4.6 Billion Year Symphony of Evolution

Book 2: Chapter Thirty Three “Under the Ice River”

Last chapter recap: Lin fought and won against a large and strong organism.

Over on Leviathans side, Lin had it wait for the Giant Trap Worm which hadnt moved. Lin didnt know if it wasnt hungry or if it was due to other reasons. But something interesting had occurred here.

Ice had formed from the surface of the water and spread downwards.

While Lin had seen ice form many times in the water, it hadnt ever seen such an unique phenomenon. The ice didnt spread rampantly like before. It was an enormous pillar of ice that stretched from the water surface deep into the water. The end of the pillar of ice slowly froze and lengthened. It almost reached the floor.

Why would this freezing be in the shape of a column and not freeze the surrounding water.

Leviathan had the Leviathan move close to the pillar of ice. This pillar of ice wasnt thick. Lin found many organisms frozen within but they were mostly floating organisms like the jellyfish.

The jellyfish might not know how to avoid the pillar of ice. They most likely had collided as the temperature around the ice pillar was not cold.

Lin had the Leviathan reach out a tentacle to touch the pillar of ice. In this moment, Lin felt a burst of pain. The surface of the tentacle was stuck to the ice.

The freezing cold spread through the tentacle cells. Lin immediately jerked the tentacle back. Accompanied by a strong tearing pain, Lin finally pulled the tentacle away.

An enormous wound appeared where the tentacle had touched the ice pillar for just a moment. Now, a big piece of ectoderm was stuck to the ice pillar.

Lin quickly repaired the tentacles wound. The blood vessels would automatically close when wounded to stop any cells from spilling out. But Lin was more concerned with this pillar of ice.

Such powerful freezing ability

Why would ice have such an unique power? Unlike normal ice, it had a great ability to freeze things but would not spread freely through the water.

Why? And the surrounding water wasnt cold. Didnt this phenomenon only occur when the water temperature was extremely low?

Lin wasnt able to understand.

Lin suddenly thought of an interesting experiment. It had the Leviathan form a ball with chitin substance. The ball had a long handle on the surface and a hook at the end.

Lin put the ball on the pillar of ice. As expected, the ice immediately spread along the ball and quickly froze all of the chitin substance.

Then Lin grabbed the handle with its tentacle to pull the frozen ball off before throwing it to the Giant Trap Worms trap.

The moment the ice ball was thrown it, the trap and the surrounding sand shook violently. The Giant Trap Worm clearly reacted greatly to this. The ice on the ball slowly spread, and the vibrations in the surrounding sand grew stronger.

Suddenly, the sand near the trap opening lifted. An enormous organism charged out of the sand and swam into the water, shaking off sand.

Was this the true form of the Giant Trap Worm? Not as large as Lin had imagined. The trap Lin had seen at the start was actually the entire body of this organism. An elliptical structure, the head was the trap opening. And the tail had a ring of swimming tentacles and a spout, which the reason it was able to charge out of the sand.

But the Giant Trap Worms tentacles and spout were all small compared to its body. It swam for a while in the water before it seemed to lose its energy and sink back to to the sandy bottom.

Then it dug on the sand using its tentacles in an attempt to burrow back into the sand.

Lin would not let the Giant Trap Worm succeed. Leviathan released dozens of flying saws. They charged towards the Giant Trap Worm, spinning at high speed and using their sawteeth to cut off the Giant Trap Worms tentacles. As the sharp sawteeth sliced through, large amounts of cells sprayed out of the wound. The Giant Trap Worm immediately charged out a short distance using its spout.

The flying saws chased after and cut towards the wounds on the Giant Trap Worms tentacles. These wounded tentacles werent thick to begin with and were immediately cut off. This enormous organism lost the ability to move.

Lin did not feel any great joy at defeating this organism even though it was more than ten times the size of the Leviathan. This kind of organism wasnt a savage hunter.

But this organism was unique. It had evolved a hollow body to act as a trap.

Leviathan moved closer to the Giant Trap Worm and looked with its eyeballs. It found that the chitin substance object it had thrown in before was not frozen any longer. It should have melted. While its freezing ability was strong, there was no value as it melted so quickly.

Then the Leviathan swam to the tail of the Giant Trap Worm and released smaller flying saws to cut at the soft structures inside the Giant Trap Worms spout.

Lin quickly killed this enormouso organism. Its interior structure was simple, the oval body hollow. The inside and outer walls were covered in shell and suited to being used as a trap. As a result, all the organs were squeezed into the narrow space between the inner and outer walls. It could produce a large amount of dissolving fluid and quickly fill its body.

Lin felt that it needed to copy this structures method of making dissolving fluid quickly. The giant trap worms cells appeared to have the ability of swallowing some harmless substances in the water, and then quickly transform it into a powerful dissolving fluid. Lin had to learn this.

As to the other parts, there was nothing special. This organism was large but its structure was simple.

Then Lin would continue to travel. However, Lin needed a base here, primarily to study that wondrous pillar of ice.

Lin released gatherers to burrow into the giant trap worm and consume the structures and cells the flying saws had destroyed. In the end, only the large elliptical structure remained. Lin put the base seed into this hard shell.

Then the Leviathan left this region. It swam upwards to the unknown.

Night was still some time away, and the corps ball the main base had caught seemed lifeless. It seemed to have died due to drying out. While it didnt have a mouth, it had gills. If the gills slowly lost moisture, the organism would die to due to inability to gather oxygen.

Lin didnt know the details about the structure because it had never made gills before. If it was on land, it would rely on the ectoderm cells to gather oxygen.

The Leviathan was close to the water now. Lin felt the water which should be warm turn colder and cold. It found the water surface was covered by a large patch of ice crystal. The light flashed uniquely as it passed through the light ice.

The ice pillar had stretched from this layer of ice down into the water.

Leviathan swam near the ice layer and used its tentacle to tap. Lin found that this ice layer did not have the ability to rapidly freeze and shattered upon impact just like normal ice.

Why was the ice pillar so strange? This was something Lin could understand at the moment.

Leviathan continued to swim slowly under the ice layer. A considerable number of organisms, mostly jellyfish, lived in this cold environment. They swayed underneath the ice layer. While they were beautiful in the light through the ice, Lin found then obtrusive.

Lin had to pay attention that Leviathans tentacles would not be stun. When it swam past the swarm of jellyfish, the ice layer in front of Lin became thicker, and the light grew dimmer.

Not many organisms were in this environment. Leviathan continued to advance to the icy region of water.

The deeper it swam, the darker the surrounding environment became. Lin had to ignite its lantern to illuminate the strangely shaped ice crystals above.

After swimming for a while underneath the dark ice, Lin still didnt find any organisms. As Lin hesitated over whether it should turn back, it found a beam of light up ahead.

A hole?

When Leviathan swam underneath the light, it found the source of the light was a circular hole in the ice layer at least two times the width of the Leviathan.

So strange. Why would there be a hole like this in the ice?

Leviathan swam under the opening. It saw that there were marks as though something sharp had dug past. This hole had some organism dug this? Why did it do that?

Lin found these organisms were very new, and pieces of ice were still falling down maybe the hole-digging organism was nearby?

Suddenly, the eyeballs floating around Leviathan saw an enormous black shadow. The shadow charged rapidly towards Leviathan from underneath!

Translator Ramblings: To the person who gave me ko-fi gold, thank you. I will read up and figure out what to do with it. In the meantime, if you like, send me an email with which novel you would like to see an extra chapter of.

Brinicles are very cool. Any opinions on the new website layout?