For a moment, no one spoke.
Schroederes remained standing with his hands raised, staring blankly at Lin Xi, his lips slightly parted, revealing a look of horror.
Meanwhile, the metal doors, which had not been opened for many years, slid open silently to both sides.
The central control room was pitch black.
"I, I didn't mean to."
Schroederes stared at the central control room as if he had seen a ghost. He suddenly came to his senses, took several steps back, and kept shouting.
"I don't know what's going on, damn it, I don't understand..."
A moment later, the thick metal door to the central control room closed once again in front of the three of them.
Lin Xi turned on the searchlight, and after a moment of contemplation, he turned to Lina.
"Lina, why don't you give it a try?"
"I?"
“That’s right, just like what Mr. Schroederes did just now.”
Lin Xi said.
"But, but..." Lina said in a panic, staring at the authentication device as if a spider was crawling on it.
Lin Xi let out a breath.
He stepped forward, past Lina, and placed his hand on the biometric authentication device.
"Beep—Authentication successful, please proceed."
The same electronic sound as before rang out again.
The door opened again.
After the metal door closed again, without Lin Xi saying anything, Lina had already stepped forward and was taking it seriously.
Just like the previous two times, the door to the central control room opened smoothly and without any obstruction in front of the three of them.
Schroederes' expression immediately relaxed.
“There must be a malfunction. Maybe it’s a system bug, or it could just be that the authentication device is faulty. After all, this is something from the Great Exploration Era. They couldn’t possibly be using Anya technology for biometric authentication devices… Maybe anyone could turn this thing on,” he said. “But I have to say, that was fucking terrifying.”
Lina stood cautiously in the doorway, glancing inside several times before the door closed again.
"Should we go in and take a look?" she asked nervously, licking her lips. "...I think maybe we should."
Lin Xi hesitated for a moment, but in the end he nodded.
Although his reason told him that after encountering those deformed, monstrous insects, he should quickly evacuate the aircraft, but…
The fact that this place used to be a lifeboat of the Providence made it impossible for him to turn back.
Jerry's previous unusual behavior seemed to be a deliberate attempt to bring him here.
If the ghost claiming to be the captain of the Providence really exists, then he must find a way to give Lin Xi some information.
As it stands, this information seems most likely to remain in the central control room.
Lin Xi hoped he wouldn't be too paranoid, but the fact that the door to the central control room, which should have been under the highest level of control, could be opened so easily by the three uninvited guests was strange enough in itself.
Lin Xi had Lina and Schroederes bring out the electronic pulse gun, then turned on the searchlights for all three of them before opening the door to the central control room and going inside.
As soon as Lin Xi entered, she keenly sensed that the atmosphere inside was completely different from that outside.
In Schroederes' words—there was an evil aura about this place.
Bloodstains were everywhere, blackened bloodstains. The metal floor was pitted and full of grooves, almost torn apart. Some shriveled corpses were piled on top of each other on the floor.
Lin Xi carefully bypassed them.
"Oh my god... what happened here..."
"Schroderes said, trembling."
"Maybe we shouldn't have come in. Maybe there are those disgusting bugs here too."
Lin Xi shook her head.
“No, I think this is probably the only place without bugs.” He flicked the light, gesturing for the other person to look at the corpses, “...their bodies weren’t eaten but were simply discarded here.”
Schroederes immediately fell silent.
"Why aren't there emergency lights here? For God's sake, I'm already starting to regret my suggestion."
After accidentally kicking someone in the head again, Lina said in a voice that sounded like she was about to cry.
Lin Xi sometimes envied people like Lina and Schroederes, who could express their emotions so clearly.
He was now standing at the very front of the three people, feeling as if his heart was about to leap out of his chest, but he couldn't utter a single word.
His head was throbbing so badly it felt like it was going to explode.
"Ugh, what the hell is this—"
Suddenly, Lina let out a scream.
"What?"
Lin Xi turned around and saw her jumping up and down, pointing at a corpse on the ground.
At first glance, the corpse looked like an ordinary human body, but upon closer inspection, one would discover its strangeness.
The deformed skull appeared long and strange, and what should have been the lower jaw looked like a pale and ferocious mouth. The surface of the bone from the sternum down gradually turned black, and the exoskeletons that belonged to insects seemed to be naturally covering the skeleton. Lin Xi observed for a long time and found that he could hardly say whether the corpse belonged to a human or an insect.
At that moment, the bizarre, twisted corpses of Liz Chan's children seemed to reappear before his eyes once again.
The oxygen seemed to have become much thinner, and Lin Xi glanced at the oxygen supply system of the exploration suit.
Those lovely green lights indicate that everything is normal.
But Lin Xi still felt like she couldn't breathe.
"Perhaps this is the problem with this aircraft."
He murmured.
The only thing that could put the three of them at ease was that, judging from the condition of the body, it had died from some kind of serious injury.
"On the bright side, at least there's something inside this aircraft fighting against this monster."
Lin Xi weakly comforted her two companions, who were on the verge of going crazy with fear.
Immediately afterwards, Lin Xi and his two companions found more similar strange corpses near the central control console. They were all basically killed by something that had directly blasted their bodies apart.
Some of them even looked completely like insects—the dry insect shells felt light and brittle when they were peeled off, and when they fell to the ground, some black dust and fluffy material fell out of the empty shells.
"I'm going to throw up."
Lina complained.
Schroederes: "Ugh..."
The poor man appeared to have actually vomited inside his exploration suit.
When they finally managed to get to the central control console, Lina's initial question was immediately answered.
Why is there no light source in the central control room?
Because the connection here has been completely lost.
"Damn it—"
Lin Xi glared at the lump of scrap metal that should have been the central control console and let out a curse.
Yes, scrap metal.
No word could better describe the pile of things in front of Lin Xi than scrap metal.
It looked as if it had been soaked in some highly corrosive reagent for hundreds of years.
The central control console is now just a pile of rusty debris that crumbles at the slightest touch.
Several insect shells fell beside it, and there was no doubt that they were the culprits that had turned the central control console into this state.
"These insects actually know how to corrode the central control console with their blood?"
Lina said in surprise, her voice full of disbelief.
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