Yes! Peach Flower House will be publishing the uncensored webnovel version along with the additional chapters included in the original Chinese print. However, in a sci-fi apocalypse setting, there’s usually a “man vs. nature-gone-wrong” element that makes such a scenario more…nuanced, I guess? That is, if you’ve actually got zombies or people turning into flesh-eating bugs, then the “shoot as soon as you know they’re infected” approach makes more sense. The characters in this book are incredibly well-developed. The author has a talent for making characters feel vivid and real, whether they're a passerby described in one sentence or someone who'll accompany the reader for a few chapters. An Zhe in particular was a delightful protagonist. His perspective on the story events and his exploration of what it means to live as a human is equal parts endearing, funny and bittersweet. As for Lu Feng - I won't say much but as the second most important character, every scene with him in it had me gripped! Also, seeing Lu Feng just relax and be happy, and the way he accepts An Zhe’s “mushroomy” tendencies – from turning into a ball of hyphae to “tasting” various other species and taking on their qualities for a while – is very heartwarming. Lu Feng doesn’t have an easy job. In fact, all of his predecessors have gone mad or killed themselves from the enormity of it all. But Lu Feng has held. For seven years he has done it all to keep humanity safe but along the way he lost his family and friends. And then he met An Zhe. His training tells him there’s something off about him but all scientific tests prove otherwise.

And Lu Feng clearly doesn’t do his job as Arbiter because he craves power or he actively enjoys killing people. It’s more that he has a very utilitarian philosophy. He is the most accurate at telling who’s been infected, so he should take on the most cases to reduce the number of non-infected killed and to spare the other Judges’ consciences. But that thinking feels very cold-blooded to most humans, who therefore fear and despise the Arbiter. An Zhe, who is also an outsider, understands the logic Lu Feng is working on, and that he does in fact care about humanity…even if it makes things awkward for him! I have other issues with the text. Clunky sentences, commas and periods placed outside of quotes ("like this", for example, and "this".), words occasionally left out, dialogue that sounded unnatural (seriously, what kind of mercenary would ever say "thus"??). A few instances of one or two of these wouldn't faze me, but this stuff was happening enough, my immersion in the book was being interrupted enough, that I started to read with a pencil handy to clean up sentences that bothered me. It's not even a matter of this being translated into English, either. Translation is a transformative act. It's on the editors to look at the text, realize something sounds clunky or odd in English, and rearrange it so it reads naturally. Instead, we have sentences in this volume like: first of all, this is such a wonderful unique premise - a story about a sentient little mushroom who gains human form amidst an ecological apocalypse and has to learn what it means to be human while watching humankind lose their humanity in a bid to save the world.they said that they can’t let the xenogenics get human genes, so humans must be incinerated immediately if they die, but didn’t we see that people who die in the wilderness aren’t incinerated? or are they supposed to incinerate dead bodies and an zhe’s group (and an ze’s group) just ignored the rules? I feel like the whole going out into the wilderness thing seems high-risk, low reward. how are what the mercenaries have found in the wilderness worth this risk? anyway, 3 stars for an zhe and mr. pauli for being the only characters who felt like people and who i could get attached to. and also for the plot concluding in a satisfying way.

The plot loosely follows the original plot of Little Mushroom towards the end. Genshin lore is also mixed into the plot.) Language: English Words: 33,471 Chapters: 9/? Comments: 84 Kudos: 249 Bookmarks: 35 Hits: 4,730 To keep it spoiler free, this second book in the duology was absolutely wild. It's the most unpredictable book I've ever read - anytime I thought I could guess what would happen next, I was proven wrong. I'm convinced the author's brain is just built different from the rest of us mere mortals.In the year 2020, Earth's magnetic poles disappeared and humankind was nearly wiped out by cosmic radiation. Within the span of a hundred years, living creatures began to mutate and devour each other while the remaining humans, numbering in the tens of thousands, struggled bitterly in their man-made bases. and this is all manifested in lu feng, the love interest and the character who embodies the concept of sacrificing for the greater good. not only is he constantly forced to kill people, he seems less human than our mushroom protagonist, an zhe, in that he appears to have killed all emotions within himself too. so of course, it's an zhe who starts to revive the humanity within him (a trope i do love to see in romance). As of the end of this volume they are definitely not together, but it is starting to seem like a possibility. i also find it very interesting how the author has an zhe not care/be calm about certain things (like war crimes), not because he’s “not into politics” or whatever, but because he’s literally not human. Like why would a sentient mushroom care about human rights? Now, when there are rights violations against sentient mushrooms, an zhe cares very much. Ok, maybe this is a bit misleading—an zhe cares somewhat human rights, but he cares in a way that’s too rational for a human? he is very removed emotionally from the fate of humans