4.6 Billion Year Symphony of Evolution

Book 2: Chapter Twenty Seven “The Light In The Darkness”

Last chapter recap: Lin discovers photosynthetic algae and goes onto land.

As Lin continued to travel forward, day and night switched back and forth.

Lin saw many things. In this vast water, sand was the primary environmental characteristic and then there was some rock. Lin rarely saw anything other than these two things. If Lin discovered something else, it would not miss it.

Right now, Lin was swimming towards a place like that. However, darkness blocked its progress.

Cold, empty. In the dark water, Lin could only see the surrounding environment illuminated by the dim light of the lantern. Lin had experienced night many times but it could not familiarize itself with night.

The light of the lantern was always limited and restricted Lins vision. When night came, Lin would slowly rise to the water surface to gaze at the endless stars. Then it would start moving again when day came.

Lin closely rose to the water surface. However, this time, the sky seemed slightly unusual

The Leviathan floated to the surface and observed upwards using an eye it had made temporarily. But it only saw darkness.

Where were the stars? Where were the flashing lights? Had they disappeared?

Would they also be obscured by the darkness?

As Lin was puzzling over this, an extremely bright light suddenly flashed by. Its light illuminated the entire region of water. Lin could feel the air and water trembling the moment it appeared.

What was that? So unique

Lin suddenly became excited. Travelling, as expected, was the correct choice. Lin was able to see many unknown and interesting things.

Then multiple lines of light flashed and disappeared. However, the light was not as strong, and the water and air did not shake.

These lights that originally belonged to the sky flashed by. While they were not as beautiful as the starry sky, Lin felt extremely interested.

Suddenly, Lin felt the outer shell of the Leviathan being hit by something. While the force was small, there were many of them.

Was this water?

Countless small droplets of water fell from the air region. They hit the Leviathans outer shell as well as the surrounding water, creating waves and ripples.

Such an unique phenomenon. Why would water fall from the air?

Lin was curious but it did not linger here because this region of water was starting to shake. If Lin did not leave, it might be carried somewhere unknown.

The Leviathan released a part of the gas inside its gas sac and continued to sink into the water. Only when it reached the deep would it not be affected by the water current.

Lin did not like darkness. In this world, Lin was only accompanied by the weak lantern light. Everything became extremely difficult during this time. While LIn would occasionally find some organisms in the darkness, most of the time, there were none.

However, single-celled organisms were everywhere. Lin suspected they were in all waters.

Suddenly, an enormous black shadow flashed by Leviathan and then disappeared into the darkness where the lantern could not illuminate.

It seemed that Lin wasnt alone in the darkness.

The Leviathan released a large number of floating lanterns to increase the range of Lins vision. Lin observed carefully if that organism would appear again.

The Leviathan still continued to sink and appeared defenseless. As expected, that figure appeared again. It immediately caused some lanterns lights to go out. It seemed they were eaten.

This organism ate the lanterns upon appearing and then fled back into the darkness. As the lantern light was not bright to begin with, Lin could not see the organism clearly.

However, Lin estimated it was a fast organism about the size of the mothership. Lin found that the lanterns had died being torn apart by countless hooks.

This was an arthropod.¹

Arthropods mostly stayed on the sand and moved slowly. The most common trilobite was an arthropod.

This was the first time Lin encountered such a fast arthropod. It felt peculiar. Maybe its inner structures would give Lin a surprise.

This arthropod didnt directly attack Leviathan but swam around to hunt Lins floating lanterns.

Lin put away all of its lanterns. It created a special lantern. This type of lantern would give off light, but Lin shoved many exploding balls inside.

Lin released many lanterns filled with exploding balls. Not far from the Leviathan, one was immediately eaten. While Lin could not see in the dark, the special sense tentacles on the Leviathan immediately detected the vibrations in the water.

That organism was shaking its head. Lin could feel the water currents it produced. It appeared the organism had fallen for the trap.

Following this, Lin released a special exploding bomb. It was similar to the previous exploding bombs, having a siphon and jet system to swim fast. Lin added light balls on the sides for illumination and an eyeball at the front, naming it a Light Guided Exploding Bomb!

Countless Light Guided Exploding Bombs charged towards the arthropod in the darkness. When they neared their target, Lin saw the other clearly.

This organism had a flat and oval body with leaf-shaped limbs on both sides for movement. At the front of the head was a pair of thick and inwardly curved segmented limbs with many sharp reverse hooks on the surface.

Lin would call it a hooked worm.

At this time, it was shaking its head in the water. It appeared the exploding bomb had affected it significantly. This was where Lin was different from other organisms. When other organisms felt pain, they would commonly flee or go crazy, doing some strange things to accelerate their own deaths.

Most likely, the cells were constantly relaying messages back to the brain and caused the brain to become abnormal due to too many messages. If the hooked worm had a brain, that is.

To Lin, pain was a message to attack, but it didnt affect Lins thoughts at all.

Lin saw the hooked worms weakness through the eyeball of the Light Guided Exploding Bomb the gills.

Many organisms had gills, used to absorb oxygen. On the surface, they appeared like cracks, and there were frequently many soft small tentacle-like structures inside.

The exploding balls charged towards the hooked worms weakness. When they exploded, the dissolving fluid didnt just corrode the outer shell, a large amount also went into the hooked worms gill.

The hooked worm immediately twisted furious in pain. It seemed that attacking the weakness was effective.

Lin relied on the air storers to gather oxygen outside. They would then return to the air sac. All of Lins openings had the ability to open and close. It never exposed its weaknesses on the outside.

Lin suddenly found that it liked to compare itself to other organisms. Lin was superior.

Lin continued to release large numbers of Light Guided Exploding Bombs to attack the hooked worm. It created countless corrosive marks and wounds on the hooked worms carapace but because the hooked worm was moving, it could not easily aim at the gill.

Under constant attack, the hooked worm did not flee but spread open the segmented limbs on its head as it charged towards the Leviathan.

Did it know that the Leviathan had released the bombs? So intelligent, for arthropods.

The hooked worm came onto the Leviathan and scraped on the armor of the Leviathan using the hooks on its segmented limbs. Lin did not act. It wanted to test the defensive ability of the Leviathans armor and see if it could stop the attack of such a large organism.

After the hooked worm tried for a while and found it could not wound the Leviathans armor, it decided to withdraw and leave. At this time, Leviathan suddenly raised the tentacles under its body and wrapped them around the hooked worms head.

The muscles in Lins tentacles tensed and contracted. The hooked worms armored head trembled under this force and cracks appeared.

While the hooked worm furiously struggled it couldnt break free of Lins tentacles.

Crush it like this.

Gurgle

What was this feeling?

A strange feeling came from Lins thoughts. The temperature of the water suddenly increased and the entire region of water seemed to be shaking.

Boom

In this moment, the entire water region was as bright as day.

What was that?

Burning hot lava exploded out ot the enormous rock protrusion on the sea bed. The entire seabed was constantly trembling.

This was where Lin wanted to go to! During the day, that only looked like an enormous hole at the bottom of the water. Now it sprayed out lava?

The light of the lava illuminated the dark water. They spilled outwards onto the surrounding seabed. All organisms were desperately running away and those that could not move were consumed by the lava.

From where Lin was right now, it was not threatened. It calmly crushed the hooked worms head into pieces and then had the gathered the remains and ate them.

As Lin enjoyed its food, it admired this unique underwater scene.

As the lava exploded out accompanied by large burst of gas bubbles and things like smoke which Lin had seen before, the power of the explosion rose into the water, and Lin could clearly feel the accompanying high heat.

Lin also saw the opening where lava had exploded from slowly bulge up. However, it stopped shortly after, and so did the lava.

The lava gradually slowed its spread, and stopped moving as though it was solidifying. As the bright red light became dim and disappeared, this region of water became dark once again.

Translator Ramblings: Times like this I wish I learned Latin so I can create my own scientific and grammatically correct species names.

1. Arthropods have shown up in previous chapters but they were always described as segmented limbed. Now arthropod since that is the correct term.