“What is that flash?” Brian Carter was stunned. The bomb caterpillar was already novel enough, but now there was a flashing, explosion-blocking bird. “Is this magic?” The concept of magic suddenly appeared in his mind; that explosion-blocking flash really looked like a magic shield.

As he thought about it,

Brian Carter had already raised his right hand. On the arm of his nano battle suit, an oversized gun barrel quickly extended, aiming at the black bird, and he fired directly.

Bang!

What shot out wasn’t a bullet, but a net of silk threads—this was Brian Carter’s improved net gun. The inspiration came from the net guns used by the police to capture criminals, but after his modifications, it shot farther and faster. He designed it to capture small animals alive in the new world, so catching birds was no problem.

The black bird had never seen such high-end equipment before. In the moment it was stunned, it was already covered by the silk net.

It immediately reacted, trying to break out of the net, but the edges of the net were weighted with bullets, and under the force of gravity, the net held it firmly in place. Around the black bird’s body, light kept flickering, like a faint layer of glow floating on its surface, but it was useless against the net.

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Chapter 8 Mushroom People

The branch where the black bird landed was quite high. Brian Carter couldn’t reach it by climbing, but that didn’t trouble him. Standing beneath the branch, the bottom of his nano battle suit extended continuously, lifting him up like he was on stilts.

He grabbed the black bird, dispelled the bird-catching net, and held the black bird in his hand. It was only the size of a pigeon, its whole body pitch black, somewhat resembling a crow. The difference was that while ordinary Earth birds have three toes forward and one back, its claws were symmetrically arranged, two forward and two back.

This allowed it to grip branches more securely.

When held in his hand, he could feel a gentle force trying to push Brian Carter’s hand away, accompanied by a faint glow.

“Is this force really magic?” Personally feeling the strength of the “magic shield,” Brian Carter was very curious. “How does it work? Does it follow the same mechanics as on Earth?”

Earth’s mechanics are based on the four fundamental forces. Scientists have long sought to unify these four forces to establish the essence of the universe. Although the new world’s trees are a different color and the creatures’ “attack” methods are different, they still appear to be carbon-based life, so it’s possible they also follow the four fundamental forces.

But the psychic ocean, this extraordinary civilization, clearly pursues a kind of psychic power that doesn’t belong to the four fundamental forces—or maybe it does, but its basic principles are not yet understood.

“If it’s consistent with Earth’s mechanics, then how do you explain this magic shield?” There was no way to know; at least Brian Carter truly couldn’t figure it out.

“I’ll call you Shield Crow.” He casually gave the black bird a name.

After taking photos and recording, he plucked a feather as a keepsake and released the Shield Crow. The Shield Crow was too big; bringing it back would consume too much energy, so it wasn’t worth it.

“Gu-gwa!” The Shield Crow, once freed, let out a strange cry and flew away, disappearing into the blue forest in the blink of an eye.

Brian Carter continued walking forward. He didn’t want to stay in a place full of bomb caterpillars, so he walked dozens of meters away and came to a clearing in the forest. There weren’t many big blue trees here, but instead a patch of low shrubs. These plants, besides being blue, also had red and yellow colors.

What surprised Brian Carter most was that he saw a group of “fungi” that looked like mushrooms—let’s just call them fungi for now.

The smallest of these mushrooms were only palm-sized, but the largest were half as tall as a person. The caps looked like umbrellas, coming in red, blue, green, purple, and yellow—brilliant and vibrant. Brian Carter didn’t know how big the largest fungi on Earth could get, but these mushrooms were truly huge.

They grew in clusters, mixed among the shrubs.

He walked up to the largest mushroom, squatted down, and saw that its stalk was about as thick as a person’s waist. It looked tender and crisp, but Brian Carter didn’t know if it was poisonous. From beneath the mushroom cap, he saw that one of the gills was densely embedded with many sesame-sized dots.

“These must be the mushroom’s spores, right?”

He carefully picked off a few dozen with tweezers, put them into a glass test tube, and stored it in his storage box. As he circled around, he suddenly discovered that the stalk of this big mushroom had holes in it. To be precise, they were man-made holes, not naturally formed.

The reason for this judgment was that there were three holes, like a door and two windows.

There was no actual door, just a big hole left behind, but the two smaller holes that formed the windows still had obvious window frames inside, though most of them had been enveloped by the mushroom stalk, with only a few bits of the frame still visible.

“These are definitely windows and a door!” Brian Carter materialized a flashlight and shone it inside, seeing a large space within, likely hollowed out by someone. It was clearly abandoned for a long time, as the mushroom stalk had grown back quite a bit. “Did I just discover the natives of this new world?”

Comparing the size of the mushroom and the door and windows, he immediately imagined a group of tiny people, each less than the size of a palm.

“Are these the intelligent species of the new world? Should I call them mushroom people?”