After a while, the girl came out. She wiped the water off her face with both hands, and her face showed excitement and fear.
“It’s not an eel!” she emphasized again. “Come and see… come and see!”
Xia Yibing's heart sank and she dived down, following the blue light to look at the follicles at the bottom.
At first glance, it looks no different than above.
All are the same, well, huge.
Just as dense.
It will reflect light as well.
It's the same, with little black spots inside... huh?
Noticing the difference, she moved closer and discovered that the further down the follicles were, the larger the black dots inside them were.
What surprised her was that the outline of the black spot on the two bottom follicles—the two follicles closest to her—looked like...
A five-pointed star?
There's a fine line?
Subconsciously, she recalled the two encounters with the giant eel and the starfish monster.
Swimming further to the side, Xia Yibing shone the knife at other follicles, and indeed she saw more kinds of small black dots.
Some look like starfish.
Some look like eels.
Some look like sharks.
Some of them are like... species that only exist in myths and legends.
"Wow!"
She also emerged from the water, exclaiming, "This is impossible!"
The guess she just thought of was too outrageous.
She actually thought that it was this follicle that gave birth to those two monsters?
So who created these eggs and this nest?
Who destroyed the contents on the stone tablet?
Too many mysteries...
To put it simply, they started taking action as soon as they arrived in the town, and it took less than a day.
In such a short time, Hitzfeld had prepared the soul-calling incense and put it to work - they were able to trace the clues to the southeast cape, and finally found this strange place here.
This is indeed a great discovery, but they act so quickly, who can destroy the tombstone before they find this place?
Could it be that the tombstone was originally destroyed?
She didn't think so.
Otherwise, the person who attacked her in Hitzfeld's ocean dream when she was about to see the tombstone clearly would not have had to do that.
The other party did this because he didn't want her to see the contents, which indirectly shows that the tombstone under the sea had not been destroyed at that time.
They couldn't even wait until the next day and came here to explore overnight. Wasn't their purpose to prevent the murderer from being alarmed and destroying the real tombstone in advance?
but still……
Or it turned out like this...
Who is it...
The other party's actions were too fast...
“But there’s a high probability that this is the case.”
Hitzfeld said, pointing to the follicle.
"These eggs include almost all kinds of marine life. We have every reason to believe that the reason why this area of water is abnormal and why there are so many deep-sea species and monsters is because of this nest."
"But... where do these eggs come from?"
Xia Yibing shook her head repeatedly.
She understands the principle, but follicles can't appear out of nothing, right?
It's impossible that this wall or a big rock gave birth to a nest of fish. This is impossible. This is too ridiculous.
"I don't know where the follicles come from, but I can roughly guess how these species are generated."
Hitzfeld raised his head and looked towards the top of the nest little by little.
"Remember what we said to Bill?"
"Yeah." Xia Yibing nodded, then frowned.
"what do you mean……"
"Correct."
The girl nodded.
"I suspect the embryo in the follicle is a human corpse."
--------
There were no comments for a long time, and I thought there was something wrong with my writing, so I quickly wrote a long chapter.
I finally realized halfway through that barrage was banned.
To ban for such a long time...
Ah, this period will be very boring~
Chapter 35: Killer Crabs
Xia Yibing's heart sank slowly.
Hitzfeld rarely draws definite conclusions, but even the guesses she makes with words like "I doubt it" or "I don't think it's possible" have a more than 90% chance of being proven correct.
She couldn't help but wonder what had led her to make such a judgment.
We have never been apart since we arrived at Bartlett, and we even sleep together. Although I didn't see the ocean dream in the middle, she couldn't have hidden the information in the dream from me. There is no reason... I can't see it.
The woman went over all the intelligence she had collected so far in her mind, looked at the girl, and asked tentatively, "Is it because of the...changes from top to bottom?"
"Yes." Hitzfeld nodded and gave her an approving smile. "If my guess is correct, the higher you go, the more human-like the things in the follicles become."
This "honeycomb" is inlaid with hundreds of eggs, some of which are exposed to the air and some of which are submerged in the water. They have previously observed that the further down the eggs are, the more detailed the shape of the small black dot in the center is, and the more clearly they can see what kind of marine life it is. So, based on this distance rule, can we infer that the eggs that are higher up are more "primitive"?
If we want to get to the root of the eggs, if we want to trace where these little black dots of marine life came from, shouldn’t we look up instead of down?
"It's obvious that this is not the only ovary." Hitzfeld raised his hand to indicate the entire wall, then looked up at the stone tablet behind it. "This cave is not the one I saw in my dream, and the stone tablet here doesn't match... I guess this ovary is much larger than we thought, and what is exposed now is only a small part of it. Maybe every real exposed cave has such a stone tablet."
"Then they are indeed tombstones." Xia Yibing nodded, agreeing with her inference.
To say tombstone, there must be a corpse - at least there must have been one in the past. She had thought it was difficult to judge in the cave environment before, but now, this wall of follicles might be the tomb of the ancestors.
It was even a little hard for women to imagine: in this deep seabed, among the densely packed seabed cavities, there were actually a large number of cavities with such follicle walls on their walls. They were densely packed with endless eggs of life, which were smaller as they went up and larger as they went down. Eventually, strange deep-sea fish hatched from the abyss, creating the anomalies and wonders on the beach and seabed.
But who did this?
Follicles in the stone, this can't come out of nothing. Hitzfeld's theory can only explain where the life in the follicle came from, but it can't explain the phenomenon itself.
"I don't know..." Hitzfeld was also thinking about this question. She lowered her head, stared at the water and shook her head gently.
"My guess now is... maybe every cave like this has a stone tablet. It was indeed carved and placed here by humans. The names of the victims may have been originally engraved on it... Yes, it is the list of victims who threw themselves into the follicles and were transformed into corpses."
This is the most likely possibility, otherwise how could there be tombstones in different caves? Could it be an introduction to the scenic spot?
"But if that's the case, why would the murderer destroy the list?" Hitzfeld grabbed his hair that fell to his chest, not understanding this. "If there are so many places like this... then obviously this kind of summoning has been happening for many, many years. It's continuous and has lasted for a long time because it's impossible to fill so many follicles with the missing people in just this month."
So what would happen if they knew about this list?
As for the list of missing persons that came out in the past month, they already have it in their hands.
And if it was before this, the list of missing persons accumulated over the years before the "Call of the Abyss" was launched, they knew too little about the town's past, so what would be the use even if they knew it?
"Unless..." Hitzfeld suddenly looked up, "Unless this will expose his identity."
"He was very sure that if we got the list, we would be able to deduce who he was from the information."
"…Then he must be the missing person in the past month!" Xia Yibing reacted quickly.
Why do they say that? Because they have the list of missing persons in the past month.
Let's make an assumption here: suppose the murderer's name is among them, then he is obviously not dead - nor has he been transformed into a small black dot in the follicle, so it is naturally impossible for him to add his own name when carving the tombstone.
If this is the case, then once outsiders get the two lists and compare them, the missing name will naturally be very conspicuous, and his plan to escape into seclusion will fail.
"It's hard to say." Hitzfeld shook his head. "I still don't understand... Is it harder to add a name to a tombstone... than to destroy it?"
If the other party has the ability to travel such a distance to destroy the contents of the tombstone, why not just add a name to it?
Didn't he know that destroying the list would also arouse their suspicion? In comparison, he could just add a name and continue hiding, even if it was only for a while. This was better than destroying the list.
"This is easy to explain." Xia Yibing perked up. She handed the lightsaber to her left hand and waved her right fingers in the air, as if she wanted to gesture something.
But perhaps because she felt it was inconvenient, she simply raised her belly and pressed her fingers on it: "Aisun... look at this!"
Hitzfeld looked over and saw that she was using her fingers as a pen, pretending to write on her belly.
"What did you write?"
"Nothing...pay attention to the intervals! The pattern of the intervals!"
Xia Yibing emphasized: "We have habits when writing content. For example, when you write a letter, you have to keep it neat and beautiful. The distance between the letters of each word is particular... If you forget to add a word in the middle, you can either rewrite it or fill it in the gap between lines..."
"——But this will definitely affect the appearance, and the word will be very conspicuous." Hitzfeld knew what she meant, "Or write it at the end...but this will also be abrupt."
Yes, this would explain why the murderer had to erase the inscription instead of adding a name.
"We have discovered something unusual about this place." Xia Yibing thought she had "accomplished something", and her tone became somewhat cheerful: "Even if we die here, more people will inevitably come here to investigate. The exposure of the nest is inevitable. This person can't let such a big flaw remain. The more you do, the more mistakes you make, so he simply-"
She glanced at the stone tablet and made a carving gesture with her right hand.
"I don't even have the heart to pour cold water on you, Chief Imaar."
Hitzfeld's voice seemed to come from the sky.
"Since you think so deeply... have you ever considered that he could actually carve a list of additional ingredients on the repaired stone tablet?"
Xia Yibing's smile suddenly froze.
really……
He could do this...
"So why?" The woman put down her right hand with a whoosh, her whole body drooping. "Since he has the ability to chisel off a layer of the stone tablet, why didn't he bother to add more information to mislead us?"
"Maybe..." Hitzfeld looked at the blue bubbles, "It's not that he doesn't want to, but that he can't."
What's the meaning.
The woman was unable to wrap her mind around this for a moment.
"He only wanted to destroy the stone tablet before we arrived. What methods do you think he might have used?"
"Oh, this may not be much."
Xia Yibing pondered.
"One is that he has a ship that is faster than ours... a much faster ship, so he arrived here early to cause trouble..."
"anything else."
"Also, he himself can't make it here, but he has an accomplice." Xia Yibing curled her lips, "There is more than one murderer. One of them notified the people stationed on the seabed of our arrival and asked that person to destroy the evidence... This way, we will be in time."
"But how do they communicate?"
"This is a problem..." Xia Yibing frowned.
There are indeed many ways to communicate faster than ships, such as simple ones like carrier pigeons and peregrine falcons, and more complex ones like the secret art of flesh and blood.
Homing pigeons and peregrine falcons cannot break through the seabed barrier, so this is ruled out.
But if it was the secret art of flesh and blood, how could Hitzfeld, the murderer's accomplice who got the news, say that he "couldn't"?
