The evolution of insect swarms from XNUMX million years ago

Chapter 320: Parasite Detected
The fact is, there is no record of the planet Dikla in any of the records known to the Ezki civilization, and there is not even any record of the hyperspace route to the nearby area. The exploration fleet heading to Earth this time is the first members of the Ezki civilization to arrive in this star field.

Things are getting weirder and weirder - not only that, but the sensory signals sent back by the parasitic creatures underground, which resemble the "Sorrenops" or "seekers" from the lost myths and legends of the ancient Ezki nation, are also showing some strange scenes.

Considering there was no better name, Lin Yi simply called them seekers. At this time, these seekers actually flew all the way down along the space of the underground world and entered a strange cave.

The entrance to the cave was not big and quite inconspicuous, but after a few steps, it suddenly became clear. Through the specially structured eyes of these pursuers, Lin Yi could clearly see a series of equally strange scenes.

The walls and the bottom of the cave were covered with a layer of tissue that looked like fungi, but the shape was a bit strange. It didn't look like ordinary fungi or plants, but more like the fungal blanket tissue of a colony?!

These strange tissues are occasionally dotted with sac-like structures that emit fluorescence, making the cave dimly glow and allowing the seekers' peculiarly structured eyes to see clearly.

As we continued to move forward, some swaying structures began to appear on both sides and above the cave. The main part was also similar to the tentacle structure, extending downward or to the side, but if we had to say it, it was more like the body of the former Hailing apple plant.

At the end, there is a huge structure similar to a Venus flytrap, hanging in the middle of the cave, which seems to be used for attack. However, at this time, these structures took the initiative to make way for the pursuers, allowing them to continue forward.

Soon, the terminal structure of the cave was fully revealed to the senses of these pursuers - at the end, there was a wider sac-like space, with fungal tissues and those huge structures of sea urchins that looked like Venus flytraps covering the ceiling, walls and ground of the cave.

In the very center of the cave, on the ground, there is a circle of structures similar to the pitcher of a pitcher plant, but it is a shorter bottle-like structure. In this circle of structures, there is an incredibly thick tentacle extending out, at the end of which is a structure that looks like a flower bud.

The end of the thick tentacle with flower buds drooped weakly until the group of pursuers flew into this space, then it lifted up slightly. In the senses, there seemed to be another sound wave of a special frequency coming from that thick tentacle.

After receiving the signal, countless seekers flew out from the group of seekers hovering in the cave above. Lin Yi keenly observed that, without exception, those who broke away from the formation were the individuals carrying the corpses of the ancient web-winged flying insects.

They actually carried the corpses all the way here. At this time, they also landed one after another, and walked forward after staggering two steps on the ground in the form of pterosaurs, bats, or the legendary flying dragons.

Then, the six tentacles on the head opened, and the corpses of the ancient web-winged flying insects fell from their mouths one after another, falling into the low bottle-shaped or jar-shaped tissue structures similar to the pitcher cages of Nepenthes.

The huge tentacle finally moved. At the end of its strange, flower-bud-like tentacle, soft "petals" made of unknown tissue slowly opened, revealing the structure underneath.

Those thick "petals" actually had an eyeball-like structure on each one, and there was an astonishingly large eyeball in the center of the petals, forming a densely packed perception structure. Then, the giant tentacles slowly arched their bodies, and those "petals" aimed at the pursuers who had landed. Those countless eyeballs scanned the pursuers in front of them, and then looked at them one by one.

The seeker below happened to be parasitized by Lin Yi's fungal spores and was sending back neural signals in real time. The densely packed eyeballs stared at the seeker's eyes, which made Lin Yi, who was watching the scene in real time through his perspective, feel a little creepy.

Waves of low-frequency sound waves emanated from the "petal" structure at the end of the giant tentacle, echoing throughout the entire cave. As these sound signals spread, strange changes suddenly occurred in the entire cave!

All the huge tentacles with the Venus flytrap terminal structures on the cave ceiling and walls were waving, the huge "Flytrap" structures at the ends opened, and liquid was secreted from the huge tooth-like protrusions on the edges.

At the same time, among the dense group of pursuers still hovering above, countless individuals broke away again after this special sound wave was transmitted and flew downwards - Lin Yi was shocked to find that, without exception, they were all individuals parasitized by his fungal mat spores!
All the parasitized individuals were not left out, and all of them broke away from the cluster and flew downwards, while the seeker individuals that were not parasitized by Lin Yi continued to hover above, unmoved.

At the same time, those huge "Flytrap" structures also opened the catchers at the end, and with the waving of the thick tentacles that looked like the bodies of sea cucumbers, they clamped towards the parasitic pursuers!
The huge tentacle with countless eyeballs in the center stretched out completely upwards, with its "petals" opening wide and continuously emitting sound waves. The pursuers that had not been parasitized circled around it and also opened their head tentacles one after another, making strange screams in unison.

In this strange scene, almost all of the parasitic seeker individuals have been clamped and torn apart by the huge Venus flytrap structure below, and have lost the input of sensory signals.

The incident happened suddenly, and Lin Yi didn't even have time to do anything with the nervous systems of these pursuers. He quickly lost the sensory signals of the parasitic pursuers, and that small piece of parasitic tissue could no longer do anything.

The signals of the parasitic pursuers fell into darkness one by one. When the sensory signal of the last pursuer disappeared, the giant tentacle bent its main body again. At the end, the densely packed petal structure and the eyeball above once again met the senses of the parasitic pursuer.

This glance seemed to penetrate the nervous system, then through the parasitic fungal carpet tissue and space synapses, and directly peek into Lin Yi's consciousness, the super-individual consciousness that now has hundreds of millions of individuals as carriers and spans dozens of star systems.

After the last individual of the terrestrial arthropod nest died out, Lin Yi hadn't known how long it had been since he encountered this kind of gaze that seemed to be able to penetrate the space synapse and look directly at the body. Combined with everything that happened underground on the Dikla star, he had some vague guesses.

The previous plan was still too conservative. In this area, it is necessary to connect with the ground world and import a large amount of special resources to achieve the production of a large number of stronger land combat grades.

(End of this chapter)