CH 4

Of course, there's no way that statue would come to life.

After confronting that thing for more than ten seconds, Lin Xi fought a cold war, and then woke up- prolonged darkness and silence will cause various psychological problems, stress, tension, fear, and others.

And Lin Xi felt that it was undoubtedly because this that he was frightened silly by an inexplicable fossil sculpture.

"Who would've thought that I'd miss your nagging now, Bryce."

Lin Xi secretly rejoiced in his heart, only he would know about his moment of weakness now.

The daring Lin Xi feel jumpy and scared because of a silent fossil sculpture?

If few hours ago, someone told Lin Xi that, Lin Xi would definitely think that that person have been affected by space radiation.

Lin Xi collected himself, then glanced over at the sculpture, he then began to go around the warehouse, continuing to inspect the miserable scene of cargo damage.

It's a relief that the sculpture was the most problematic one. The plants and other small animals found in Sunu, the cultural relics of the Sunu royal family, and a large amount of precious metals were all still intact in their containers.

"Wow, dude, looks like those damn alloys targeted you."

After inspecting all the goods, Lin Xi forced himself to ignore the faint resistance in his heart, returning to the fossil sculpture.

He needed to check the condition of this thing more carefully, after all, it's the only thing that slipped out of storage in the whole warehouse.

Moreover, it's also the most valuable of these batch of "goods".

The surface of the fossil sculpture was intact, but the insulating gel that coated it was drying.

And in those parts, the surface color of the fossils began to gradually darken and oxidize, the degree wasn't too serious, but those spots were hard to ignore.

"I'll bet you that if that fellow Talan sees you now, he'll probably have a nervous breakdown on the spot."

Lin Xi manipulated the mecha hand clumsily, wiping some isolation gel left over from the ground on the fossil, muttering softly to the weird chrysalis in sight.

The touch of the fossil was transmitted to Lin Xi's fingertips through the mecha's sensory system, that weird feeling was somewhat indescribable.

Completely different from the softness perceived visually, this Sunu fossil felt hard and a little rough, like there were many invisible scales or bumps on its surface, the isolation gels also brought it some subtle stickiness and slipperiness...

"That bastard Taran should really feel this thing sometimes..."

It was so quiet in the warehouse, Lin Xi almost subconsciously started talking to himself to relieve the overwhelming stagnation and silence.

But even so, as soon as he stopped speaking, the silence swept again.

Lin Xi could even hear the sound of his blood flowing through his veins. That kind of gurgling sound could easily make people nervous in this environment, because it really sounds like something's wriggling inside his body.

Oh shit, squirming.

A strange picture appeared in his mind.

It was a wriggling, indistinct lump of flesh.

There were also some brightly colored stains.

Lin Xi trembled slightly because of the unexpected imagery.

Well, it can be said that the cat's out of the bag.

Lin Xi glanced at the weird and strange fossil sculpture again, it probably made him so terrified because it looked so much like something from his nightmare.

But in the end, he didn't think too much about it.

Lin Xi never thinks too much, he isn't Bryce.

He quickly brushed aside those meaningless things in his mind, focusing on his damn mission.

Of course, Lin Xi could use a device to record everything in the warehouse, and then turn around and leave just like that.

After the situation stabilizes, other people will slowly climb down from upper deck and deal with the mess. However, according to Lin Xi's observation, the condition of the sculpture is indeed a bit bad. Who knows if being exposed to the outside will affect the weird activity inside it— also, what if it affects the secretion of ground milk?

Lin Xi found a lot of spare storage in the warehouse of the upper floor, but the power needed to re-press the thing into the slot and inject isolation gel can't be provided by the built-in battery of the mech.

Alisa must have noticed something, reminding him to restart the system settings.

This woman's sixth sense was sometimes so sensitive that it acts like some kind of superpower.

Lin Xi sighed resignedly, retreating from the warehouse b-3.

However, the moment when he was about to turn around, a gloomy gaze landed on his back.

Lin Xi turned around suddenly.

It was still very quiet in the warehouse.

Only the sculpture, still wet, lying peacefully on the ground motionless, but that hideous carved face seemed to be looking at Lin Xi.

"..."

Lin Xi swore that he really didn't like those things carved by the Sunu.

He slammed the warehouse door shut (unnecessarily though) and moved quickly toward the machine room. Whether he wanted to admit it or not, his movements were much faster than before.

From the bottom of his heart, Lin Xi didn't want to stay on floor b-3 with that thing anymore.

Fortunately, the progress of things has become much smoother at this stage.

At least, solving the system failure was easier than Lin Xi thought.

Yes, as Alisa reminded, the system just froze not burned. ("God, I'm really falling in love with you Alisa..." Lin Xi muttered.)

After a short period of debugging that even Lin Xi could complete, Lin Xi suddenly pulled down the heavy switch once, then there was another click, and then the delightful buzzing sound from various mechanical parts immediately sounded.

Lin Xi returned to floor b-2, carrying off the unused storage containers and isolation gel, then he was out of breath, exhaustedly opening the warehouse door.

Staring at everything in front of him, his mind suddenly went blank.

The statue remains in place.

Just like what he saw when he left.

However, the sufficient light at this moment made it look...

Extraordinarily terrifying.

Dark oxidation traces could already be seen on the surface of the sculpture before, during the short period of time Lin Xi left, those oxidation traces had turned dark brown.

And the source of the special feeling before became clear— Lin Xi could see obvious ring-shaped moles emerging from the sculpture's pupa-like body.

"... I didn't know the isolation gel was such an important thing."

After a while, Lin Xi muttered to himself dryly.

Things were a little tricky.

Of course, strictly speaking, this trouble had nothing to do with Lin Xi, his mission records can explain everything, even so, Lin Xi still felt a little heavy looking at the statue that's obviously changed.

For the first time in his life, he regretted always dozing off in history class. Otherwise, he might've been able to search for some useful information from the depths of his memory to explain the strange shape of this fossil.

But now, staring at the increasingly terrifying and disgusting fossil, the only thing he could think of was the most basic concepts about the Sunu people.

The Sunu love bugs.

It's more correct to say that the lives of the Sunu are closely related to bugs.

Their food, clothing, production materials, medicines, and even their religious beliefs are all based on bugs.

Even their most worshiped god, C'tan, took the form of a gigantic worm.

And uh... it looked similar to the sculpture in front of him.

Lin Xi took several deep breaths, then calmed down a little.

In any case, the first thing he needs to do is put the sculpture back in those storage containers, and then fill it with insulating gel.

Lin Xi had already seen with his own eyes what would happen to this damned sculpture without a sufficient amount of isolation gel, he didn't intend to make things worse.

However, now that he's seen the extent of the damage the fossil was going through, the psychological pressure of putting it back was much greater than before.

Lin Xi was disgusted enough.

The sculpture was still hard and rough to the touch, but the dried isolation gel's become more sticky.

Moreover, the capacity of the spare storage was smaller than that of the original one, it took Lin Xi a lot of effort to force the sculpture into it.

Several times, he even suspected that he was about to destroy the sculpture's bulging, slightly protruding abdomen—but every time he found that it was just that he was too nervous.

"I'm so sorry, I want to say that I really didn't mean to but... oh... God..."

Lin Xi chanted desperately at the sculpture in the empty warehouse.

He seemed to see a row of curly appendages under those carapace-like shells that he couldn't recognize for the life of him?

Now Lin Xi somehow understood why the Sunu went crazy- if the object of his daily worship also looked like this, he might've gone crazy even earlier than those Sunu people.

It wasn't until the container made a "beep" sound after being sealed, and he watched the isolation gel fill all the gaps, that Lin Xi exhaled.

Only then did he realize that he's been holding his breath involuntarily.

"Oh, that's awesome, halfway through life, finally finding out that I'm afraid of bugs—"

Lin Xi said to himself.

He really didn't want to admit it, even slight shaking in the container because of the injection of the gel made him almost scream out.1

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PastTimer: As much as I can pump out cause I'll be out for a while