mother of all races

After 10 minutes, Lin Xi took care of himself a little, and then dragged his extra heavy and sticky body. He tried his best to cheer himself up all the way—meeting with Taran was not an easy task job.

Especially thinking of his strange appearance yesterday, Lin Xi's worries became more intense.

What's disturbing is that when he stepped into the captain's cabin through the metal hatch, the air he found was more dignified than he expected.

After just one night, Taran looked even more haggard than before.He kept sniffling as he spoke, as if there had been some small problem with his respiratory system, and the uncomfortable light in his eyes became sharper and brighter.Lin Xi knew that he might be a little mean to think this way, but just seeing Talan like this, he couldn't help but think of the rumors about his blood—it has to be said that Talan is indeed reminiscent of bugs in many places, And his eyes are especially so now.

His dear Alisa was also in the captain's cabin, and the poor girl looked very haggard, with dark circles under her eyes that seemed to hang around the corners of her mouth.

Next to Alisa, there was a somewhat unexpected person.Ando Shizuo, this is a short man with a baby face that doesn't match his age. He is always smiling. Like Lin Xi, he is also a mission assistant sent by the Earth-Moon Union University. The only difference is that his status requires One level higher than Lin Xi, and his research direction is Sunu's zoology.

Well, in principle, Ando is Lin Xi's boss, but Lin Xi has always gotten along with him quite well, after all, Ando is the kind of person who can hardly say "no" (Lin Xi is very convinced that this is him. He was packed together and thrown on this damn spaceship to carry out this damn mission), and many times Lin Xi would even forget that there was a division between the two of them—but at this moment he was very sure, The reason Taran asked Ando to come here was for this relationship.

As soon as Lin Xi stepped on the floor of the captain's cabin, which had been worn gray due to years of friction, she knew something was wrong.

Because when he saw Alyssa and Ando, ​​he instinctively looked at the two of them, but the two who should have given him some hints or gestures were becoming more and more worried now, when Alyssa looked at him With a dignified face, Shizuo Ando's iconic smile completely disappeared from that baby's face.

"Dr. Lin Xi, I think you need to look at this and give me a reasonable explanation."

Immediately afterwards, a dry sound, as if something was being rubbed against, appeared in Lin Xi's ears.

That was Taran, and he said it without even allowing Lin Xi to make a routine report.

An object contained in a small transparent seal was carefully pushed by Taran to the center of the table.

The sealing device is like a huge glass capsule, with complex metal parts at both ends, and the indicator lights that light up regularly on it prove that the life support system inside is in operation.

And right in the middle of this huge glass capsule, a weird fusiform thing is quietly soaking in the culture fluid.

Through the light blue culture fluid, one can vaguely see that under the protein-colored translucent film, there is a layer of slender oval-shaped eggs wrapped in a row.

It looks like some kind of special pod.

Meaty, elastic—there would be no such "bean pods" on earth, after all, those cute and delicious bean pods on earth would not be like the one in front of him, which would vibrate slightly from time to time.

Lin Xi frowned and looked at the thing, especially those egg-shaped cores that trembled with an imperceptible arc to the naked eye. He couldn't help but feel that the "bean pods" looked a little disgusting, but when he thought about it carefully, that There was a strange feeling of nausea, as if the prickly thorns of miscanthus had pierced the skin, but there was no reason at all.

A more obvious emotion than nausea is confusion.

Because Lin Xi could swear that he had never seen such a weird thing before, but judging from the performance of Talan and even Alisa and Shizuo Ando, ​​they seemed to be sure that Lin Xi had to give them an explanation.

"what is this?"

Lynch asked.

He tried to keep his attitude as natural as possible, so as not to excuse his confusion to the other party.

Taran's sharp eyes stabbed at him instantly.

"I can assure you that this is the first time I have come into contact with this kind of...thing...I really have no way to explain it to you."

Lin Xi raised his hands towards him in a gesture of surrender, and then he spoke in an extremely distressed manner.

"This is the first time you've seen it? You promise?"

Alisa interrupted suddenly.

"I promise!"

Lin Xi has never been so sincere.

"All of my itinerary is in the personal terminal. If necessary, you can check those records thoroughly. I have never seen such a thing-if I have seen such a disgusting thing, I will definitely have an impression. "

He looked at Alyssa for help.

Alyssa seemed relieved to have his reassurance, and she turned to Taran.

However, before she could speak, Taran stared at Lin Xi gloomily and asked.

"Can you guarantee that you didn't make any operational mistakes when resealing that statue of the Sunu star god? I repeat, there were no 'any' mistakes or omissions—"

"sculpture?"

Lynch opened her eyes in confusion.

Oh, right……

Lin Xi remembered that Alisa mentioned in the message to him before that they found something in that weird sculpture sealed container.

His condition was so bad that he didn't remember it at all.

But, wait, this constant thing in front of them is the "thing" they found in the sealed container of the Sunu sculpture?

Lin Xi stared at the "pod" in the glass capsule in disbelief.

The thing was about fifteen inches...maybe sixteen inches long, and both the egg-coloured outer membrane and the eggs within were impressive enough.

Unless Lin Xi was already blind at the time, he couldn't have missed this thing when he sealed the sculpture.

"My operation is also in the mission log. If necessary, I can give you a more detailed text briefing, but——I swear, I never saw it when I was doing the operation!"

Lin Xi said firmly.

"But it's there."

Taran said mercilessly.

"When we went to do a really solid post-processing on this priceless sculpture, it was in the sculpture's container. If we didn't do it in time, it would have been suffocated in those gels. die."

Lin Xi insisted that he had never seen this "bean pod", but judging from Talan's attitude, he seemed to firmly feel that Lin Xi needed to be responsible for it.

The situation fell into a stalemate like this, until Shizuo Ando, ​​who had been silent all this time, suddenly spoke.

"Sorry, actually I have a very small assumption."

He said with a very embarrassed smile.

Then he clicked on the electronic screen to enlarge a section intercepted from Lin Xi's mission log.

That was the image data of Lin Xi when he was resealing the statue.

"Dr. Lin Xi mentioned before that the spare container he found was smaller than the original airtight container, and he had to use some less gentle methods to force the sculpture into the airtight container—"

The aura on Talan's body suddenly became cold and terrifying, and he glared at Lin Xi as if he wanted to eat people.

God knows why he cares so much about this sculpture on an alien planet... Lin Xi doubted that even if he touched Taran's woman, this guy would not show such obvious hatred.

While thinking about it, Lin Xi defended himself and said, "That thing had already started to turn black, so I had to do that!"

Ando Shizuo nodded.

"Yes, we can see that the statue of Sunu at that time had hardened to a certain extent..." At this point, he looked at Lin Xi reassuringly, "Actually, this is normal. In Sunu, All star god statues must also be preserved in a special slime. Once exposed to the outside world, they are prone to this hardening phenomenon, but as long as they are re-immersed in the liquid for enough time, they will return to normal. It's just the first time People who have experienced sclerosis will inevitably feel that the state is a bit serious. I can understand the actions Dr. Lin Xi took to alleviate the sclerosis, and I also believe that at that time, the egg case did not appear."

"Egg case?"

Lin Xi asked in surprise.

He couldn't help but looked up at Taran and Alyssa, the expressions of both of them showed that Ando was not talking nonsense.

Now Lin Xi finally wanted to understand why he felt uncomfortable when he saw that "bean pod". After all, he just discovered his insect phobia just yesterday.

"Oh my god……"

Lin Xi almost subconsciously took two steps back to stay away from the egg case.

"Why is there an egg case here? What is the egg case?"

he asked with a frown.

"That's what we want to know, too."

Alicia sighed and said.

But Ando immediately followed her and said: "We don't have enough instruments on this ship to carry out testing, but based on my personal opinion, this should be the egg case of a Sunu star butterfly."

When Lin Mao heard the word "Sunu Star Butterfly", Lin Mao shuddered very slightly.

Vaguely, he felt as if he remembered something.

Something slippery, dark, and unpleasant.It's just that the fragments of the memory were so fragmented that they passed quickly in his mind. When he tried to recall it hard, his mind was blank.

"...I thought Sunu Star Butterfly was extinct?"

Lin Xi said in a daze.

He still remembers that he liked Sunu Xingdie very much when he was a child. He bought several encyclopedias about Sunu in an attempt to find more information, but Sunu Xingdie is extremely mysterious even among the Sunu people. The presence.

The only thing that people on earth can know is that it is very sacred, it is the spiritual totem of the Sunu people, and it is considered to be a "little star god" and its ethnic group has been decreasing day by day, and it was on the verge of extinction more than 30 years ago.

And when the Sunu people started to go crazy, those big bugs that originally needed very meticulous and cumbersome care died faster.

But now, Ando told him that there was actually a fresh star butterfly egg case on the Helios?

"At least as far as we know, yes, all Sunu star butterflies are extinct on the current Sunu planet, but I suspect that such an egg case should have been produced earlier." Ando said as he spoke. Nodding his head.

Now even Taran's eyes were on him.

Ando's face flushed slightly: "I'm a Sunu fan... Well, everyone knows this. A long time ago, I vaguely remembered seeing some records in a document about Sunu culture. When people encounter a pregnant woman with dystocia, they will take her into the temple and bury her under the seat of the star god, and those Sunu people firmly believe that this treatment will make the difficult-to-delivery baby born smoothly."

Alisa raised her eyebrows in astonishment, and she quickly thought of something: "You want to say..."

Ando continued, and once his interest was involved, he became eloquent: "Yes, we all know that star butterflies encountered reproductive problems centuries ago, but they are so different for the Sunu people. Noble and important. Considering this, it is very possible that the Sunu people buried those egg cases in the statue in an attempt to restore their reproductive capacity." Speaking of this, Ando looked at Lin Xi sympathetically, "The one who made the forced landing before The shock may have loosened some places on the fossil statue, and when Dr. Lynch resealed that statue, the egg case that had been buried inside the statue slipped out."

While speaking, Ando enlarged the image of the resealed statue on the electronic screen. Under the immersion of the sealing liquid, the black hardening marks on the surface of the weird statue are slowly fading.

Ando pointed to a very inconspicuous depression at its tail, and in the middle of that depression, there was a very shallow crack.

"We all thought that this was the crack created when the container broke and it fell out, but I observed it carefully before, and I doubt that this is the place where the egg sheath was discharged. There should be a bigger opening here when it hardened before. It’s just that there’s enough slime now that it’s less noticeable.”

After Shizuo Ando's words fell, there was a short silence in the captain's room.

"Thinking about it, the egg case of this Star Butterfly should be quite valuable?"

Lin Xi blinked, and cautiously tried to Talan who said nothing.

He admitted that he had fully accepted Ando's statement, although it did sound a bit too bizarre.

But eliminate all the impossible, the rest is possible.

Lin Xi vaguely remembered seeing such a sentence in a book many years ago.