Volume 5: Bottomless Sinkhole Chapter 263 Egg Sheath
At this moment, Martin suddenly let out a sharp scream: "It...it, it, it's fingers seem to move!"
"Don't talk nonsense!" The Hound glared at Martin fiercely, but when he turned around to look at the hand under the ice, he found that the middle finger and ring finger of this hand seemed to actually twitch.
The amplitude of the jump was very small, so small that it was almost negligible, but the hound could be sure that it really moved!
"Damn it, everyone, get back off! That damn thing is still alive!" he yelled, raised his gun and pointed it at the ice. He flicked his thumb lightly and with a "click" the safety of the pistol opened.
"What should we do?" Layton glanced at Ke Lan, then turned his head to look at the hound. "Should we...should we strike first?"
"Wait a minute." Ke Lan raised his palm and made a "stop" gesture. "This thing... may not be able to break through this layer of ice. If we take the initiative to open fire, we will be helping it."
While they were talking, the top joint of the middle finger suddenly bent about twenty degrees. Then, a series of fine cracks began to spread from the fingertip and quickly reached the surface of the ice!
"It...it seems to want to crawl out..." The hound held his breath and said to Ke Lan in a very low voice.
The vitality of a monster that can survive in such an ice layer is simply unimaginable, and the strength required to break this layer of ice is extremely terrifying. If such a monster enters this ice road, the fate of their team can be imagined.
"Crack..." The sound of the ice cracking was clearly audible... At this moment, Ke Lan remembered the scene when he and Layton encountered the giant eyeball on the ice track...
"Everyone, keep quiet, don't move, and turn off all light sources." Ke Lan said quickly. He was the first to turn off the tactical gun light mounted on the pistol, and Hound and Zhuo Ligetu also immediately turned off their flashlights. Layton even turned off the laser emitter on his weapon for auxiliary aiming.
In comparison, Qin Zhao and Martin's movements were slightly slower.
The ice track suddenly became pitch dark, and Ke Lan could only hear her own accelerating heartbeat... and the "crackling" sound of the ice breaking.
But soon, the "cracking" sound disappeared ... the ice was not broken, and the owner of the hand did not climb out from below.
This situation remained deadlocked for more than ten minutes. Just when everyone felt their ankles begin to go numb, Ke Lan finally turned on the gun light again, adjusted the brightness to the lowest level, and shone it towards the location of the palm.
The hand had disappeared, leaving only a few tiny cracks on the ice. A misty white cold air was constantly emerging from the cracks and quickly melted in the relatively high temperature of the ice track.
"The hand... the hand disappeared..." Martin hunched his shoulders and clenched the gun with both hands. "Could that thing have crawled out?"
He didn't dare to look back at all. He always felt that there was something lying behind him. As soon as he turned around, that thing would pounce on him and pierce his throat with its five slender fingers.
"This crack is so small that even a bug can't pass through, let alone the thing just now." The Hound said, "I think that thing might have sunk."
Ke Lan didn't say anything. His eyes looked into the depths of the ice beneath his feet. There was nothing there except endless darkness.
"It's better to be careful... The visibility of the ice is less than half a meter. Maybe that thing is less than one meter away from us, but we can't see it at all..." Ke Lan said, "Layton, leave a warning beacon here, and then we will continue to move forward."
"Got it." Layton took out a small piece of special explosive that looked like plasticine from the equipment box, stuck it on the crack, and then carefully inserted a finely crafted metal tube on the explosive.
It was a highly sensitive trigger detonator. As long as the shaped explosive was deformed by external force or the crack underneath it expanded again, the fuse inside the detonator would detonate the explosive.
The equivalent of this amount of explosives is very small. Even if someone accidentally steps on it, as long as the unlucky person who steps on the mine is wearing slightly better protective gear, he will basically not lose any limbs - its warning effect is far greater than its killing effect. Ke Lan asked Layton to set up such a warning beacon to prevent the monster under the ice from widening the crack and secretly crawling out after they leave here.
No one would want an inhuman monster to be following the team unnoticed, let alone that this monster has the power to easily massacre the entire team.
…
The team continued to move forward, but before they had gone a hundred meters, they had to stop again...
The ice path ahead suddenly narrowed, and the surrounding ice walls were no longer as flat and smooth as before, but were covered with a large number of growths. These growths were piled up layer by layer on the ice walls, which made Ke Lan think of the lipid deposits attached to the blood vessels of patients with atherosclerosis.
When they got closer, they found that these growths were fist-sized dark brown oval objects. They were attached to each other and tightly attached to the ice wall. Their surface was covered with a thick layer of white frost.
"What the hell is this?" Layton stared at the growths in front of him with fear. "It looks... disgusting to me."
"To be honest, I think it's a bit like... a bit like a cockroach's egg case... but this thing is hundreds of times larger than a cockroach's egg case." The hound said in a deep voice.
"Could it be... a mutated giant cockroach?" Martin suddenly interrupted, "I've heard that some Earth cockroaches escaped from the Ark and mistakenly entered a high-radiation area, where they mutated. Not only did they grow in size, they even evolved the ability to walk upright. They also have hands like humans, and their IQs are very high..."
"I know the story you mentioned. It's an old science fiction comic, and it seems to be the work of a Japanese cartoonist. But the story takes place on Mars in the solar system, not Alpha." Ke Lan said, "There are indeed examples of cockroaches brought from the solar system to Alpha by humans evolving, but it's not to such an exaggerated extent... Fifty years is not enough for such a low-level creature to evolve to the level in the comic."
"But," Ke Lan changed the subject, "if the volume only increases a few hundred times, it is still possible."
