The heartbeat quickened, and Yun Hai couldn't help but walk towards the stone wall.
After taking a few steps, he felt his body light and his landing silent. Yun Hai had the illusion that he could even fly if he ran at full speed.
Reaching out, he grabbed a stalactite-like stone strip extending from the stone wall. As soon as he exerted force, the stalactite was crushed into pieces by Yun Hai.
Looking at the stone powder in his hand, he clenched his fist again and slammed it against the stone wall in front of him.
With a "bang," a large amount of gravel splashed from the stone wall, and a fist-shaped pit appeared, surrounded by spiderweb-like cracks.
"What a powerful force!"
Overwhelmed with joy, Yun Hai grinned silently, seeing that the skin on his fist hadn't even broken.
Turning back, Yun Hai extended his finger and slowly pressed it against the fungal carpet, while nervously watching his heart pounding in his mind.
The soft fungal carpet touched his finger, but nothing unusual happened.
"It seems that at this stage, having merged with the Alien Mother, I have extracted power from the Alien Queen, and possibly speed as well."
Yun Hai simply pressed his entire palm onto the fungal carpet, but the previous strange situation did not occur again.
"I just wonder if the power I've gained will affect the Alien Queen herself."
"After all, in a fight, the Alien Queen's entire body is a deadly weapon. Coupled with her instinctive stealth attacks, she can outstrip me by a mile. If absorbing her power leads to a decrease in her strength, then it would be a losing proposition."
After thinking it over, Yun Hai could only speculate.
The Alien Queen's current actions are all instinctual, including eating, growing, and even reproducing.
Regardless of whether she would respond to his mental inquiries now, and feeling the Alien Queen's pain in the mental connection, Yun Hai temporarily dismissed the idea of communicating with her on a mental level.
Turning off the flashlight, in the thick darkness, Yun Hai suppressed the joy in his heart and sat down against the stone he had been leaning on.
Suddenly, an anomaly appeared.
With the flashlight off, and unable to see his fingers in front of him, Yun Hai's consciousness remained in the space, but at that moment, a strange scene appeared in his mind.
A three-dimensional image appeared in his mind, clear and vivid.
After a moment of absentmindedness, Yun Hai finally understood what it was.
A huge and constantly vibrating, distorted light and shadow. Without much thought, Yun Hai knew that it was the Alien Queen.
Opposite the Queen, a large area of white light and shadows, in different shapes.
The most numerous, over forty, were naturally the mutated giant rats and mutated squirrels, these hosts.
Another larger one was the mutated juvenile bobcat.
Then there was the surrounding environment, like an architectural blueprint. Gray represented inanimate objects without life pheromones, such as the ground, stones, and so on.
With Yun Hai's own position as the center, and the stone wall not far behind him as a reference, he estimated that everything within a hundred meters was presented three-dimensionally in his mind.
He finally understood how the Alien Queen, without the organ of eyes, could move freely in the dark and complex environment.
Yun Hai was convinced that the range she could sense was definitely much larger than his own.
And there was hearing. In the silent cave, the breathing of those tragically fated hosts, and even the sound of the Alien Queen's mucus dripping onto the fungal carpet, all were clearly reflected in his senses.
Smell was just as sharp. Yun Hai had the illusion that he could even smell the faint scent of human blood emanating from the giant rats, even though it had been several days since they had eaten human flesh, and they probably still had some human blood on them.
"So it's not just speed and strength! I've also extracted the Alien's unique senses from her!"
Yun Hai was no longer calm. He simply stood up and, without going too far from the Queen, began to walk around the cave.
The honeycomb holes in the stone wall, the unevenness of the ground, and even the faint white light spots representing the lives of some unevolved insects, everything was displayed clearly in his mind.
Overjoyed, Yun Hai started running in the pitch-black darkness.
Unable to determine how many meters he could run in a second, Yun Hai only felt the airflow in the space cutting his face like a blade, but it was extremely fast.
Not only was the speed extremely fast, but also the lightness and agility.
The terrain in the cave was not flat, with rocks standing and uneven ground. Yun Hai ran rapidly with his eyes closed, dodging, shifting, and leaping high.
His movements were smooth and flowing, his speed was lightning fast, and there was not a trace of stagnation.
The more he ran, the more exhilarated he became. While experiencing this unique sensation, Yun Hai confirmed that there were no mutated creatures in this huge cave that could threaten him or the Queen, and then happily returned to the Queen's side.
Without turning on the flashlight, he picked up his backpack, precisely opened the zipper, took out a pack of biscuits, tore it open, and slowly chewed.
...
...
"Rumble..."
A dazzling lightning bolt tore through the dark night sky, and the bright light illuminated the entire world.
The earth-shattering thunder was deafening, and one lightning bolt after another streaked across the sky as black clouds rolled like angry waves and the wind roared and raged.
Suddenly, a violent thunderclap that seemed to shatter the universe erupted, and torrential rain poured down.
The rain poured down like whips, mercilessly lashing the mountains and the earth.
Raging winds, torrential rain, exploding lightning, dark night sky, and muffled thunder, all alternated in the night sky, revealing the power of nature.
"It's raining!"
In the dark cave where time was unknown, Yun Hai, who was dozing off, was awakened by the thunder. He rubbed his eyes and looked at the Queen.
Five days had passed since Yun Hai entered the cave.
As for Cui Hao and the others, he had grown up with Datou since childhood, and he had figured out whether he was still alive or not. Yun Hai searched the area several times, but there were no results.
The main concern was that there might be more mutated creatures attacking, forcing the Queen to leave the ovipositor, so Yun Hai didn't dare to go too far from the Queen.
In his unique senses, the Alien Queen's huge body had a duct-like ovipositor constantly wriggling.
He walked over gently, turned on the flashlight that he hadn't used in the past few days, and shone the beam on the front.
The ovipositor was full of mucus, and its diameter was comparable to the Alien Queen's body.
On the wriggling meat membrane tube, faint blood vessel-like patterns covered it. A large amount of mucus was like a spider web, covering everything.
The tailbone dragged behind her, convulsing unconsciously. As the Alien Queen's mandibles extended from under the smooth skull cap, spitting out white mist, and the cold and ferocious surface constantly oozed sweat-like mucus, the constantly wriggling tubular object would extend a bit further.
In the faint but indelible mental connection, Yun Hai could clearly feel the Alien Queen's pain, like experiencing labor pains before childbirth.
Already close to three meters in length, the tubular object extended slowly, but with each slightly painful struggle of the Alien Queen, it would always lengthen.
The direction of the ovipositor's growth was the central location where the fungal carpet had trapped the host, and the "chrysanthemum"-like tip of the ovipositor was now only about half a meter away from the central location.
"Success is at hand!"
Although he had expected this scene to appear sooner or later, he had been waiting anxiously for these five days. Seeing that success was in sight, Yun Hai, who had been going crazy after staying in the pitch-black cave for five days, became excited again.
The Alien Queen looked a lot more haggard, but of course, this was just Yun Hai's imagination.
Without eyes that could betray her soul, only a smooth skull and the constantly moving mandibles beneath it, Yun Hai could only see that the Alien Queen was obviously thinner than she had been five days ago.
"Hiss..."
On the magnificent skull, on the large and small bone plates all over her body, sweat formed by mucus dripped down like raindrops. The Alien Queen's mandibles extended from under the skull, her lips and teeth trembled rapidly, and the skull struggled desperately from side to side, causing the thick ovipositor to wriggle constantly.
"It's done!"
Suddenly, he felt a life form in the Alien Queen's body, and it instantly established a unique and clear mental connection with him. Yun Hai's heart pounded, and he stared unblinkingly at the sticky, thick ovipositor.
A visible Alien egg was squeezed out of the Queen's abdomen and pushed out along the narrow ovipositor. In Yun Hai's wide eyes, an Alien egg nearly a meter long was spat out by the "chrysanthemum"-like tip of the ovipositor.