4.6 Billion Year Symphony of Evolution - Volume 2 - Chapter 33

Chapter 33

Chapter 33 – Underneath the Ice River

Over on Leviathan’s side, Lin had it wait for the Giant Trap Worm which hadn’t moved . Lin didn’t know if it wasn’t 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 hadn’t ever seen such an unique phenomenon . The ice didn’t 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 wasn’t 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 tentacle’s 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 wasn’t cold . Didn’t this phenomenon only occur when the water temperature was extremely low?

Lin wasn’t 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 Worm’s 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 Worm’s 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 Worm’s 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 Worm’s tentacles . These wounded tentacles weren’t 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 wasn’t 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 Worm’s 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 structure’s method of making dissolving fluid quickly . The giant trap worm’s 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 didn’t have a mouth, it had gills . If the gills slowly lost moisture, the organism would die to due to inability to gather oxygen .

Lin didn’t 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 Leviathan’s 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 didn’t 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?