Volume 1 Glacial Relics Chapter 13 Big Eyeballs
This ice wall easily reminds people of the freezers that humans use to refrigerate food... But the meat frozen in the wall is simply impossible to associate with the ingredients in the freezer...
These "meats" - let's call them "meats" for the time being - all have extremely strange and terrifying appearances: the first piece of meat is covered with eyes, and the eyeballs in the eyes are of different sizes. Some eye sockets have only one eyeball, while others have three or four. Some eyeballs look like they come from mammals on Earth, but some are compound eyes unique to insects; the second piece of meat has a bloody mouth that occupies almost one-third of the volume, and the mouth is full of teeth, even the tongue and the upper jaw are no exception; the third piece of meat is in an irregular cystic shape, and looks like a huge tumor. Through the bulging transparent surface, you can see that it is filled with milky white egg-shaped objects...
"What the hell is this..." Leighton felt his throat tightening. Fortunately, he had only eaten some semi-liquid emergency food after the crash, so he didn't vomit directly.
"I don't know." Ke Lan shook his head slowly. "I guess it might be the food of the Alpha people... No, if it is food, it should be cultivated in batches, and the differences between individuals should not be so huge..."
Ke Lan pondered. He felt that these pieces of meat were not unfamiliar to him. He must have seen them somewhere. Was it in some document? Or a video? Or a dream?
"Food? The Alpha aliens have a strong taste, don't they?" Layton gasped, and the exhaled gas quickly condensed into white frost. "I think... these monsters might be the result of their experiments, and this place is a cold storage room for storing experimental specimens... Let me tell you, the biological research laboratory on the Ark does the same thing. We capture the native creatures outside and bring them to the Ark, and those scientists stuff them into freezing tanks, and then sink them into liquid nitrogen pools for preservation... It's exactly the same as this!"
"...Is there any way to break the ice?" Ke Lan suddenly turned around and asked.
Layton was shocked by this: "What are you going to do? Dig these ghosts out? Who knows if they are alive or dead?!"
"I always feel that these things are related to the piece of meat that turned into the shape of a hound. If we break through the ice wall, perhaps we will make more discoveries," Ke Lan said.
"But there is also a possibility that we will be eaten by the monsters that come back to life!" Layton firmly disagreed.
As soon as he finished speaking, the beam of light emitted from the mechanical arm went out after a flash, and the passage returned . Those terrifying pieces of meat were once again hidden in the black ice.
"...The energy consumption of this concentrated mode is even higher than the diffusion mode..." Layton complained, dug out a waste crystal with exhausted energy from the robotic arm, and then took out a new crystal and replaced it.
"Let's not talk about whether I agree with your idea or not. Even if we want to dig, we have no tools and no energy. What should we use? Hand digging?" Layton sighed. "Before we separated, we left some crystals to Lao Gou and the others. Now we have less than 50 units left. This number is really not enough. Besides, my mechanical prosthesis still needs this thing to drive it. If it is used up, I will be useless."
"It's our bad luck," Layton continued. "We've been here for quite some time, but we haven't seen a single crystal... Hey, why are you staring at me?"
"Pay attention to your back...don't turn your head too quickly, be mentally prepared." Ke Lan said in a low voice. He was not staring at Layton, but his attention was attracted by something behind Layton.
"...Oh." Leighton was stunned for a moment, then nodded angrily. A drop of cold sweat slid down his cheek and dripped onto the armor on his chest.
Even though he turned his head very slowly and was mentally prepared, his heart still skipped a beat when he saw that huge eye.
“…I…fuck…”
A huge eyeball with a diameter of one meter was staring at Layton who turned around through a thin layer of ice!
"Get ready to run. This thing wasn't here just now. It appeared when you were changing the crystals... It seems to have the ability to move freely in the ice..."
There was only a thin layer of black ice left blocking the big eyeball, and it seemed that it could break free at any time and enter the passage where Leighton and Ke Lan were.
"...Run?...Where to run?" Leighton also lowered his voice, fearing that he would alarm this thing.
"We can't just run back." Ke Lan pointed to the front of the passage with his eyes.
“…What if there’s something like this ahead?”
"What if we run back and this thing chases us? What should we do with Lao Gou and Ivan?" Ke Lan asked back.
"This..." Leighton gritted his teeth, "How about we fight it out? It's just an eyeball..."
"Do you have to choose the worst option? Wait...it doesn't seem to have noticed us?" Ke Lan suddenly discovered that the eyeball seemed to slowly turn in a different direction and began to move downwards.
The side of the eyeball was exposed to the two people's sight. They found that the eyeball was not independent. Behind it was connected many fleshy tubes as thick as arms. There were blue-black veins under the tubes, which looked like blood vessels under the cortex.
As for where these fleshy hoses lead to and what they are connected to, that is not something they can see.
"...Where...where is it going?" Leighton still didn't dare to move, and his whole body froze there.
"I don't know, but do you feel... this thing, it seems to be patrolling..."
"Now that you mention it, it really does sound like that... just like... the surveillance camera in the cold storage, but that thing can only move on slides." Layton breathed a sigh of relief.
"Let's go. We didn't get discovered this time, but maybe we won't be so lucky next time." After the eyeball had completely sunk into the ground and even the fleshy tube growing behind it was completely submerged in the darkness, the two of them cautiously took a small step forward.
"Phew... I was scared to death... Fortunately, the eyeball is so big but the vision is not very good, otherwise I would be in real trouble this time." Leighton sighed.
"It should have been attracted by the strong light we released before. The energy was exhausted and the lights went out at that time, so we were lucky enough to escape." Ke Lan said, he wiped his forehead, his hands were full of tiny ice chips formed by sweat.
"We are lucky... Let's go, I don't want to stay here any longer."
