Lin Xi, Bryce, and Alyssa were now huddled together in the circuit switching room in the corner of the corridor. Given their current situation, this circuit switching room was practically a small gift from God—it was the only place they could hide in this bare corridor, and they could also keep an eye on the outside world through the ventilation window above the metal door of the switching room.
Of course, this small exchange room wasn't without its flaws: the cramped space forced them to huddle together rather awkwardly, and because of this, Lin Xi could clearly feel that Bryce's breathing and heartbeat were too rapid.
What exactly happened to that guy?
He looked up and saw Bryce mouthing something to him.
Bryce's forehead was covered in cold sweat, and he looked even worse than Elisa.
Lin Xi rarely saw Bryce show such a terrified expression (even though Bryce had tried his best to hide it), and then it belatedly came to her mind that back on Earth, the thing Bryce hated most seemed to be myriapods. Now, watching his colleague turn into such a disgusting state was obviously quite a shock to him.
Lin Xi held his breath and gave Bryce a helpless look. Then he looked at Alyssa beside him, signaling her to calm down. After all, Alyssa was with them. Before they were driven insane by the giant human-faced centipede, they had to think about the people who needed protection.
Lin Xi didn't know how much information could be exchanged in the dimly lit room, but in the end, Bryce nodded with a twisted expression.
But sometimes, things always seem to go in the worst possible direction. For example... even though Lin Xi was praying frantically in his heart that his group wouldn't attract the attention of those "people," Ali's body suddenly trembled violently, and then he abruptly changed direction.
He was about to wander away along the corridor, but instead, he crawled towards Lin Xi's direction.
"rustle……"
"rustle……"
The scraping sound of countless feet scraping across the metal ground became exceptionally clear in an instant.
Eric's pale face was almost touching the ground as he kept sniffing the thin air on the ground, making a tapping sound.
“Elisa…we’ve found…Elisa…”
At this distance, Lin Xi and the others could clearly hear the muttering coming from Ali's mouth.
At first, he was simply mechanically repeating the instructions given by Taran.
But as he closed the distance between himself and Lin Xi, his whispers gradually transformed into a higher-frequency hissing.
"King—our—King—"
Eli's cries were incredibly sharp, filled with pain.
The moment Lin Xi heard that voice, her head throbbed as if it were about to explode.
He had to bite his lip hard to keep himself from making a sound.
But when he finally caught his breath, he noticed that Bryce and Elisa were both looking at him with great concern.
What's wrong?
Despite his own pale face and trembling uneasily, Bryce still silently mouthed a question upon seeing Lin Xi.
"..."
Were they not affected?
A hint of doubt flashed through Lin Xi's mind.
However, at this moment, he didn't even have time to investigate, because Eric was almost right next to them.
A bead of cold sweat clung to Bryce's chin, his nostrils flared, and even though he was trying his best to control his breathing, Lin Xi could still feel that his breathing was becoming increasingly heavy.
And his hands were moving silently.
He was aiming his pulse gun at Eric's location outside the metal door.
Lin Xi's pupils suddenly contracted, and he shook his head with difficulty at Bryce.
No--
He wanted to shout.
But it was too late.
"Click..."
The faint rustling sounds stopped.
The light streaming into the exchange room through the louvered ventilation windows suddenly dimmed.
Lin Xi suddenly turned her head.
Then I saw... the face that belonged to Eric.
A pale, distorted face, devoid of any expression.
—The monster with the dark insect-like body was raising its upper body and resting it on the outside of the metal door. Its empty pupils, devoid of any white in its eyes, were staring straight at the three humans in the electrical exchange room through the narrow gaps in the ventilation window.
No, it should be said that the only person he was looking at was Lin Xi.
"king--"
Eric grinned at them.
"Bang--"
Bryce suddenly raised his foot and kicked the metal door open from the exchange room.
"Aaaaaaahh ...
He let out an unbearable scream and rushed out, raising his gun and pulling the trigger at Eric's head.
"Pfft—"
Eric's expressionless human face was burned to a charred mess right before their eyes by the pulse bullet.
A crimson viscous fluid, countless times thicker than human blood, gushed from the wound and splattered all over Bryce.
Eric's body swayed heavily to both sides, but its mobility was not diminished at all after the shooting.
"Click-click—click-click-click—"
A grotesque maw emerged from the already mangled flesh, and without the human face as camouflage, it looked even more repulsive than before.
The piercing clicking sound was coming from the lower part of Eric's deformed jaw.
Its eyes were already blind, but its movements became increasingly swift.
"Watch out—" Lin Xi suddenly pulled Bryce away, finally managing to dodge the mouthpiece that was ejected from Eric's throat.
The mace landed heavily on the metal door that had already been dented, and a ring of thin teeth tore a piece of metal off, leaving a slightly uneven ring on the metal door.
"Oh heavens!"
Elisa timed it perfectly and gave Eric another burst of pulse bullets.
"I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry—"
The young woman's face showed genuine pain and apology.
Perhaps because she was the only one of the three who could accurately recognize Eli's identity, the fact that she was now being shot at so mercilessly was causing her great distress.
Of course, the gun in her hand remained very steady.
In the moment of crisis, Bryce glanced quickly at the hole that had been pierced by the mouthparts, and his face twitched.
"Don't tell me you survived an attack by one of these things..."
He asked in alarm, with a hint of belated panic.
"That thing is much more terrifying than him!"
Lin Xi shouted.
Neither he nor Bryce were foolish enough to stay and entangle with Eric; instead, they began to run wildly down the other side of the corridor.
However, just like how Ali discovered their existence not with his eyes but with his sense of smell, even though most of his head had been blasted into pieces and his eyeballs had turned into a sticky, unidentified liquid that splattered onto the corridor ceiling, Ali was still able to accurately locate Lin Xi and the others and then wriggle his body to crawl directly toward them.
The pale yellow feet that covered his sides were running very fast, and Lin Xi felt the speed of the multi-legged creature so directly for the first time.
It can be said that, without breaking a sweat, Aili narrowed the distance between himself and the three of them, including Lin Xi.
"Oh no... oh no no no no no..."
Bryce would turn around and shoot at Ali every now and then, but what he couldn't understand was that even though the monster's upper body was almost blasted into a charred, sizzling pulp by the pulse gun, it only managed to slow down a little instead of trying to escape.
In Bryce's experience, even a monster (or a giant insect) should feel such damage, but Eric felt nothing about the bullets or the wounds on his body. He stubbornly chased after Lin Xi, his mouthparts, which were constantly oozing black and red fluid, making a clicking sound.
Bryce could swear that even in his most terrifying nightmares, there was no such scene. In fact... if it weren't for his girlfriend and brother in front of him, Bryce suspected that he might have already broken down in tears.
God knows how much Bryce hates bugs with more than six legs. Let alone this bug with the body of a centipede and the face of a former colleague (who has now been blasted off).
There seemed to be some rumors about Eric and Elisa before. People always felt that Eric, who was eloquent and good-looking, was suitable to be Elisa's first mate. Bryce never showed anything unusual in front of others because he was always confident in his relationship with Elisa. However, occasionally, in the dead of night, he would still fantasize about shooting Eric's face off with a bullet.
At that time, Bryce never imagined that one day his dream would come true, and that shooting a bullet into the face of his former rival would bring him not joy but panic.
In his view, there could never be a worse moment in the world than now.
But he soon dismissed this naive idea himself.
"I**&%……"
Just as they were running down the corridor and about to turn a corner, Elisa suddenly stopped.
Bryce nearly bumped into her, and Lin Xi almost fell as well. Fortunately, they both managed to stay steady at the last moment.
"What's wrong……"
Even though the footsteps of the mangled, multi-legged giant worm could still be heard behind him, Bryce froze involuntarily after seeing the scene at the other end of the corridor around the corner.
It's fair to say that Elisa, who could still swear in the face of the situation, is probably the most mentally resilient of the three.
At the end of the dark, cave-like corridor, a group of... mutated crew members were huddled together, wriggling about.
They didn't seem to have undergone the same drastic changes as Eric; at least, they still appeared to retain their human form. However, judging from their disheveled appearance and slime-covered bodies, their gathering at this end of the corridor seemed to have been going on for quite some time.
If Taran were still here, he would probably tell Lin Xi that his guess was correct. These people had already disappeared before Taran used incense to turn those who had mutated into his puppets. In fact, these people were the first to mutate after consuming the food bags; in the words of the Sunu priests, they were born with that so-called "active constitution." These people would suddenly wake up on certain nights, slowly walk out of their cabins, and never return—Taran had received warnings about their disappearances, but he didn't pay much attention, after all, he had too many things to do at the time, so he simply and crudely used his authority to suppress all the alerts.
However, Taran probably never imagined that these missing people had gathered in a secluded corner on the same deck as him.
They even began to transform themselves—
The moment Lin Xi saw these people, her instincts screamed a warning: the core of those dazed, empty-eyed people had been altered.
Chaotic and cold-blooded insects are taking shape inside their bodies, gradually replacing their warm flesh and emotional souls.
Of course, these bloody devourings occurring at the soul level were impossible for Elisa and Bryce to perceive.
What horrified them most was the sheer number of the mutated crew members and what they were doing... They were devouring several clumps of bodies that were clearly beginning to rot.
There were obvious bullet marks on the walls and floor of the corridor, but the weapons were now soaked in thick blood. The people who once controlled them had become food for the other mutated crew members.
Clearly, a confrontation had taken place here not long ago. Not everyone on the Sun God had become a dazed, mutated insect-like monster.
Unfortunately, faced with hundreds of mutated crew members, the crew members who could still maintain some semblance of normal sanity ultimately failed.
The once pristine and cold metal corridor was now covered with a sticky, unidentified substance. The viscous, colloid-like substance clumped together, its surface covered with a mottled, crisscrossing network of veins.
Countless bulging, translucent sacs hung down from mid-air, swaying gently as their contents vibrated.
Almost at the same time that Lin Xi and the other two were staring blankly at the scene before them, one of the sacs suddenly trembled violently and then convulsed—accompanied by the tearing of its fleshy outer shell, a deformed half-human, half-insect body mixed with a large amount of mucus rolled out of the sac.
"Sizzle sizzle sizzle... sizzle..."
Everything happened so fast that it was almost impossible to react.
The moment Lin Xi and the others stepped into the corridor, all the mutated crew members, and the newly born human-insect monster... turned around at the same time, staring directly at them. Then, the half-human, half-insect monster, still covered in slime, crawled forward, struggling towards Lin Xi...
Faced with this corridor that looked ominous no matter how you looked at it, no one dared to move forward, yet following behind them was Eric, who was getting closer and closer.
At that moment, the three of them looked at each other, and a hint of despair appeared on their faces.
"..."
Time seemed to stretch out infinitely at this moment, as if by some force.
Lin Xi, Elisa, and Bryce tacitly switched positions, forming a triangle with their backs to each other, and then raised their guns, pointing them in different directions.
At least in this way, they won't be attacked from both sides before they die.
However, a dozen seconds later, all three of them realized... something seemed a little off.
Eric, who should have arrived quickly, hadn't shown up for a long time. Meanwhile, the monster that had been crawling rapidly in their direction suddenly stopped moving.
It suddenly fell to one side, its carapace facing upwards, curling itself into a ball.
A wave of fear emanated from the newborn monster.
Moreover, it exudes a strong sense of submission.
Lin Xi's head was throbbing more and more, his brows were furrowed tightly, and cold sweat kept pouring out.
"What happened?"
He heard Bryce say behind him.
No one dared to put down their guns.
“I don’t know, maybe Eric…maybe he died on the way…maybe…”
Elisa answered weakly.
"..."
Lin Xi simply pursed her lips tightly, remaining silent.
He didn't know how much time had passed... maybe only a few seconds. But in Lin Xi's perception, tens of thousands of years had passed in that short time.
"Bang……"
A huge, pitch-black corpse suddenly appeared out of thin air and landed with a thud in the corridor that Lin Xi had come from.
Eric's body was divided into two distinct sections, and his tail and head could still twitch slightly, perhaps still retaining some vitality.
The corpse, covered in a thick, dark red slurry, even slid a short distance on the ground, almost touching Lin Xi's toes.
The moment the corpse suddenly appeared, Bryce let out a scream. He shrieked and, in place of Lin Xi, stretched out his foot and lifted Ali's body away. After hitting the wall of the corridor, the segmented worm-like limb thrashed violently on the ground several times before finally stopping.
"Who, who is it and where is it?"
Bryce went on a rampage in the corridor, firing his gun until the pulse gun went off with a piercing alarm due to low power.
Meanwhile, the mutated crew members who had been eyeing Lin Xi and his two companions with predatory intent suddenly curled up in unison.
They retreated slowly, little by little. Many of the more mutated crew members, such as those whose bodies were beginning to develop insect-like eyes and carapaces, chose to cower and play dead.
"Calm down, Bryce!"
Lin Xi had no choice but to punch Bryce hard to calm him down.
Even so, Bryce still seemed on the verge of losing his temper—well, Lin Xi could understand that—
After all, Eric's body appeared out of thin air...
etc.
wrong.
A chill ran down Lin Xi's spine, almost making his hair stand on end.
Lin Xi suddenly stepped forward, raised his gun, and pulled the trigger towards a spot he sensed.
"Splash..."
Just as the pulse bullet struck a spot on the wall, a sound like soft fabric being shaken came from the air.
Right before Lin Xi's eyes, the area that should have been a metal wall suddenly trembled, and the color and reflection of the metal became blurred, as if covered with a thin layer of frosted paper. Then, all the colors faded away little by little, revealing the wrinkled wings below, which were almost translucent.
Something fell from the wall. It was unusually robust and enormous, even larger than Eric—and far more terrifying than that bizarre, deformed giant centipede mutant.
At first glance, the creature bears a resemblance to a praying mantis on Earth, with six sharp, menacing legs evenly distributed along both sides of its body. However, on its back, it possesses a pair of wings that can be described as quite beautiful.
Unlike all the mutants Lin Xi and his group had seen before, this monster's insect-like body did not have the glossy or colorful appearance of an insect's shell... its body surface was actually covered with a thin layer of human skin.
"Waaaaah..."
What was chilling and unbelievable was that a whimpering sound, indistinguishable from that of a human, came from the creature's throat.
The enormous wings trembled slightly and tucked tightly behind its back, with some circular markings clustered together along the soft, wrinkled edges of the wings.
The surface alternated between pale pink, blue, and vibrant yellow-black.
Pink represents joy, blue represents shyness, and as for those black and yellow colors, they probably represent extreme terror?
During the time she took care of Star Butterfly, Lin Xi had become accustomed to judging "Number One's" moods based on the color of its wings.
The monster before him now...
But it wasn't a star butterfly.
Lin Xi said to herself.
Only he himself knew how insecure he felt when he thought that way.
Those brightly colored wings.
It also has an unparalleled ability to mimic its surroundings.
Lin Xi had only ever seen this in "Number One".
"..."
Perhaps sensing Lin Xi's gaze, the monster trembled slightly and then slowly turned its head. However, as it did so, its wings gradually spread out. It seemed very afraid to show its face to Lin Xi (Lin Xi himself did not know why he felt this kind of "fear" from such a terrifying monster), so it kept covering most of its face with its wings.
Only his eyes... its eyes were visible.
"Bang--"
Lin Xi heard the sound of the pulse gun falling to the ground; it was a mistake made by Bryce in his distraction.
"Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God..."
He seemed to have completely forgotten other words, only repeating this word over and over in Lin Xi's ear.
Lin Xi didn't even have the ability to speak. He felt completely frozen, unable to move, speak, or think.
All he could do was stare in shock at the other person.
On the monster's deformed and terrifying body, incongruously, was a pair of incredibly deep and gentle eyes.
There was even a tiny beauty mark at the corner of her eyes, which always seemed to carry a hint of a smile, and her deep blue pupils were as deep as the starry sky.
Those were Savile's eyes.
Lin Xi thought to herself.
No matter how much time has passed, no matter what has happened, Lin Xi could never mistake those eyes. After all, in all that long time, no matter who he was with, whether he was happy or sad, that man's face was always etched deep in his soul.
Over time, those marks began to rot and bleed, leaving him scarred and in excruciating pain.
But no matter how painful or desperate it may be, that person's face will always be there and will never disappear.
forever.
Lin Xi never imagined that she would meet that man's eyes again in the rest of her life, the eyes of Saville.
Those are the eyes of a living person.
“Savill—”
Finally, all the surging emotions erupted in that instant.
He let out a long shout and then ran toward the man.
"No, Lin Xi, no—that's not Savile! That's not it!"
Unfortunately, Lin Xi didn't even have time to run a few more steps before someone grabbed her tightly.
Bryce and Elisa reacted in an instant.
They grabbed Lin Xi's shoulders and pulled him back forcefully. At the same time, "Number One," which had been motionless and carefully covering its face with its wings, involuntarily trembled its wings because of Lin Xi's call, which was filled with sorrow and longing.
This immediately revealed the pitted and uneven parts of its wings that were originally well hidden.
"Waaah..."
This unexpected mistake immediately made it tense, and it tried to hold up its less-than-handsome wings with its forelimbs.
Unfortunately, this action also fully revealed its true nature.
In that instant, all emotions and longing vanished into thin air.
Instead, there was only fear and guns.
"That's just its mimicry! Don't be fooled!"
The moment Elisa saw "Number One," she immediately raised her gun.
That's not Savile.
Although she had never seen the legendary man, Elisa was now quite certain that there was no man named Savile here.
There is only one insect-like monster here.
The creature had a hideous, indescribable insect face; every part of it seemed to proclaim its evil and cruelty. Its sharp mouthparts were covered in sticky, dripping blackish-red blood.
Anyone could see that the dark red blood belonged to none other than that of the unfortunate personal assistant, Eric. Heaven knows what the monster did to him before he died to have his mouth full of blood.
Yet this monster—with such a face—had an unusually beautiful pair of eyes that should have bulged out in the place of compound eyes…
This makes the monster look terrifying in a way that can be described as unprecedented.
It was not only terrifying, but also disgusting.
A wave of disgust and fear overwhelmed Elisa in an instant; even her very bones trembled at the sight of this monster.
Elisa pulled the trigger without hesitation.
But the monster before them possessed incredible agility and speed—no wonder that Ali, who had such tenacious vitality and had terrified them, was so utterly powerless against such a monster that he was reduced to two pieces of corpse.
Its movements were so fast it was almost like teleportation. Even Alyssa, the best marksman among the three, couldn't completely miss her after firing.
"No, stop!"
Of course, Elisa didn't have time to fire a few shots either.
Because Lin Xi called out to her directly and pressed down on the muzzle of her gun.
"I...I know who it is, please—don't shoot—it means no harm—+"
It took Elisa almost all of her willpower to control her fear. She forced herself to finally release her finger from the trigger.
"Lin Xi? What are you talking about?! It doesn't mean any harm? This monster—"
She asked with a distorted expression.
However, the next moment, when she saw the monster's reaction after the gunfire stopped, her question got stuck in her throat and she couldn't get it out.
Neither Bryce nor Elisa ever imagined that they would encounter such a thing one day.
Just as Lin Xi had said, the monster made no attempt to attack them.
Even... it does seem to exude an inexplicable sense of humanity.
Its incredibly sharp limbs were tightly tucked into its chest. It first tried to raise its forelimbs to cover its face with its bent joints, but it quickly realized that its conspicuous forelimbs seemed to put immense psychological pressure on the human in front of it, so it quickly lowered its forelimbs.
How should I put it? This monster seemed a bit lost.
After a brief hesitation, it subtly dragged its wings over its back, then shrank its neck and hid its face behind its wings again.
There was a small, fresh scorch mark on the edge of the wing, left from when Lin Xi shot it again.
It quickly noticed the somewhat unsightly black spot, and casually tugged the small piece of wing to the side.
The colors on its wings kept changing, showing that its mood was changing very quickly these days.
Its unusually human-like eyes darted around, constantly staring at Lin Xi, Elisa, and Bryce.
(If Elisa had paid a closer look, she would have noticed that a certain alien insect was particularly interested in her interactions with Bryce.)
The look in those clear blue eyes seemed to have an almost innocent quality to it.
But... only those eyes.
Upon seeing the monster's body, Elisa felt her scalp tingle.
"No, don't be afraid."
Bryce quietly approached Elisa and took her hand.
Bryce's palms were also damp, and his pulse was beating exceptionally fast—while reassuring Elisa not to be afraid, Bryce himself was actually quite nervous.
Of the three, only Lin Xi appeared calm.
"Number One?"
Lin Xi stared blankly at the strange insect, then murmured a question.
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