4.6 Billion Year Symphony of Evolution - Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Chapter Eight End of Winter, Beginning of Summer

Coldness, this was the only thing in this expanse of water .

Lin’s acid ejectors and cone-shaped cells had all been sacrificed in the spreading ice . Only 91 diggers had survived . They formed a sphere that protected Lin’s observer from being affected

The world outside this sphere was already a world of ice . Through the transparent bodies of these diggers, Lin was able to see that this was not the blue liquid water of before, but a motionless crystal mirror .

Lin’s cell group had been heavily impacted by these seemingly beautiful crystals . Even though Lin did not know why the last remaining diggers were unfrozen, Lin did not want to stay here .

Lin had the diggers start to move in an attempt to leave this place .

Some of the diggers were glued to the ice but if they twisted slightly, they would detach themselves .

These diggers seemed to have evolved . In the past, the cells would be freeze if they came into the slightest contact with the ice, but they were much more resilient now .

However, when they moved, Lin could clearly feel the coldness when the outer membrane of the cell touched the ice … …

This seemed to also be a kind of pain, but it was different than other kinds of pain . Lin did not feel a strong desire to escape the pain but this feeling made Lin want to shrink into a ball and remain unmoving .

However, this feeling did not affect Lin’s activities .

This expanse of water was frozen and the only remaining portion of water that was free was this little place where Lin was with its ninety two cells . All the water surrounding this place had formed impenetrable ice .

Maybe it could dig through this?

Lin had the diggers use their denticles to scrape the ice but other than producing a few shards, they were of no help . It would be almost impossible to break through the entire expanse of ice .

Lin didn’t know what to do .

The decrease in its cell group had caused its intelligence to decrease greatly . It was unable to ponder anything complex .

But even if Lin had the intelligence of a cell group of one thousand, it would not have a solution . At this time, it could only wait .

Luck or death .

It didn’t know how much time had passed . Lin knew the term time but did not know what it represented . However, Lin could feel the effects of time on it .

First … … hunger .

It was the first time Lin experienced hunger . There seemed to be a feeling in Lin’s thoughts that called it to search for food to replenish the expenditure of energy due to movement .

Lin had the diggers stop scraping the ice . It lowered its activity level to decrease its energy consumption . It was still able to understand this rationale .

But, the lack of movement did not mean that they had paused . The cells were still using up energy, even though this was at a much slower rate than when they were moving .

Lin continued to wait . It did what every organism should do and when an organism could not do a thing, remain still . They would wait to see if the surroundings would produce something that they could do .

In the process of waiting, several diggers used up all their energy . This was another kind of pain . It was different than other pain . When the energy was all used up, the cell membrane and the nucleus would start to wither, shrivel up, and then die .

Lin had the other cells eat the corpses of the cells that had no energy left . Their deaths could help give more time to other cells .

The phenomenon of death by starvation caused Lin to have a new thought .

Every time a cell ate, it would quickly digest what it ate and then divide . They would quickly use up the energy they obtained .

However, what if it could store energy? If there was a way to store energy in the cells, Lin would not have to fear if it encountered a situation like this again .

Lin thought of a new term … … fat .

Even though it did not understand the details, the term seemed to represent food that was stored .

Then next time, it would try to see if it could store food .

If it could survive this … …

With this thought, Lin remained in a motionless state . All of the cells were the same as they floating silently in the water .

The icy cold was draining Lin’s mind . The coldness made Lin want to sleep forever like this … …

But Lin would not give up . Even though the wait was long, but luck would come … …

Lin’s observer found that a crack appeared in the ice layer in front of him … …

Warmth, Lin felt something that was not the same as ice . This new feeling awakened every one of Lin’s cells . Lin found that there were more and more cracks … …

Under Lin’s gaze, the ice crystals slowly cracked and became countless large pieces . These ice pieces started to slowly shrink, just like the process of food being digested . They decreased in size, and then completely disappeared in the water … …

These ice crystals appeared out of nowhere, and froze everything . Then they instantly disappeared . If it wasn’t for some shards of ice that had not yet melted, Lin would feel that nothing had ever happened .

There were only 77 cells left, including Lin’s observer,that had passed this danger .

They now had immunity against the great cold . This disaster had almost killed off Lin’s cell group but Lin also became stronger .

Lin’s mission right now was to find anything that it could eat to recover the size of its original cell group . These cells which had used up large amounts of energy were slower and more fragile .

Lin’s cell group swam in the water . Even though the ice had melted, the water was still cold . Lin reached the place the enormous food had been before . This white food was covered in a layer of ice . It seemed the ice had affected this place as well .

Lin had the diggers try to break apart the ice layer on the surface of the food yet no matter how they twisted, they could only slice off some shards . It was difficult to create any damage to the ice layer .

What hadn’t the ice here melted, and it was so hard … …

Lin did not know why but it could feel that this place was slowly becoming cold again . The ice shards floating in the water showed signs of increasing in size .

Maybe this place would be frozen again .

When this thought appeared in Lin’s mind, it instantly took all of its cells to leave this place . Lin didn’t want the past situation to repeat .

Lin’s only hope was to once again go into the deep blue to search for new food and a warm place .

Warmth … …

Lin could feel that the water in one direction was different compared to the other water and it held warmth that made Lin feel comfortable .

Right, this was the area the shapeshifting cell that fled in .

Not long after the cell group swam, Lin found the transforming cell . This enormous being had not escaped the danger of being frozen . There was a layer of thin ice over its body . The enormous body was slowly floating in the water without any signs of life .

Even though the ice seemed to have melted, this cell seemed unable to wake up again

Lin had the diggers go forward . The thin layer of ice on the shapeshifting cell was fragile and easy to break . The diggers could easily cut through it . The body of the shapeshifting cell that was still soft was exposed in front of Lin .

Eat .

Lin only had this one thought .

The diggers started to feed on the shapeshifting cell’s body . It used its old method of the denticles to cut down pieces before slowly engulfing them . After they replenished their energy, the damage caused by the cells slowly faded and they became energetic again .

Then it was cell division . The number of diggers slowly started to increase .

But Lin did not forget what it had thought about before .

It needed to store energy . Lin needed the stuff called fat to guarantee that the cells could still survive periods of time without food .

There was also something else .

Lin hoped that it could find the acid ejectors and cone-shaped cells that had completely disappeared in the ice disaster .