" curiously with a finger. It didn't understand why the humans were being "caged up" Were they the pets of the spirits?