Mysterious creature sightings

The ground crack under the Great Rift Valley is about 60 meters deep from the ground. Here, darkness is the environment that creatures are accustomed to.

But despite being unable to see his fingers, Ling Jiangyue was able to walk freely.

Her eyes had a special sense of transparency in the dark, and she could clearly see all the organisms along the road, those crawling on the ground, those staying on the cave walls, and... those hidden in the color of the environment.

She walked in the opposite direction to that of the inspection group. After stepping over a few blocking stones, she detoured into a more smelly and damp corridor.

There are very subtle vibrations in the air here, usually small insects flapping their wings or slightly larger creatures breathing.

Ling Jiangyue stopped and closed his eyes.

Rather than visual abilities, she is more familiar with distinguishing categories based on taste, because the "signals" sent by each creature are different, and those chemical substances directly indicate different information.

For example, now, she can smell a fresh aggregation pheromone, which is some kind of creature summoning its companions to attack the prey together.

What creature?

"Your pheromone level is too high," she whispered to the thing. "Can we wait until we finish talking before we swarm?"

The creature would not answer, but the next second, the accumulated pheromone was forced to stop releasing.

The creature had never encountered such a situation before. It opened its mouth and screamed. The sound was a sound wave frequency that was inaudible to human ears, but the intensity was very weak and not harmful.

However, the screams and other pheromones produced in the body due to excitement allowed Ling Jiangyue to "see clearly" what it looked like.

It was a huge butterfly creature with its wings raised high, and it did look similar to a humanoid in height.

It's just that it's not as eye-catching as the humanoid shape. The insect's mouthparts and eyes are basically invisible, and it's even scary when enlarged -

There are sensor hairs in the middle of the huge compound eyes, the mouthparts are like coiled clockwork, and the edges of the two pairs of wings are jagged, like hand-painted horrific mutant monsters.

After adapting to the terrifying atmosphere, she turned on her headlight and looked carefully at the wings of the giant butterfly.

Its wings do not have the bright and beautiful patterns of ordinary butterfly creatures. They are black with white spots. If you look closely, you may even feel a little dizzy. You can vaguely see the three-dimensional effect of the snake's head.

But almost instantly, its wings changed color and became exactly the same as the color of the environment under the light. It was difficult to tell the difference between it and the stone walls in the corridor just by looking at it with the naked eye.

"I guessed it right, you are really a master of mimicry." Ling Jiangyue sighed with praise in his tone.

The other party's mouth was still hissing, and the snake head-like patterns on its wings were so lifelike that at first glance, she really thought it was a snake staring at her.

"Stop, your wings make me dizzy." She said to herself, raised her hand and pressed down. The mimicry disguise of the giant butterfly gradually faded away, unable to support it, and it showed its original appearance.

The ordinary and ugly appearance is very suitable for its living environment. No one can see it in the dark place, so it can grow as long as it wants.

"It's not very pretty," she commented habitually, and added, "But if humans want to catch you, they don't care whether you are good-looking or not. Their aesthetics is only divided based on interests. Let me see, you are already very rich if you can grow so big. Research value."

"There are also wings. The snake head pattern on your wings can make people dizzy, which is another research direction. It may also allow you to identify with the swallowtail butterfly, because the last instar larvae of the swallowtail butterfly will mimic the shape of a snake."

Her voice echoed in the corridor, sounding a little nervous.

Ling Jiangyue sighed, remembering the past, when she would get someone to nod and smile encouragingly when she told her biological knowledge correctly, and would discuss right and wrong with her.

Now there was only a giant insect of unknown classification in front of her. It could not speak or look at her with praise, it could only scream in horror.

She shook her head and said to herself: "Let me see what category you belong to. Are you a butterfly or a moth? Are you the one that was seen before? Or are you a relative?"

There are many mimicking creatures in nature, and butterflies occupy most of them. Among them, the shape-shifting mimicry is the most amazing, and it can assume different shapes from small to large.

According to the adult appearance of this creature and the descriptions of witnesses, their family should have the function of shape-shifting mimicry.The giant butterfly didn't answer - of course, but Ling Jiangyue still "listened", feeling the smell of the pheromones it secreted into the air to identify its language.

"It looks like it's you. The air overflowing from the cracks in the ground is different from the air above the Great Rift Valley. Apart from being a bit ugly, you don't have any other threat. Don't go up there in the future. Be careful of being caught making soup. When the time comes, I won’t save you.”

Under the influence of her voice and the scent of soothing pheromones, the giant butterfly slowly became peaceful, retracted its wings, and lost its aggressive posture.

One person and one butterfly seemed to be able to communicate freely, chattering and exchanging information in the dark.

……

the other side.

The inspection team is still moving slowly.

There were things floating in the air along the way, and they fell on the protective clothing. They looked like dust that was too fine to be seen by the human eye, not to mention that they were wearing infrared goggles, which had even lower clarity.

But a microbiologist in the group said with certainty: "This is a living thing, not dust."

It's a pity that we can't study them on the spot. Even before we know the function of these things, we have to try our best not to let them fall on our bodies, for fear that they will carry corrosive acid on our bodies just like the cryptids.

Lin Zheng was still walking at the front. All the floating things fell on the goggles, but there were no color spots in the infrared scope. It was obvious that the existence of these creatures was not detected.

This is the limitation of the instrument. Fortunately, they also have a human guide.

Thinking of the human guide, Lin Zheng looked back.

The infrared goggles displayed the body shapes of a group of people, and the red images produced by thermal radiation were still following their movements to create a sense of flow, but——

But he looked around and couldn't see the slender figure.

His brows knitted together and he quickly looked around, but there was no humanoid thermal image that matched her size.

When did she leave the team?

Did you leave on your own initiative to do something, or did something happen?

"Ling Jiangyue?"

"Have you seen Ling Jiangyue?!"

Lin Zheng's voice was tight, louder than the previous one, and the vibration in the communicator made his ears hurt.

The space in the underground cave was small, and the echo echoed with sound waves, shocking more tiny microorganisms to float out, almost covering the surface of their goggles.

But when Xu Jiayan was avoiding them, he happened to scan the value in the sonic scanner and realized something was wrong: "Why is the external sound so small? This is wrong!"

"These creatures are obviously very sensitive to sound..." Soon an experienced scientist discovered the problem, "No, they can definitely swallow sound!"

Lin Zheng and the others were already prepared for the extraordinary talents of the creatures in the cave. He was not distracted at all and said louder: "The most important thing now is to find people! Did no one see where Ling Jiangyue went? Jiang Yuxing! People! Don’t you even know it’s right behind you?!”

Jiang Yuxing honestly admitted his mistake, and a group of people shouted louder. The echo was "gnawed" into holes and spread to the other side of the corridor.

Ling Jiangyue in the distance twitched his ears, tilted his head and smiled at the giant butterfly in front of him: "Someone is looking for me, please go."

After saying that, he put away all control, turned around and stumbled back, his voice trembling: "Lin Zheng!"