Mysterious creature sightings

Chapter 78 A Hole of Natural Hallucinogens

Psilocybe mushrooms, also known as psychedelic mushrooms, as the name suggests, can cause hallucinations and, in severe cases, confusion and self-harm.

But this is not what they are looking for, because psilocybe mushrooms are not some exotic species, and the effects produced after eating them are not likely to cause people to fantasize about a fire and then actually die in the fire.

But since she said that, she had to go down one more time to check. Maybe the thing she was looking for was clearly visible down there.

Lin Zheng planned to take three people down, because the space below was not big, and it would not be good if there were too many people, and there must be someone above to keep an eye on it.

"You stay up there." He told Ling Jiangyue.

Ling Jiangyue nodded honestly and was left behind with the archaeologist and Xu Jiayan.

Xin Wen and Xin Zhi had to go down, for fear that they would not have a place to die and would clamor to go to the front.

I have been disappointed twice, and I still get excited when I hear the words "There may be something down there." It's really like some religious believers who lose their rationality after hearing a term that makes them excited, and they have no choice but to take risks. I can’t wait to eat good food.

Ling Jiangyue was thoughtful, watching their figures disappear at the entrance of the cave, and then glanced sideways at Xu Jiayan.

She knew that Xu Jiayan was left behind to monitor her. Lin Zheng had not given up his suspicion on her yet, and he was so vigilant.

She squatted on the spot, plucking the grass at her feet and watching the ants carrying food.

No, how do they move things out of the hole?Food with ants in it?
Ling Jiangyue stared carefully at the ants "carrying the bag", squinting to identify the bits of food they were holding.

Looks like...meat?

"yue——" She couldn't help but think about the corpse and started to retching again.

After retching, I looked at the third ant with tearful eyes. It didn't seem to be the meat on the corpse.What unlucky insect would have been decomposed?

Seeing that she was looking at the ants so enthusiastically, Xu Jiayan really felt that there was no need to stare at her unless the ants could help her convey the message.

——But that is a plot that only exists in fairy tales and goblin legends. If it came true, without her being caught, he would first commit suicide by jumping into the sea.

After watching the ants, there was no movement from the people below. The real-time picture uploaded by the tablet was not as dark as the middle of winter. It was difficult to watch with the light on. Ling Jiangyue was not interested, and he held his chin and thought of something else.

Speaking of which, it had been a long time since I heard her name from Lin Zheng's mouth, as if he was deliberately avoiding it.

The sex pheromones were forcibly reduced by the medicine, and he actively avoided it in words and deeds. He really thought that he didn't do it clearly enough. Didn't he know that the more obvious the avoidance was, the more serious a problem it was?

Speaking of which, she saw this on TV. In order to let her adapt to life in the Ling family again, he lived with her for a long time. Every day when he came back from get off work, he would ask her if she had watched TV.

I don’t mean to tell her to watch less, but I want to ask her if she has learned any normal human social knowledge from TV.

Suddenly I still miss him a little bit.

"Ah! Something fell on my foot!"

When the people on the tablet spoke, they became somewhat distorted after passing through the sound hole. The three people left behind quickly moved closer to listen, just like left-behind children in rural areas rushing to listen to the annual call from their parents.

"I was shocked. What is this? A frog?"

"It moves slowly. It seems that it is used to jumping around people's feet, but those feet have turned into bones."

"Are you disgusting?"

"Not sure, it may be caused by eating something. Look, there is a handful of dead grass that has been neatly tied up here."

"It's ephedra." It's a natural hallucinogenic poison.

"Frogs don't seek mental stimulation." "There are a lot of frogs here, be careful, there are also many poisonous ones in their family."

"Hey, fungus, look, it's on this dead frog. Do you see it? When the light shines on it, it looks like chytrid, a fungus that almost made toad amphibians extinct in Australia."

The mycology professor's voice was faintly excited, and a large section of his explanation followed.

Ling Jiangyue searched around on the tablet interface and saw Lin Zheng's figure in the dark corner. He seemed to be bending down to observe something different.

"There are more than a handful of neatly bundled plant leaves here."

Several people moved closer, and the camera shifted to his perspective.

The plants that had been stored for many years were almost completely decomposed, with only the handfuls in the middle still retaining their shape.

"It's Kratom." Jiang Yuxing is relatively professional in botany, but he just looked around and didn't feel confident enough to speak.

“Kratom and ephedra appear here, doesn’t it feel right?”

Kratom is even more famous than ephedra because it is a natural poison that is banned in Thailand. It is prohibited from being introduced into our country and is naturally prohibited from being sold out.

"Is this a dried psilocybin mushroom?" Xin Wen, as a biology teacher, could also recognize some of them.

"There are also khat grass, acacia root bark, and coca." They are all hallucinogenic and nerve-stimulating natural poisons.

Now you can guess why those people came to this ghost place one after another.

Lin Zheng asked Jiang Yuxing to take away some creatures as evidence. His deep voice echoed in the cave: "It seems they are collecting or trading drugs."

The "Tanyou" and "Buddhist theory of time and space" are all pretense, and those people are just a group of people carrying poison.

By the time they came out of the tomb, the conclusion was almost formed.

Lin Zheng mentioned something that the biological department has been cracking down on: "In fact, some people have been buying and selling organisms from other countries in some black markets. Among them, plants that can act as hallucinogens and stimulants when chewed are the most common, followed by fungi with hallucinogenic effects. . In the past, there were offline transactions, but now many transactions are online, because most of the buyers are individual tourists who are making tentative purchases, so it is difficult to stop them.”

"There are also animals," Lin Jia added, "such as the Colorado River toad. Americans use toads as poison and lick them so much that they are afraid of humans."

Ling Jiangyue looked disgusted: "...It's so weird."

"Whether these people are picking and sharing for their own use or buying and selling, it is illegal. But these people were poisoned themselves. It may be that similar substances with unknown toxicity were mixed in, or they may be the sellers. It’s a trap.” Lin Zheng said again.

Xin Zhi couldn't bear it and asked: "Does this mean the thing we are looking for is here? Is it some kind of plant that has dried up or a toad that is dying?"

Lin Jia: "It's also possible that when these three things are eaten together, the toxic mixture produces the kind of psychologically induced physiological suicide effect."

The Xinwen brothers were not satisfied with this conclusion that was neither mysterious nor magical. They still felt that there should be some more mysterious unknown fungus that was the culprit. This fungus had a long lifespan and was somewhat different from Buddhism and Taoism. Well-known connections.

Xin Zhi even lost his temper, gasping and raising his voice as if scolding his subordinates: "This is completely inconsistent with the theme of our investigation! You are just doing things half-heartedly!"

Lin Jia grimaced: "I don't know what result you want, but this is what can be found so far..."

Before he finished speaking, Xin Wen suddenly said in horror: "Brother! Brother, what's wrong with you!"

Xin Zhi's body began to turn red inexplicably. A fever-like red color could be seen on the surface of his skin, and he was sweating profusely.

"I... what's wrong with me?"

Xin Zhi felt that his body was so hot that he wanted to swallow like crazy. Looking at his sister's frightened look, he suddenly reacted with a trembling voice: "What's wrong with me? Help me! It must be the spores of that thing that have sprayed into my respiratory tract." , my stomach is so hot, so hot!"

(End of this chapter)