Chapter 469: Chapter 338: Flying Insects (Part 3)
Gu didn’t avoid me, and I also forgot that Little Red was ’injected’ with insect eggs. These eggs couldn’t survive under its skin and definitely all died. The smell from the rotting eggs in the heat...
I could also smell it on Little Red, but right now, everyone doesn’t smell too great. However, if Little Red doesn’t clean off those rotting eggs, the smell will only get worse. No matter how dirty a person is, they can’t produce the smell of rotting flesh.
So when we set up camp in the evening, Little Red called me, saying it needed to step out for a moment. In reality, it was finding a hidden place to shed its outer skin and clean the dead eggs under the skin with sand.
I had never seen it without its skin before. It’s actually quite similar to robots in movies, except there are no gaps at the joints or neck. It’s completely seamless from top to bottom, like a statue cast from a single piece of metal.
The only part where you can see a junction is at the eyes, but even that’s tightly sealed, probably not even allowing water in.
Its metallic body isn’t afraid of being worn by sand, and its skin is also unbothered. Whatever material this skin is made of, it’s incredibly durable. Once it finishes washing and shakes off the sand, putting its skin back on, we were about to head back to camp when Little Red suddenly pointed to the sky.
There was a black cloud moving swiftly towards our camp. From a distance, it looked more like a piece of black gauze, wafting and floating in this direction.
What good things could possibly be found in this Death Desert? We hurried back to the camp.
The entrance of the cave we were resting at tonight is as large as a garage door, with no cover or block. If a large beast tried to rush in to eat someone, we might be able to manage, but for small, swarming creatures, we couldn’t stop them.
The human and machine broke into a sprint, kicking up a trail of sand as we rushed back to the camp, startling Wang Le, who was standing guard at the mouth of the cave. Once he realized it was us, he patted his chest and laughed: "Wow, you scared me! I thought there were sharks in the sand."
I didn’t entertain his joke, "Quick, something’s flying over here. It’s either birds or insects."
The ’black gauze’ was behind the cave, so Wang Le couldn’t see it. People inside the cave heard the noise, and Qinghan was the first to rush out and ask what was happening.
Upon hearing that flying creatures were headed this way, she quickly told everyone to hide.
How to hide?
By burying each other alive!
There weren’t any stones around the cave to block the entrance, and we didn’t have anything on hand to block it either, which meant there was no way to stop flying creatures from rushing in.
Using fire and solid fuel shouldn’t be wasted. Besides, burning them out could only hold for about ten minutes. If there were many attackers, we might as well spend that time hiding from the start.
Considering this possibility, Qinghan had instructed us to dig pits inside the cave right after dinner.
In our equipment, there were still a few cans of portable oxygen left. With calm breathing, they could last for half an hour or even longer.
This equipment was provided by the Kangaroo Country’s side, but the quality had to be tested by Doctor Du’s team first to know for sure.
Burying people was quick and easy, but there was one problem: someone would inevitably be left unburied.
The choice was actually quite simple. If it wasn’t me, it was Little Red. The two of us quickly buried everyone else. Little Red said it was fine and told me to get in the pit first. I didn’t stand on ceremony with it, but unfortunately, time ran out. The ’black gauze’ rushed in.
They were exactly the kind of insects Gu had drawn for us, specialized in ’injecting’ eggs into living organisms.
Thankfully, we made sure the dirt was thicker than the length of their ’injectors.’ Even if they poked their ’injectors’ into the dirt, they couldn’t reach us.
I was ready to use Karmic Fire. Anyway, no one was watching me now; everyone was buried in pits.
However, the flying insects hovered around me but none dared to make a move.
"Hey? Do you really think I’m dead?" I got a little annoyed. I had been out of the tomb for a while now, and even Qinghan said I seemed more and more human. No, now I’m just like a living person. Why don’t they sting me?
"Come on, try stinging me, sting me once! Come on, try stinging me just once, I won’t bite the bugs!"
Little Red seemed to watch me as if surveying a ’Human Confusion Behavior’ competition. I felt a bit deflated and squatted down, thinking of becoming a salted fish.
The insects didn’t like me before, and they still don’t now.
The flying bugs circled over the soil pits, with a few trying to probe the soil layer. Perhaps they couldn’t find the ’breeding environment’ they were used to, because living creatures have warmth, and the soil did not. So they only probed a few times without stopping to produce.
Little Red learned a lesson and automatically lowered its temperature this time, turning into a temperatureless metal lump. Hence, the insects ignored it.
The flying insects, after unsuccessful attempts, flew away from the cave as a group. Just as Little Red was about to speak, a loud noise came from outside, accompanied by a strong wind.
