"No rush, let's take a look first." As he spoke, Ke Lan released the drone and it slowly flew towards the base.

The perimeter of the base was in a complete mess. The defensive positions consisting of watchtowers, bunkers and walls were torn apart like a piece of paper. The buildings and the ground were covered with traces of acid corrosion. The densely packed holes on the metal armor looked like a honeycomb... Just taking a single frame of the picture would be enough to give a try to people with trypophobia a cardiac arrest.

"Without the energy shield, these fortifications are just a pile of decorations in front of the 'Anemone Head'." The Hound commented on the side.

"Yeah." Ke Lan controlled the drone to continue flying forward... Until now, they have not found any monsters... or even any corpses.

If there is no corpse, where does the strong smell of blood and corpse come from?

Until the drone flew right above the central square of the base——

"What...what is this?!" Even Ivan, who was usually calm, couldn't help but exclaim in surprise when he saw what was on the screen.

In the center of the square, there stands a huge cocoon-shaped object that is nearly thirty meters high. The surface of this object is covered with a layer of dark pink flesh membrane, and underneath the flesh membrane are purple veins that pulsate rhythmically like blood vessels.

The giant cocoon was spindle-shaped as a whole, but there was a crack similar to a flower bud at the top. As the cocoon squirmed slightly, sticky black pus and blood continued to overflow from the crack and slide down the surface of the cocoon... Right below the cocoon, a large pool of blood had even accumulated.

"That stench of corpse...could it be coming from this thing?" Although he only saw it through the drone's camera, the hound still felt inexplicable palpitations.

"It seems to be alive," Ivan said. "I always feel that... this thing seems to... seems to..."

"It seems like something is hatching, right?" Ke Lan supplemented Ivan's unspoken guess, "Do you have a feeling that those disappeared bodies are actually wrapped in this giant cocoon..."

"..." Ivan did not answer, but nodded silently.

Ke Lan controlled the drone to fly around the giant cocoon, but unfortunately, when looking inside from the crack at the top of the cocoon, he could only see that it was filled with a sticky dark red fluid. As for what was soaked in the fluid, he couldn't see it clearly at all.

But what surprised Ke Lan even more was that around this giant cocoon... or even in this entire mining base, he didn't even find a single "anemone head", which was really beyond his expectations.

Did the monsters leave after creating this giant cocoon? This is too unreasonable, right? If this giant cocoon is really the "reproduction method" of those monsters, then according to the instinct of the creatures, they must have left some guards to protect the safety of the giant cocoon.

Or...were they also swallowed by this giant cocoon? This somewhat outrageous idea suddenly popped up in Ke Lan's mind.

"I just don't know if this thing has any offensive capabilities..." Ke Lan lowered the drone's altitude and aimed the crosshairs at the crack on top of the giant cocoon. The drone was equipped with a mini launch device that could be used to drop tactical equipment such as stun grenades and smoke bombs from a distance. However, due to weight limitations, it could only carry two rounds of ammunition at a time.

Ke Lan set the detonation mode to collision detonation, and then fired two stun grenades at the giant cocoon at once.

The silver-white cylindrical projectile drew a graceful arc in the air and fell into the crack accurately. Then, a burst of strong light burst out from it, accompanied by a deafening buzzing sound.

Nothing happened. The giant cocoon did not show any stress response to this sudden attack.

"...How about this," Ke Lan thought for a moment and said to the others, "I'll go over and take a look first. You guys wait outside the base. If anything unexpected happens, you can just go ahead and implement Plan B."

The so-called "Plan B" was actually to ask for help from the consortiums stationed at several other bases, but this plan had an obvious drawback, which was that no one could be sure whether the other consortiums were willing to lend a helping hand. Moreover, if the situation got worse, they might even be imprisoned and tortured for their words and actions. Anyway, several thousand people had already died in this incident, and adding their names to the list of victims would not be too much...

"What nonsense are you talking about? Can't you think more positively?" said the hound, rolling his eyes at him.

"Always be prepared for the worst." After saying this, Ke Lan stood up and walked towards the base step by step.

“Beep, beep, beep…”

As soon as Ke Lan stepped into the gate of the base, the alarm of the Geiger counter rang in her ears, which meant that the radiation in the base had exceeded the safety threshold that humans could withstand. Before the base was breached, the radiation concentration in this area was almost negligible.

"Radiation? Could it be caused by that big guy?"

With such doubts in mind, Ke Lan continued to walk slowly forward.

"Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep..."

“Beep, beep, beep…”

As the distance between Ke Lan and the giant cocoon continued to narrow, the alarm of the Geiger counter became more and more urgent. By the time there were only a hundred meters left, the beeping sounds had almost become a string.

Even though he was wearing a power armor with protective clothing function, Ke Lan's skin could still feel the uncomfortable tingling sensation... The radiation concentration in this place was far higher than the deepest part of the mining area.

"This thing... couldn't be filled with radioactive material?" Ke Lan had originally thought about getting some explosives to blow up this giant cocoon, but now he has completely given up on this idea - if this thing exploded, it would be almost like a super dirty bomb. Not to mention the valley where the mining base is located, it is estimated that the area within a radius of several kilometers with this place as the center will become a dead zone.

"The only good news is that this thing doesn't seem to have any biological induction... I've gotten so close, but there's still no reaction."

Ke Lan walked around the giant cocoon and then moved a little closer.

He could vaguely hear a "gurgling" sound inside the giant cocoon, and his mind couldn't help but imagine large chunks of flesh and blood tumbling in the sticky, boiling slurry.

"We can't get any closer... The radiation is too strong..." Less than ten seconds had passed and Ke Lan was already beginning to feel dizzy. He quickly distanced himself from the giant cocoon and took out an anti-radiation injection and inserted it into the injection port reserved on the arm of the power armor.

"Come over here. This thing doesn't seem to be dangerous at the moment... it's just that the radiation is very high. Don't get too close. There should be prepared protective clothing in the ruins outside. Let Asano Akira find one and put it on... The radiation in this place has reached a level that is enough to be fatal." Ke Lan said into the walkie-talkie.

[PS I encountered something very infuriating today, and I want to tell you about it: my previous novel "Wasteland Survival Guidelines" was stolen again on the Himalaya audiobook platform. I negotiated with the person who stole my text a few years ago. His attitude was pretty good at the beginning, so I didn't investigate it too deeply. I just asked him to remove the VIP paid chapters and only keep the free public chapters... I thought the matter was over, but today someone told me that he was dictating the audiobook, and I found out that the person changed the title of my novel, and the author became himself. The content was copied intact, and the content of more than 1,000 chapters was copied. The total number of views is more than 8 million, and he also set up a fan group of his own, charging novel readers three cents per chapter... He also claimed that it was not easy to update and he had to support his family...

I am confused. Can stealing other people's things be considered as supporting a family? I am a person who almost died once. I have no job and no income. I have never thought of stealing or cheating. I just want to make money by my hard work. Then someone plagiarized my work and openly claimed it as the result of their own labor?

Why can people be so thick-skinned?

I haven't deleted that person's WeChat yet. I checked his friends and found that there are even more shameless ones: he called my book that I finished many years ago his "new book", and he also held an event of "updating 10 chapters a day", and he even learned from e-commerce to hold a discount event for paid chapters on Double Eleven...

Almost made me laugh...

This is no longer considered piracy. At least the pirate will not change the name of your novel. At least he will indicate the original author's ID. Now the author of this book has become himself. This is blatant plagiarism!

I saw that all the comments on Himalaya were praising him, and some even paid to ask for updates. Judging from the number of views... I even suspect that the income from this plagiarized book will not be even lower than that of my original work. This world is so fucking magical.

I calculated the time, and when he finished plagiarizing, I was lying in a hospital bed, being tortured to death by chemotherapy drugs. Fortunately, I didn't die, otherwise, wouldn't he be afraid that I would come to his house in the middle of the night?

Here is the information of the plagiarist: His Himalaya ID is Piduoduotadie321, and his work is called "The Strong Man in the End of the Online Game", which is a plagiarism of my old book "Wasteland Survival Guidelines", and the chapter names are exactly the same as the content of the novel. In addition, this person's WeChat ID is PDD0305.

I am not a famous author, and I don’t think Yuewen has the time to help me with this kind of rights protection. My personal power is very weak. I hope that friends who have seen this chapter can help me report this book to Himalaya. If more people report it, maybe Himalaya will pay attention to it. As for the paid chapters that he sold privately in the WeChat group, I really can’t do anything about it.

I feel very sad and angry, but there is nothing I can do. This world is so fucked up.