Chapter 32

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Chapter 32: Star Death Reality Show (XV)

“Genocide Day”, just hearing this name made one feel panic, as if they were being driven to the slaughterhouse, shaking in the face of death.

“What is… Genocide Day?” Qi Leren was infected by He Yi’s current solemn expression, and right now he was as nervous as he was, but he was obviously in a much better state than He Yi. He remembered to turn on the camera.

“Judging by the amphioctopus’s nature, this is about to happen, and I happen to know something. At first, I didn’t think… The glowing stone was… It was a dormant octopus egg… It shouldn’t be, it’s impossible, how could it be… I mean, they’ve been extinct for hundreds of years. Most of the data of amphioctopuses focuses on their parasitic nature and the way the amphioctopuses spread between hosts, there’s seldom mention of what form they take in the dormant period. Their vitality is very tenacious, and if they sense that none of their common prey is active, they can go into a dormant state that can last for hundreds of years! What kind of monster have we released!” He Yi put his hand over his forehead, and his voice was hoarse.

“Would you like some water?” Qi Leren could see that his current state wasn’t good. It could be guessed that he hadn’t eaten since entering this underground laboratory, and there were no clean water sources here.

At the beginning, he had felt that He Yi was like Su He, but now it seemed that they were very different. At least, He Yi doesn’t have the calm and faint superiority in his stature. He was just an ordinary person, who would be scared and afraid like an ordinary person.

Stripped of the coat of a peaceful environment, he was just a panicked human being under his skin.

It seemed that He Yi had not been parasitized. Otherwise, he would have had the chance to kill him, or at least control him.

“Do you have any?” He Yi asked happily.

Dr. Lu had found two bags when collecting materials, one of which had been given to Qi Leren. Qi Leren had put in it some compressed food and a small bottle of water in a special thermos to prevent freezing. After all, there were cameras everywhere. He couldn’t take them out of thin air from the item bar, so he had simply prepared a little, which came in handy now.

After receiving the food and water, He Yi took a few mouthfuls, took a few bites of compressed food, and handed it back with pain and patience: “Put it away, otherwise I can’t help but eat it.”

Qi Leren generously said: “You eat, I’m not hungry.”

He Yi gave him a complicated look: “Save it, we have to prepare for the worst. The spaceship won’t return to this planet until… I don’t know which day. We should count on this until then. Believe me, this is the safest way.”

“No, we have to find a way out and tell the people outside!” Qi Leren flatly rejected He Yi’s proposal.

“You can’t get out. Even since I found that the standby power here was turned on, the automatic defense system here also started. There are laser traps at the exits… How did you get in?” He Yi suddenly remembered this question and looked at him with an expression of surprise.

Qi Leren hadn’t understood why the electronic lock on the iron door in Jing Siyu’s basement was electrified—in fact, it hadn’t been electrified the whole time, the power had only been turned on after He Yi had mistakenly revealed the corridor into the underground research institute.

“I have better reflexes than most people,” Qi Leren lied without changing his face.

He Yi made a face of “Are you kidding?”

“My companion and I found the ID card, unlocked the electronic lock, and encountered some danger after entering the laser corridor. Fortunately, my reaction time was quick enough,” Qi Leren said.

He Yi was silent for a while, and looked at Qi Leren with suspicious and inquiring eyes. After careful observation, he seemed to have a trace of fear in his expression: “Who on earth are you?”

Qi Leren couldn’t explain.

“Are you from the military? What do you know?” He Yi’s voice had an uncontrollable panic.

Qi Leren looked at him inexplicably.

“Did you know the octopus would be here?” He Yi asked nervously.

“You’re mistaken, I really am just the lead singer of a band.” Qi Leren patted He Yi on the shoulder calmly and He Yi trembled with fear. “Well, don’t be too nervous. It’s not impossible for us to beat the amphioctopus. We won’t die like the people on this planet.”

He Yi looked at him with an expression that was like he had cursed him severely just now.

“Er… What are your plans now?” Qi Leren tried to forget that he had just raised a flag.

“If we stay here, we can avoid Genocide Day. Our situation here is separate from the outside world because of the long distance, so we need to wait a few more days, and when the army arrives, we will be rescued. If we go out and fight rashly and without thinking, the final result may be that we’re parasitized or killed… Do you really want to do that?” He Yi asked.

“My friends are still outside, they know nothing about the situation,” Qi Leren said.

He Yi closed his eyes and whispered, “You are not the saviour.”

“I know.”

“You can’t save everyone.”

“I know.”

“And you’re likely to die.”

“I know all this.”

He Yi looked at him: “Then why do you want to do this?”

Qi Leren was silent for a long time. For the task requirements, he had to go out to kill the octopus to earn more survival time. What’s more, Dr. Lu and Du Yue were outside, so he had to bring back the information about the octopus. Even if he didn’t consider these, he had to consider those innocent NPCs. Although he wouldn’t sacrifice his life in order to save them, he had chosen to help them as much as possible, even if he didn’t know what these NPCs were.

He had died many times and knew how terrible death was, so he was even more reluctant to see someone else die, even if it was just an NPC.

He Yi was still looking at him. Qi Leren realized that he had been thinking for too long, but he couldn’t give a convincing answer. He felt that saying the truth would be a bit nauseating, so he responded to him with a saint-like smile: “Because I want to get the Best of the Day, one million dollars.”

He Yi: “……………”

He Yi didn’t seem to want to dwell on this problem anymore. After his mood stabilized, he told Qi Leren what had happened between him and Mark when he’d returned to the basement of Jing Siyu’s house with the axe.

“Mark’s eyes began to bleed. I thought he had hit his head and caused intracranial hemorrhaging. He was scared to death. After all, we don’t have any medical equipment. If the situation was serious, he would die. But soon, I found that something was wrong. Mark’s eyes turned white, and he was convulsing like crazy. After about half a minute, he returned to normal and woke up. I asked him what was wrong. He didn’t answer me. He looked at me with a strange look… ” As He Yi recalled that look, his body shivered unconsciously.“ It was a kind of… waking up from hibernation. A monster’s eyes.”

Qi Leren’s back suddenly felt cold.

“The reason why the octopus can multiply on such a large scale anywhere in the universe is that once they parasitize intelligent creatures, they will first paralyze the brain of the host and acquire all the knowledge of the individual, including common sense, at an alarming rate. The consciousness of the host itself cannot compete with it. The terrible thing about it is that once it begins to parasitize, it learns to disguise itself. It will follow this individual’s way of thinking, tone of speech, walking posture, and even micro-expressions… Only it knows that this is imitation, and everyone will think that this is the host itself.”

“What about Mark?”

“There’s a process in the octopus’s parasitism. As I said just now, after entering the human body, it will paralyze the host’s brain first, and over the next eight to ten hours, it will madly capture the host’s body. At that time, there will be a short period of strangeness, and Mark’s eyes bled during this period. Next, the amphioctopus completely occupies his brain, entrenched in it. After more than 20 hours after entering the body, the amphioctopus will develop from larva to a mature body and will begin to replicate itself. Mark was the first infected person, and the infection time was roughly before midnight on the first day…”

He Yi’s words reminded Qi Leren of another thing. He asked, “What did you want to say to me when we were waiting for Mark outside Annie’s house?”

He Yi gave a wry smile: “I want to say that on the first night, I saw Mark and Annie go to the church. And Janet and Alex, they’re dating… It’s too late to say this now.”

Qi Leren nodded: “Go on.”

“I had seen his eyes bleeding. At that time, he had already been captured by the octopus… He held me hostage and tied me up in the attic. I never thought of the reason, and wondered how he dared to do such a thing in front of the camera. After that, Mark left the attic and talked to Annie. I vaguely heard some words. They seemed to want me to be the next object of sacrifice… At that time… I… didn’t understand what the sacrifice was… I thought it was a cult sacrifice… I broke the rope, found the entrance to the basement, and entered the basement through the pipe. Mark found that I had run away and chased me down. I also found explosives and wanted to kill him to escape. As a result, I accidentally revealed the passage behind the wall and entered here.”

“But Annie shouldn’t be infected. I knocked her out when I searched the basement just now. If she was parasitized, she wouldn’t be knocked out so easily by me, would she?” Qi Leren asked.

He Yi asked: “How did you knock her out?”

“Hitting the nape of her neck.”

“Let me think about it… If she was parasitized for no more than one day, it would still be in her brain and wouldn’t have swallowed her internal organs. I remember that at this stage, it may cause the host to be unconscious for a short time.” He answered, and continued, “after entering this institute, I found some information. I couldn’t read the text, but the picture above linked to Annie and Mark, and I finally put everything together. But it’s too late… By now, it’s the fourth day. According to the way the octopuses breed, they grow and multiply each day. There is only one on the first day, then two on the second day, and four on the third day. On the fourth day, that is, this evening, their number will surge to eight!”

Eight… This was too much!

Qi Leren thought about it. It was Mark who was infected on the first night, Mark infected Xue Jiahui on the second night, and Mark and Xue Jiahui infected one person respectively on the third night, one of whom was probably Annie.

In this way, Annie was infected for only one day at most.

Fortunately, otherwise, when they had been in the basement, Qi Leren would have faced a hard battle.

Was this the use for bringing two people with EX luck? Qi Leren couldn’t help but come up with such a thought.

But tonight, these four octopuses would infect four people again… The time left for him was running out.

He Yi looked at Qi Leren, and the look of horror became more and more dignified: “The octopus has another characteristic… Once the number of octopuses in a closed environment is greater than the number of hosts, the mature octopuses will give up the slow one-on-one infection and start ‘competition’.”

“…Competition?” Qi Leren suddenly felt a chill.

He Yi shivered, lowered his voice, and said, “Because the number of parasitic hosts is less than the number of parasites, they will… break out of the body… and, to store energy for hibernation, they begin hunting the humans.”

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