The screen of the mobile phone is showing the video that was monitored on the seventh day after the apocalypse. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info

In this plant cultivation observation room, the man-eating flower at that time was still a very small plant, the size of a newly ripened wheat, and its body floated in the green metal tank medium, and there were many petal mouths, oh, these petal mouths should still be called "branches", they were similar to the leaves of other plants, not the petals of Cordyceps.

The Cordyceps cultivated in the metal trough, because of some special cultivation, although it is much larger than the ordinary Cordyceps, but it does not exceed the limit of Cordyceps, and the piranha flower at this time does not have the activity that the current piranha flower shows, it is still maintained in the category of plants, as a carnivore, the end of the world has probably had some impact on it, and it is not enough for it to undergo the current change.

Then, at this time, a strange animal suddenly appeared in the room.

It was a primate animal, it looked like a monkey, and the most special thing was the thick and long tail with black and white rings on it, for this animal, Ye Tuo had vaguely seen it somewhere, and he couldn't help but say: "This is, lemur?" ”

"That's right, it's a ring-tailed lemur, which belongs to the world's most frequent species." Yuan Xiaowei leaned her face close to the mobile phone screen, and looked at the lemur on it seriously, the lemur on the screen was looking at the whole room with some immersion, as if observing the danger that might be encountered, the black and white ring-like tail was swinging back and forth, slowly approaching the metal trough located in the innermost part of the room, Yuan Xiaowei said with a little puzzlement, "This animal seems to only exist on the island of Madagascar now, right?" Some large zoos may have them, but I remember that there is no lemur in the zoo in City Z, right, where did this lemur come from? ”

"On the seventh and eighth floors of Lilip Biotech is a small eco-room to study the relationship between species conflict and changes in the natural environment, and in order to study the topic of 'the dominance of primates in natural development', the company got two lemurs two years ago, and they have lived in the eco-environment room for two years, and this one is one of them." Alan explained on the phone screen.

"Smuggling rare animals?" The fat man was a little confused, "The style of this company seems to be very dark. ”

"The company only does this for the purpose of conducting nature research, in fact, the two lemurs have been living very well in the company, according to the records, they themselves were smuggled by criminals and found by the company's personnel, and after being rescued, because the zoo in Z City could not take care of them safely, they were sent here, and it is safer here than sending them to the zoo to be taken care of by those unprofessional keepers." Ah Lan's appearance appeared on the screen of the mobile phone, and she seemed to be a little unhappy to refute the fat man's words, it seemed that he still had a sense of belonging to Lilipu Biotech.

The fat man waved his hand with a smile and said disapprehantly, "Then what happened next?" He brought his fat face close to the screen, which continued with the previous video.

After the lemur approached the metal trough, he stared at the man-eating flower for a while, and then turned his head around with some caution and nervousness, and after confirming that there were no other animals, he secretly took out a test tube with a light blue appearance, which was previously held in his hand, but because of the blurry quality of the video, everyone did not see what he was holding clearly until now.

The test tube was covered with a plug at one end, and the lemur deftly pulled the plug off, poured the liquid into the culture tank, and then hurriedly slipped out of the room.

"What did he pour into the metal trough? What did you say earlier about the microbiota? The fat man asked in surprise, subconsciously turning his head to look at the metal trough in this room, not far from the metal trough, the man-eating flower was still writhing, as if it was going through some kind of transformation process.

"That's right, it's a fungus." Ah Lan's voice seemed to be a little nervous and urgent, and replied, "I compared the test tubes in the hands of the lemur, and some of the test tubes in the company that conduct special experiments have numbers on them, so you can distinguish the laboratory to which the test tube belongs and the experiments carried out. Saying this, a video screenshot of the lemur's closest position to the surveillance camera appeared on the mobile phone screen, the screenshot was enlarged, and after a certain amount of contrast processing, a blurred line of numbers appeared on the test tube in his paw, which was a string of numbers crossed by English and word count.

"Before the end of the day, the tube was owned by a lab on the fourth floor, and the tube was used to grow a fungal spores called ophiocordycepsunilateralis. ”

"What is this? How could it possibly make the piranha what it is now? Ye Chui asked, he was trying his best to regain the strength of his body.

"It's a fungus in the rainforest, and if you translate it into Chinese, it's called Cordyceps lateralis, and of course, it has another more famous name." As if to attract the sense of anticipation of Ye Chui and the others and animals, Ah Lan deliberately paused, "Zombie fungus." ”

"Zombie fungus!?" Wang Wenxue exclaimed.

"That's right, you've all heard of zombie ants, right? Zombie ants are ants parasitized by Cordyceps fungus, which can affect the behavior of ants by changing chemicals, making ants become zombie-like beings, so this fungus is also called zombie fungi! Ah Lan quickly explained, "However, the zombie fungus can only parasitize specific ants, not plants, and the fungus that the lemur poured into the metal trough has obviously evolved, and it is not the man-eating flower that has a huge impact on the apocalypse, but this fungus, and now the man-eating flower has become like this, I think it is caused by this fungus." ”

Although Ah Lan originally paid attention to the man-eating flower, he didn't pursue how it became what it is now, until just now Ye Chui wanted her to help find the weakness of the man-eating flower, and she re-watched the surveillance video of the man-eating flower, and then found this scene that she had missed before.

"The man-eating flower underwent a noticeable change in activity, from a plant to an animal, which began when the lemur poured these fluids containing fungal spores into a metal trough." Alan continued.

"So, what's going on with that lemur?" The fat man's voice asked suspiciously, "How did he know to pour zombie fungus into the metal trough of the man-eating flower?" Who told him to do that? Moreover, the zombie fungus has evolved after the apocalypse, does that mean that it can now even be infected by humans? "If zombie fungi can infect humans, doesn't that mean there will be real zombies?

"After being infected by a zombie fungus, it should show obvious signs of infection, but so far I haven't found any signs of animals being infected in this building, so they shouldn't be able to infect animals." Ah Lan guessed, but then her face wrinkled again on the screen, "However, the monitoring equipment installed in the ecological observation room on the seventh and eighth floors was destroyed as soon as it was after the apocalypse, and it was almost a small rainforest, and I don't know what happened inside." As if noticing Ye Chui's nervous expression, she hurriedly said, "But I don't think you need to worry too much about being infected by zombie fungi, the behavior patterns of humans and animals are far more complex than those of ants and bugs, even if zombie fungi have evolved, they should not have intelligence, they control ants by manipulating chemicals, and even if this mode of evolution does not change much, I think it is ineffective for people and most animals." ”

"In that case, it was the zombie fungus that infected the Cordyceps, because although the Cordyceps belongs to plants, it has an activity that other plants lack, so the zombie fungus changed the Cordyceps and became the current man-eating flower." Ye Trai grasped the key to the development of things, he was originally sitting on the ground, but now he stood up, "Then, under the control of zombie fungi, the man-eating flower captures humans and animals, and gains human intelligence by manipulating their heads. ”

The man-eating flower in front of you is composed of three parts: the body of the man-eating flower is the part that belongs to the cordyceps; The microbiota, also known as zombie fungi, causes changes in the cordyceps like some kind of catalyst; Then there are those human heads, zombie fungi lure cannibal flowers to steal human intelligence, so that the cannibal flowers in front of them gain stronger consciousness.

"That's how this thing came to be, so how are we going to kill it?" Knowing what was going on with the man-eating flower, the fat man looked at the writhing man-eating flower with some confusion, "I don't think it will let us leave casually." ”

"I have a way!" Ye Chui said with a solemn face at this time, when everyone looked at him, he had already jumped on the fat cat's body, and said to Garfield, "Garfield, aim the pistol at the man-eating flower!" ”

"Meow?" Garfield seemed to be a little puzzled, but he still pointed the gun in his hand at the writhing man-eating flower according to Ye Chui's request, "What do you want?" ”

Ye Trai jumped on the barrel of the pistol, he was still carrying the White Cat Glaive Knife in his hand, I saw him bend down and insert the handle of the White Cap Glaive Knife into the barrel of the pistol, the handle of the White Cat Glaive Knife was transformed from the handle of the carved knife, which was far thinner than a bullet and could be easily inserted into the barrel, and then Ye Trai stood on the barrel of the gun, and shot a few spider silk in his hand and stuck to the blade of the White Cat Glaive Knife.

He clutched the spider silk in his hand, took a deep breath, and said to the fat cat, "Shoot at the middle of the man-eating flower!" (To be continued.) )