Chapter 25
Flipping the pages quickly, Lu Shiyu soon found information about this strange-looking plant.
"The parasitic star is a plant that parasitizes on the roots of trees, half of it growing underground and half exposed above ground. Because the entire plant lacks chlorophyll, it cannot photosynthesize and can only parasitize on the roots of the host plant, absorbing nutrients from the host plant as its main source of nutrition. Its petals are fleshy and can split into up to five petals..."
Shao Xingyang couldn't help but yawn: "It really exists."
"Don't open your mouth so wide, be careful not to inhale the pollen again." Chen Yunliang finally collected a test tube of pollen and put it into the bag.
"It says the main use of pollen is..."
"It's about spreading pollen and sowing seeds. I've learned that." Shaoxing Yang answered confidently, but Lu Shiyu showed a complicated expression after putting down the book.
"No, the main function of pollen is to stimulate the tentacles on the petals to secrete sweet mucus, and that mucus is what really attracts insects."
"Yeah, and then let the insects spread the pollen, that's right."
"No, no, no, that's totally wrong," Lu Shiyu shook his head and said, "It doesn't attract insects to spread pollen. This plant doesn't need fertilization to reproduce. It attracts insects just to eat them."
As they were talking, more and more flying insects gathered around them. Shaoxing Yang firmly asked them to stay away from the insects before talking.
The petals were soon covered with flying insects of all sizes, almost covering the entire petal. Then the petals moved slowly. This step did not alarm many insects, but the next second, the petals closed instantly and returned to their original appearance when the few people first saw them. It looked like a huge egg, and the insects were trapped inside, about to be digested and turned into nutrients for the flower.
"While the main source of nutrition for these insects is their host, they also hunt for their own food in this way."
Yan Hong came over and asked, "Is there anything else in the book?"
Lu Shiyu glanced down and said, "The book also says that the flesh of this plant is very popular with the nearby deformed creatures, so it evolved a hard shell. Huh? Can this be eaten?"
"If the deformed creatures are edible, then can humans eat them too?" Lu Shiyu stood up and walked towards the "egg": "The edible part should be these petals... Hey, what are you doing!"
Yanhong and Shaoxing Yang pressed Lu Shiyu and pulled back at the same time.
"This is absolutely not possible!" Yan Hong protested loudly.
"You can eat anything today, but you absolutely cannot eat this!" Shao Xingyang practically screamed, "There are even bugs in it!"
"I'm just going to take a look! I really am just going to take a look, you have to believe me!" Lu Shiyu's words were directly ignored, and the two of them pulled her together to prevent her from taking another step forward.
Shaoxing Yang was embarrassed, pushed up his glasses and said, "Actually, I don't want to eat this either. At least it can't contain bugs."
"It's human nature," Tang Zeyu said, "but they just said they could eat anything today. What if something even stranger turns up?"
Shaoxing Yang was silent for two seconds.
"It shouldn't be such a coincidence."
Only after Yu swore on the way that he would not use this parasitic star as food did the two of them release the shackles.
"I think you're exaggerating a bit," Lu Shiyu said, stretching his arms. "It doesn't look that weird, does it?"
At least it wasn't weird when it was an egg.
"What if it also has hallucinogenic effects after eating it?" Yan Hong put her hands on her hips and said, "Who knows if those deformed creatures like to eat this because of its hallucinogenic effects?"
"That's not the case," Lu Shiyu added. "The book says that one of the hallucinogenic effects of the powder is to cause predators to have terrifying hallucinations, thereby achieving the effect of repelling them. So, aberrant creatures won't become addicted to this stuff's hallucinogenic ability."
As if remembering the hallucination just now, Shao Xingyang touched the goose bumps on his hands and tried to smooth them out: "That hallucination was indeed quite scary."
"What did you see?"
"Um, well," Shao Xingyang scratched his head a bit embarrassedly and said, "I saw my parents say they didn't want me anymore, then they turned around and left, locking me in the room. I couldn't get out, and there was nothing to eat. There were also all kinds of bugs around."
"I saw that the human base had also fallen. Humans, like those creatures, were deformed and became neither human nor ghost," said Yan Hong.
"What people see varies." Lu Shiyu turned to Tang Zeyu and asked, "Tang Zeyu, what did you see?"
Tang Zeyu glanced at the flower with a complicated expression and said, "I saw all the people who were important to me die in the waves of deformed creatures. I was the only one who survived, and then I began to walk aimlessly."
"Then what?"
"There's nothing more," Tang Zeyu said as he stood up. "I kept walking endlessly until I heard your voices and woke up."
"The captain's hallucination is too simple and boring," Shao Xingyang said, kicking the closed flower. "I wonder what kind of hallucinations those deformed creatures will see after inhaling this pollen."
"Can deformed creatures also have hallucinations?" Lu Shiyu asked. "Then can deformed creatures also dream?"
"Some can, some can't," Chen Yunliang said, wiping the pollen off his lenses. "Any creature with relatively high intelligence and self-awareness can dream, but I'm not sure what they dream about."
As she was speaking, Yan Hong felt something crawling over her feet. When she looked down, she saw that it was a beetle as big as a fist.
"Damn!" Yan Hong swung her foot and threw the beetle down. The beetle's belly was facing the sky and its six legs were waving continuously. Finally, Yan Hong turned it over with her toes so that it could walk normally.
"When did so many beetles appear on the ground?" Chen Yunliang looked down and saw that quite a few of these beetles were crawling on the ground.
"Yanhong, save me!" Shaoxing Yang's neck jumped, and Yanhong subconsciously grabbed it, and Shaoxing Yang was picked up by Yanhong.
"Get out." Yan Hong gritted her teeth and blurted out these three words.
"Wuwuwuwuwu, what's wrong with saving someone after so many years of friendship?" Shaoxing Yang grabbed Yan Hong's neck and shoulders and vowed not to let go. "Wuwuwuwu, am I not your little baby?"
Chen Yunliang took two steps to avoid the bugs and said to Shaoxing, who was still crying, "If you keep crying, Yanhong will really throw you into the bugs."
Shao Xingyang stopped shouting instantly, stared at Yan Hong and said, "You won't do that, right?"
"I can."
Lu Shiyu was not afraid of these insects. He squatted down and looked at the beetles crawling out from all directions. These insects seemed to have been hiding in the soil before, but now they suddenly crawled out.
This insect is reddish-brown all over and can hide itself well under dead leaves without being discovered. It also has six thick hairy legs. The most obvious feature of this beetle is that it has a pair of particularly large clamps with serrated edges on its head, a pair of eyes on the left and right, and a pair of eyes on the top of the head, which can detect the approach of predators in time.
The beetles' target was the closed parasitic star. Several beetles that crawled out of the soil climbed onto the round flower bud one after another. Their three pairs of legs could cling to it and avoid sliding down. After choosing the place they liked, the beetles became busy, opening and closing the pair of clamps on their heads.
Lu Shiyu took a closer look and found that the beetles were trying to bite open the flower buds with their pincers, but after trying for a long time, it was in vain and they could not break through the hard outer shell.
Lu Shiyu said, "The book only said that there are some weird-looking deformed creatures that can walk upright and like to eat parasites. I didn't expect that there are also insects that like to eat parasites."
"If this parasitic star had just grown, these bugs might still be able to deal with it," Chen Yunliang put away his glasses cloth and walked over. "But this one has obviously been growing for a long time, and its shell is hard enough to prevent insects from biting through it. These beetles probably can't deal with it."
Sure enough, after these insects found that they had worked for a long time without any progress, they spread their wings hidden under the hard shell, flapped their wings and flew up.
"Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh——" Shao Xingyang let out a series of screams. The person closest to him was naturally Yanhong, who was holding him. Feeling the stinging pain in her eardrums, Yanhong threw him down. Shao Xingyang, who fell to the ground and hurt his butt, stopped screaming instantly.
The beetles were not flying very high. After circling around, they soon found a new target. There was also a flower like this under another big tree not far away. The difference was that this flower seemed to have just grown not long ago. The skin did not even have the same lines as lychee, but was still smooth and bright.
The parasitic star that has not yet fully grown does look like a star, with a light yellow core inside and very short tentacles on the unfolded petals. It is much more acceptable than the previous one.
Lu Shiyu thought for a moment, then turned to ask Chen Yunliang and Yan Hong, who had just gotten up from the ground: "How about we eat this beetle today?"
"Ah..." Shaoxing Yang started to howl again: "Not very good, can you change to something to eat, not insects."
"Is this thing really edible..." Yan Hong was skeptical about the usefulness of the ingredients.
"But didn't you say we can eat anything?" Lu Shiyu asked back.
"No, but this is too much." Shaoxing Yang hesitated and looked extremely reluctant.
Yan Hong's expression was complicated: "Is there really no room for maneuver?..."
"Eat bugs or this, it's your choice."
Lu Shiyu pointed at the still tender parasitic star on the ground and asked the two to choose one.
The two looked at the beetle that was crawling onto the parasitic planet, then looked at the parasitic planet that seemed to be okay, and were still a little hesitant.
"If you don't make a decision now, once the parasite planet is eaten by beetles, you'll have nothing left to eat but beetles."
"Parasite! I choose Parasite!"
"Me too!"
Lu Shiyu nodded calmly, turned around and pulled the beetles off the parasitic star to prepare to collect the parasitic star.
The two were still breathing a sigh of relief because they didn't have to eat insects, but they didn't know that in a corner where they couldn't see, Lu Shiyu had a triumphant smile on his face.
Plan pass.
This scene was seen by Chen Yunliang and Tang Zeyu who were watching the show not far away. Chen Yunliang was once again worried about the IQ of his two teammates.
"I don't know whether to say Lu Shiyu is clever or those two are terribly stupid."
Lu Shiyu felt the position where the parasitic star touched the ground, and used his hands to dig away the soil. Only after digging to a certain depth did he actually touch its roots.
The complete parasitic star is really big, about the size of a baby a few months old. Its roots are entwined at the roots of the tree, where it absorbs nutrients from the tree. The tree parasitized by the parasitic star is obviously not as thick as the other trees around it.
A small piece was left on the road and it was not completely removed from the roots. The parasitic star was peeled off from the roots. The picked parasitic star looked like a huge pestle. The rhizome became thicker as it went down, which made the part exposed outside look very small.
Lu Shiyu hugged the entire parasitic planet with satisfaction, and Yan Hong and Shao Xingyang also came to their senses at this time.
"Did we get trapped just now?"
"It seems so..."
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