After the immortal disappeared

Quiet dry forest, quiet town...

Aunt Zhu moved her eight legs, chose a house and walked in.

Then her voice came out: "Dead."

A family of six, ranging from a three-year-old to a sixty-year-old man, are all here.

Each corpse was shriveled, as if the last bit of flesh had been sucked dry.

There were several round holes on the bodies.

Dong Rui went to look at the back shed of another house and said twice: "I won't even let the pigs and dogs go."

Livestock also died in the same way.

No matter who the murderer was who massacred the townspeople, he truly did not leave any chickens or dogs behind.

He Lingchuan looked at the window and said, "They were broken in from outside. There are a lot of them."

Hundreds of people in a town had their flesh and blood sucked dry and died quietly here.

He Lingchuan noticed that a white net appeared again in the open space behind the house. The net was very thick and the mesh was very dense. Once it was pressed down by the snow, no one else bothered to flip it.

But he insisted on pulling out the floating life and scraping open the white net.

When the snow melts, the soil here should still be frozen, and it will take another month or two before the land can be cultivated. However, He Lingchuan found that the ground was quite soft, and there were small bumps of earth formed one after another.

This is probably because something got into the ground and dug out this kind of bulge.

He Lingchuan greeted Dong Rui, went back to the house, took out a shovel, and started digging.

Dong Rui didn't expect that he would have to do farm work after entering the town. He yawned every time he shoveled the soil, and he was reluctant to dig. Aunt Zhu is not so particular. When her eight claws move, she can turn the ground faster than any other farm tool.

After digging for a foot, she suddenly stopped:

"There is something."

This object is three feet long, a bit like a fly but has a dark body, a broad head, red eyes, wings on its back, and a bulging abdomen.

Aunt Zhu picked it up, moved her legs, pressed it to the ground and rubbed it several times quickly.

This is a spider's habit of sensing its prey - when it's not sure what it is.

"Dead." It continued to feel, "This is a cicada."

This thing was already dead and was frozen solid.

"Cicada?" He Lingchuan was unsure, "Is it a monster? Can a cicada grow so big?"

At this time, he also touched a foreign object under his shovel.

When I dug it out, I saw that it was probably something like this, but it had no wings on its back and its two forelimbs were extremely long and curved like a mantis.

When the two gadgets are placed together, you can see obvious differences.

"Isn't this the same species of cicada?"

He Lingchuan patted their bellies with a shovel: "But the bellies are very soft."

Aunt Zhu is also an insect herself, and she can tell at a glance: "There are eggs."

With a sharp scratch with the tip of her claws, which were sharper than a knife, the belly of the strange cicada was cut open, revealing a large pile of white dumplings inside.

Each one was about the size of a grape and almost transparent in white. He Lingchuan could see that the larvae inside were mature and could even move their legs and feet.

It seems that the hatching time is not far away.

It stands to reason that insects should lay their eggs underground or in trees instead of holding them in their bellies to hatch.

"This may be the seventy-year-old cicada!" Aunt Zhu said suddenly, "I only know the seventy-year-old cicada that lays eggs in its belly."

Before He Lingchuan understood, Dong Rui had already raised his middle finger: "Impossible, a cicada can grow this big in seventy years at most. Three feet long? Impossible!"

Aunt Zhu dug out a cicada egg and shook it at him: "I've eaten many of these cicadas, and you question me?"

Dong Rui was speechless.

Yes, yes, he has never eaten and has no right to speak.

While observing the cicada corpse, He Lingchuan said, "Can someone explain it to me?"

"The seventy-year-old cicada is the longest-lived species among all cicadas. In fact, three thousand years ago when the aura was abundant, it was also called the seventeen-year-old cicada. It grew from egg to larvae underground, and the growth process was extremely slow, lasting sixteen years. It is not until the last half of the year that they transform into adults and crawl out of the ground to feed and breed."

Aunt Zhu paused and continued: "They will die before their young hatch, and their remains will be absorbed by the cicada eggs as feed. However, in today's environment, the time it takes for them to metamorphose into adults is extended to seventy years, and not many cicadas can Hold on until then.”

"Aren't these just fine?" Dong Rui pointed to the small bumps on the ground. Isn't there at least one adult incubator underneath each one? "You said this is a seventy-year-old cicada, but the two cicada corpses dug up look different. How do you explain this?"

"Indeed, I have never seen anything like this before."

"Then have you ever seen something like this?" He Lingchuan pointed to the cicada corpse he dug up, the one with two forelimbs like a praying mantis.

It was completely dead, but its abdomen suddenly fluctuated, as if something was scratching inside, ready to burst out.

If other people saw this scene, their scalps would probably explode with shock.

Dong Rui let out a sigh and leaned closer to take a closer look: "Interesting!"

As soon as He Lingchuan looked at his expression, he knew that this Frankenstein had once again aroused his desire for research.

Aunt Zhu waved her paw: "Get out of the way." Then she stretched out her toes and pulled on the abdomen of the insect corpse——

With a "hoo!", the cicada corpse's abdomen exploded, and thirty or forty larvae jumped out!

Each one of them looked like a replica of an adult body, with the same forelimbs as curved as sickles, only as long as He Lingchuan's index finger.

As soon as they were born, they rushed towards the two of them without stopping, as if they smelled human scent.

Aunt Zhu was well prepared and sprayed out a mouthful of cobwebs to catch them all.

These young cicadas wanted to charge at them in the spider web. He Lingchuan saw their mouthparts, which were indeed like needles, thick and long.

The weirdest thing is that under their gaze, the body of the young cicada grew at an alarming rate!

In just a quarter of an hour, they grew to their mother's size.

It only took a quarter of an hour to transform from being as long as a human index finger to a monster with a head and tail three feet long! He Lingchuan had never seen a creature with such a short growth cycle.

As they grow up, they become even more irritable and make chirping cicada sounds.

An ordinary cicada as long as a finger can keep the whole family awake, and the sound of such a large individual is many times louder than that of a small cicada.

Moreover, thirty or forty of them turned on the mic at the same time, forming a deafening chorus!

At that moment, He Lingchuan felt like he was standing next to the ship's whistle, hearing nothing but the overwhelming chirping of cicadas.

Even his head was buzzing.

Aunt Zhu couldn't bear the noise, and her ears were more sensitive than humans, so she spat out a mouthful of acid into the net.

The strange cicadas screamed, but they could not resist the power of the acid and were corroded bit by bit.

Aunt Zhu was not satisfied: "It's too slow."

With the power of its acid, it should be divided into three and five.

Just when the cicadas stopped chirping, two rustling sounds suddenly came from the woods ten feet away.

Anyone? He Lingchuan stood up immediately.

Immediately afterwards, more than ten figures rushed out of the woods and surrounded the two people.