When Qin Minghuang was eating teppanyaki takoyaki in the restaurant, Dr. Ji Lun in the monitoring room was almost angry to death.
Watching the scenes displayed on the surveillance screen, he became completely manic, with veins bulging on his forehead. He almost couldn't help but pull out the gun from the cabinet and walk out of the underground laboratory to shoot Qin Minghuang.
How could this happen?! How could this happen?!
His precious experiment! The treasure he had finally found in a deserted area! But this woman had chopped off its legs while they were courting each other, and she even ate it?!
Yes, Ji Lun was quite sure that his subject's previous series of behaviors were courtship.
Before encountering it, Ji Lun had never seen such a strange creature. Everything about it was new to him, which meant that his understanding of it was basically based on speculation.
Ji Lun couldn't even tell its gender until it showed... a special liking for a human.
Ji Lun wanted to bring it into contact with humans and make it interested in the opposite sex of different races. This was originally just a bold attempt by Ji Lun, but he didn't expect it to actually succeed.
It is a miracle in itself that this alien creature, which had previously spent most of its time submerged in the pool without moving, like a ball of air, would actively approach a human being.
After that, its interaction with the woman made Ji Lun feel surprised and excited. He could not monitor the emotional fluctuations and physical condition of this precious experiment, and could only rely on naked eye observation, but he could analyze and explain the behavior of the experiment by observing the physiological condition of the woman.
According to his guess, it can keenly perceive human emotions, perhaps through the smell of some substance secreted by the human body. Faced with the different emotions expressed by the woman, it will show different reactions.
When she was in a good mood, it would tentatively touch its limbs to her feet;
When she is angry, I will stay away from her, shrink aside and observe silently;
When she is bored, she will show her willingness to play with her;
…
Ji Lun discovered the abnormality of the experimental subject earlier than Qin Minghuang. Its restlessness appeared before the woman's menstrual period, and it sensed the abnormality of her body.
In nature, reproductive behavior occurs most of the time during the estrus period, which has special rules, and the smell emitted represents a signal. In a sense, the physiological period of human females is also a signal.
In the afternoon, it wandered around the pool, with all its limbs resting on the edge of the pool, heading in one direction. Ji Lun had reason to suspect that it was "looking" at the dormitory building over there, which had a human scent.
So he kept a close eye on it all night, and sure enough, it began to make some strange noises at night. This was the first time Ji Lun heard it make a sound after capturing it from the no-man's land. Before this, he had suspected that it had no sound system.
When the sound captured by the machine reached his ears, Ji Lun discovered that it could not only make sounds, but also had an excellent onomatopoeia system. It could simulate a variety of different sounds. One of the sounds was very familiar to Ji Lun. It was a piece of music that he had played in the car when he was transported here!
Only the last sound it made was not onomatopoeia, and Ji Lun suspected that it was its real cry.
He could hear the sound and feel the expulsion in it. He felt dizzy and uncomfortable at the time. However, through the camera, he found that the woman did not have that feeling. Her expression showed a kind of enjoyment, as if she found the sound particularly beautiful.
Ji Lun endured the headache and recorded the sound, but when he played it back it was just a bunch of noise.
Later, something even more terrifying happened. The woman was dragged into the water by the experimental subject. Not only did the scene he expected not appear, but the woman also cut off one of its tentacles and successfully escaped!
Ji Lun’s feelings are probably the same as those of many readers, full of disappointment and astonishment, just like that
However, he could do nothing but watch the woman grilling octopus legs in the monitoring room, feeling helpless and furious, yet extremely worried that the precious experimental subjects in the pool would die.
He angrily and nervously turned his eyes away from the octopus dinner and began to carefully observe the situation in the pool.
The experiment with one of its arms and legs cut off floated quietly in the pool, revealing its complete shape. Its arms and legs were like those of an octopus, but the number was far greater than that of an octopus. Its head and body were shaped like an anemone, with overlapping "petals" and tiny tentacles swaying on the edge.
This shape cannot be called beautiful. On the contrary, this weird appearance combined with its huge body will make anyone who sees it scream and call it a monster.
But at this moment, its shape is changing. Its soft body spreads out in the water, and its thick legs reveal wrinkles, spreading out into a wavy skirt.
Ji Lun quickly calmed down from his anger and realized that it was undergoing a transformation.
But why did it begin to transform
Ji Lun couldn't understand it, and Qin Minghuang, who had eaten a belly full of octopus, was even less clear. This strange-shaped creature came from the sky and sea, and its number was rare. In their tribe, reproduction required a special ritual.
When a male meets a female he likes, he will let her eat his hidden limb at the beginning of the female's breeding period. This special limb is hidden inside the body and will only be extended after he finds the female he likes. This hidden limb is equivalent to their "token of love", because a male will only grow one hidden limb in his lifetime, so they will only have one partner for life.
On the other hand, this hidden limb is also used to supplement nutrients to females so that they can face the breeding period more easily.
Therefore, the scene in the pool was not what Qin Minghuang imagined, "a battle with an alien octopus, escaping by chance and taking a delicious octopus leg", nor was it what Ji Lun imagined, "failed to court a mate and was brutally cut off by a violent woman". On the contrary, for it, this was all normal process.
Their tribe has always searched for the object of their choice by smell, but it liked the scent of a creature of a different species and regarded her as a mate. When it discovered that she had entered the breeding period, it stretched out its hidden limbs and entangled her in the water according to its habit. It was really embarrassed and distressed.
According to its genetic memory, the female should have strangled its hidden limbs and eaten them, but this little female seemed to have no strength left.
Fortunately, it succeeded in the end, so it entered the next stage happily. Since it succeeded, it will begin to transform and officially enter the courtship and reproduction period.
In nature, many males will show their most beautiful side in order to win the favor of females, so many males often look more beautiful than females, such as peacocks and birds of paradise, and the same is true for them living in the sky and sea.
After being eaten by the female, the cryptids will change their appearance and become more "beautiful" to attract the female. If necessary, they will continue to change their appearance according to the female's preferences, just to maintain the female's favor and make the female willing to maintain a "husband and wife" relationship with them.
At this point, the creature in the pool that had completed its metamorphosis was no longer the terrifying octopus it once was, but was more like a jellyfish.
Its tentacles have completely turned into flowing and elegant hems, like the hem of a fairy's skirt. The anemone on its head and body is like a flower-shaped umbrella cap, with thin, translucent ribbons floating between the hems.
After the complete transformation, the translucent body has a faint pink hue, and it floats in the air as if it were floating in water, looking elegant, beautiful, soft and fragile.
Its body is huge, but when it stays in the pool, it seems to have no volume. Even if the pool is full, it will not let the water overflow because its body will lock the water. It can float in the air because there is relatively dense water vapor nearby. It can capture the moisture in the air to fill its body, and it looks like it is swimming in the air.
On a rainy day like this, the air is full of water - and this water has a faint salty smell, the most familiar smell of air and sea water.
The sea of sky above has covered most of the base, and the rain now is the water falling from the sea of sky.
The "fairy skirt jellyfish" wandering in the air stretched its body and happily absorbed the long-lost familiar sea water.
It was also rather unlucky. At the beginning, Kukai was above the no-man's land. The tide rose and a heavy rain fell. It fell down with the sea water while it was sleeping. It was in its growth stage and was caught by Dr. Gillen who went to the no-man's land to observe Kukai, and was secretly transported here for observation.
Kong Hai had always been far away from it, and it had no way to go back along the rain. Now Kong Hai had finally gotten close, but its female was still here, so it had no choice but to stay here.
—My wife is more important.
The beautiful jellyfish swayed its skirt and came to the outside of the lighted restaurant. It leaned against the glass and looked at Qin Minghuang who was eating takoyaki with his back to it.
The female was small and ate little, and it took her so long to finish half a hidden limb.
Yes, its limbs were too big, and the blade Qin Minghuang was holding was too small, so he only cut off half of it.
Although it didn't know what cute meant yet, the edge of its beautiful skirt trembled slightly because of this scene, and it was touched by Qin Minghuang's efforts to gnaw on his hidden limbs.
Qin Minghuang, who was chewing takoyaki, touched his arm and suddenly felt a chill.
It turned out to be raining and the temperature dropped.
But this octopus is so delicious, it’s the most delicious octopus she has ever eaten!
Just after being attacked and dragged into the water by the big creature, Qin Minghuang was thinking that it was not advisable to stay here for long. But now, after having a full meal of octopus, she was a little reluctant to leave.
After all this trouble, the sky was about to get light, and Qin Minghuang decided to stay here for two more days to find out why the giant octopus suddenly attacked her. She brought a knife with her and hid two blades in the soles of her shoes, and returned to the dormitory to rest.
She lay on the bed, feeling the warmth in her abdomen and the comfort filling her whole body. An irresistible drowsiness came over her and she quickly closed her eyes.
A piece of light pink squeezed in from the edge of the window, which was opened a tiny crack. Soon, the huge jellyfish, which had squeezed itself into a piece of cloth, completely entered the room and stretched out in the air.
It fluttered its skirt hem and spread out on Qin Minghuang's arched quilt, like covering her with a beautiful big skirt.
Qin Minghuang, who was sleeping soundly, noticed something and frowned uneasily, but soon she smelled a special scent, the scent secreted by a giant jellyfish.
When she smelled this scent, she felt as if she had returned to the place that made her feel most at ease. She felt a sense of familiarity and fell into a deep sleep in relaxation.
This sea creature, which can transform and find its target based on smell, can also secrete a smell that makes its target feel comfortable.
Before, Qin Minghuang didn’t feel it very obviously, but she was just unconsciously friendly to it. Now that she has eaten its hidden limbs, she has become more sensitive and can smell its scent more clearly.