Volume 5: Bottomless Sinkhole Chapter 279: Creatures Suspected of Xirang
"No way..." The Hound opened his mouth and said in astonishment, "Isn't this too mysterious?"
But the next second, the hound had already pulled out a bitter smile at the corner of his mouth: "But compared to what we have experienced, there is nothing to be surprised about..."
"You said that the jar was placed on the stone platform, and then what? You took the jar away?" Ke Lan asked the mercenary.
"No... the jar is not placed directly on the stone platform. There is a base underneath it." The mercenary said, "The guy who led the way told us that this base is actually a safety mechanism. If we forcibly remove the jar, the device inside the base will smash the jar and release the contents of the jar."
"What's in the jar?" The Hound asked, but before the mercenary could answer, his face suddenly changed. "You said that the jar would break and the contents would come out... Then wouldn't it have come out now? The collapsed passage can kill people, so how could it not break a glass jar? How dare you go back to look for the jar?"
"The jar should not be broken..." The mercenary shook his head repeatedly. "Although it is made of glass, it seems to be a very special kind of glass. It is stronger than the armor plate on the tank. A 10mm caliber full-power bullet hit it, but there was not even a trace... As for what is inside, I really don't know. The liquid in the jar is very turbid, like a tank of ink. You can't see what's inside at all..."
"You really are not afraid of death. You know it will be a big trouble if the things inside escape, but you still dare to shoot at the can?" said the hound.
"It was a stray bullet that accidentally hit the jar... If Ryan hadn't told me about it, I wouldn't have noticed it at all." The mercenary replied.
"Stray bullet? There was a battle in the cave? Is the 'accident' you mentioned before referring to this incident?" Ke Lan asked with a frown.
Logically speaking, since the mercenary team did not suffer any casualties before withdrawing from the cave, it means that the intensity of the battle was not very high... However, if the intensity of the battle was not high, why did this "accident" delay their scheduled evacuation time?
"We did have a firefight in the cave, but the accident I mentioned was not this incident..."
"Then tell me about the exchange of fire first. Who are your enemies? Indigenous creatures? Or some...more bizarre monsters?"
" I don't know what that thing is..." the mercenary muttered, "When we climbed onto the platform and prepared to take the jar down, a lot of things came out from somewhere around the platform... a lot of things..."
His brows were furrowed, and he looked as if he was constipated - it was obvious that the mercenary could not find a suitable adjective to describe what they had encountered in his poor vocabulary.
"How should I put it... It's a bit like minced meat... No... It's more accurate to say it's meat puree... It's the kind of meat puree that Chinese restaurants use a blender to make meatballs. It's also light pink and feels very sticky, a bit like silt mixed with a lot of water... The meat puree poured and quickly filled the more than one-meter-deep ditch around the platform... After it was flush with the height of the platform, it began to crawl towards the platform..."
"Ke Lan... could it be that thing?" The Hound slowly rubbed the stubble on his chin and spoke to Ke Lan in an extremely fearful tone.
Ke Lan knew what the hound was referring to—the red fleshworms on the Leviathan. Their movement patterns were indeed somewhat similar to the "meat paste" mentioned by the mercenary...
But Ke Lan shook his head and said, "It shouldn't be... Although those bugs look like a red tide from a distance, you can still distinguish the outlines of the individual ones if you look closely. These mercenaries are not far away from the meat paste... Besides, if it were those bugs, they would have been eaten long ago."
Ke Lan glanced at the mercenary lying on the ground and said, "I didn't ask you to stop, so keep talking."
"Oh...oh...when the flesh mud surged up, Ryan and I's first reaction was to shoot, but the bullets were no different from hitting the mud...Not only bullets, even fire had no effect on them. I saw with my own eyes that Ryan threw an incendiary bomb into the flesh mud, but the flames were extinguished as soon as they rose, and the body of the incendiary bomb was also wrapped in the flesh mud...
I quickly emptied the bullets in my magazine... Just as I was about to step back to reload, an exile suddenly grabbed my shoulder and told everyone not to step back and to follow his example..."
"What to do with his appearance?"
“He…he took out a dagger and cut his arm, letting the blood drip onto the ground… Strangely enough, after the flesh paste smelled the blood, it stopped coming closer. Instead, a very thin tentacle stretched out from its body, touched the blood dripping from the man, and then retreated.
He yelled at us: "If you don't want to be eaten, give your blood as a sacrifice, and they won't attack you after swallowing your blood!" ... To be honest, I didn't believe it at first, but Ryan believed it, and after he did it, the meat paste really stopped crawling towards him! "
The mercenary stretched out a wrist with a healed scar on it. "I did the same. The exile didn't lie to us. After sucking our blood, the flesh retreated to the bottom of the platform and disappeared soon..."
"In my impression, there is indeed an indigenous creature that is very similar to the 'meat paste' you mentioned, but some of its characteristics are completely opposite..." Ke Lan pondered.
"What is that?" the hound couldn't help asking.
"A special creature called 'Xirang'. There are no samples, and we cannot determine whether it is an independent individual or a group. We cannot classify it into the existing biological classification system. There are only eyewitness records in several 'dry valleys' near the South Pole of Alpha Star."
Ke Lan paused, a hint of doubt flashed across his brows: "But according to the existing information, Xirang is a gray-white mud-like organism that likes to live in very dry areas... And the complete opposite of the 'meat mud' you mentioned is that after the 'Xirang' comes into contact with human blood, it will become very aggressive. Half of the exploration team that first witnessed Xirang died because of it."
One retreated after sucking a small amount of blood, while the other started killing at the smell of blood... No matter how similar these two "creatures" look, it is difficult to say that they belong to the same species.
"Could it be a closely related species? Or... a subspecies, a mutant, or something like that?" the Hound guessed.
"It's possible... Moreover, I think these things have been transformed and domesticated by the Alpha people... The only thing I can't figure out is why they react to human blood..."
Even if these flesh pastes were indeed the soil transformed by the Alphas, after sucking the blood of an alien species like "humans", the most normal reaction should be to expel these "invaders" from the ruins, rather than retreating obediently like a pet fed by its owner...
This is really confusing.
"After the meat paste disappeared, we started to work... The two exiles asked us to hold on to the jar with our hands, and they took out a dozen metal sticks with strange patterns engraved on them. After a while, they asked us to hold on to the jar tightly, and then inserted the metal sticks one by one into the base under the jar, just like inserting keys."
"Those metal sticks...are they what they carry with them all the time?" Ke Lan asked.
The mercenary nodded, while Layton beside him shook his head: "I searched the bodies of those exiles at least three or four times. If there was something like that, I would have found it long ago."
"I remember that they didn't take them out after they inserted the metal rods." The mercenary said, "Less than three seconds after the metal rods were inserted, the can bounced off the base... Fortunately, we were prepared in advance, so the can didn't roll off the platform."
"But, the accident happened at this moment." The mercenary continued, "A lot of water gushed out of the base, and the water flow was very fast... no, it should be said that it was very strong, just like a high-pressure water gun used for riot control. Ryan and one of the exiles were instantly washed off the platform by the water flow, and another mercenary and I held on to the jar tightly... But we couldn't hold on for even a second, and we fell down with the jar... Fortunately, the water level below was more than one meter deep at that time..."
The mercenary's face showed a look of reminiscence. "The situation was in chaos at that time, and I can't quite remember what happened. Anyway, when we returned here with the jar, it was more than an hour past the scheduled evacuation time... Okay, now I've told you everything I know... Then, can you give me that?"
"Although I'm not very satisfied, I'm not a very demanding person..." Ke Lan said, placing the syringe filled with morphine solution on the ground. The mercenary quickly struggled to turn around, grabbed the syringe in his hand, tore off the protective cover with his teeth, and directly inserted the needle into the subcutaneous tissue on the inside of his arm.
Ke Lan no longer paid attention to the drug addict who was half dead, but walked to the other side with Hound and others and began to discuss the next action plan.
"What should we do now? The secret passage these guys came in through is completely blocked, and there is no other way here. We can't search the entire bottom of the lake, can we? Even if we seize their diving equipment, the problem of equipment and oxygen will be solved, but who knows what monsters are under the lake?" The Hound spoke very quickly, "We have solved the problem of the giant octopus that can speak human language, but what about those damn piranhas? We can't stay at the bottom of the lake for a long time."
"Maybe we can go to the cave that the mercenary mentioned and take a look... maybe we can find something." Qin Zhao suggested, "Anyway... that meat paste doesn't seem to pose a threat to us..."
"Little sister, I say you are still too young..." The Hound glanced at Qin Zhao and coughed in a mature manner. "If you believe everything others say, you will be killed sooner or later... That guy was our enemy not long ago. We killed his brother and almost killed him too... Then Ke Lan tortured him, causing this guy to lose all the benefits of this mission and there is a high probability that he will be thrown into the wasteland to feed the indigenous creatures in the future... Tell me, how can this guy not hate us?"
"Ah..." After being told this by the hound, Qin Zhao was speechless, and his fair cheeks suddenly turned red.
"The reason why he didn't show hatred is because he was afraid... But if he was given a chance to kill us all here, what do you think he would do?"
"...But, if we die, he won't be able to get out alone, right?" Qin Zhao said in a very small voice.
"That's not necessarily true. People in this business will more or less keep some cards in their pockets... and we have no way to verify whether what he said is true or false... Let me give you an example. If their team had far more than a dozen people, and more than half of them died in that cave, killed by those 'meat pastes'. And he was one of the few who escaped death... Now, he told us that the meat pastes that killed most of them are completely harmless. They will retreat as long as they suck a few drops of blood, and they are as obedient as pet dogs raised by humans..."
"Haha..." The hound sneered twice, "If possible, I would like to throw him into the cave to see if the so-called 'meat paste' can eat humans."
"How about this," Ke Lan was silent for a long time, and finally spoke, "Let's rest here for a while. Anyway, this place should be safe for the time being, and the supplies those mercenaries carry are enough for us to sustain for a week. I suggest waiting until Ivan and Asano Akira wake up before taking further action."
"This is a good idea. I fully agree with it." Layton nodded. "Asano Akira is our strongest fighter. With him, we will be more confident when we encounter some monsters. Doctor Ivan is knowledgeable and can be regarded as an indispensable member of the team... Moreover, after they wake up, they can also free Zhuoligetu. They don't have to carry two body bags on their shoulders wherever they go..."
