"Dr. Lin Xi..."
A pale face slowly emerged from the darkness.
Lin Xi had to admit he was startled; he almost threw a punch at the ghostly face. After a moment of stunned silence, he realized that the face that had emerged from the darkness belonged to Ando Shizuo.
"Professor Ando? Is it really you? What happened to you?"
Lin Xi blurted out the question.
Since the last time I saw Shizuo Ando, even though we only brushed past each other in the corridor, Ando looked like he had aged ten years—or worse.
Shizuo Ando now looks like a skeleton wrapped in the skin of a dead man, with sunken cheeks and cracked lips, only his eyes shining brightly, exuding an abnormal spirit.
"Has something happened?"
Lin Xi felt a sudden, inexplicable chill run down his spine. He looked at Ando Shizuo and added uneasily.
It took Ando Shizuo a long time to focus his gaze on Lin Xi, and his reaction seemed unusually slow.
"Me? I...I'm fine..."
He said in a low voice.
However, his overly weak tone made his words unconvincing.
“I’m just a little tired. You know, Liz’s condition… she’s been having a tough time before this, and I have to stay by her side to take care of her. It’s hard for someone to get a good rest during this time… that’s normal, isn’t it?”
No, this is not normal at all.
Lin Xi thought to herself.
“But you…you don’t look too good, God, how long has it been since you slept? Maybe I should go and check on Bryce?” Lin Xi said to Ando, feigning composure. “How’s Liz? Maybe she needs some extra help too?”
As they spoke, Lin Xi subtly peered into the cabin, past Ando's hunched figure.
Unfortunately, he didn't see anything.
Both the darkness inside the cabin and the stench emanating from it filled Lin Xi with a sense of foreboding.
He felt his heart grow heavy.
“Ah, Liz… she just needs quiet rest, there’s no need to trouble Dr. Bryce.” Ando Shizuo rolled his eyes and thought for a moment before muttering to Lin Xi, “The first period was the most difficult, but she has stabilized now.”
This evasive attitude made Lin Xi frown.
Especially considering Ando's incoherent speech and seemingly terrible mental state, Lin Xi felt increasingly terrified as she listened.
The more Shizuo Ando emphasized that Liz was perfectly fine, the more terrifying the thoughts in Lin Xi's mind became. Yes, Shizuo Ando was indeed a good husband, at least from the outside. But how could one guarantee that a person would present the same face in public and at home? Especially considering Liz's special status, and how frail she was after becoming pregnant, completely powerless to resist.
Lin Xi vaguely remembered that it seemed that few people on the ship had seen her since she became pregnant.
Some dark memories slowly surfaced from the deepest part of Lin Xi's soul, and he had to grit his teeth to control his emotions.
Fortunately, just as Ando finished speaking, a hoarse and strange voice came from the depths of the dark cabin, dispelling Lin Xi's guess about Liz's current situation.
"Darling, who is it?"
Although the voice was faint, it was still clear that it came from Liz.
Lin Xi breathed a sigh of relief, but he still couldn't put his mind at ease.
"It's Dr. Lin Xi. He's very concerned about your condition."
Ando turned around and whispered softly into the darkness of the room.
“Oh my god, Dr. Lin Xi…why not let him in for a cup of tea?”
Liz spoke enthusiastically in the room, sounding a bit more energetic than before.
"Sorry, look at me, I completely forgot to let you in."
Ando's eyes flickered, and he spoke dryly.
Lin Xi was on edge, carefully observing Ando Shizuo, and of course he didn't miss the unnatural look on his face for that instant.
It was obvious that Ando Shizuo didn't want him to enter the dark cabin, but Lin Xi couldn't shake off his unease and doubts. So, as if he hadn't noticed Ando's stiffness at all, he strode into the cabin where Ando and his wife lived, following Liz's invitation.
As soon as I stepped into the room, the strange smell became even stronger.
Lin Xi was almost grateful for the darkness in the room at that moment, otherwise the Ando couple would have definitely seen his suddenly contorted face. Lin Xi used all his willpower to prevent himself from vomiting.
The room was extremely hot, abnormally so, and the smell was like rotten blood, a cloying sweetness mixed with a foul and fishy odor.
"It's so dark here, is there a problem with the lighting system?"
Lin Xi asked cautiously.
He heard Ando follow him into the room, and then the hatch slowly closed behind him. The scraping sound of the old spaceship hatch sliding was nothing unusual under normal circumstances, but at this moment it sounded like the scream of a banshee, making his heart clench.
Lin Xi almost ran away, because the room became even darker after the hatch was closed.
The only light source might be the tiny emergency light on the wall, as faint as a firefly, but the dim light emitted by that light couldn't even illuminate an area the size of a fist.
Lin Xi unconsciously widened her eyes, trying hard to find Liz's whereabouts in the cabin.
The stench, which smelled like blood, made him increasingly worried about Liz's condition.
"No... I just... can't stand the light being too bright."
Liz answered Lin Xi quickly, sounding quite relaxed. However, Lin Xi felt increasingly nervous because he realized that Liz's voice was coming from the corner of the wall.
In the corner, there were two faint reflections, located directly above the ceiling.
Both reason and intuition told Lin Xi that something was wrong. He subconsciously took a few more steps toward Liz, and then he tripped over something in the darkness.
"Hmm—"
Lin Xi let out a muffled groan.
Are you alright?
Shizuo Ando asked nervously.
"I'm so sorry, I should have shown you the way... This is really..."
At this moment, Lin Xi had no time to pay attention to Ando's repeated apologies.
His attention was completely drawn to what had tripped him.
It was a very large object, so large that it should almost never be in the living space of a space crew member.
Moreover, its texture is very subtle. The rough surface feels very hard to the touch, but that hardness is quite different from that of steel, plastic, or glass—and most of the equipment inside spacecraft is made of these materials.
Lin Xi used it to slowly get up from the ground. His eyes were useless in this environment, so he could only try to identify what the thing was by touching it.
The surface of that thing also has many fine and intricate patterns, some of which have very rounded lines, while others are particularly sharp.
The texture of it gave Lin Xi a vague sense of familiarity, but perhaps because he was too nervous, he couldn't remember where he had encountered something similar before.
"Turn on the night light, darling, otherwise it would be too impolite to our guests."
Just as Lin Xi was completely baffled, Liz spoke quietly from the corner of the wall.
"But……"
Ando seemed very reluctant.
“It’s alright,” Liz said, and then Lin Xi felt her turn towards him. “Dr. Lin Xi, I’m sorry to have you see us like this. Shizuo didn’t mean to be rude, it’s just that I…”
Liz's tone became a little strange: "I hope you're somewhat prepared for my current state. Turn on the lights, darling. Dr. Lin Xi isn't some shallow, ignorant, and rude person; I don't think he'll mind too much that I look like this."
Urged on by Liz, Shizuo Ando turned on the night light as if he had made a great decision.
The nightlight was hardly bright, after all, it was originally designed for the crew members who were half asleep, but that kind of light was enough for the cabin at this time.
The soft yellow light spread throughout the room, illuminating everything within it.
The moment Lin Xi saw everything clearly, she finally understood why the Ando couple had seemed so reluctant to turn on the lights.
For a moment, he just stood there, dumbfounded, staring at everything before him, his mind blank.
The scene was so far beyond common sense that it seemed particularly bizarre and surreal, more like one of Lin Xi's nightmares than reality.
He saw Liz.
Liz, alive and well.
I was not subjected to domestic violence, harmed, or murdered.
but……
However, he couldn't understand the other person's current situation.
The Sunu-mixed woman was as thin and haggard as she had been seen in the medical room, but her abdomen was now many times larger than before. Her already thinning hair had completely fallen out, replaced by tentacles that emerged from under her scalp, forming a flesh-colored, mesh-like structure that clung tightly to the wall. A semi-transparent mucus secreted from these tentacles, enveloping Liz and securing her deformed body firmly to the corner of the ceiling.
In that corner, everything from the ceiling to the floor was wet, covered in slime that had slid down Liz's body, and the suffocating stench emanated from her.
The two points of reflection that Lin Xi saw in the darkness were not some kind of machine device as he thought, but Liz's eyes.
"Oh my God."
Lin Xi swallowed hard, staring blankly at Liz. That was all he could say.
Liz opened her dark eyes wide, and grinned, revealing a terrifying smile.
"It looks a bit ugly. I think I've scared you, haven't I?"
The woman said in a low voice.
“There’s no need to hide anything. I know I also think I’m terrible—but what can I do when I have Sunu blood in my veins? Sometimes you just can’t change your origins.”
"Women on Sunu experience some physical changes during pregnancy..."
At some point, Shizuo Ando came to Lin Xi's side and explained to her in a hoarse voice.
"So that's how it is..."
Lin Xi finally felt that she had regained her ability to speak.
Although he still hadn't calmed down.
"I never imagined this..."
Lin Xi spoke stiffly, though even he himself didn't know what he was saying.
He unconsciously took two steps back and almost tripped over the same thing again.
This time, he only needed to tilt his head to see what it looked like.
A hideous insect face, adorned with fangs, compound eyes, and strange bony plates, was pointed directly at him.
"Oh heavens!"
Lin Xi screamed this time.
He jumped straight away, his knees buckling.
"No, don't be afraid, it's just that sculpture!"
Ando Shizuo followed behind him, calling out in alarm.
Lin Xi retreated to the very edge of the cabin, pressing his back tightly against the metal wall, his face deathly pale.
Ando's words seemed to come from a distant horizon.
"sculpture?"
It took Lin Xi a long time to understand that seemingly simple sentence.
Then it took him even longer to recognize the thing's true identity.
"...For God's sake, what have you done?"
Lin Xi felt she had used up all her strength and shouted angrily at Ando.
But in reality, he merely parted his lips slightly and murmured the question with difficulty.
The sense of familiarity that arose when I caressed that thing in the dark has finally been answered, because the thing located in the very center of the Ando couple's room is none other than that extremely troublesome Sunu fossil statue!
However, when Lin Xi saw it twice before, it was encased in gel, and even when it hardened due to the gel drying out, it was only a slight hardening. Now, the statue has been freed from the protective gel, and its entire outer shell has completely hardened.
What was originally a sculpture carved by Sunu artisans has now been completely transformed into an extremely hideous and terrifying insect shell.
From its mouthparts to its compound eyes, and its complex physiological structure, everything is vividly depicted.
Even though Lin Xi already knew that this was the sculpture's natural appearance after it was removed from the gel, he still couldn't look at it directly.
Fear is sometimes something that cannot be controlled by willpower.
Especially when he thought about how just a few minutes ago he had been touching the surface of that huge insect sculpture repeatedly, Lin Xi felt his scalp tingle.
Under such intense impact, even Liz's swollen belly stuck to the ceiling with gel seemed unremarkable.
After all, Liz has alien blood in her body, and aliens sometimes have some strange habits.
And insects—insects are insects.
Insects this enormous are nothing short of a nightmare.
Of course, after calming down (which took Lin Xi a lot of effort), Lin Xi had to start questioning Ando about what had happened. After all, even though he was terrified, he was still certain of one thing—the fossil sculpture should be in a sealed container in the lower warehouse at this time, not in the crew's living quarters.
"Because...it is a sacred object of the Sunu people..."
Faced with Lin Xi's questioning, Ando stammered for a long time before giving a very vague answer.
"Shizuo did all of this for me."
In contrast, Liz, whose condition was clearly very strange, appeared much calmer.
After listening to her explanation, Lin Xi finally understood the reason for the matter.
As Ando had said many times before, Liz's health had been quite poor since she became pregnant. Before those little lives were born into her womb, neither Ando nor Liz had imagined that the blood conflict between the Sunu and Earthlings would be so intense.
Purebred Sunu females only need to be pregnant for three months, and they usually eat voraciously before pregnancy until they become bloated balls of fat, which makes it easier for them to cope with the frenzied feeding of their unborn children during the next three months.
However, Liz's physical constitution was more Earth-like; she simply couldn't grow to three times her original size in a short time like her kind, and the confined environment of the spaceship also prevented her from doing so. Yet, the fetuses in her womb clearly inherited the greedy and ferocious characteristics of the Sunu fetuses. While they were developing in Liz's womb, they were also killing the frail Liz.
And the children were all healthy, even surprisingly so (especially considering their mother had half-human blood). But the healthier they grew, the weaker Liz became.
Even without Bryce's diagnosis, the Ando couple could clearly sense that Liz would likely die from exhaustion before the children could be born.
“Dr. Bryce has been trying to persuade us to kill these children. He is indeed a good man, but we don’t want to lose our children… Given my special constitution, these may be the only offspring between Shizuo and me; their existence is a miracle in itself.” Liz lowered her terrifying head and looked gently at her abdomen. “However, I must admit that my condition was terrible; I almost lost my children. And at that moment, I dreamed of my father… and then I remembered that if I were still in Sunu, my maids would probably have taken me directly to the temple to have the great star god bless me so that I could give birth to my children smoothly.”
Liz said.
His tone was tinged with a hint of ethereal, dreamlike worship.
“The power of the Star God can help us overcome all difficulties. I know this, and I can feel it. Because when I think of it, I suddenly feel its call.”
As Liz spoke, her gaze remained fixed, mesmerized, on the terrifying statue of Sunu. For a time, Lin Xi had thought that aside from her frightening appearance, Liz's thinking was quite clear. But now, Lin Xi was unsure of her judgment.
Because the fanaticism and obsession that Liz displayed didn't seem like she was still maintaining her rationality.
Incidentally, Lin Xi also remembered that Liz's exceptionally noble father, before he completely lost his mind, seemed to be a priest of the temple... and according to the report of the Earth's researchers stationed in Sunu, when those Sunu people went mad, all the clergy were the most insane.
"So I managed to steal this sculpture from the warehouse. Oh, Dr. Lin, I swear to you, I'll return it to the warehouse as soon as the baby is born. I just... had no other choice..."
Liz had probably seen the Sunu statue go into a frenzy more than once or twice, because just as she started muttering some incoherent prayers, Shizuo Ando quickly took over the conversation.
"I really don't know what to say."
Lin Xi stared at the couple in disbelief.
"If Taran finds out..."
Based on Lin Xi's previous understanding of Taran, if that paranoid person were to discover that his beloved sculpture had been secretly brought into the ship's hold by researchers... Lin Xi couldn't even imagine what that person would do.
“Taran will not be a problem.”
Liz suddenly turned her head and stared straight at Lin Xi, chuckling.
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