Zheng Qing gave a wry smile at the professor's teasing.
"I deserved that."
The young scholarship student muttered, his mind once again flashing to the Slender Red Heavenly Pillar on the Black Prison Battlefield, the Inner Castle Wall crushed beneath it, and the figures scattering beneath the wall. He could not help letting out a heavy sigh.
"A very interesting gift."
The professor repeated the words, holding the pot of mushrooms in his hands and raising it into the sunlight. "See? This is a shade-loving plant. Sunlight makes it curl up its caps and cover itself in red spots... Leave it in the sun for a while, and it dies."
Zheng Qing stared silently at the Death Cap as its cap slowly curled beneath the sunlight. Its reaction to sunlight resembled that of a mimosa after being touched, except Magic Plants were far more sensitive than ordinary plants. It formed a sharp contrast with the changes he had undergone after becoming a wizard.
When he had still been an ordinary middle school student, he had always been exceptionally sensitive to subtle changes in the outside world. Yet after becoming a wizard and experiencing so many things, he had instead begun to grow somewhat numb.
However, the headmaster of Jiuyou Academy paid no attention to that faint, delicate feeling in the boy's heart. He had picked up the pot of Death Cap for another reason.
"Mushrooms are very special creatures."
The professor carefully examined the curled fungus in the sunlight. After speaking, he paused before continuing, "They grow in the dark world beneath the earth, accompanied by the aura of death all year round, yet they never truly die... From life to death, then growing again from decaying corpses... This is an ancient cycle."
A cycle.
Zheng Qing inexplicably thought of