Zhang Zhuxun took off his gas mask and smelled it carefully. Yes, it smelled like this. Something seemed to be choking in Chuan's throat. Zhang Zhu retched out of reflex and quickly put on a new gas mask.
Help, I really can’t stand it! Zhang Zhuxun quickened his pace. He had to find his brother quickly, and then set the whole place on fire.
The passage here is built like a spiral shell on the back of a snail. Zhang Zhuxun can feel that he is going in a circle clockwise, and the number of turning steps is getting fewer and fewer, and the rotation amplitude is getting larger and larger, which means that he is heading towards The spiral goes more centrally.
The space in front of him suddenly became larger, and Zhang Zhuxun immediately saw the young man standing in the center of the stone room, holding a fire seal in his hand.
Just as Zhang Zhuxun was about to speak, the younger brother suddenly turned around and looked at him, placing his index finger on his lips and making a gesture.
"Shhh" gesture. Zhang Zhuxun immediately fell silent, walked to him cautiously, looked at the side where the younger brother was staring, and was startled.
There was a huge yellow-gray cocoon hanging in mid-air. Ma Chongshan, who had just escaped, was also here. He was completely naked, and the clothes on his body were worn off when Zhang Zhuxun grabbed him and ran away.
At this moment, Ma Chongshan was kneeling under the cocoon in an extremely humble posture. Zhang Zhuxun looked around. It was an oval-shaped stone chamber with an egg shape. There were many wooden beams and pillars crisscrossed around it, forming a lattice and pavilion. The cocoon that Zhang Zhuxun saw just now was hanging in the center of the pavilion. on a carved wooden pole.
The surrounding walls were covered with fluffy filaments, like carpets. There are many slightly thinner square wooden grids under these wool threads, and there are many cocoon silk dumplings the size of millstones inside.
These checkerboard-like grids are exactly the grid clusters used by silkworms to spin silk, enlarged dozens or hundreds of times.
Jian Zhang Zhu looked at it and was stunned. After working together for a long time, he found that what was underneath was not a moth at all, but a huge silkworm!
Ma Chongshan was lying on the steps below the huge cocoon like a small truck, with a very humble posture, still muttering something like a spell in his mouth.
Because his back was turned, Zhang Zhuxun couldn't see his mouth, so he couldn't read his lips. Zhang Zhuo looked around for a few times, but didn't see the reason, so he leaned into the little brother's ear and asked him in a low voice,
"What is Ma Chongshan doing? Could it be that the black cocoon boy outside was poisoned and went crazy after taking too much smoke?"
"Dead." The younger brother said softly.
"Huh?" Zhang Zhuxun was a little confused. Wasn't he still chanting a spell? Why did he die? So could the person speaking now be the ghost of Ma Chongshan whose obsession has not been eliminated?
That's too ridiculous. Zhang Zhuxun gestured to the younger brother, meaning that he should go over and take a look at what was going on.
After Ju took two steps, he found that his little brother had also followed him. He stared at the scabbed bite mark on the back of his left hand and frowned slightly.
Zhang Zhuxun waved his hand casually and said with a silent smile: "It's okay, I didn't feel anything unusual." However, the younger brother led him to the side of the pavilion, motioned him to squat down, and pointed at Ma Chongshan's bony abdomen.
Zhang Zhu looked around and his eyes suddenly froze. wipe! What the hell is that? When did Ma Chongshan turn into a gray and thick silkworm!
I saw that Ma Chongshan actually had several pairs of gastropods growing from his chest to his abdomen. The skin all over his body was empty and hanging limply on the side. His head seemed to have become an empty shell, with two rows of fine chewing jaws emerging from it. Protruding from his throat were its mouthparts.
It turned out that this was the thing that bit the back of Zhang Shuxun's hand before. Zhang Zhuxun suddenly felt a chill in his heart, and he finally understood that there should have been a silkworm living in Ma Chongshan's body before, but after entering the wellhead, for some unknown reason, the silkworm in his body suddenly exploded. It started to bite him back, eating all his internal organs, and chewed him into an empty skin.
What made the murmuring sound was actually the mouthparts of the big silkworm still eating the empty shell of Ma Chongshan. The sudden large areas of skin peeling off Ma Chongshan's body before were probably because the insides had been eaten away, and his body began to shed its skin under the corrosion of the silkworm's saliva. No wonder his crawling movements were so insect-like.
Looking at the length of the abdomen and legs, I estimate that the silkworm hidden in Ma Chongshan's shell must be more than one meter long.
Thinking of this, Zhang Zhuoxun's expression changed. He looked at the largest cocoon above, and his bad feeling became more and more serious.
God, if that's the case, if the silkworm moth in the giant cocoon hanging above comes out, a pair of wings will help him and his little brother fly away.
As he got closer, Zhang Zhuxun saw that there was a large area behind the pavilion. Inside, there were many dried yellow-brown silkworm sloughs stacked like large blankets. The color looked very unknown.
Jian Zhang Zhuoxun squinted his eyes, took out several large bottles of alcohol from the space, held a lighter, looked at the younger brother, and said solemnly: "Just start the fire?" But the younger brother pressed his hand and stared closely. The big silkworm still hidden in Ma Chongshan's belly underneath,
"Wait a minute." Zhang Zhuxun was confused.
"What are you waiting for?" The younger brother said calmly, "Waiting for mating."
"Cough cough cough..." Zhang Zhu tried to stop himself from choking, and took a hard breath.
"Brother, you mean that after Ma Chongshan's silkworm hatches out of its cocoon, it will mate with the big moth that emerged from the cocoon?" The little brother nodded and said nothing.
Zhang Zhuoxun thought a little bit in his heart, he really learned a lot today. Since Brother Ju said he had to wait, he must have some concerns. Maybe in the spring period, the fighting power of these two brain silkworms will be weaker?
Judging from the difference in size of the cocoons, the female silk moth should be the last one to emerge from the cocoon above, while the male silk moth emerged from Ma Chongshan's body.
"How long will it take?" he asked. The younger brother shook his head and said he didn't know. Zhang Zhuxun counted on his fingers. It took ten to twenty-four hours for ordinary silkworms to spin silk and break out of cocoons and emerge into moths. The time for these two giant silkworms might be longer. , this time I have to wait.
He was about to take out a handful of melon seeds and wait slowly, but the younger brother suddenly reached out and pressed the scar on the back of his left hand and said, "Pick it open, there is something inside." Zhang Shuxun's expression changed and he immediately took it out. Take out the medical bag, disinfect it, use a surgical knife to peel off the scab, and cut open the skin directly.
The sharp tip of the knife picked out several shriveled eggs from the bright red flesh and blood tissue. The beige egg shells had circles of black threads on the surface. Each one was only the size of a sesame seed. They were very tiny, but they were indistinguishable from the eyes. Like silkworm eggs.
It's just that because of Zhang Zhuoxun's special blood, these parasitic eggs were killed under the skin before they had time to hatch.
Zhang Zhuxun secretly cursed himself for being careless. These small parasitic eggs must have been transmitted to him through the mouthparts of the big silkworm in Ma Chongshan's body. He thought that the blood in the wound would not be poisoned if it did not change color, but he did not expect this flesh bug. And this trick.
After picking out all the small eggs in the wound, there were seventy-six in total. Zhang Zhuxun reluctantly used tweezers to pull at the skin and asked the younger brother to take a closer look with a magnifying glass to make sure there was not a single bit inside before he felt relieved.
Due to the scratches and rummaging through the flesh, the blood had flowed down the back of the hand all over the hand, dripping to the ground and fainting.
Zhang Zhuoxun frowned in distress. It was so hard to raise such a small insect, but the damn big bug caused him to waste a lot.
It was inconvenient to operate with one hand, so Zhang Zhuxun stretched out his hand and felt happy when he saw the little brother carefully applying medicine and bandage to him.
The brain silkworm in Jian Ma Chongshan's body stayed under the pavilion for half an hour. The upper part of the human skin shell on its back had been eaten. The head belonging to Ma Chongshan was still on the silkworm's head. It seemed that It looked very much like a half-transformed monster with a human head lying there.
The Brain Silkworm took the remaining half of the human skin shell and crawled slowly to the wooden lattice on the side.
"It's time to spin silk. It's time to spin silk." Zhang Zhu looked at the place where the brain silkworm crawled. There were many beige cocoons the size of millstones on the wooden grid there.
He suddenly had a guess in his mind and whispered,
"Hey little brother, those big cocoons in the wooden lattice clusters are not caused by people who eat silkworms, right?" The little brother was also staring there with a calm expression.
"Perhaps." Zhang Zhuxun clicked his tongue in his heart. This stupid Ma Chongshan has done a lot of harm to people. What on earth is he trying to do by raising so many silkworms here with human flesh?
He carefully considered in his mind what had happened since entering the ancient well and what Ma Chongshan had said.
Except for the sudden appearance of the menacing Wang family, there seemed to be nothing related to the ancient city of Sizhou, and he didn't see any patterns related to the scorpion tomb here.
No, if these things really had nothing to do with Sizhou Ancient City, I wouldn't have come all the way here. He made it clear that he knew something, so he hurried to deal with it before going to Changbai Mountain.
And the eggs that entered his wound through the mouthparts of the brain silkworm also looked strange. He had never looked at them before like silkworm eggs, but more like the eggs of some kind of moth.
Based on Zhang Zhuxun's poor experience in raising silkworms, silkworms only use their tails to mate and lay eggs when they break out of their cocoons and become moths. The big brain silkworm was still in the form of a silkworm before. Where did the eggs in its mouth come from? ?
Not to mention that the silkworm that ate Ma Chongshan might have been a male. From this point of view, the black pupae hanging in the passage outside are not the same species as this silkworm, so they can only have a symbiotic relationship of eating and being eaten. Those pupae outside are from the giant silkworms living here. grain reserves.
This giant silkworm enters its mating period in winter, while the ghost-backed moth outside happens to be dormant in winter, which makes it easier to eat. The dormant moth will not struggle to resist.
When the silkworm parasitized in Ma Chongshan's body was eating those pupae, Zhang Zhuxun might have made Yaxun anxious, so it bit Zhang Zhuxun in turn, or it might have wanted to eat Zhang Zhuxun together. , thereby getting the egg into the back of his hand.
So the question is, where did Ma Chongshan get this big silkworm that can grow into a giant.
Was it given by the Wang family, or did Ma Chongshan get it from somewhere himself? Or maybe Ma Chongshan was raising this silkworm for the Wang family.
The Wang family is borrowing Ma Chongshan's hand for experiments! From this point of view, the two Wang family members were actually sent to silence them.
Zhang Zhuoxun chuckled lightly. It had to be said that there were quite a lot of twists and turns here, and he almost got caught in them.
The most important thing now is to figure out Ma Chongshan's purpose of raising this kind of silkworm and the origin of this mutant silkworm.
What is the reason that allows Ma Chongshan to work diligently for the Wang family? This purpose is even important enough to sacrifice the lives of the Ma family's family members.
Zhang Zhuxun frowned slightly, tapping his knees habitually. He collected all the clues in his mind and carefully considered the connection.
Blood and flesh offering, the flesh and blood of the Ma family's relatives... relatives... flesh and blood... offering - a kind of silkworm, a giant mutant silkworm... The silkworms in Ma Chongshan's body suddenly exploded to eat... …eat – raise silkworms… raise… Himalayas, southern Tibet – Medog!
Zhang Zhuoxun's eyelids moved slightly, and something suddenly flashed in his mind. He immediately looked at the younger brother and moved his mouth. Before he could express his guess, the younger brother seemed to feel something and turned to look at him with quiet eyes.
Zhang Zhuxun silently laughed in his heart, no wonder, no wonder, in this way, everything made sense.
It seemed that the sudden change that happened to Ma Chongshan was related to the silence of the Wang family and the visit of him and his younger brother.
Ma Chongshan probably realized that the Wang family wanted to kill the donkey, and because the blood of the Zhang family was special, it would affect this kind of silkworm, so in desperation, he secretly swallowed the silkworm behind Zhang Zhu and the other two people and kept it hidden on his body. The silkworm seeds were gnawed into bare skins by silkworms in the ancient well passage.
In fact, if the evil trap is done well, with slight changes inside, it can achieve the function of both suppressing and raising corpses, which is the so-called corpse raising. The Wang family built a corpse raising bureau here to raise silkworms, which is really a masterpiece. big.
After figuring out the key, Zhang Zhuxun raised his gauze-wrapped hand with a sullen face, and made an OK gesture to the younger brother, indicating that he already understood and that his hand was fine.
The little brother nodded, turned around and continued to stare at the man who had climbed onto the wooden trellis and started spinning silk out of his mouthparts.
Silk silk starts out as a translucent liquid, but quickly condenses into soft threads when exposed to air.
The brain silkworm was holding Ma Chongshan's head and kept swaying in a figure-eight shape, as if it was drunk. prototype.
Zhang Zhuxun and his little brother sat in the corner and waited quietly. The brain silkworm spun silk faster than expected. In only four hours, the silkworm spun out its entire insect body. Wrapped in circles.
I could only see that the inside of the big cocoon was still squirming, and it took another two hours for it to completely quiet down.
