Mother of Insects

Chapter 10

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Ten minutes later, Lin Xi tidied himself up a little, and then dragged his extremely heavy and sticky body. He tried to cheer himself up all the way - meeting with Taran was not an easy task.

Especially when thinking about his strange appearance yesterday, Lin Xi became even more worried.

What was disturbing was that when he stepped into the captain's room from the metal hatch, he found that the air was heavier than he had expected.

In just one night, Taran looked even more haggard than before. He kept sniffing as he spoke, as if there were some minor problems with his respiratory system, and the uncomfortable gleam in his eyes became sharper and brighter. Lin Xi knew that he was probably a little harsh in thinking this, but just seeing Taran like this, he couldn't help but think of the rumors about his bloodline - it must be said that Taran does remind people of insects in many ways, and his eyes are especially so now.

His dear Eliza was also in the captain's room. The poor girl looked extremely haggard, with dark circles under her eyes so heavy that they seemed to hang down to the corners of her mouth.

Next to Alyssa was a somewhat unexpected person. Ando Shizuo, a short man with a baby face that didn't match his age, always smiling. Like Lin Xi, he was also a mission assistant sent by the Earth-Moon United University. The only difference was that his status was one level higher than Lin Xi, and his research direction was Sonu's zoology.

Well, in principle, Ando is Lin Xi's boss, but Lin Xi has always gotten along well with him. After all, Ando is the kind of person who can hardly say "no" (Lin Xi firmly believes that it is because of his character that he was packed up and thrown onto this damn spaceship to carry out this damn mission). Many times, Lin Xi even forgets that there is a distinction between superiors and subordinates between them - but at this moment he is very sure that the reason why Taran asked Ando to come here is for this relationship.

As soon as Lin Xi stepped onto the floor of the captain's room, which had been worn to gray due to years of friction, he knew that something was wrong.

Because when he saw Alyssa and Ando, he instinctively looked at the two of them. However, the two people who should have given him some hints or shown goodwill now looked more and more worried. Alyssa looked at him with a serious expression, and Ando Shizuo's iconic smile completely disappeared from that baby face.

"Dr. Lin Xi, I think you need to take a look at this and give me a reasonable explanation."

Then, a dry sound, like something rubbing against each other, appeared in Lin Xi's ears.

That was Taran, who spoke without even allowing Lin Xi to do his routine reporting.

An object contained in a small transparent sealed device was carefully pushed to the center of the table by Taran.

The sealed device is like a huge glass capsule with complex metal parts at both ends. The indicator lights on it light up regularly, proving that the life support system inside is functioning.

And right in the middle of this huge glass capsule, a strange spindle-shaped thing is quietly soaking in the culture medium.

Through the light blue culture medium, one can vaguely see that underneath the egg-white translucent film, there is a layer of slender oval-shaped eggs arranged in a row.

It looks like some kind of special pod.

Fleshy and elastic - there is no such "pod" on Earth. After all, those cute and delicious pods on Earth are not like the ones in front of him, which would move slightly from time to time.

Lin Xi frowned as he looked at the thing, especially the egg-shaped core that was trembling in an arc that was barely noticeable to the naked eye. He couldn't help but feel that the "pod" looked a little disgusting, but when he thought about it carefully, that strange feeling of disgust, as if the thorns of Miscanthus pierced his skin, was completely unexplained.

A more obvious emotion than disgust is confusion.

Because Lin Xi could swear that he had never seen such a strange thing before, but from the performance of Taran and even Alyssa and Shizuo Ando, they seemed very sure that Lin Xi had to give them an explanation.

"What's this?"

Lin Xi asked.

He tried to keep his attitude as natural as possible so that his confusion wouldn't give the other party the excuse.

Taran's sharp gaze pierced him instantly.

"I can assure you that this is the first time I've come into contact with this kind of... thing... I really can't give you any explanation."

Lin Xi raised his hands towards him in a gesture of surrender, and then he spoke with great distress.

"Is this the first time you've seen it? You promise?"

Alyssa suddenly interrupted.

"I promise!"

Lin Xi has never been so sincere.

"All my itineraries are in my personal terminal. If necessary, you can check the records thoroughly. I have never seen anything like this before. If I had seen something this disgusting, I would have remembered it."

He looked at Alyssa for help.

Alyssa looked relieved after receiving his assurance, and she turned to look at Taran.

However, before she could speak, Taran stared at Lin Xi and questioned him grimly.

"Can you guarantee that you did not make any mistakes when resealing the Sunu statue? I repeat, there were no mistakes or omissions—"

"sculpture?"

Lin Xi opened his eyes wide in confusion.

Oh, right…

Lin Xi remembered that Alyssa had mentioned in the message she had given him before that they had found something in that strange sculpture sealed container.

He was in such a bad way that he had no recollection of it.

But wait, these things in front of us are the "things" they found in the sealed container of the Sunu sculpture

Lin Xi stared at the "pod" in the glass capsule in disbelief.

It was about fifteen inches... maybe sixteen inches long, and both the egg-white coating and the ovoids inside were impressive.

Unless Lin Xi was blind at the time, he couldn't have missed this thing when sealing the sculpture.

"My operation is also in the mission log. If necessary, I can give you a more detailed text briefing, but - I swear, I definitely didn't see it when I was operating it!"

Lin Xi said firmly.

“But it’s there.”

Taran said mercilessly.

"It was inside the container of the sculpture when we went to do the real work of treating it. It would have almost suffocated in the gel."

Lin Xi insisted that he had never seen this "pod", but from Taran's attitude, he seemed to firmly believe that Lin Xi needed to be responsible for it.

The situation was at a stalemate until Shizuo Ando, who had been silent all along, suddenly spoke.

"Sorry, I actually have a very small hypothesis."

He said with a very sheepish smile.

Then he clicked on the electronic screen and enlarged a section extracted from Lin Xi's mission log.

That was the image data of Lin Xi when he was resealing the statue.

"Dr. Lin Xi mentioned before that the backup container he found was smaller than the original sealed container, and he had to use some less gentle methods to barely put the sculpture into the sealed container—"

The aura of Taran suddenly became cold and terrifying, and he glared at Lin Xi as if he wanted to eat someone.

God knows why he cares so much about this sculpture on an alien planet... Lin Xi suspected that even if he touched Taran's woman, this guy would not show such obvious hatred.

Lin Xi thought about it and defended himself: "The thing had already started to turn black at that time, so I had to do it!"

Ando Shizuo nodded.

"Yes, we can see that the Sunu statue at that time had already hardened to a certain extent..." At this point, he looked at Lin Xi comfortingly, "Actually, this is normal. In Sunu, all the star god statues must be preserved in a special mucus. Once exposed to the outside world, they are prone to this hardening phenomenon, but as long as they have enough time to be soaked in liquid again, they will return to normal. It's just that people who see the hardening phenomenon for the first time will inevitably think that the condition is a bit serious. I can understand the actions taken by Dr. Lin Xi at that time to alleviate the hardening phenomenon, and I also believe that at that time, this egg sheath did not appear."

"Oggcase?"

Lin Xi asked in surprise.

He couldn't help but look up at Taran and Alyssa, both of whose expressions showed that Ando wasn't talking nonsense.

Lin Xi now finally understood why he felt uncomfortable all over when he saw the "pod". After all, he had just discovered his insect phobia yesterday.

"Oh my god… "

Lin Xi almost subconsciously took two steps back to stay away from the egg case.

"Why is there an egg sheath here? What kind of egg sheath is this?"

He asked with a frown.

“That’s what we want to know, too.”

Alyssa sighed and then said.

But Ando followed her and said, "We don't have enough instruments on this ship to test it, but based on my personal opinion, this should be the egg case of a Sunu star butterfly."

When he heard the word "Sunu Star Butterfly", Lin Mao shuddered slightly.

Vaguely, he felt as if he remembered something.

Something slippery, dark, and unpleasant. But the fragments of memory were so fragmented that they quickly passed through his mind. When he tried to recall it, his brain was blank.

“… I thought the Sunu Star Butterfly was extinct?”

Lin Xi said in a daze.

He still remembered that when he was a child, he liked the Sunu Star Butterfly very much. He bought several encyclopedias about Sunu in an attempt to find more information. However, the Sunu Star Butterfly was an extremely mysterious existence even among the Sunu people.

All that the people on Earth know is that it is extremely sacred, that it is the spiritual totem of the Sunu people, and that they originally believed it to be a "little star god." Moreover, its population has been dwindling, and it was on the verge of extinction more than 30 years ago.

And when the Sunu people started to go crazy, those big insects, which already required very delicate and tedious care, died even faster.

But now, Ando told him that there was actually a fresh star butterfly egg case on the Apollo

"At least as far as we know, yes, all the Sunu butterflies on the current Sunu planet are extinct, but I suspect that such an egg case should have been produced earlier." Ando nodded his head as he spoke.

Now even Taran's eyes were on him.

Ando's face flushed slightly. "I'm a Sunu fan... Well, everyone knows this. A long time ago, I vaguely remember seeing some records in a document about Sunu culture. When the Sunu people encountered a pregnant woman with a difficult birth, they would take her into the temple and bury her under the throne of the star god. Those Sunu people firmly believed that such treatment would allow the difficult-to-birth baby to be born smoothly."

Alyssa raised her eyebrows in surprise, and she quickly thought of something: "What do you want to say..."

Ando continued, and once he touched upon something that interested him, he became eloquent: "Yes, we all know that the star butterflies encountered reproduction problems centuries ago, but they are so noble and important to the Sunu people. Considering this, it is possible that the Sunu people buried the egg sheaths in the statue in an attempt to restore its reproductive ability." At this point, Ando looked at Lin Xi sympathetically, "The shock of the previous forced landing may have loosened some parts of the fossil statue, and when Dr. Lin Xi resealed the statue, the egg sheaths that had been buried inside the statue slipped out."

As he spoke, Ando magnified the image of the resealed statue on the electronic screen. After being soaked in the sealing liquid, the black hardened marks on the surface of the strange statue were slowly fading.

Ando pointed to a very inconspicuous depression at its tail. In the middle of the depression, there was a very shallow crack.

"We all thought that this was the crack caused when the container broke and it fell out, but I observed it carefully before and I suspect that this is where the egg case was discharged. There should have been a bigger hole here when it hardened before, but now there is enough mucus, it has become less conspicuous."

After Ando Shizuo finished speaking, there was a short silence in the captain's room.

"Looking at the bright side, this star butterfly egg case should be quite valuable?"

Lin Xi blinked and cautiously probed Taran, who remained silent.

He admitted that he had completely accepted Ando's statement, although it did sound a bit too bizarre.

But if we eliminate all the impossible, what remains is the possible.

Lin Xi vaguely remembered seeing this sentence in a book many years ago.