The lower abdomen writhed with a fleshy membrane, a "chrysanthemum"-shaped object. That was the tip of the Alien Queen's ovipositor. Once the ovipositor finished growing, the Alien eggs, which Yunhai had personally experienced, would be expelled from the tip of the "chrysanthemum".
However, this process was painful and prolonged. The growth of the ovipositor, like a woman's labor pains, would last for a full six days.
It could be said that the Queen was enduring extreme pain every moment during these six days, even though she wasn't afraid and didn't care about it at all.
However, the most important thing was that once the ovipositor grew out of her body, the Alien Queen could only stay in place. Let alone fighting, even getting up and taking a few steps would cause the ovipositor to detach from her body.
This meant that within three months, the Alien Queen would not be able to grow another ovipositor and continue to reproduce Alien eggs to strengthen the clan.
Yunhai naturally didn't want to see this situation occur. Everything clearly told him that this world had completely collapsed. To survive, the Aliens were his greatest reliance.
The evolution of living things made the bloody law of nature, "the strong eat the weak," even more vivid. Only the fittest could survive.
Aliens could completely adapt to any environment, even ice mountains and seas of fire, or even in a vacuum. On Earth, even in the process of evolution at the speed of light, Yunhai firmly believed that they would also stand at the crest of the evolutionary tide.
[Comment User: The strength of the Alien is related to the host. The stronger the host, the stronger the Alien.]
"Must succeed!"
Yunhai pumped his fist to cheer himself up and began to survey the cave.
The cave was very large, and the flashlight's beam couldn't even reach the edges. Yunhai retracted his gaze and looked down at his feet.
The ground was covered with a large amount of black substance. Through the information in his mind, a kind of instinctive inheritance from his genes, Yunhai knew what it was.
This mucus secreted from the Alien's body, forming a black, rubbery, gel-like substance, was the Creep.
The Creep would remain active for a long time. It had heat and moisture retention properties unimaginable to humans, providing the fastest growing environment and temperature for the Alien eggs laid by the Queen.
Also, secreting mucus to form the Creep wasn't just the Alien Queen's ability; all Aliens could secrete this mucus.
The Creep formed by the mucus secreted by a certain number of Aliens could even cover the entire cave.
The Creep contained nutrients, or rather, energy. The Alien Queen, located within the Creep, could absorb the energy within to replenish the weakness brought about by laying eggs.
Therefore, even without food to replenish energy, as long as the Creep continued to exist, the Alien Queen could maintain a considerable amount of continuous egg-laying work just by absorbing the energy within.
The mucus secreted by the body during egg-laying would form the Creep again, absorbed and discharged. This was completely a self-sufficient cycle system, extremely excellent.
The function of the Creep wasn't just this. It also had another function: to trap the hosts for the Alien Queen.
The Queen's ovipositor took a certain amount of time to grow. If the host it captured died, then the Alien eggs that were born, after growing at the fastest speed, would face the awkward situation of having no host to parasitize.
After all, compared to the Aliens, even compared to the larval stage Aliens, the Facehuggers were still weaker. And without a creature with heat-sensing body temperature approaching, the Facehuggers generally wouldn't leave the egg.
Therefore, trapping the host to prevent it from escaping, obediently accepting Facehugger parasitization, so that Aliens could be born as soon as possible to protect the Queen when she was weak from laying eggs, the Creep's function of trapping the host was also indispensable.
In Yunhai's view, the ground was already covered with black Creep, and on the towering stone forests of various sizes, there were giant cocoons of various sizes stuck to them.
These were the hosts trapped within by the Creep.
Intuitively, the function of these strange Creep wasn't just these. However, the instinctive memory derived from genetic inheritance only told Yunhai some of the most basic information. As for whether the Creep had other functions, it remained for him to discover.
At this time, he wasn't in the mood to consider these things. With an excited heart, Yunhai looked at the Alien Queen's achievements in recent days.
There were mostly mutated bamboo rats, after all, Yunhai had seen the Aliens capture them quite a bit that night.
Yunhai discovered that these mutated bamboo rats were larger than when he saw them that night, but considering that they had been captured by the Queen all these days and hadn't eaten, their gigantification mutation hadn't stopped.
Their entire bodies were wrapped in the Creep, forming giant cocoons. Obviously, before the last time he appeared, the Alien Queen had captured hosts many times. A full forty-five mutated bamboo rat heads were poking out of the Creep.
Some had their eyes tightly closed, not knowing whether they were dead or unconscious. More mutated bamboo rats were struggling from time to time, but they couldn't struggle out of the Creep's wrapping at all.
There were also five mutated squirrels. Their size was a bit larger than the bamboo rats, but they still couldn't break free from the Creep, revealing their heads and uneasily awaiting their fate.
Furthermore, there was a huge fellow. Yunhai carefully looked at it for a moment with the light of the flashlight and finally recognized it.
At first, he thought it was a leopard, but he quickly recognized that what was wrapped in this extraordinarily large cocoon was actually a rare lynx from Yangshan.
Lynx was the folk name. The official name for this creature was 猞猁 (shē lì). Because of its cunning and cautious nature, and its extremely fast and agile speed, at least in recent years, Yunhai hadn't heard of anyone seeing one in this area.
A blood hole had been pierced through its limbs from the joints. Yunhai estimated that it was just a cub. In the adult lynx species near Yangshan, the soft fur around the neck would turn black, while this huge lynx's "scarf" was still milky white.
Of course, Yunhai couldn't be sure whether the difference between the "scarf" of the larval and adult stages was still the same for the obviously mutated lynx.
Based on the size of the cocoon, Yunhai deduced that the body length of this lynx cub reached over a meter, but he didn't dare imagine how big an adult lynx would be.
The lynx was unconscious and didn't know what kind of damage it had suffered. Its mouth was like it had been splashed with concentrated sulfuric acid, and half of its face was gone.
The thick liquid flowing in the cave, Yunhai observed that its condition would occasionally move, obviously still alive.
These were the hosts that the Alien Queen had found during this period. Yunhai hadn't been to the back mountain and didn't know if there were any big guys there, but he estimated that the Queen simply couldn't trap them with the Creep.
Otherwise, with its current size, speed, and strength, it naturally wouldn't be bad, and it wouldn't be difficult to capture a few more ferocious hosts.
Unable to move while growing the ovipositor, keeping a mutated beast that couldn't be completely controlled by its side was no different from a time bomb, and the Alien Queen naturally wouldn't do it.
"Any creature is at its weakest when laying eggs and giving birth. If a mutated creature discovers and attacks at this time, it shouldn't be a problem for the Queen to resist, but if that's the case, all previous efforts would be wasted."
The more Yunhai looked, the more excited he became, and he felt even more nervous.
As long as an Alien egg was successfully laid, the Facehugger would grow rapidly in the Creep, and then let it successfully parasitize a host, even if it was a mutated bamboo rat or a mutated squirrel that looked similar in the head.
In less than a day, the Alien that burst out of the chest would quickly grow up, and it would also capture more food and hosts for the Alien Queen. The number of Aliens would reach a terrifying number in the shortest amount of time.
Yunhai completely believed that as long as there was enough time, as long as there were enough hosts, the Alien clan would cover the entire Earth.
The appearance of Alien eggs on Earth was an accident, or a conspiracy that Yunhai's current level couldn't even touch. He didn't even think about these things at this time.
For him now, to live well, to strengthen the Alien clan as much as possible in the shortest amount of time, and then go north to Qin Province to find the only relatives in this world, these were what he needed to consider at the moment.
Just like standing in a rainy night, the Alien Queen was "drenched in sweat" all over, and sticky liquid kept dripping into the Creep beneath her.
Waving her skull, she let out another painful hiss. The yellow egg-laying channel finally squeezed out of the Alien Queen's lower abdomen, and a large amount of amniotic fluid-like mucus "whooshed" out.
"Hissing" sounds continued. Having just completed the most critical step in the growth of the ovipositor, the Alien Queen opened her giant maw and exhaled a long breath of mist.
Her gorgeous and bizarre skull tilted slightly, and the inner jaws in her mouth slowly extended, letting out a sharp hiss towards Yunhai's back.
Before the Queen's sharp hiss could fade, Yunhai felt a strong sense of danger coming. His heart skipped a beat, and he suddenly turned around.
He reached out and pulled out the boning knife in the sheath at his waist, and at the same time, the high-powered flashlight followed the sound.
With just one glance, Yunhai's scalp went numb, goosebumps covered his body, and he felt like countless ants were crawling all over him.
On the ground dozens of meters away, a centipede appeared. He had an inexplicable aversion to these multi-legged insects from birth. Seeing the mutated one now, Yunhai felt extremely uncomfortable all over, wishing he could take an iron brush and scrub his skin hard.
He didn't know how long the largest of these insects covered in legs could grow. Yunhai had occasionally seen centipedes of about 20 centimeters in the mountains before, but compared to the one he was seeing now, the longest of those before couldn't even compare to its legs.
It had a reddish-black back, yellow legs, and inverted mandibles at the front of its head that looked particularly sharp under the bright light of the flashlight.
Its tail was even more exaggerated, looking like two curved blades, with sharp tips.
Its body length was estimated to be at least one meter. The centipede's running speed was very amazing. Its mandibles were waving slightly, and at the moment the bright light of the flashlight shone over, it suddenly stopped.
It only paused for a moment, and in Yunhai's constricting pupils, the mutated centipede suddenly accelerated and ran towards him.