Chapter 19

Zero moves forward in the cave, and the military boots step on the mucky land. The slime of swallowing beetles is greasy. If you are not careful, you will fall. So zero walked very carefully and stepped lightly at the same time. All underground creatures have degraded their eyesight due to environmental reasons, but their hearing is very developed. Even the sound of needle dropping will be detected by them, so zero doesn't go fast, for fear that the sound will be found by the insects.

The cave excavated by the swallowing beetle twists and turns. Zero silently calculates his steps and comes to the conclusion that he has walked nearly a kilometer. However, the cave seemed endless, but I didn't pay attention to it at all. Quiet underground, dark abyss, he walked alone. It's like a completely strange world. Although there are many people in z7 base, zero feels lonely.

After all, there is a gap of nearly half a century between him and those people.

Zero doesn't remember the past. Who is he? From where? What have you done? There is no answer to all this, but zero knows that as long as he goes on, one day he will approach and know the truth.

Just like now.

The end of the cave.

It's not exactly the end, but the channel turned a 90 degree turn here and directly extended to the dark abyss.

Zero, take out the cold fireworks, light it and throw it down. The fire light swept through the vertical channel, and some fist sized iron beetles immediately dispersed away from the ice to cool the bright light.

Fortunately, the drop of the vertical channel is only about ten meters. This distance has not made zero in sight. Cold fireworks continue to burn at the bottom of the channel. They use both hands and feet to climb down through some uneven mud on the channel. When his feet touched the ground, the cold fireworks just went out. Darkness returned to the bottom of the ground. Soon, a green light came up and let the iron beetles gathering towards zero disperse quickly.

Zero holds a fluorescent stick in his hand and continues to walk along the horizontal channel opened by the gold swallowing insect. The passage kept tilting downward, as if straight to hell.

But this time, the journey of zero will soon end.

Because he heard some special voices from the quiet underground.

Zizizi——

Like the sound of alternating current, or the sound of something rubbing against each other. Zero can't be sure, just took out the M500 revolver. This pair of large caliber murder weapons, if shot at close range, are like the tough shell of gold swallowing insects, and may not offset the impact of 50 bullets.

The sound is getting closer and closer.

Under the green fluorescence, the channel came to an end.

At the end, there is a larger cave. The fluorescent light can't reach the end. Zero estimates that the radius is about 300 meters.

The strange sound came from under the cave. Zero squatted down at the edge. Under the green fluorescence, several huge insect bodies were intertwined orthogonally. Those strange sounds came from the mutual friction of these insects with mucus. The golden swallowing worm is like a meat maggot magnified countless times. It is difficult to distinguish the head from the tail. Now several big insects are entangled, which makes people unable to distinguish.

Under the fluorescence, the reflection of something slightly hurt zero's eyes. Looking towards the light source, there was a thick layer of copper mud on the edge of the cave.

Those are the food for swallowing goldworms, showing a thoughtful expression. Why did the golden bug bring food here? Moreover, in terms of the amount of this pile of copper mud, these foods are enough for several gold swallowing insects to eat for several days. In other words, did they prepare food in advance? Why? Is it because of the "movement" below?

In zero's mind, he quickly analyzed the things in front of him.

The golden swallowing insects are intertwined with each other and look like snakes breeding offspring. But the golden swallowing insect is asexual reproduction, and it does not need to reproduce its offspring through this behavior at all. Zero didn't know much about this creature, and the information he knew was only from a chart when old Jack took over the task.

He can't judge, but he doesn't want to stay long. The task of reconnaissance may not include the annihilation of gold swallowing insects. Zero won't do superfluous things, but when he turned to go, new things happened to the insects in the cave below.

One of the biggest gold swallowing insects suddenly stuck out his head. On the big head of the fat and white insect, there were two rows of six scarlet eyes. A cross crack appeared in the center of the insect's head, followed by the fat rolled up, revealing a mouth device the same size as the head.

Zero can be seen clearly in green light. There are three layers of tiny inverted teeth in the mouth. These seemingly insignificant inverted teeth can dig mountains and stones. Now, the goal of this mouthpiece is towards its companions.

With a puff, the big bug swallowed his companions in his mouth. I saw the big bug sucking, so I swallowed another bug into my stomach.

Zero pupil contraction.

what is it? Kill each other?

Soon, after swallowing his companion, the insect gained a whole circle of weight. A wrinkle was visible under the insect body, as if the swallowed companion was struggling. The stomach juice of a gold swallowing worm can melt gold fossils. How can it bear its own kind. Soon, the body of the big bug stabilized. But it seemed very hungry, so it pointed its huge mouth at other insects.

The sound of sucking and swallowing kept coming. Zero looked at the big bug and swallowed the remaining two companions. After eating the three insects in one breath, the body of the golden bug becomes extremely huge. It made a painful cry, the six red eyes flickered, and the surface of the insect set off layers of meat waves. It's like digestion or excretion.

The body of the giant insect kept twisting, the big head began to sink, and the body curled up to form a cocoon the size of a hill. When the shape of the cocoon is completed and stabilized, it vibrates slightly like the human heart.

Zero quietly withdrew, and the reconnaissance mission was over.

This strange phenomenon of gold swallowing insects should belong to evolution. By swallowing other companions, we can improve our genes and evolve to a higher level of life form. In this era, in order to survive, we must do everything to make ourselves stronger. This is true of humans and other creatures.

The work of zero has been completed. Whether the gold swallowing insect evolved into a new form will threaten the base needs to be evaluated by professionals. It's not a zero job. The base doesn't want to control how to deal with gold swallowing insects.

When I returned to the mining area, it was two hours later. Zero jumped out of the cave and heard the noise outside. He frowned. It's working time. It seems that he shouldn't be so noisy. Things are not simple.

Zero entered the mining area. Nick, a miner who had contact with him before, was arguing with others. Seeing zero, Nick ran over. While running, he also used his fingers to draw the shape of a cross on his forehead.

"Thank God you're finally back, sir."

He nodded and asked concisely, "what's going on?"

"Lost contact, sir." Nick gasped, pointed to the direction of the base and said, "just half an hour ago, we were going to transport the first batch of copper mines back to the base. But the gate of the base was locked, and we contacted the inside of the base by radio, but there was no news at all. Everyone was in a hurry and didn't know what happened inside."

"Didn't you contact old Jack?"

"How can we? After the radio contact was silent, we contacted the boss directly through the internal telephone, but no one answered." Nick hesitated: "it's incredible. It's like the people at the base suddenly disappeared."

After hearing this, he looked silent. Leaving Nick behind, he dived into the crowd, boarded the harvester and drove to the entrance of the operation area.

But no one knew that his hand was gently holding on to the fender of the revolver.

The gate at the entrance of the operation area was closed tightly, and the arrival of zero made the surrounding workers look at him.

Zero jumped out of the mine car and asked, "who is in charge."

"Me." a middle-aged man stepped out of the crowd, raised his hand and said, "Sir, I'm the person in charge of mining operation. You can call me Jetto."

"How's the gate?" zero one asked as he walked towards the gate.

Jetto followed zero and reported: "the electronic system failed completely, and there was no response inside the base. The electrician is already dealing with it, but the possibility of recovery is very low."

Next to the fine steel gate, a thin man is squatting on the ground to check the electronic circuit of the gate. Zero came to him and asked, "can you open it?"

"No, there was no response at all." the thin man replied without looking back. Then he saw a zero dressed up by soldiers, jumped up immediately and said respectfully, "Sir, I've tried my best."

Zero asked, "can't you start it manually?"

"Manual system? Should..." the electrician patted his head and said, "Damn it, how can I forget the manual system."

He immediately called back some miners and ran to the other side of the gate.

Before long, just listening to the sound of "card", the door separating the operation area from the base finally opened slowly.

People near the gate breathed a sigh of relief, but the skin under zero clothes felt like a slight needle.

DANGER!

From the door, a dangerous smell came.

The door opened a crack, and red and viscous liquid slowly flowed out of the door. They flowed across the brown ground, over zero and other people's shoes, and then stopped ten meters outside the door.

The miners couldn't say a word. Just by the door, an arm slipped out of the crack in the flow of red liquid.

This is just an arm. It broke from the root of the shoulder. There are still white thorns in the fuzzy flesh and blood.

"This... What's going on?" the person in charge of the mining area looked silly and looked at zero.

Zero inhaled deeply and said quietly, "you stay here. When I go in, close the door!"

With that, he stepped into the blood water with one foot and another, and he had stepped into the gate of the base.

A moment later, the door closed slowly.