Mushrooms had always been easy to associate with dreams and illusions. They might have been the first natural hallucinogens used by animals. These soft, adorable fungi had always existed on Earth, serving all kinds of purposes.
Before the 1960s, people believed mushrooms belonged to the plant kingdom. After all, these little umbrella-bearing things did not move. They simply grew beneath tree roots or in dark, damp places, looking perfectly harmless.
The ancients believed they were, like lichens and mosses, the most primitive and humble cryptogams, unworthy of attention.
But as technology advanced, especially with the widespread use of microscopes, people discovered that mushrooms' growth methods, survival habits, and even overall structures were vastly different from plants. Plants were mostly made of cellulose, while mushrooms were made of chitin, a material commonly found in the bodies of various insects.
Compared with plants, they were more like animals. They were decomposers in the food chain, and could even be called participants in the end of all life forms.
The circulation of energy in nature was not particularly complicated.
Plants absorbed trace elements from the soil and synthesized carbohydrates through photosynthesis. They were then consumed by herbivorous consumers.
These herbivores survived, reproduced, and were consumed by carnivores. Energy passed upward through the food-chain pyramid, level by level, until it reached the animals at the top. That position was currently occupied by omnivores represented by humanity.
Once higher-level consumers died, their corpses were consumed by decomposers represented by fungi and bacteria, broken down into trace elements, and turned back into fertilizer for plants, completing the cycle.
Within the food chain, fungi held a higher position than plants. They possessed an extremely powerful trait: they could intervene at any stage of that cycle and directly complete the energy loop.
They could cause seeds to mold