Using the drifting cloud steps to the limit as he made his way back towards the giant mushroom he had first landed on when arriving at the mushroom forest, Xuan Hao did happen to run into one of the other immortal mushrooms along the way that was similarly making its way in the direction of the gate leading out of the celestial trial.
Luckily for him, the immortal mushroom had not grown fast enough to catch up with him. Allowing him to easily move past it while avoiding the area where space was sealed around it.
However, the encounter did allow him to confirm that the immortal mushrooms were becoming stronger with time as they rolled through the mushroom forest, with the one he just encountered already reaching a speed comparable to someone in the Early Stage of the Dao Seed Realm. Far above the first one of them he had seen moving that only had a speed around the Peak of the Soul Ascension Realm to the absolute slowest among those in the Dao Seed Realm.