4.6 Billion Year Symphony of Evolution

Book 2: Chapter 51 “Assembly of Organisms”

Such a pity

Watching as the jellyfish broke up and fell into the water, Lin once again lost the chance to study floatation. It could not return to the hot water to gather the pieces of the jellyfish.

Why would the punctured jellyfish kill itself? Lin did not understand these jellyfish and didnt know if they had brains. The surrounding jellyfish grabbed enough trilobites and floated away from here. Lin did not know when it would meet them again.

Never mind, continue climbing.

Some new arthropods were climbing out of the water, but in decreasing numbers. This meant the ocean was growing hotter and they were dying in the water before climbing out.

Lin did not know why there was no feeling of heat in the air.

When daytime passed, Leviathan finally climbed to the top of the steep walls and finally reached the northern land.

The land on top of the cliffs was a flat and wide land of rock, and in the distance, tall sharp pillars. Lin could see the tall pillars now. They were tightly closed together, the shortest a dozen meters, the tallest over a hundred meters, and they were all covered in green.

Were those organisms?

This idea just flashed through Lins mind. Compared to those pillars, Lin was more concerned with the state of the flat expanse in front of it.

The rocky ground was covered in damp puddles of water, and the corpses of fish all over. Most of them were helmet fish that had been pushed up by the tsunami. Lins surviving thirty one transporters were all scattered on the rocky ground.

This place seemed to be filled with some special scents produced by the corpses. All organisms would have many wild cells on their bodies. These cells would usually just eat the waste produced by their hosts. Once their hosts died, they would start to decompose the cells of the host who had lost the ability to fight back. The strange scents would be produced during this process.

This seemed to be called rot.

Rotting would produce a great odor and the brontoscorpio that had arrived first were attracted by the scnet of the fish corpses. They feasted on the food here so Lins transporters were safe for now. Lins Leviathan was unable to move at the moment so it had to make modifications.

Leviathan had to be changed to adjust to the land, and some of the internal structures had to be switched out. Because the tolerances were different than when climbing, the last segment of the segmented limbs were thickened and the ends enlarged to tolerate Leviathans weight.

After the modifications, Leviathan started to move on the land. It needed to find the transporters and add appendages they could use to move on land. Soon, Leviathan neared the first transporter. There was some minor trouble here.

An enormous dunkleosteus ten meters long was blocking Lin. A group of brontoscorpio were surrounding it, and using their pincers to tear flesh and skin. The transporter was coincidentally at the tail end of the dunkleosteus corpse.

Because the dunkleosteuss scent was so great, the scorpions ignored the transporter.

But when Leviathan came near, the scorpions turned around, raising their pincers and waving their bodies in an attack fashion. They did not want to attack, only to drive away Leviathan.

Lin ignored them and the Leviathan walked to the tail. It started to make some appendages inside its body. In reality, this was a kind of segmented limb. Because the transporters were filled with nutrients, their outer shell could not be opened. Otherwise, the contents would spill out. So they needed Leviathan to help them.

These appendages all had their internal systems, and could move without needing to connect to the body. Leviathan created six appendages and added very sticky chitin substances on the ends before gluing the appendages onto the transporter. When the chitin substance hardened, Lin only had to add eyeballs to complete the process.

Using legs like this, Lin could even get non-living things like rocks to move. However, the appendages could not last for long. Most of the structures were muscles and there were not a great amount of nutrients stored in them.

Leviathan left with the outfitted transporter. Those scorpions, who had been waving threateningly, turned and immediately went back to eating the dunkleosteus corpse, completely uninterested in Leviathan and the transporters.

Leviathan and the transporter walked among the corpses in search of other transporters. There were a lot of fish here. While many brontoscorpio and trilobites had climbed up, Lin guessed there was enough fish for ten days.

Lin found some lobe-finned fish hadnt yet died. They struggled fiercely on the rocky ground. Once their gills lacked water, they would quickly die from inability to breathe. The brontoscorpio also had gills but they seemed to have some other special structures so they did not fear their gills lacking water.

Lin had never killed a brontoscorpio to study as it found it unnecessary.

While this place was covered in water due to the tsunami, the water would be blown away by the air sooner or later. Lin didnt know if the ocean water would return to normal by then. If the ocean water was still abnormal, it had to survive on land

Lin quickly found another transporter in a pile of helmet fish. This pile of corpses was taken over by a kind of small trilobite. These trilobites were small, but there were many.

Lin still ignored them and got the transporter out.

In the searching process, Lin did not encounter any dangers and found all the transporters, gathering them in a spot on the ground empty of corpses. What should it do next? What was the state of the calamity now?

While no vibrations would occur here in the next few years, Lin was still worried about those fireballs. Those were things Lin could not predict, and didnt know where they came from

Unable to predict things in the air it would have been great if Lin could catch the jellyfish that could fly. But they were so good at escaping and would kill themselves if caught. So troublesome.

If Lin returned to the water, it would encounter many problems. Of course, on land, there would be some new problems. Lin could not live on land just because it could resist ultraviolet light. Lin would wait and see. Would the ocean recover

Lin had many transporters that had been thrown far into the land, most likely in the group of sharp pillars. While they were dead, Lin would find them if given the opportunity.

As night came, Lin created some lanterns and put them around the group to observe the surroundings and warn of danger.

The night wind came with a long-lost cold. Lin had not felt such discomfort for a long time. Lin saw countless lights flashing in the distant sky. Were those fireballs?

Lin obtained a new term: meteor. Those meteors had not flown over here.

If those things hit the land, they would be a great threat As Lin thought this, it created a new small unit called a tester. Their use was to jump down the cliffs and test the temperature of the water. From the tester, Lin learned the water was still very hot. While the temperature hadnt increased, it would be difficult to live in it.

Why did the air not heat up? The temperature of the water should affect the air.

While Lin didnt know the reason, Lin felt that it would be wonderful. If the air heated up, then no organism would be able to survive.

Lin looked at the distant meteors and waited for night to pass.

The smell of rotting corpses floated around this vast area. This scent was a message signalling food. However, Lin had enough nutrients right now and did not have to fight for corpses with those scorpions in the dark.

Some organisms were repelled by the scent of the rotting corpses because their cells could not defeat the rotting bacteria, or the toxins produced by the rotting bacteria. When they smelled corpses, their cells would create a substance. This substance would cause the brain to feel a message called disgust which would stop the organism from nearing the rotting corpse or eating it.

This was a strange feeling. Their brains were unable to judge if something was edible and needed cells to produce a substance to make the brain feel disgust and not go close.

Why go to such trouble? If one knew that something couldnt be eaten, then dont go over there. Why waste power by producing the feeling of disgust? Some organisms would throw up their undigested food when the feeling of disgust was great enough.

Was there a need for such waste?

Lin had experienced a hundred million ears and had a conclusion a normal organisms brain had a consciousness of which a part did not know what the other cells in the body were thinking. Of course the cells did not know what the consciousness thought, so the cells would produce some fluid substances, or pass certain energy to produce all kinds of responses. These responses would tell or control the consciousness and occasionally cause very stupid things to occur like avoiding corpses and wasting large amounts of food.

So troublesome. This was a shortcoming of all organisms with brains.

Lin would occasionally think of trying to make a brain, but when it thought of all this, it would immediately throw away the idea.

As Lin pondered these matters in boredom, the night was about to pass, and Lin could not see the meteors any longer.

But as the day came, Lin found its sight was even worse than in nighttime

Translator Ramblings: Lin is so funny looking down on all these organisms who need to have a central organ that control other cells through secretions.