Last chapter recap: Lin created a giant tentacle called the “explorer” and then left the base for unknown waters.
Chapter Twenty-Three Anomaly
Greyness. Countless grey pieces of rock filled Lin’s vision.
All of the rocks here were at least thousands of times bigger than Lin’s cells. They were also so many that they reached the limit of what Lin could see.
Lin had new terms appear in its thoughts about this scene. This place covered with rocks was called the “seafloor,” the rocks were called “sand granules” and when they were covering a large span like this, they were called a “beach.”
Beach? Sand granules? Granules?
It was the first time the term “granules” appeared in Lin’s thoughts. But it could immediately feel as though “granules” referred to things that were very small.
But the sand here was not small at all.
Lin’s explorer moved its body and swam towards the endless beach below.
The closer Lin got to the beach, the bigger the sand granules looked. None of them were of the same shape. Almost all of them were of different sizes. Even the smallest sand granule was more than twice the size of Lin’s explorer.
The explorer landed on a relatively flat sand granule primarily to rest. At this time, Lin felt that this sand granule seemed especially … …warm.
No, this surpa.s.sed warm, it almost surpa.s.sed Lin’s heat tolerance.
This place had something … …
The explorer started to move. Lin decided to explore further.
Because the sand granules were of various sizes, there were gaps and cracks even though they were piled on top of each other. Lin’s explorer could easily move through these cracks.
Swimming between the enormous sand granules, Lin felt that the temperature here was very high. As it went deeper, the temperature clearly grew higher.
After moving around a few sand granules, Lin saw an enormous rock being pushed down by large amounts of sound. This rock was much larger than the surrounding sand granules, so Lin categorized it as rock and not sand.
This rock was black, and there were many holes on the surface. there were transparent spheres coming out of these holes.
What was that?
Lin tried to go near this rock, but the heat given off there stopped the explorer from going closer.
Suddenly, there were more transparent spheres coming out of the rock. The entire rock started to tremble as well.
What was going on?
Lin found that even the surrounding sound granules started to shake.
The vibrations grew stronger. Suddenly an enormous pieces of sand granule fell from above the explorer and Lin hurriedly swam to avoid it.
But as this sand granule fell, all of the sand piled up together started to crumble. Countless sand granules rolled down.
Lin’s explorer avoided the falling sand granules and swam outside relying on the advantage it did not have a large body. It found that the water here was starting to grow hotter and staying here would be dangerous.
Avoiding the countless sand granules falling down, Lin saw the light of the entrance. It was near the top, only the distance of a hundred cells!
Yet at this time, the surrounding sand granules once again shook. Two sand granules on the sides rolled down at the same time. It pinched the long body of the explorer in the middle. No matter how Lin struggled, it was unable to break free.
But Lin had other moves. At this time, the round head of the explorer suddenly started to inflate. After inflating to a certain degree, it exploded like the exploding b.a.l.l.s. The water that shot out sent the observer and the fat cells inside out of the collapsing sand granule area.
The explorer with its burst head was covered by the sand granules in the next moment.
It really was dangerous … …
Lin’s obverse swam higher and looked down at the entire beach. It found that in the center of where the sand was vibrating, the sand at some places collapsed inward and formed holes with quickly flowing sand.
Suddenly, a red substance burst out of a hole. In this moment, Lin felt the surrounding temperature seemed to increase multiple times. A fat cell that had been relatively close even die instantly due to the increase in water temperature.
Lin’s observer and the remaining fat cells had swum higher, so they were not wounded.
Lin carefully observed the red substance. It seemed vicious and hot. It continued to burst out of the sand pit and spread on the sand. It turned the entire beach into a hot red.
Lava.
Lin had a new term in its thoughts about this red sticky substance.
No matter what it was, it was something that gave off high heat. Lin could not easily go near it.
Lin thought and then swam upwards to distance itself from this terrifying thing called lava.
As Lin swam upwards it found that the large patch of ice that had covered the upper parts had disappeared. Right now, the temperature of the water was much higher than before, and it was no wonder that the ice crystals would disappear.
However, Lin had not found the reason that the cells were not appearing.
No matter how frightening the lava was, there would not be any cells that would deliberately charge into the lava.
Or was it that the lava could reach very high? That would cause the water temperature to increase significantly and kill all the cells.
But Lin saw that the lava could not reach very high. And after erupting for a while, it would fall back down.
Maybe it should go investigate the higher reaches?
As Lin thought, it swam upwards towards the light.
Lin still remembered that in the area when it first touched the topmost part of the water, the light there was extremely bright and dangerous. That thing that was called ultraviolet light could instantly kill its cells.
Maybe this was caused by ultraviolet light?
Lin thought as it swam. Suddenly, Lin stopped.
Large numbers of cell groups appeared around Lin’s observer.
These cells were not of the same kind. They floated around Lin’s cells. They seemed to have been carried by the water, and suddenly appeared in Lin’s field of view. They almost filled this entire region of water. In terms of numbers, there were most likely millions, no, billions.
Why would so many cells suddenly appear?
This was not right … … it was very strange.
Lin found at this time that almost all these cells didn’t move. They seemed to all … … be dead.
These … … were corpses.
Lin’s observer went close to look at one of the corpses. These was nothing inside the cell’s corpse. However, the cell nucleus inside seemed to have been damaged, and twisted into the ball. But the outer membrane was untouched. This did not look like something caused by a virus.
Lin looked at the other cells. They all showed similar signs, their death should have been caused by the same thing. But what was it?
Lin didn’t know.
Lin felt very uncomfortable. It was the first time it saw such a great number of deaths. Among these floating cell corpses, there was even an enormous shapeshifter.
Lin swam closer. This shapeshifter was also dead without any signs of life.
The shapeshifter was the strongest organism that Lin had ever seen with the exception of itself. Yet it apped to have been unable to escape this large-scale death.
What had created this? The temperature of the water here was normal … … Lin did not think that this was caused by water temperature.
Just as it was puzzled, Lin found the surroundings seemed to turn dark. However, this was unlike the darkness when night came. This felt as though light was being covered by something.
Only when something enormous was pa.s.sing by would cause this effect. Lin immediately wanted to look up.
Large amounts of green appeared in Lin’s field of view.
What was that?
Green. More accurately, it was a large group of green cells. It was unlike the other cells. They swam with exceptional liveliness in the water. There were also so many of them that Lin found all of the water it could see had turned dim.
Were these green cells what had caused this scene?
Translator Ramblings: Underwater volcano eruption.
Picture of underwater lava. Credits to NOAA