Trap (First Update)
With a crisp "crack" sound, just like a small bottle was broken, the back of the tourist's hand suddenly became transparent, and between the blue blood vessels, the roots of the banyan tree seemed to be stimulated and continued to grow wildly.
But in the middle of it, there was a very small, transparent object like a sphere or a water droplet swimming in it.
It stretched out its long tentacles, which were reflected by the human blood vessels and looked green, and swayed gently like a shawl, beckoning to its prey.
Perhaps the excessive fear had exceeded the threshold, the tourist became a little dazed and did not react at all, just blinking his eyes slowly.
The next second, it was like a courier box was gently opened, and the old courier slip fluttered. The tourist, like the tour guide before him, was instantly scattered in the wind.
This time I saw clearly that the small and inconspicuous "sphere" took away all the water from this body, absorbed it enough, and expanded slightly.
Those black hair-like tree roots suddenly dried up and wilted after losing water, and then seemed to be injected with strong toxins by the tentacles, and then turned into smelly black water.
In this process that was gradually slowed down, the "sphere" that had absorbed enough water floated up, became more and more transparent, and soon became almost invisible.
It was just the size of a fingernail and looked harmless, but it gave me a strong tingling sensation on my back.
I know where it's going to go.
It will continue to rise, and gather with countless equally tiny similar ones to form a huge "rain cloud". This process is very silent and long.
Until the stored moisture becomes too heavy for them to bear, there will be a rainstorm that will transport all the moisture intercepted here and dump it eight years ago.
——This is the true face of the Divine Concubine.
I was slightly moved and whispered, "They are not one, but a group of such small individuals."
I still don’t know the full picture of the tour guide’s introduction to the lake, but I have had many associations with some of the words in it.
For example, comb jellyfish, I once thought that this word was a reference to something. But now it seems that it is the literal meaning, although the tour guides probably misunderstood the key issues.
This is a group of comb jellies that thrive in the short-lived river.
The eight-year period is their nesting site, during which they can freely and lightly come and go as they please, moving any materials they think can be used to build a nest.
In the common biological sense, comb jellies are not actually a type of jellyfish, but a kind of carnivorous marine invertebrate that generally lives in shallow or deep seas.
And here, as a strange story, countless spherical "ctenophore" larvae together form the huge bluestone and continue to dive deeper.
Those offspring that go out hunting shuttle through the stream of time without any great momentum, but when they rise they become clouds, and when they move they herd the wind and rain.
In the deep water, their thick, transparent gelatinous bodies are crowded together, forming what I see as a bluestone shell;
The returning offspring kept falling from the sky into the water, round like eggs, balls, and water drops, gently hitting the bluestone and then blending into the wall, making a continuous and fragmented sound that sounded like rain hitting banana leaves to me;
The interior of the huge, winding, and extremely centrally symmetrical object in the bluestone has become a fairy pavilion with changing scenery as you move forward.
Therefore, after the "bluestone" was damaged, they quickly filled the gap by flowing, and the accumulated water that poured in from the breach entered their common stomach along with us.
The fairy lady who opened the door that I saw was nothing more than the pharyngeal tube that it vomited out from its stomach.
Looking back now, the reason why I was able to escape after the trapped woman opened the door was not because of the noise made by the tour group below, but because there was a group of deeply alienated prey in its eyes, which were constantly "flashing".
I roughly know that biologically, comb jellies are invisible but can sense light.
So for the "ctenophores" in the ghost story, there is probably no brighter bait than tourists.
"The so-called immortality granted by the immortals..."
The team leader also looked up, and followed me as he watched the extremely fragile transparent sphere disappear into the air. He couldn't quite accept it: "Just this little thing?"
Yes, it is indeed hard to imagine.
I sorted out my thoughts and asked him back, "What do you think if there is a kind of creature whose consciousness is like a bee colony, sharing a collective subconscious?"
We didn't stop while talking, and continued to move forward.
The team leader simply collected the tourist's head, wrapped it up and carried it with him, waiting to find a place to deal with it later.
When I asked him this, he was stunned: "Zerg? We are playing StarCraft here?"
I shook my head and asked him again, "What if a creature of this kind lived eight years ago and could transmit what it saw to another creature of this kind eight years later, thus achieving continuous communication across time and space?"
His face changed. "That depends on whether the images transmitted are sufficient, accurate and effective. If used well, this thing is really a magical trick."
"There are countless of them in the valley."
I said, and judging from Yan Jing'er's situation, humans who are deeply parasitic can also see the comb jellyfish's transparent thoughts and memories to a certain extent.
During these eight years, in this place, on this day, comb jellies were densely populated, and almost every detail related to this place could be seen.
But for them, they will not pay special attention to the information of a certain person or thing, and the images transmitted back inadvertently are intermittent.
As for the parasitized person, he cannot bear the huge and dense information shared by the comb jellyfish, so he can only receive and recognize some of the information related to himself in a trance.
If someone leaves this place with young comb jellyfish on their body, it is possible to further expand the range of the comb jellyfish's vision.
This is the truth about "Flicker" and how it works.
The two worlds occasionally "overlap" after a heavy rain because the heavy rain means that a large number of comb jellies have returned to their nests after a rich harvest, opening up an invisible connecting river at both ends of the eight-year cycle.
So even now, through the delivery of the Goddess, the snail man can still walk out of the cave and see us.
Heavy rain is not an inevitable trigger condition for the overlapping mechanism, but a trace left by the goddess.
"——Hey, that's weird. What about "make a wish"?"
One of the guys was puzzled when he heard this: "It sounds like this mechanism doesn't even need to make the prey's wishes come true."
Yes, that's the problem.
Thinking back carefully, it was the same parasitic relationship. Every time the goddess appeared, all she promised in her whispers was longevity in a twisted coexistence, and nothing she wished for ever came true.
I don't think that strange stories are meant to serve humans, and there is no reason for them to add another rule to satisfy our fantasy and definition of "Goddess". Most of the time, the strange stories we see intuitively are only indescribable anti-logic. This stuff doesn't care whether humans can understand and accept it.
"Making a wish, having the wish come true in a distorted way, and having people parasitized pay the price. This is another set of smooth rules and logic." I said slowly, "The mechanism of making your wishes come true belongs to the banyan tree."
The guy was a little confused: "But just now... that brother said that he has a universal wish opportunity. Isn't he in the same group with these jellyfish?"
I nodded, feeling indescribably excited or subtly sad, and asked a question for the third time today:
"——Who do you think Yan Jing'er told these words to?"
The guy was suddenly stunned and broke out in a cold sweat.
"And anyone who might see the Snail Man and talk to him." Zhang Tianyi turned around and said bluntly. He was already far ahead of us. "He can't guarantee that after he sends the Snail Man away, we will be the first to receive him in time."
He paused and gestured, indicating that the B&B could be seen from afar.
We quickened our pace, and Zhang Tianyi continued, "After he recognized your young master, he kept mentioning the wrong incident in the convoy, emphasizing that Zhou Tingmao and Yanjinger are different now."
"The people in the tour group won't know what mistake he made."
"It's his fault..." the team leader said subconsciously and fell silent.
The person who was most deeply touched and entangled in grievances about this matter was actually the team leader. He once felt extremely regretful and resentful for trusting Zhou Tingmao. The matter of glasses was a big demon in his heart.
After we got out of trouble, I met with the team leader alone to review the situation and told him about the misunderstandings and coincidences that occurred.
Once I tell him the key point at this point, I believe he will understand it immediately.
Zhou Tingmao is hinting to us that what he is going to tell us next is just like what happened with the convoy before, which is full of wishful misunderstandings and traps.
If the people in the tour group had met the snail man earlier, they would have heard an answer that completely satisfied their speculations and expectations, an extremely tempting answer that would have made their wishes come true.
In this story, most of what Zhou Tingmao said was true.
But from the moment he thanked me and poured out his emotions to me, he omitted the essence of the comb jellyfish and the goddess' concubine, omitted the operating mechanism of the flickering and overlapping world, and described the two strange stories of the banyan tree and the goddess as if they were the same, misleadingly.
I can almost imagine this scene:
When the people behind the tour group captured and obtained the information, and saw the tremendous power they could possess after coexisting with the Goddess, they would eagerly make a wish to find the cave, and then greedily enter the deep pool and throw themselves into the arms of the Goddess.
Just like a praying mantis that, after being parasitized by a wireworm, frantically searches for water to commit suicide.
But after seeing Zhou Tingmao wailing the word "make a wish" in the bluestone and Gao Liu sleeping in agony, I know:
Whether it is the banyan tree's "wishes come true" or the goddess' "eternal life", there is absolutely no good meaning in it.
In order to completely overwhelm their rationality, Zhou Tingmao did not reveal a very fatal and simple fact:
The victims of the roadside haystacks were merely the ones whose moisture was sucked out by the comb jellies, which blocked the germination and growth of the banyan trees. The bodies of the victims were only battlefields, not the three animals.
——It is not enjoying the sacrifice.
Those who think they have fed the goddess's concubine with enough human lives and can ensure her safety like feeding tamed lions in a zoo, and then throw themselves into the goddess's arms... will be the first to become the goddess's delicacy when they are full of ambition.
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