are there other jobs in the outer city besides mercenary, supply depot person, and sex worker? like who made all that potato soup they ate out there? Later me: Ok, so it seems like the garden of eden also grows the vegetables? But do they also cook the soup? Lu Feng lowered his head and whispered in An Zhe’s ear. “Let’s see if you can give birth to another one.” at first, it's a bit slow-paced, narrating the stories of the survivors outside the base, which then suddenly turned into an angst that kept me on the edge of my seat, and just like the first book, i read this within a day. i just can't get enough of the superb worldbuilding, the political strife, humanity's struggle for survival, and humanity's kindness, which our little mushroom learned to adapt together with developing his feelings with lu feng :3 An Zhe lowered his eyes slightly. The feeling of being patted on the head by the Arbiter was very wondrous. He felt that Lu Feng was now very soft. If it was because his previous words comforted this man, he would feel rather happy.

the underground city base was out thermonuclear weapons…i can’t believe they’re out here using MULTIPLE nuclear bombsAnd 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! An Zhe began life as a little mushroom. He tried to save an injured human, An Ze, but failed. In the end, he fed on An Ze’s body and absorbed his genes in the Abyss where it was his home and became a human that looked exactly like An Ze. He also inherited his memories, his ID card and his belongings. Due to his special property of being an inert mushroom, the other living mutant beings were not interested in him unless they fed on mushrooms. Although An Zhe looked 100% human, he was still a mushroom which possessed mycelium and could change form from human to white mycelium (soft white thread-like roots of a fungi). To humans, he was a heterogenous species. This little heterogeneous seemed so sure that Lu Feng wouldn’t hurt him despite his body being covered with marks from the electrocution. ” In addition, we were told that there’s only a 1 in 1000 chance of an infected person retaining their human consciousness, but here we see A) 1 in 1000 is actually quite a lot of people, considering the original human population size, and B) the number goes up further if you consider those who “lose themselves” for a while but then recover. It turns out there is a whole group of these people who have formed a sort of commune in the wilderness around an old research center. Ironically, these xenogenics – who know they would have been shot on sight if they tried to return home - treat each other with much more humanity than the fearful “pure” humans inside the base. And, appropriately, it is their research – and a sacrificial act by An Zhe – that saves the world. From then on, I'd describe the book as "An Zhe can't get a break". Everything that can go wrong, it does. And yet, it is not bleak and depressing? I think it's because An Zhe is such a gentle soul. He's just a little mushroom!!! Trying to find his spore!!! and in the meantime acquiring a boyfriend, whom everyone thinks is a hardass but who has such a soft spot of him that it can be seen from space!!! And I think that's the biggest charm of this book, just that there can be gentle, soft feelings in a world that is falling apart.

Little Mushroom Author: 一十四洲 | Shisi This is a carrd I made to help entice new readers to read little mushroom :) 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:

Look, I can’t comment on the accuracy. One day I’ll be able to read the source material, but that day is not today. However, at this point, I have tried reading a novel from just about every publisher who is tl-ing Asian works and this has managed to impress me. First, it’s very smooth. There are no typos, nor any strange formatting issues like dropping a line mid-sentence, random spacing changes, etc (looking at you, WE). There are no awkward word choices or strangely written sentences. It feels professional, and since this is a small business, that’s even more impressive! I am looking forward to reading more of their works.