Deep, dark underground where no one can see.
A colossal spaceship, so massive it could almost be called a city, lay silently in the moist, sticky alien sand.
What an astonishing metal creation it was, as if it were not made by insignificant humans, but by the hands of a more sacred and omnipotent god—in fact, even the workers and scientists of country A who built it were amazed by it. When they were making it, they always felt as if something was attached to them, allowing them to successfully construct the outline of this miracle.
Countless golden, transparent energy panels, made of translucent polymer materials, were assembled together to form a golden sphere resembling a small asteroid.
Although people around the world have created various stories based on the Providence in various works of art for many years after its disappearance, none of them have been able to truly depict its magnificence and grandeur.
Strictly speaking, it cannot even be called a spaceship—it is actually an artificial sphere of matter made up of the most advanced, luxurious, and sophisticated technologies of the entire Great Exploration Era.
It can almost be called a Dyson sphere, although its core is a high-tech spacecraft rather than a real asteroid.
But no matter what, even now, it can still be called a miracle of humankind.
Countless metal pipes, like plant roots, extended from the gaps in the Providence's metal plates, piercing deeper and deeper, making it look like a virus magnified countless times. A continuous stream of geothermal heat was extracted by these pipes and converted into clean energy, transported to the interior of the "city."
However, even with this amount of energy, it was not enough to power the entire spaceship.
The surface of the enormous spaceship was completely dark, and there was no sign of any equipment operating.
Three hundred years had not caused much damage to the spaceship. Its surface metal remained as bright and smooth as ever, and all the equipment was still in good condition. However, it still looked lifeless, like a metal corpse that had been dead for three hundred years, silently buried in a tomb.
However, inside the very interior of the Providence's "corpse," something still retains its vitality.
The energy converted from geothermal energy was transported here, and the pipes pulsed like human blood vessels. The electronic brains, which were wrapped around the outer wall of the spherical core, were regular spherical shapes. They were interconnected and would flash and change regularly from time to time depending on the amplitude of energy transmission.
Beneath the heavy envelopment, at the very center of the metal core, lay an empty command room. A damp, sticky gelatinous substance covered all the metal surfaces, with intricate blood vessels and nerves protruding from it, collectively constructing a moist, warm, and malevolent nest.
Right in the center of this nest of blood vessels, a man was hanging his head, enveloped in the veins and meridians.
He had a pale but handsome face, looked to be in his thirties, and was as beautiful as some celebrities on Earth.
However, his body had severely shrunk and become deformed. His emaciated body looked only the size of a child, and because of the dryness and tightness of his skin, he had to curl up, like a sacrificial offering placed in a jar during a human sacrifice.
Most of his body had become one with the gelatinous substance on the ground, but his exposed skin shimmered with a metallic blue light.
The body, which looked utterly disgusting, showed no movement; only some artificial parts embedded in its surface would periodically emit a faint glow, like breathing lights.
Suddenly, its body trembled, and then it slowly opened its eyes.
Those were a pair of scarlet, dark compound eyes, devoid of any emotion, containing only emptiness, just like the darkness that enveloped them.
"He is still alive..."
The monstrous man emitted an incredibly unpleasant, hoarse voice.
"...Yes...Why did I forget...He was already in the final stages of transformation. Ordinary firearms couldn't kill him. This is terrible, because He shouldn't exist. There should only be one Queen Insect in this world, don't you think?"
The monster muttered.
It posed a question, but throughout the entire process, the gelatinous substance enveloping him and the countless spherical objects hanging around him remained silent, offering no answer to its question.
"Oh……"
The monster let out a cold laugh as it looked into the darkness. Its tiny pupils, densely packed within their sockets, locked onto a single insect egg embedded in the wall.
The insect egg has entered the late stage of hatching. It appears heavy and swollen, and there are already some mottled patterns on the chitinous shell on its surface.
The monster's eyes flickered, and then a metal arm extended from above the control room, directly grabbing the insect egg and bringing it to its side.
Immediately afterwards, a blue light suddenly flashed on the metal arm. In just a few seconds, the blue light had scanned the insect eggs evenly, allowing the monstrous man to see the contents of the eggs directly.
"Sizzle—"
The next moment, under the monster's gaze, the shell of the insect egg was sliced open by the metal arm.
Accompanied by a viscous sound of gushing mucus, a foul-smelling slurry gushed directly from inside the insect egg.
Next up was a deformed insect curled up in a ball.
It looks only the size of a kitten, with a head that resembles that of a primate, but from the neck down, it is clearly an insect. However, the underdeveloped insect looks more like a lump of semi-liquid soft flesh inlaid with carapace and bristles.
The unusually tenacious vitality of this alien species is vividly demonstrated in this deformed creature.
Even when forcibly removed from the egg, even when severely underdeveloped, it still survives.
Its mouthparts contracted and relaxed rapidly in the air, its soft, limp body trembled, and it tried to escape from the monster—
But the metal arm mercilessly clamped it down.
"Disgusting...disgusting...damn it...damn Lin Xi..."
The monstrous man allowed the metal arm to place the deformed object into its hand.
It let out a painful groan, then suddenly tore open the little creature's body, swallowing the soft flesh of the defeated, deformed insect piece by piece.
In the end, only the ossified head of the deformed insect was left.
The man, bored, tossed aside the portion of the remains that he couldn't absorb.
The deformed insect's eyeballs twitched rapidly in their sockets a few times, and then it finally lost all life.
Around it are hills piled high with bones.
The monster man turned his head, looking at the remaining insect eggs on the wall.
Its eyes flickered, and it seemed quite downcast.
"I can't even remember how long it's been..."
He said with a sigh.
"It's been such a long, long time since any of the chicks have hatched successfully... Okay, I know you don't like me doing this, but what else can we do? We really need new chicks..."
As he spoke, the monster man laboriously twitched his body with the help of the mechanical arm.
Beneath his body, something utterly disgusting trembled slightly.
It was once an incredibly powerful insect.
"King Worm" is the name given to the worm in some Sunu myths.
However, the King Worm has now had most of its body removed, leaving only its intact reproductive glands and a portion of its life support system preserved to maintain its vitality. It is meticulously and ingeniously sewn into the monster man's body—without a soul, without thoughts, without a body, it lives in this void.
However, on one or two occasions, it seemed to respond to the monster man's words.
"It's okay, everything will be alright."
The monster man was very gentle with the mass of flesh stitched onto his body.
He seemed completely oblivious to how terrifying and maddening the scene was.
"...Once he's dead, everything you're worried about will be resolved, I swear to you."
The monster man muttered to himself.
“But killing Him will definitely take some effort. I can sense that He is expanding His territory and multiplying His children. Maybe cutting that guy into pieces would work. Yes, I think that would be feasible. After cutting him into pieces, I could kill his retinue. Even He, when it can't draw enough energy to repair his body, will naturally die, won't it? Let me think about what I should do… Let me…”
As he spoke, the monster man suddenly looked thoughtfully at the metal arms.
Even after three hundred years, the blue painted lettering on the metal arm is still clearly visible—it is the prominent logo of the Del Corporation.
...
Lin Xi shivered and suddenly woke up.
He vaguely felt as if he were having a nightmare.
He dreamt of deformed insect eggs, a dark nest, and oh yes, horrible chunks of flesh sewn onto his body.
Perhaps only after experiencing the most disgusting thing in the world (such as finding himself turning into a monstrous insect with extra mouthparts and straws growing out of his throat) would he have such a devastating nightmare.
In the gap between sleep and waking, Lin Xi even had trouble distinguishing between reality and dreams.
The heavy feeling coming from his waist made him involuntarily let out a scream.
He instinctively pushed the monster away—
"Lin Xi?"
"Number One" suddenly tightened its wings, raised its head and looked sadly at Lin Xi, its eyes full of confusion.
In fact, "Number One" had already woken up alertly long before Lin Xi woke up.
However, it knew that once Lin Xi opened her eyes, it would have to separate from her. In its straightforward attachment, it tried very hard to maintain the posture of tightly hugging Lin Xi's waist.
The slap that landed on its face stung a little, making "Number One" a bit worried that its mimicry might be accidentally dispelled.
Facing the face of "Number One" that resembled Savile's, Lin Xi shivered and finally snapped out of his daze.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
