Chapter 10: 10

 

Draft
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After ten minutes, Lin Xi took care of himself a little, dragging his extra heavy and sticky body. He tried his best to cheer himself along the way—meeting with Talan wasn't an easy task.

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 scene he found was more dignified than he expected.

After just one night, Talan looked even more haggard than before. He kept sniffling as he spoke, like there was some small problem with his respiratory system, the uncomfortable light in his eyes became sharper and brighter. Lin Xi knew that he might be a little mean thinking like this, but just from seeing Talan, he couldn't help but think of the rumors about his blood— it had to be said that Talan does look like a bug in many places, especially his eyes now.

His dear Alisa was also in the captain's cabin, the poor girl also 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. Shizuo Ando, the short man with a baby face that doesn't match his age. He's always smiling, and like Lin Xi, he's also a mission assistant sent by the Earth-Moon Union University. The only difference is that his status was a level higher than Lin Xi's, and his research direction is Sunu's zoology.

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

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

Because when he saw Alisa and Ando, ​​he instinctively looked at the two of them, but the two who should've been giving him some hints or gestures were becoming more and more worrisome now. When Alisa looked at him with a dignified face, while Shizuo Ando's permanent 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, like something rubbing against something, appeared in Lin Xi's ear.

That was Talan, and he spoke without even allowing Lin Xi to make a routine report.

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

The sealing device was like a huge glass capsule, with complex metal parts at both ends, and the indicator lights lit up regularly to signal that the life support system inside is in operation.

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

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

It looks like some kind of special pod.

Meaty, elastic— there'd be no such "bean pods" on earth, after all, those cute and delicious bean pods would never be like the one in front of him, vibrating lightly from time to time.

Lin Xi frowned and looked at the thing, especially those egg-shaped cores that trembled in an imperceptible arc. He couldn't help but feel that the "bean pods" looked a little disgusting, but when he thought about it carefully, that strange feeling of nausea, like prickly thorns of miscanthus piercing the skin, had 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 Talan, and even Alisa and Shizuo Ando, ​​they all seemed to be sure that Lin Xi could give them an explanation.

"What's this?"

Lin Xi asked.

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

Talan's sharp eyes stabbed at him instantly.

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

Lin Xi raised his hands towards himself in a gesture of surrender, he was very distressed.

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

Alisa suddenly interrupted.

"I promise!"

Lin Xi had never been so sincere.

"The records of everything that happened are in my personal terminal. If necessary, you can check those thoroughly. I've never seen such a thing— if I did, I'm sure I definitely would've had an impression on something so disgusting."

He looked at Alisa for help.

Alisa seemed relieved by his reassurance, she turned to Talan.

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

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

"Sculpture?"

Lin Xi confusedly widened his eyes.

Oh, that's right...

Lin Xi remembered Alisa mentioning in a 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 pod thing in front of them was the "thing" they found in the sealed container of that Sunu sculpture?

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

This thing was about fifteen... maybe sixteen inches long. Both the egg-coloured outer membranes and the eggs within were impressive enough.

Unless Lin Xi was blind at the time, he never would've missed this thing while sealing the sculpture.

"My records are in the mission log. If necessary, I can give you a more detailed text briefing, but— I swear, I never even saw this thing while I was doing the operation!"

Lin Xi firmly said.

"But it's there,"

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Talan was relentless.

"When we went to do solid post-processing on this priceless sculpture, it was inside the sculpture's container. If we didn't make it in time, it would've been suffocated in the gel and died."

 

Lin Xi insisted that he'd never seen this "bean pod", but judging from Talan's attitude, he seemed to firmly believe 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 forcefully put the sculpture into the airtight container through some less gentle methods—"

The breath on Talan's body suddenly became cold and terrifying, he glared at Lin Xi like he wanted to eat him.

God knows why he cares so much about a sculpture from an alien planet... Lin Xi doubted that even if he touched Talan's woman, this guy wouldn't show as obvious hatred.

While thinking about this, Lin Xi defended himself and said: "That thing had already started turning black at that time, I had to do that!"

Shizuo Ando nodded.

"Yes, we can see that the statue of the 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'll return to normal. It's just that when experiencing this for first time, most will inevitably feel that this is a serious problem. I can understand Dr. Lin Xi's measures to alleviate the oxidation, and I also believe that at that time, this egg case (ootheca) hadn't appeared."

"Egg case?"

Lin Xi asked in surprise.

He couldn't help but look at Talan and Alisa, the expressions of the two showed that Ando wasn't talking nonsense.

Now Lin Xi finally understood why he felt so uncomfortable looking at that "bean pod". After all, he just discovered his insect phobia just yesterday.

"God..."

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

"Why is there an egg case here? What kind of egg case is that?"

He asked, frowning.

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

Alisa sighed and replied.

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 ootheca of a Sunu star butterfly."

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

He vaguely felt like he'd forgotten something.

Something slippery, dark, and unpleasant. It's just that the fragments of that memory were so fragmented that they quickly passed through his mind. When he tried to recall them, his mind blanked.

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

Lin Xi said in a daze.

He remembered that he liked Sunu Star butterfly very much when he was a child. He bought several encyclopedias about Sunu in an attempt to find more information, but the Sunu Star butterfly was extremely mysterious even among the Sunu people.

All the people on Earth could know is that it's very sacred, it's the spiritual totem of the Sunu people. It was originally considered to be a "little star god" and its ethnic group has been decreasing by the day. It was on the verge of extinction more than 30 years ago.

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

But now, Ando was telling him that there was actually a fresh star butterfly egg case in 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 explained as he spoke, nodding his head along.

Now even Talan's eyes were on him.

Ando's face flushed slightly: "I'm a bit of a Sunu addict... Well, everyone knows this. A long time ago, I vaguely remember seeing some records on a document about Sunu culture. When people encounter a pregnant woman suffering from dystocia, they'll take her into the temple and bury her under the seat of the star god, the Sunu people firmly believed that this kind of treatment will make the difficult delivery smoother."

Alisa looked surprised, she frowned and quickly thought of something: "You mean to say..."

Ando continued, once it was his field of interest, he became eloquent: "Yes, we all know that star butterflies began encountering reproductive problems some centuries ago, but they're different for the Sunu people. Noble and irreplaceable. Considering this, it's very possible that some Sunu buried those egg cases inside the statue in an attempt to restore their reproductive capacity." Speaking of this, Ando looked at Lin Xi sympathetically, "In the crash landing from before, the shock might've loosened some places on the fossil statue, and when Dr. Lin Xi resealed the statue, the egg case that had been buried inside slipped out."

While speaking, Ando zoomed in on the electronic screen. It was the statue was resealed, under the sealing fluid, the tough black marks on the surface of the weird statue were slowly fading away.

Ando pointed to a very inconspicuous depression at its tail, 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 fell out, but I observed it carefully before, and I doubt that this was 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 mucus now, and it's become less conspicuous here."

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

"If you think about it, the egg case of the star butterfly should be quite valuable, no?"

Lin Xi blinked, and cautiously tested Talan who was silent.

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

When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

Lin Xi vaguely remembered seeing such a sentence in a book he's read many years ago.

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