Volume 5: Bottomless Sinkhole Chapter 264: In the Egg Sheath
"I'd rather encounter a cockroach, even if it's a giant cockroach that's hundreds of times bigger." The hound whispered, "Compared to those ghost things, cockroaches are cuter."
After hearing what the Hound said, Martin couldn't help but think of the hand that just disappeared under the ice. He nodded in agreement: "It seems... it seems to be the case."
"Don't think it's too simple." Ke Lan patted Layton's shoulder, "Try and see if you can dig an egg case from it."
"It should be possible. These things are not embedded in the ice. As long as we can melt the ice chips that stick them together around them, it will be fine." Leighton nodded.
"It's best not to use heating. I'm worried that the temperature increase will cause the things in the egg sheath to hatch." Ke Lan spoke again, "Use pure physical means if possible."
"Okay." Layton's mechanical arm made a crisp "click" sound, and a palm-sized circular saw emerged from his palm and began to rotate at high speed.
The teeth of the circular saw were all black, a bit like carbon fiber, but with the luster unique to metal. Ke Lan knew at a glance that the teeth of the circular saw were made of 100% pure Nino alloy. It was no exaggeration to say that it could cut through iron like mud.
Layton raised the circular saw and approached an egg case at the outer end with great caution. When the spinning teeth came into contact with the ice, there was a teeth-grinding friction sound, and the fist-sized egg case fell off and fell into the specimen box that had been connected below.
The next delicate work was not something that an electric circular saw could accomplish - Ke Lan asked Layton to use a mechanical arm to fix the egg sheath, while he held the scalpel in one hand and a smallest file in the other. He first used the file to remove the remaining ice on the surface of the egg sheath, and then pushed the blade in along the edge of the egg sheath little by little.
Ke Lan's hands were steady, the blade barely trembled at all, and she inserted it into the egg sheath very smoothly.
"There was something in there... I felt like the tip of the blade was hitting some soft tissue."
But whether the things inside are dead or alive can only be known after opening the egg case.
Ke Lan began to exert a little force, using the edge of the egg sheath as a fulcrum, and slowly pried open the upper part of the egg sheath...
Generally speaking, an egg case of a cockroach can hatch ten to fifty nymphs, depending on the species. However, this giant egg case that was pried open contained hundreds of tiny translucent vesicles, each of which was a separate larva...
But what was wrapped in these translucent vesicles were not cockroach nymphs, but curled up into balls of... red fleshy worms!
The fleshy worms inside these vesicles are still wriggling slightly...they are alive!
Ke Lan, Hound and Layton raised their heads and exchanged glances at each other. In each other's eyes, they saw the kind of fear and dread that was difficult to express in words.
They were not ... Ke Lan still clearly remembered how those people from the Mitsui Group were swallowed up by the "tide" composed of these insects - it only took them a few seconds to eat away all the flesh and blood on a person's body, leaving no bones behind!
"How could this thing appear here?!" said the Hound with a serious expression.
He raised his head and glanced at the ice road in front of him that was almost completely covered with egg sheaths. He couldn't help but want to retreat: "If these egg sheaths are full of this kind of insects..."
He didn't continue speaking, but Ke Lan and the others knew what he wanted to say - if these red fleshworms in the egg sheaths hatched out when they passed through this passage, the entire team would be destroyed in an instant.
When Ke Lan thought of those bugs burrowing under his skin and crawling freely in his flesh and blood, he couldn't help but feel an itchy sensation all over his body - even if he really had to face death one day, he would never choose this kind of death that made him shudder at the mere thought of it.
"What should we do? We can't just go back, right?" Leighton frowned and said, "Old Dog, Ke Lan, you two have a lot of ideas, you two decide."
At this moment, Qin Zhao's voice suddenly came from behind: "So, this kind of insect... is there any problem? You seem to be very scared."
Ke Lan glanced at her. In view of the confidentiality agreement they signed, the truth of the Leviathan incident could not be revealed. However, it was very simple to explain the horror of this insect.
"These bugs feed on humans... or rather, not just humans. They will devour any organism they come into contact with and digest it in a very short time. They move very quickly, and when they gather together, they are as unstoppable as a tide. Even flamethrowers and energy shields can hardly stop these bugs... If, I mean if, all the bugs in these egg cases hatch, the few of us will not be enough to fill their teeth."
Hearing what Ke Lan said, Qin Zhao's already light-skinned face turned even paler, and Martin began to grope his body frantically with an unnatural look on his face.
"I... I feel so itchy... could it be that a bug is crawling on me?" he said hurriedly.
"If there really was a bug crawling onto your body, even if it was just one, you would have lost several pieces of flesh by now." Ke Lan glanced at him and said in a deep voice, "The itchiness is a psychological effect. Don't scare yourself."
"Oh...oh." Martin nodded hurriedly, "Then, then is there any way to kill this kind of insect?"
"As I said before, flamethrowers, energy shields or other explosives can easily kill individual insects, but it's useless."
"No use?"
"There are simply too many of them... You can't kill them all... And once the insects in front of you die, the ones behind them will immediately devour their bodies and turn them into a part of themselves... You ca n't ."
"Hiss..." Martin grinned and couldn't help but take a breath, "Senior, what should we do now?"
"Forward or backward, there is no other choice." The hound looked back at the ice road behind him and said, "If we go forward, we have to step on the egg sheaths of these insects. No one knows whether they will suddenly hatch... If we go backward, we can only return to those nine stone chambers and suffocate to death in there."
"There is a third way," Ke Lan said, "There is a crack in the ice where the hand was just now. If we chisel open the crack, there might be a third passage underneath."
"Ke Lan, are you crazy? Then I would rather choose to step on these egg sheaths and move forward." The hound couldn't help but say.
"Actually, my choice is the same as yours. I'm just saying it." Ke Lan shrugged. "The temperature in the ice track is very low. These egg sheaths should have been sealed here by the Alphas, so I think there is a high probability that they will not hatch."
