u/Automatic-Amoeba9798

I've been working on pulling weeds from a mostly abandoned garden bed around a gazebo. Some of the roots are deep so I've torn up a bunch of the soil. In one area of the garden bed I kept finding these orange fibers but couldn't tell what they were connected to. Google told me slime mold, dodder, some oriental invasive vine thing, etc.

I've found a number of these wood chips with the orange on it and was inclined to believe it was slime mold but there was a lot of the orange fibers in the soil. I pulled out a lot yesterday and they were neon orange at the time. Whatever it is it seems to be dying since some of it's a more pale orange today. If it is slime mold, is there a way to save it and keep it from dying?