There can't be a Harvest Moon in the RimWorld.

When I pushed open the cryogenic hibernation chamber with the loose handle, I found only a male corpse that had been dead for a long time and was already decomposed beyond recognition.

The male victim had suffered a brutal attack on his abdomen before his death, and the organs beneath the wound were clearly visible, but he was covered by a healing membrane from a cryogenic hibernation chamber.

I boldly speculate that the deceased must have entered a cryogenic hibernation chamber to seek treatment after suffering extremely severe external injuries, attempting to recover from his injuries during a long period of sleep. However, for some unknown reason, he was cut off from all power and thrown into the ground.

During the power outage, the deceased briefly regained consciousness from hypothermia and attempted to push open the steel coffin lid pressing down on him. However, hypothermia prevented him from moving, and he ultimately died from complications such as external injuries, hypothermia, and hypoxia.

What surprised me most was a cylindrical device clutched tightly in the hand of the disfigured male victim. It had only one prominent button on it, and the owner's name was laser-engraved below the button.

“DONALD?MORDEN”.

Chapter 548 I caught a Pokémon!

Faced with the surging horde of insects, Gots could only retreat step by step, eventually chasing after me from outside, leaning against the wall and shouting at me.

"Marcus, the monster is catching up! Is it safe inside? If not, let's break out!"

run?

Given the current situation, the only possibility is that we will be swept away by the swarm of insects in one fell swoop; there is no chance of easily escaping from the mine.

I stopped checking the hibernation pod and quickly pulled Gotz inside the hole.

Then, with their combined efforts, they pushed the heavy iron coffin to the crack, firmly sealing the opening through which insects could possibly swarm in.

I then said to Gotz with lingering fear, "Don't run around. Just stay here. Let's wait here for a while. Maybe these bugs will give up the chase, and then we can get out."

Gotz tore off the tattered strips of cloth from his clothes, looked at his wounds that had healed completely, and then frowned as he surveyed the surroundings. "But this place is airtight and doesn't breathe well. Won't there be a risk of oxygen deprivation if I stay here for a long time?"

To answer his question, I raised the torch in my hand. "Look," I said, "when I entered this cave, the torch, which had been dying, started burning brightly again, and the two chickens stopped clucking. As the saying goes, 'Don't touch gold when the rooster crows and the lamp goes out,' but now that the chickens are not clucking and the lamp is still burning, it means we are safe."

"There's actually such a saying!"

Gotz looked at me with utter astonishment. "Who did you learn all this from? Why do you have such strange experiences?"

"Why ask so many questions? This is a line of work that we don't easily share."

Who did I learn from?

Of course it's Tianxia Bachang!

It's said that Hu Bayi and his gang were top-notch tomb raiders, except for the fact that they were constantly on the verge of death, repeatedly came up empty-handed, and never found anything of value. However, they repeatedly failed to meet their KPIs and were eventually forced to go to the United States to perform a show of living off a woman. It was truly bizarre.

Since the air here is even more plentiful than outside, it means there's a high probability that this place is connected to the outside world; and since Alpha Chicken doesn't sense any threat, it also means this place is safe, so my analysis is basically correct.

But Gotz was still not entirely at ease. He braced himself against the hibernation pod and only breathed a sigh of relief after feeling the impact and shaking from outside gradually weaken.

I said to Gotz, "Save your energy. Give this guy in the jar a chance to live. He's already dead, and you're still using him to block the door. He's practically your top disciple."

Gots' attention was drawn to the highly decomposed corpse, and he asked, "Why is there a corpse here?"

I shook my head: "I don't know. I'm completely baffled by what's going on here. It's one thing to have bugs the size of goats underground, but then there's this corpse that looks like it hasn't been dead for long, and we're pretty sure it's not from this town... What on earth is going on?"

Gotz then noticed the strange object in the deceased's hand. "Donald Morden... Is that the deceased's name? I feel like I've heard it somewhere before..."

"You've heard of it? Think about it, maybe this is the key to finding the truth!"

A glint flashed in my eyes. Even I, the so-called "young frog," couldn't see through this situation. There must be a crucial clue that we hadn't found yet. As is customary, perhaps this clue would appear in Gotz's unintentional hint.

After thinking for a long time, Gotz said to me with a pained expression, "No... Although the name sounds familiar, I can't remember where I've heard it before..."

"Don't be discouraged!" I coaxed gently. "Think about it first, is the person associated with this name tall or short, fat or thin..."

Gotz scratched his head vigorously and said in despair, "I'm trying! Can you please stop nagging me? You're not trying to inspire me, you're just trying to cram some weird image into my head!"

Seeing him deep in thought, I shut my mouth and stopped introducing him to the amazing accordion player. I also started to organize the clues in my mind.

First of all, the presence of so many insects at the foot of Mount Mads must be due to some external factor. No one in the mining town had ever mentioned this decades ago, and Old Man Hook never told me about the insects, indicating that the anomaly must have occurred sometime after he left.

Secondly, to accomplish this, understanding Mineral Town isn't enough; one needs to be familiar with Mount Mads and this long-abandoned mine to subtly transform it into an insect nest. It seems that besides the old miners from back then, no one else could possibly be capable of doing this.

Finally, the time of death of the mysterious corpse in the cave is completely different from the time the place was sealed and abandoned. The longer time must be taken as the basis, and the later time must be considered as a special condition. For example, it would be surprising to find Yuan blue and white porcelain in a Song Dynasty tomb, but it seems unlikely that the discovery of Emperor Lizong of Song's skull bowl in the tomb of a Yuan Dynasty sorcerer monk would cause any stir (this is actually a true story).

Therefore, the anomaly of this matter can be basically determined based on the time of the deceased's death, that is, the time when the anomaly occurred can be locked at three months ago.

Coincidentally, news about the insect infestation also began to emerge three months ago, so the mysterious deaths and the insect infestation seem to be completely unrelated.

...Ahem, I got off topic. I meant, what if he has a special skill in raising insects?

If we understand it this way, then these anomalies can be explained: for example, his mysterious death caused the swarm to go berserk and reproduce wildly. These backstories are slowly taking shape in my mind, and with a little polishing, plus a background story of a certain Vault-Tomb and human experiments, it seems like it could be published soon.

"I remember now!"

Gotz suddenly exclaimed, "Marcus, I remember now!"

He grabbed my neck and shook me, and I felt all the stories in my head being flung away. Soon, only a few fragmented sentences remained, and then only a few hiragana characters.

"You... just say it if you have something to say!"

I angrily pulled away from his grasp and accused him, "You remembered but didn't say anything! You've shaken away the more than one million words of novel I had in my head!"

Gotz reluctantly released his grip and replied, "Sorry, I suddenly remembered something and got a little excited... If I remember correctly, Donald Morden should be a general!"

I continued, "And then?"

Gotz replied matter-of-factly, "That's all."

...It should be a general, six characters.

Good grief, you've been thinking for so long, and you've even ruined the plot of my entire novel, and all you can come up with are these six words!

Do you think expanding a plot is easy, so you gave me six words and thought you could expand it into a million-word novel?

"Ugh, keep thinking! What general?! Is he a general on horseback?! This black guy has changed his identity countless times, how is anyone supposed to know who he is?! And when will the story of becoming a tycoon in Japan continue?!"

This time, I grabbed Gotz by the neck, shook his head repeatedly, and said things he couldn't understand.

Gotz was shaken until his eyes rolled back, and he quickly begged for mercy, "Marcus, don't make things difficult for me! I grew up in Mineral Town and can barely read and write, but I've only read a few books. How could I possibly remember the life and deeds of such a person!"

The knowledge in Gotz's mind was like water in a sponge—it was all water when squeezed out, with no substance at all.

The illiterate Gotz finally gave up thinking and took the initiative to change the subject: "That's right, you can go out and ask Harris! He graduated from a regular school, he must know where this person comes from!"

Seeing that I couldn't squeeze anything else out of them, I gave up asking and urged, "Gotz, whether we can escape is a small matter. The most important thing is how to deal with the insect infestation. If we let it go unchecked, one day the insect plague will hollow out the entire underground and flood the whole town."

Gotz hesitated for a moment, then said, "So you mean..."

I nodded vigorously: "Face to face!"

Gotz looked at me with shock in his eyes. "You haven't suffered a mental breakdown, have you? With so many monsters around, how do you plan to deal with them all?"

I said firmly, "Of course I can't deal with all of them, but I can solve the problem at its source and prevent them from continuing to multiply. Once that's done, it will be easy to let them gradually die out."

On the way in, I had already examined that strangely shaped, irregular colloidal substance again and read the data information of the colonizer system from it.

Building Name: Insect Nest

Architectural Description: A giant insect nest. If awakened, it will continuously breed giant insects and new nests over time, also producing valuable insect glue. As a product of genetic modification, the giant insects must rely on the nest to reproduce.

Durability: 130/130

Cover effectiveness: 50%

This is where my confidence comes from!

The information from the colonist system never lies to me, so the insect hive must be the key to the reproduction of giant insects. As long as we destroy this thing, the huge number of insects will be reduced one by one, and it is not necessarily impossible to deal with them.

The appearance of the keyword "awakened" further confirms my guess that there must be some unknown factor involved.

And this time point is very close to my guess of three months ago.

Even more coincidentally, three months ago was the time when I witnessed the disaster that befell the parallel world's Mineral Town. Is there a necessary connection between the two?

“We were too conspicuous just now, making a commotion that attracted the monsters’ attention. Actually, these insects only focus on a small area on the side, so the key this time is to ‘go in quietly, don’t shoot,’ understand?” I emphasized the key points of the operation.

"You mean that as long as these insect nests are destroyed, those monsters will stop reproducing?" Gotz asked incredulously, seemingly having no reason to believe that the terrifying monsters would have such a great weakness.

But I couldn't explain it to him. It was an invisible and intangible system that told me that these giant insects were artificially modified, so their ability to reproduce on their own may have been eliminated beforehand, and they could only reproduce by relying on their nests.

"Don't hesitate any longer! Just now, as we approached the insect hive, a monster rushed out and attacked us. This shows how important the hive is to them. If we delay any longer, they'll just multiply even more!"

After my persuasion, Gotz finally put aside his doubts and, together with me, removed the seal from the steel coffin and quietly returned to the mine.

In our view, the cave worms that had been so aggressive just moments before had now disappeared, leaving only the cave worm that had been pierced through by Gotz and was on the verge of death. It was now close to the edge of the nest made of an unknown gel, chewing on the gel with its sharp mouthparts and slowly recovering from its injuries.

Gotz rushed forward again, tearing the dying giant insect in two along the wound on its abdomen, completely eliminating any possibility of its survival. He then used a woodcutter's axe to chop at the half-person-high insect nest, hacking and chipping it until it was unrecognizable.

I picked up a fragment of gel from the ground. The texture in my hand was exactly the same as the unidentified colloid Cliff had found. It seemed that this was a component of the insect nest. And the insects living deep underground had also begun to mutate and evolve rapidly because they received nutrients from the colloid, becoming a mysterious and multifaceted ecological disaster on the island.

"Let's go, next place!"

Gotz and I then transformed into a professional demolition company, continuing our journey into the mine along the narrow, winding path. This time, I was responsible for distracting and dealing with the insects, while Gotz was in charge of dismantling the insect nests. Working together, we quickly dismantled three or four more unsightly piles of gel and ventured deeper, ready to eradicate all the insect nests in these winding mine tunnels in one fell swoop!

…………

Gray and Harris waited outside the mine all night, until the sky began to lighten and the birds in the woods started chirping noisily, before they saw my dirty and disheveled figure and Gotz slowly emerge from the cave.

"Boss! You guys are finally out!"

"Don't get too close. The two of us have basically taken a bug bath. I'm afraid the early birds will snatch you away too." I stopped Gray from getting closer.

Harris rubbed his sleepy eyes and said, "You guys have been in there for far too long! Gray and I have been waiting here all night without daring to close our eyes!"

...Wipe the drool off your mouth before you speak, okay? You've got wrinkles on your face from sleeping all night and you're telling me you didn't sleep?

Gotz said to Gray, "Go back before Sebala wakes up. We can discuss the situation at the tavern later. Your grandfather would kill you for that outfit."

Gray thought about it for a moment, and probably was a little wary of his grandfather's Ora Ora Ora, so he went down the mountain first.

Harris approached mysteriously after Gray left and asked, "Marcus, Gots, what was your reason for sending Gray away? What's down in the mine?"

Gotz and I exchanged a glance, and Gotz said helplessly, "There are bugs down in the mine, big bugs, lots and lots of big bugs. Believe me, you definitely don't want to go in and experience it again."

Harris noticed something was wrong from our grim expressions. "Was it really that scary? How did you get out?"

I hissed as if I had a toothache. "It's good that Gray is gone. I was just worried about hurting this kid's values. If you don't believe me, see for yourself..."

After I finished speaking, I clapped my hands, and a six-legged monster with goat horns emerged from the mine, swaying as it slowly walked towards us.

Its body resembled a giant bear standing upright, its chitinous exoskeleton gleaming with a dark light, its serrated sickle-like hands incredibly sharp, and its powerful tail striking the mountainside with a thunderous roar.

But the three pairs of compound eyes, which should have been cold and indifferent, were now looking at me with great joy, their mouthparts making high-frequency clicking sounds, as if they were greeting me. Those almost jubilant little movements were completely incongruous with their fierce and imposing appearance; it was as if I were seeing a woman flirting in front of me, utterly unacceptable.

"Don't ask, the answer is that I had no choice..."

I placed my hand on the shell of this monster, which was as big as a bear. "I never thought this guy could be tamed like an animal... The kid says it's hungry, and you look delicious. Would you mind giving it a bite?"