Chapter 762: Strange Cicadas

The quiet withered forest, the quiet small town... Zhu Xiuer moved her eight legs and chose a house to walk into.

And then her voice came out: "Dead."

A family of six lay in a mess, from a three-year-old child to a sixty-year-old elder, all were here.

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

There were several round holes on the corpses.

Dong Rui went to the back shed of another house to take a look and clicked his tongue twice: "Even pigs and dogs were not spared."

The livestock were also killed in the same way.

Regardless of who the murderer who slaughtered the townspeople was, they truly achieved the goal of not leaving a single chicken or dog behind.

He Lingchuan looked at the window and said: "They broke in from the outside, and there were many of them."

A town of several hundred people, all sucked dry of flesh and blood, died quietly here.

He Lingchuan noticed that white nets appeared again on the open space behind the house; the nets were very thick, the mesh was very dense, and then pressed by the snow, others didn't even have the thought of turning them over.

But he insisted on drawing Fusheng and scraping away the white nets.

In the season when the snow melts, this should still be frozen soil, and it would take another month or two to plow the land. But He Lingchuan discovered that the ground was quite loose and piled up into one small mound after another.

This was mostly because something had burrowed into the ground, hence digging out such bumps.

He Lingchuan greeted Dong Rui, went back to the house to get a shovel, and started digging. Dong Rui didn't expect that he would have to do farm work after entering the town, yawning every time he shoveled soil, digging very reluctantly. Zhu Xiuer didn't have these scruples, her eight claws started moving, faster than any farm tool for turning the soil.

After digging down a zhang, she suddenly stopped: "There's something."

This object was three feet long, a bit like a fly but pitch black all over, with a wide head, red eyes, wings on its back, and a bulging abdomen.

Zhu Xiuer picked it up, moved her legs a few times, and rubbed it on the ground a few times quickly.

This was the spider's habit of feeling prey—when she wasn't sure what this thing was.

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

This thing had long since died thoroughly and was frozen stiff.

"Cicada?" He Lingchuan was uncertain, "A monster? Can a cicada grow this big?"

Just then, he also touched a foreign object under his shovel.

Digging it out to look, it was also roughly this kind of thing, but there were no wings on its back, and the two front limbs were particularly long, curved like a mantis.

Putting the two things together, one could see the obvious difference.

"These aren't even the same variety of cicada?"

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

Zhu Xiuer was also an insect herself, and she knew as soon as she saw it: "There are eggs."

With a scratch of her claw tips, which were sharper than knives, the cicada's belly was sliced open, revealing a large pile of white balls inside.

Each grain was the size of a grape, white and almost transparent, and He Lingchuan could see that the larvae inside were already mature, even able to move their legs and feet.

It looked like the hatching time was not far off.

Logically speaking, insects should lay eggs underground or on trees, rather than incubating them in their own bellies.

"This might be a seventy-year cicada!" Zhu Xiuer suddenly said, "I only know about the seventy-year cicada that incubates eggs in its belly."

He Lingchuan hadn't understood yet, but Dong Rui had already raised his middle finger: "Impossible, the seventy-year cicada can only grow this big at most. Three feet long? Impossible!"

Zhu Xiuer directly dug out a cicada egg and shook it at him: "I don't know how many of these cicadas I've eaten, you're questioning me?"

Dong Rui was speechless.

Right, right, right, he hadn't eaten them, so he had no right to speak.

He Lingchuan observed the cicada corpse while saying: "Is anyone going to explain to me?"

"The seventy-year cicada is the longest-lived of all cicada species. In fact, three thousand years ago when spiritual energy was abundant, it was also called the seventeen-year cicada. From egg to larva, it was all underground, and the growth process was extremely slow, lasting sixteen and a half years, until the last half year when it transformed into an adult, crawled out of the ground to forage and breed."

Zhu Xiuer paused and said again: "They would die before the larvae hatched, and their remains would be absorbed by the cicada eggs as feed. However, in the current environment, their time to transform into adults has extended to seventy years, and not many cicadas can hold on until that time."

"Aren't these holding on quite well?" Dong Rui pointed to one small mound after another on the ground; each one had at least one adult incubator, right? "You say this is a seventy-year cicada, but the two cicada corpses dug out don't look the same, how do you explain this?"

"Indeed, I haven't seen this situation before."

"Then have you seen this situation?" He Lingchuan pointed to the cicada corpse he dug out, which was the one with front limbs like a mantis.

It was dead thoroughly, but its abdomen suddenly fluctuated, as if something was scratching inside, preparing to break out of the belly.

Seeing this scene, others would probably be terrified.

Dong Rui let out an 'eh', instead leaning closer to look: "Interesting!"

As soon as He Lingchuan saw his expression, he knew this mad scientist had been hooked by his research desire again.

Zhu Xiuer waved her claws: "All move aside." And then she sliced across the abdomen of the insect corpse with her foot tips—

With a 'whoosh', the cicada corpse's abdomen exploded, and thirty or forty larvae jumped out! Each one was like a flip version of the adult, also with front limbs curved like sickles, only as long as He Lingchuan's index finger.

They had just been born, yet they rushed toward the two without stopping, as if they had smelled human scent.

Zhu Xiuer was prepared, spitting out a mouthful of spider web, catching them all in one net.

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

The strangest thing was that under their gaze, the bodies of the young cicadas grew at an astonishing speed!

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

From the length of a human index finger to a three-foot monster, it actually only took a quarter of an hour! He Lingchuan had never seen a creature with such a short growth cycle.

They became even more irritable after growing up, making the classic 'zha zha zha' sound of cicadas.

Ordinary cicadas as long as a finger could make the whole family unable to sleep, and the sound of such a large individual in front of him was several times louder than that of a small cicada.

And there were thirty or forty of them opening their mouths at the same time, forming a deafening chorus!

At that moment, He Lingchuan only felt that he was standing beside the ship's whistle, and could hear nothing but the sky-filling cicada chirping.

Even his head was buzzing.

Zhu Xiuer also couldn't stand the noise; her hearing was even more sensitive than a human's, so she spat a large mouthful of acid at the net.

The strange cicadas screamed in pain, but couldn't stop the power of the acid, and were corroded to nothing bit by bit.

Zhu Xiuer was dissatisfied: "Too slow."

With the power of her acid, it should have been done in a flash.

Just as the cicada chirping stopped, there was a rustling sound from the forest ten zhang away.

Someone? He Lingchuan stood up immediately.

Immediately afterward, more than ten figures rushed out of the forest, surrounding the two and one spider.

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 763 =====

(End of chapter)