4.6 Billion Year Symphony of Evolution

Book 2: Chapter 36 “Crystal Ecology”

Last chapter recap: Lin stumbles across a weird stone and ends up in the land of crystals.

Why would this little stone inside the tentacle always point in one direction? Magnetic field? Magnet?

Strange terms appeared in Lins thoughts. It did not understand what they meant, but it knew that magnet represented attraction.

The stone was attracted to something?

Leviathan put away the base seed. Lin suddenly had a feeling that the destination of this stone would be more suitable to release the seed.

Lin continued to advance in this dark sea covered in crystals. As it followed the stones guidance Lin found the surrounding crystals increased in size. Some were not fragments, but complete pieces.

Not just the crystal bacteria lived here. Some flat fish also lived here but these flat fish were of strange appearance. Their heads were thicker and rounder than normal flat fish and the upper head was covered in a thin shell.

Why did they grow like that? Wouldnt they swim slower? It wasnt of much use in defense

Lin was only slightly puzzled. It passed by the fish and continued to swim forward. The crystals here became bigger and bigger. The scattered fragments were almost completely absent. As Lin observed the surrounding environment, it sketched out the entire regions appearance and size in its mind.

The perimeter of this region were cracked crystals, and the crystals became more complete as Lin went in. What had created this kind of environment?

Maybe an organism?

Many flat fish surrounded the Leviathan. They seemed extremely interested in Leviathans lanterns. Lin did not see their eyeballs, but they seemed able to feel light.

Lin stretched out a tentacle to grab a few, tear them apart, and eat them. Lin found their bodies werent unique. However, their outer layer contained many rhombus crystal pieces, and large numbers of crystal bacteria squeezed within the cracks of these scales.

Leviathan reached the next area. These crystals were conical in shape and stood up from the stand. This could be called a forest of crystals.

Another kind of organism appeared here. They had soft and small bodies but carried large shell. Organisms like this seemed to be called snails.

Lin seemed to have known the word snail before but this was the first time Lin saw the snail organism. Its shell was made out of crystal, and there were many crystal bacteria within its body alongside its organs.

It seemed that every organism here seemed to have a relationship with the crystal bacteria. How did the crystal bacteria communicate with them?

This kind of relationship seemed to be called symbiosis but why did they come together?

Lin hadnt seen even one ice crystal monster up until now. It was possible that this kind of organism was rare.

Lin continued to advance. The tentacle with the stone moved more violently and this meant that Lin was close to the destination.

Lin suddenly thought that it had only been paying attention to this side. It hadnt advanced anything back at the main base. Lin had deconstructed the corps ball. The internal structure of this organism was special. It had a large sac for the small corps balls to live in. Because the organism didnt have a mouth, it relied on the small corps balls to feed it food.

While interesting, Lin was more interested in this side of things so it put the matters of the main base to the side. Lin could have the warheads act automatically.

Suddenly, an enormous organism flashed through the light of the lantern.

Ice crystal monster?

Lin had the lanterns chase that organism. However, it swam quickly and Lin only saw the debris its tail brought up.

Lin retrieved the lanterns and grew out a lantern tentacle outside the Leviathans shell for illumination. Then Lin had the Leviathan move at full speed to chase this organism. It was swimming in the direction the stone was pointing in.

Leviathan used the water spouts to spin as it swam. This way, its speed could match other speedy organisms.

After chasing for a while, Lin saw the organism again. This was an ice crystal monster but it was much smaller. It swam quickly just using the spouts on its rear limbs. The Leviathan had a difficult time catching up.

Lin noticed at this time the surrounding environment had changed again. Some enormous crystals appeared. They stood up from the seabed like enormous stones. Many organisms were active around these crystal rocks. The small ice crystal monster suddenly accelerated. It charged to an enormous wall of crystal and then burrowed in.

This was

When Leviathan came close, Lin found that there was an opening just perfect for the ice crystal monster to climb in on this crystal wall.

Also, this crystal was extremely large, incredibly large.

Lin could only see an enormous barrier of crystal. It blocked the Leviathan completely and the light of the lantern could not reach the end. Then the Leviathan released a large number of lanterns to swim in three different directions to see how large this crystal was.

The lanterns and eyeballs that went to the two sides swam for a long time before circling back to the Leviathans location. It seemed that this crystal was a cylindrical structure. It was wide enough to hold several hundred leviathans, but the eyeballs and lanterns swimming upwards hadnt reached the end of the crystal barrier

Was it

Leviathan had the lanterns stop. Then the Leviathan swam upwards following the crystal barrier. It found that the crystal continued to stretch upwards until Leviathan got close to the ice layer covering the water surface.

This icy barrier broke through the ice barrier and stretched above the water surface

So enormous this wasnt any normal crystal, it was something that could be called a mountain.

It reached from the dark abyss deep in the water to the region of air. This was a crystal mountain!

How was it able to grow so large? How did this form?

Lin found the more it saw, the more it understood, and the more questions it had.

There were no organisms on the crystal barrier, unlike the numerous organisms that gathered in the deep water. Lin was puzzled by this.

However, Lin felt it would be good to dig a hole in this and make a base. With so much crystals, it could create many units with shells.

While food was lacking here, Lin had finished that experiment.

It was the last step of eating light, mixing water and certain gases with certain substances it obtained from the green cells. Lin could form something edible.

Lin completely mastered the ratios involved. At present, it could produce a new type of cell.

While the things that needed to be mixed together were many and complex, in actuality, they were few in number, and most of them were not edible to begin with. Adding on that these substances were everywhere in the water, Lin found it extremely profitable to use them to make food.

However, the efficiency of this process was not high. The green cells that Lin had caught and only fed on light as food reproduced slowly. Some other types of green cells reproduced quickly, but they would feed on other substances or single cell organisms.

While the efficiency wasnt high, this was a source that was endless. Consequently, Lin felt that this study was extremely useful. It would be able to build bases in areas lacking food but rich in other resources.

Maybe Lin would call this photosynthesis and chlorophyll.

Actually, organisms that could absorb light werent just the green ones. Lin had seen single cells of different color able to eat light. Some were red, others blue, and even black ones existed.

Lin planned to make a structure for photosynthesis at each base, but it would do the one here first.

Night was passing by and day time was about to arrive. A layer of light passed through the ice layer above. Lin ignored it. It had the Leviathan build drillers. This type of cell were cone-shaped with denticles and at the end, they had three water spouts, allowing them to spin rapidly and drill into the crystal wall.

Then Lin had the gatherers collect the crystal debris scattered in the surroundings.

When the debris was dissolved, it could be made into armor. Dissolving fluid was divided into several types. Not every type could dissolve crystals. Some dissolving fluids would completely destroy the crystals to the point they could not be used again. As a result, making armor like this was slightly troublesome.

Daytime had arrived while Lin was making holes on the crystal wall. As the light from above grew brighter, the drillers in the crystal wall suddenly felt the surroundings grow hotter

Right, these crystals would absorb heat!

Lin suddenly thought of this but it was too late. The drillers had dug too deep and were unable to withdraw before they were killed by the high temperature.

The entire crystal seemed to absorb the light of day and become dazzling.

Such high temperature. Maybe Lin couldnt build a base here. No wonder no organism remained close to the crystals.

Then what would it be like for the ones in the deep ocean?