Published at 12th of November 2020 10:24:36 AM
Chapter Forty Three The End of the River
Lin did not think for long before it had the Leviathan follow the helmet fish up the mouth of the river .
Of course, Leviathan did not care about salinity and other factors . When other organisms swam, their organs would continuously exchange all kinds of materials and nutrients with the outside water . They were unable to tolerate any changes in the water .
But Leviathan did not have a nutrient system that was directly connected to the water . While it had the ability to absorb water and spout water, the water would not go into the blood or other circulatory systems . Leviathan relied on a small type of cell to gather the nutrients and food from the water . These cells were an evolution of the gatherer who could separate the benign and malicious materials in the water . They could also judge which materials the Leviathan needed and the amounts .
In other words … … when entering the river, the gatherer would gather more salt and less water .
The Leviathan followed the helmet fish to swim deeper into the river . There were not many organisms in the water, only some small ones on the riverbed sand . No hunters here could threaten this group of helmet fish .
Other than Lin … …
Lin did not know how long the helmet fish would swim so Leviathan created an eyeball on the back of the Leviathan . The Leviathan floated to the water surface and observed the changes on land .
Leviathan had never created eyeballs before in this period of existence . It seems to purely live through its smell and touch senses . Lin felt this was almost incredible .
The burning ultraviolet light now did not seem to be very harmful . Even though the daylight was still bright, Leviathan did not feel anything when out of the water .
There seemed to be some large rectangular stones along the two sides of the river which blocked Lin’s sight . Green things grew on those rocks . They looked like hard and slender tentacles with splits at the ends .
They seemed to have climbed onto land . Just like the algae, these were the evolved forms of light eating cells . They had evolved along a completely different path compared to ordinary organisms . While they had systems like blood vessels, they were not willing to evolve a heart, muscles, a brain and other similar organs . Because they had no muscles, they could not move . They could only spread their reproductive cells by relying on the flowing water . Their reaction speed towards the surrounding environment was slow . But even so, their lives were not any worse than other organisms which had brains .
They seemed to have been the ones which created oxygen . While their reaction was slow, they could respond against the organisms with brains which liked hunting them . This was really wondrous . Climbing onto land must be one of the strategies to avoid being hunted .
These organisms could be described using another term … … “plant . ” They were very different from the “animals” that moved quickly .
However, Lin had characteristics of both plants and animals . This felt very interesting .
Leviathan followed the helmet fish into a special area .
The water up ahead was blocked by enormous rock walls . However, this was not the end of the river because the cracks between the enormous rocks showed the flow still continued upwards . But these rocks had fallen into the river and blocked the river .
The destination of the helmet fish clearly was not this place . However, their bodies could not go through the cracks in the rock . They swam up to the water surface, and jumped upwards to the top of the enormous rocks out of the water .
The helmet fish waved their fins and cumbersome heads, attempting to climb over the enormous rocks blocking the river .
Why did they not just reproduce here? Why did they have to climb?
Lin felt puzzled watching the helmet fish on the rocks . However, this also proved the ultraviolet light was not harmful any longer .
What about Lin? Should it also jump up? Leviathan looked through Leviathan’s memories . It did not seem to have the ability to go onto land . In the billion years it had lived, it had never been close to land .
However, Leviathan had occasionally landed on land before and had survived climbing back into the water . Maybe Lin could try . Even the helmet fish could climb over this by moving its fins . There was no reason Leviathan could not .
Lin had the Leviathan float up to the surface, and then suddenly opened its water spout to jump up and land on top of the rocks .
While Leviathan only had two tentacles at the moment, the suction pads on the surfaces could provide great power . They could even pull the three meter body along land .
Leviathan was surrounded by the laboriously climbing helmet fish . There were still ten meters before they could reach water . Leviathan had a large body, but with the suction pads, Leviathan climbed faster than those helmet fish . When Leviathan climbed halfway there, some strange beings appeared ahead … …
The long flat bodies were more than a meter long . The ends of their forelimbs had enormous pincers with teeth . The tail parts were slightly curved with a sharp hook at the end . These were clearly predators . These organisms originated from a nondescript limbed organism . Lin had seen those organisms before, and had not expected they could now climb onto land .
They had their own name, “Brontoscorpio . ”
Such a strange name . There were three of these scorpions who seemed to be waiting here to ambush the helmet fish .
This could be dangerous … …
The brontoscorpio had eight eyeballs on their heads . Lin did not know how their vision was, but they were clearly staring at Leviathan .
Lin felt this would be troublesome … …
Leviathan was enormous and these scorpions seemed wary of charging forward . However, they spread out and surrounded Leviathan in three directions .
Leviathan did not have any new cell types that could fight on land . But Lin used the old tactics . Leviathan had openings on the sides of its body and on its head . Other than the tail, it did not have a dead spot .
Shoot!
The exploding bombs with their powerful acids hit one of the scorpions in front of Leviathan . In pain, the scorpion twisted and retreated . The other two organisms avoided Leviathan and went to grab the nearby helmet fish .
They did not seem to be working together and left separately?
Lin did not think too much . It took the opportunity to climb into the water . Even though it had the exploding bomb, facing three enemies was troublesome .
This place was the spawning grounds of the helmet fish . A vast round water body . This should be called a “lake . ”
After the Leviathan, many other helmet fish jumped into the late . The brontoscorpios seemed to only grab a few and could not stop the helmet fish from coming here to spawn .
The helmet fish school swam into the sand and mud at the bottom of the river . They used their helmets to dig out small holes . Each pair of fish had their own hole, and then they released large numbers of cells .
Some were very large and spherical, about a centimeter in length . The other kind was extremely small and had a small tentacle-like tail . Those were the size of simple single cells . There seemed to be two terms that described the differences, “male and female . ”
The ones that released spherical cells were female, and the ones that released small cells were male . When female and male cells came together, they could create descendants with the advantages of both .
After the helmet fish released their cells, they would die . This was just like the flat fish . Lin found that most organisms had a limited longevity . They were unlike Lin who would occasionally deconstruct the older cells . When their longevity ended, all the cells in their body would die, starting from the brain and spreading all over .
They were not attacked, nor were they infected by viruses . This seemed to be determined by their own cells . An organism could only live a set amount of time, and then they had to die and leave the position to their descendants .
A flat fish’s lifetime was about ten years or so . While they may die early due to viruses or parasitic worms, no matter what, they could not live longer than ten years . All the cells were set to die at that time . The helmet fish were more unique . They would only die after spawning . Before that, they would not die .
The corpses of these helmet fish would not be wasted . They would become food for newborn fish .
Lin did not come here to just watch them reproduce . It wanted to set a base here to study how this place was different from the sea water .
Lin’s bases were now very different than in the past . The center would be a sphere thirty centimeters in diameter . Then it would spread out in a green carpet that would cover the entire area .
The structure of the green carpet was much simpler . It was primarily two transparent layers of shell which contained the green cells and some small defensive units .
The green carpet would not affect the helmet fish . Lin rarely attacked other organisms now . It was more valuable to observe them than eat them .
After putting down the base seed, Lin suddenly felt something special … …
This was … …
The interior of the base seed contained some very sensitive tentacles . Lin had designed them to observe the changes in the surroundings . They could calculate how the environment would change through gathering information on the movement of the seabed, water temperature and other things . Then Lin could prepare beforehand .
The moment Lin put down the base seed, they could feel … … something strange .
Translator Ramblings: Lots of new things in this chapter: actual plants, osmosis, migratory fish, sexual reproduction…
and this scorpion-like organism .