Vol 2 Chapter 10: Atonement: Red Earth (8)

At this moment, the group of people led by Chen Zeng was the first to return. Everyone was carrying two or three water bottles, and a few others came back with a blue-blue tumor-covered plant. Now, from time to time, bunches of rotten branches and leaves that are suffocating from those nodules still spew out, and the whole room is filled with a disgusting smell in an instant.
Many of Chen Zeng's subordinates looked reluctant and unwilling to look disgusted, complaining that they were not going to sleep and ran out to get these things back. Obviously Chen Zeng obeyed Ethan's opinion and did not tell others about the video. Tanisel smiled and said to Chen Zeng, "Thank you."
Chen Zeng sighed, "I hope it's really useful. However, we also brought back some other plant and animal samples. Can you take a look?"
Tanisel readily agreed, and followed Chen Zeng through those Ethans who noticed that many Alpha non-humans were staring at Tanisel with some kind of greedy gaze, whispering to each other, and faintly laughed. Can't help but be secretly surprised, and there is also such an inexplicable displeasure. Although Tanisel is good-looking, he is also an Alpha anyway. Are these people hungry to the point? And they knew it was a very task, but they didn't know the tension, and didn't know if they had any brains. If they know what kind of things they might face, see if they are still thinking about these messy things.
An inhumane probably saw the contempt in his expression, became angry, and strode over at him, grabbing his collar, "What the are you looking at!"
Ethan shrank instinctively, trying to get rid of the opponent's restraint, "I didn't look at you!"
Another non-human came to persuade, "Jeff, you should just relax, he is Samuel's."
"Huh, if Samus really valued him so much, why didn't he have a tooth mark on his neck? And Scott almost marked him. It's not like a okay person. If it's Samuel before, Scott His teeth were broken long ago.
The man named Jeff stared at him disdainfully, as if looking at a worthless bitch,
Don’t think it’s so great when you go to Samuel, an Omega It's dull, maybe it's just a toy that Samus casually found." Ethan's self-esteem was once again hit hard, his anger made his face hot, and his teeth clenched.
But he dared not show it, he knew it would only make things worse. So he suppressed his anger, lowered his gaze, and muttered, "I shouldn't have looked at you just now, I'm sorry."
"Now I know I'm afraid?" Jeff slammed him backwards before letting go. Ethan's center of gravity was unstable, he staggered two steps backwards, accidentally kicked the inverted wine glass with the bug, and made a crisp sound. He secretly said that it was not good, and quickly lowered his head to check. Fortunately, the wine glass did not overturn, but moved the position with the bug inside.
The sound drew Jeff's attention to the ground, his eyes straightened immediately.
"What the is that!"
Ethan hurriedly stood in front of the wine glass and said hurriedly, "The priest said you can't touch it until you know it!"
However, he was swept away rudely. The other party completely ignored his warning and squatted right in front of the strange bug. His face was generally disgusting and half curiosity. He tilted his head and murmured, "This thing seems to have a long face. Face?"
The other inhuman also leaned forward. Ethan watched them put their hands on the glasses and picked them up.
He knew that he should call Tanithel, and the priest had a program that could control all inhuman collars, which could prevent these two men from doing anything next.
But he didn't speak, just stood silently and looked at them. In the depths of his eyes, there is a kind of coldness that he never shows.
Losing the imprisonment of the glass, the strange worm that had been motionless suddenly reacted. Its front end slowly lifted up, bending out a flexible arc, as if it was also looking at two strange humans curiously. It seemed that the folds of its eyes were squirming, and a tuft of black hairs protruding from the hole-like mouth was also flying and squirming in different directions. Jeff took a cigarette out of his pocket and used it to poke the creepy body.
In an instant, a creamy yellow mucus was ejected from the end of the strange bug. After encountering the air, the mucus condensed into a fine net like blood vessels, and sprayed all of it on Jeff’s face at an impressive speed. There is no time to react or dodge. Jeff yelled and fell to the ground, reaching out to wipe his face, but he wiped off the squishy thing with a vomit-like stench. He yelled in disgust, attracting everyone's attention.
Tanithel strode forward, and upon seeing this, he glanced at Ethan with a bit of blame. Ethan shrugged his shoulders, feeling a little bit unhappy and feeling a little bit guilty. They didn't know if there was any virus on this strange bug, and if it would be dangerous to touch it. At that moment, he thought it would be good to let Jeff be the subject of the experiment, anyway he didn't listen to it.
His inner conscience woke up from a short dormancy, so that he did not have any pleasure of revenge, but was as uncomfortable as swallowing a fly.
A few inhumans scrambled to find napkins to wipe Jeff's face, and when Tanithel just stooped to pick up the wine glass, Jeff suddenly cursed "Damn bug!" After all, he stepped on his foot. past.
Everyone has no time to stop his stupid behavior.
Hearing a chuckle, the soft body of the strange insect burst open under his feet. At the same time, countless beige and black mucus condensed into thin lines at the same time, like a rapidly spreading spider web exploding on the ground, Many of them splashed onto the clothes of people nearby. Jeff was the first to bear the brunt. His trousers, hem, and even the back of his hands were stuck with that kind of semi-sticky substance.
Unexpectedly, Ethan saw that the substances that touched the skin quickly shrank, as if they were being absorbed. The mucus that was obviously sprayed on the face just now disappeared from the skin, and only those that fell on the cloth and hair are still there. He was the only one who noticed this abnormality, and even Jeff himself didn't seem to feel anything.
Tanithel stared at Jeff, with an astonishing burst of anger bursting from those gray eyes, and the corners of his lips were tightly pursed, making him suddenly majestic, and the Alpha, who was originally about his height, lost their momentum. Seeing him like this, Jeff's arrogant arrogance was only slightly reduced, and he explained with his neck, "It's just a bug anyway."
"It's just a bug?" Tanithel's words had a disturbing deep meaning. "Maybe you are just a bug."
After that, he stopped paying attention to that inhuman, and did not give him any electric shocks as punishment. He just squatted down, carefully sucked up the mucus with a siphon, and loaded it into the empty space he had just found in the laboratory. In the test tube, be careful not to get those things on your skin. Ethan called the base computer Gina to find a cleaning robot to clean up the dirt on the ground. Although Jeff seems to be fine, but he has an intuition that it is better not to touch too many people.
Samus came back after a while. The remaining teams also gradually arrived. The rancid smell of the black juice quickly overflowed the entire main base building, and Ethan barely suppressed the feeling of nausea after putting two tissues in his nose. After tossing all night, the sky was almost bright, everyone found the vacant dormitory rooms, and all of them went to sleep in the sleeping cabin.
Ethan didn't want to sleep, he was afraid that the terrible of entropy would come when he was sleeping. He stayed in the pale hall, sliding his hand on the transparent tabletop, quickly scanning all the development materials about Base 18.
He remembers that when the Red Earth Development Plan was implemented, many people opposed it. The first one was a famous female Dr. Alpha named Luo Shan. She is a well-known expert on species research in the edge of the Milky Way. She has at least two doctoral titles and one researcher title, and was even personally received by President Abia. She strongly opposed the development of the Red Earth, and even personally wrote several letters to the president, persuading her to block the development of the Hera Galaxy.
Bai Luoshan believes that the star field where the Red Earth is located is too barren, and some of the nearby planets that should have been civilized in theory are all a barren and ruined scene, so that the Red Earth is deeply trapped in what they once thought was a "death star field." "The center has not been discovered. Why there is such a vast sea of ​​death in that corner of the Milky Way has always been a mystery, and in a lonely sea of ​​death stars, why there are signs of life activity on the Earth alone. She thinks this is not accidental, just like a mirage in the desert, and even a bit like a trap.
In recent years, Bai Luoshan has been fascinated by studying the primitive wisdom and civilizations of remote star regions, so that people are a little dysfunctional. He always talked about the collective memory of the universe, the five-dimensional space creatures, and the super-intelligent species. She kept bringing her followers on the Internet to warn the Energy Administration that this planet is regarded as a "hell" place in many marginal civilizations, and rash steps will only bring unprecedented disasters to earth civilization. However, she never explained what the disaster was, nor did she produce any substantive evidence. She just kept citing frescoes, poems, and myths and legends of marginal civilizations to confuse people.
At that time, the Energy Bureau felt extremely negative about Bai Luoshan, because for the Energy Bureau, which had not discovered a new resource station for many years, Red Earth was a rare opportunity. Prior to that, the Earth Alliance’s storage of rare earth metals and water was in a hurry, and it would cost too much to purchase them from alien countries, so the President gave them a one-year period to find new resources. During that year, the Energy Bureau was like a deep purgatory, and everyone's heads were pinned to the waist of their pants. They almost desperately searched for habitable planets in remote areas, and finally found this miracle at the end of the year, but the doctor who stood and couldn't talk had told them not to go?
Just because of the songs and legends of some savages, should their heads of the Bureau of Energy be turned off?
Due to the great influence of Rosan Bairroshan, Ethan followed the director Abel to run around, lobbying members of the three major parliaments, and even alarmed the president himself.
That was the only time Ethan saw the most noble person of the Earth Alliance-President Abia. At that time, he was waiting in the bright and clear Victorian corridor, looking through the tall French windows and mottled shadows of trees, and saw Abia who was talking and laughing with her second lady Bohuang in the garden. She is well-proportioned and tall among women. She has a neat but feminine short haircut. She wears simple dark clothes and looks like she is lying leisurely on a lounger by the artificial lake, listening to him. The Secretary said something eagerly.
If you don’t know her noble status, you will feel that she is just an ordinary female Alpha who looks good, not at all like the gods praised in the songs that are always played on the street, as if she will emit thousands of lights. .
Later, the president seemed to be bored, waved his hand casually and stood up, pulled up her wife and left. When Ethan saw the Chief hurried back, his tight face seemed to finally relax.
Ethan then breathed a sigh of relief.
With the special approval of the President, the first batch of pioneering spacecraft was launched. Although there was a little mess in the middle because the Eve people also tried to land, fortunately, they were all resolved successfully in the end, without causing unnecessary disputes.
But now, Ethan began to suspect that Roshan might be right.
He didn’t understand her complicated theories, but just remembered what she said, we think we already have the ability to conquer the universe, but we don’t know that in the face of real chaos, human beings have all other interstellar civilizations that have been doing for survival for thousands of years. Struggling hard is actually meaningless.