Chapter 237 Spring

Spring. As usual, the desert was dyed green by the endless growth of vines and ferns. Originally, there would be the cries of many creatures in this new forest, but now …

It became quiet …

It was not only the desert, but also the Twisted Jungle. It was supposed to be the breeding season, but there were no sounds of creatures fighting or chirping. There was nothing, only the smell of rotting corpses that lingered in the air.

Compared to the large arthropods, the reptiles only occupied a small portion. They were unable to supplement the environment, so after the disaster, the entire jungle seemed very empty and quiet.

The large arthropods had already disappeared. The current forest could be said to be a forest of plants and fungi, as well as a small number of reptiles. The reptiles' numbers should explosively increase due to the loss of their natural predators, but until then, Lin could only wait … Was that it?

In another area, Lin's oxygen fortress was filled with normal sounds. Some large creatures had awakened from their slumber. They did not seem to have noticed that the world around them had changed. They stretched their huge bodies and lazily strolled through the forest, trying to wake up from their long slumber.

Thud.

A scorpion-like creature crashed into the 'wall' at the edge of the oxygen fortress. It was one of the descendants of the desert scorpions that Lin had encountered a long time ago. As Lin had made the shell transparent, the scorpion-like creature did not notice it even though it had just woken up. Instead, it crashed into the wall a few more times, and after realizing that it could not move forward, it circled around the strange place.

It wasn't just the desert scorpion. Inside the transparent shell-like cover. Banging sounds could often be heard. Some bee-like creatures kept hitting the transparent barrier. It was as if they were very confused as to why they couldn't fly over.

This wasn't surprising because they had never been trapped like this before. However, Lin noticed that some of the creatures were bleeding from the impact, which didn't seem appropriate.

Moreover, it wasn't just the sound coming from inside. Occasionally, there would be some huge rocks crashing down from outside …

Boom!

A huge rock smashed into the outer shell of the oxygen fortress, causing a loud bang that scared away a few bee-like creatures that were ramming into the wall.

In the Twisted Jungle. Loud booming sounds could be heard everywhere. The moon was slowly moving further and further away.

Through every night, Lin could clearly see that the moon was getting smaller and smaller, and its influence on the Sound Stone was slowly losing its effect.

Lin began to think that the Sonic Rock would slowly descend, which wouldn't cause too much damage, or that it would all fall at the same time at a certain point in time, which would cause a lot of damage. But it was only for a moment.

But in reality, this was neither of the two situations mentioned above. Instead, it was an even stranger situation.

After the moon started to get smaller. The Sound Stones suddenly lost their buoyancy one by one … This was really quite sudden.

The Sonic Rocks that suddenly lost their buoyancy would fall from a high altitude without any pattern, making it impossible to predict. Lin deduced that it might be related to the moon's surface activity. These falling rocks would occasionally pose a fatal threat to the creatures on the rocks or the creatures in the forest below.

However, Lin had yet to see the entire Big Sound Stone falling from the sky. The largest falling rock was less than ten meters in diameter, and if it exceeded that, it would peel off bit by bit instead of falling as a whole. At least this way, it wouldn't cause a large scale of casualties.

Because of this strange way of losing buoyancy, loud noises could be heard from the forest. Lin's oxygen fortress was reinforced by spider silk, so it wasn't that easy to break through. But there were still some cracks on it, and Lin needed to use the Shell Scribbler to repair them. At the same time, Lin used the aerial troops to push away the Sound Stones above.

The brainworm also rolled down from the airship, just like when it first jumped into the water. It stopped the airship on the surface of the water and rolled into the water, but this time, it didn't roll for too long. Instead, it began to build a new rock mountain near the canyon, preparing to live in the vicinity …

The brainworm wasn't in a good mood. It felt uneasy about the silent forest that was filled with the smell of rotting corpses. Without prey, it couldn't hunt. Although the brainworm could grow crops, it mainly relied on hunting. Now, the brainworm was in a bad mood, and this would probably last for a long time.

Lin made a display for the brainworm to see its future biological evolution. Only when it saw this would the brainworm become excited.

But at the same time, it also became more fond of staying in the rock mountain, and didn't like to come out and roll as much as before.

Lin, on the other hand, wasn't that bored. She had a large number of snowballs floating in the forest, watching everything that happened in the forest and recording the changes of the entire forest …

In addition to the twisted forest and spreading fungi, she also found some small creatures moving around in the forest. They were … arthropods.

A group of small cockroaches quickly ran in front of Lin. This unsurprising phenomenon suddenly attracted Lin's attention.

These cockroaches were the descendants of a large arthropod called the 'Question Mark Cockroach'. The name came from the '?' symbol on their carapace. But that wasn't the main point. Many arthropods had the habit of laying eggs at the end of summer and letting the eggs survive the winter underground before hatching again. Obviously, these small cockroaches that hatched were fine. They could live in this environment.

Lin suddenly noticed that the same thing was happening everywhere in the forest. Small arthropods began to appear. They crawled out from the ground where the temperature rose due to melting snow, and with their tiny bodies, they ran in this world where large arthropods had been wiped out …

Arthropods weren't extinct yet. Some species that Lin thought would disappear forever, such as millipedes, centipedes, cockroaches, crickets, spiders, and other creatures, were emerging from the ground. Their small newborn bodies required very little oxygen, so they could live safely.

But what would happen after that? These babies would grow up sooner or later, right?

Time gave Lin the answer.

Lin specifically selected some fast-growing creatures to observe. One of them was a creature called the 'Golden Spider'. After more than ten days, these creatures should have grown more than a meter tall, but they didn't. Instead, they maintained a body size that was slightly larger than a baby …

So that's how it was. Because there wasn't enough oxygen, their bodies stopped growing and remained in their infantile stage. Their reproductive organs would also mature, and they could reproduce directly at this size.

In that case, the lack of oxygen didn't cause their extinction, but instead reduced their size? Floating astronomy.