Chapter 132

 After the fog dissipated, this was the first thing Lin saw. It looked like a gigantic rock, possibly over a kilometer tall. Leviathan's field of vision was completely occupied by this gigantic object.

In Lin's mind, there was only one word that could describe this object.

'Mountain'.

Lin had seen mountains in the sea before, but this mountain on land surpassed all the mountains Lin had seen in the sea. Lin had never thought that there would be such a sight on land.

The mountain was quite spectacular, but it seemed to be incompatible with life.

The entire mountain was greyish black, which Lin thought was a rock structure. There were no plants growing on it. What Lin noticed the most was the mountain's surroundings.

The entire area around the mountain was black, as if it had been burned by flames. Just like where Leviathan was now, it was filled with white poisonous fog and scorched black plants.

Lin and a few other creatures could filter the poisonous gas, but most of them couldn't, so the mountain's surroundings were barren.

Perhaps the mountain was the culprit that destroyed the headworms, and the surrounding forest was also destroyed by it.

Lin planned to fly to the mountain to take a look, but before that, Lin wanted to catch a small appendage that was swimming in the boiling black water. Lin planned to call this appendage 'Ash Worm', it seemed quite fun.

Ash Worms were very fast, but Leviathan didn't have a hard time catching them. She only needed to use a simple method: a trap to catch them.

She just needed to dig a hole and chase them into it. This was also a trick Lin learned from observing the headworms hunting. The headworms were better at observing the surrounding environment. They weren't like Lin, who relied almost entirely on the abilities of the troops.

She caught an Ash Worm. Lin quickly dissected it.

The cells of the Ash Worm seemed to be quite special. Although it was small, it had a set of extremely complex organs. This set of organs allowed it to maintain its body temperature, and at the same time, it was equipped with a heat-resistant carapace of a certain thickness. This creature could live in boiling water.

This was interesting and worth learning.

Although Lin could create heat-resistant armor, she couldn't stay in the heat for too long. Otherwise, the internal cells would be roasted, but ash worms seemed to be able to ignore this problem. They could switch a certain mechanism in their body to make their cells heat-resistant, and when they left the boiling water, they would adjust the mechanism back so that the cells would not die due to a sudden change in temperature.

This mechanism was somewhat similar to the circulatory system of some fish that switched between seawater and fresh water. However, the ash worm's system was quite complicated, and there were many cells inside that Lin had never seen before. It might take a long time for her to learn.

But if he could learn it completely. Lin might be able to create units that could advance through fire, as long as their shells were strong enough to withstand the fire damage. In fact, the internal temperature would not be very high. It only needed to be adjusted …

If Lin had this ability, she wouldn't have needed to escape from the sea.

But no matter what, he had to keep discovering new things for evolution to not stop.

Now, let's go up the mountain and take a look.

The Leviathan spread its wings and flew in the direction of the towering mountain peak. Lin might be able to discover the reason for the destruction of the Brainworms.

As the Leviathan approached the mountain, Rin found that the hillside was covered with black stones. Some of the stones were large and long, very much like something Rin had seen in the sea before … solidified lava.

Could the ground erupt lava as well?

The Leviathan continued to fly to the top of the mountain. While flying up, Lin found a few plants and some arthropods, but they were few in number and could not form a spectacular environment.

Looking at the environment here, Lin could not help but have an idea. Perhaps she could try to change the appearance of the entire environment? Create an ecosystem?

Lin had indeed been trying to do so. She had a certain degree of success in shaping the ecological environment on the other side of the salt lake. Lin's' Overlord 'had successfully created some umbrella-shaped green carpets in the salt lake. These green carpets would filter the toxins in the salt water and turn it into clear water, which successfully attracted many creatures. If Lin could filter the entire salt lake clean, the salt lake would soon be covered by forests.

Creating an environment was a very good thing. It was much more useful than just raising a few creatures for food or just laying green carpets.

At this time, the Leviathan was already close to the top of the mountain. When she reached the top, Lin found that the environment at the top of the mountain was completely different from the hillside and the foot of the mountain. It was actually a large lake with a diameter of about 500 meters, and the lake water looked quite clear.

The Leviathan landed on the lake and scooped up some water. Lin felt that the water was just like normal water, clear and without any toxins, and mixed with a large number of single-celled creatures.

At the edge of the lake, the Leviathan looked around. Suddenly, Lin saw some large figures swimming in the water. The Leviathan immediately dived into the water to observe these creatures.

Salamanders? Some black salamanders were moving around in the water. Apart from that, Lin also saw some worms, and even fish.

How did they get here? This place was quite far from the sea!

This place seemed to be different from the foot of the mountain. It had a very rich environment, but looking at these creatures, Lin could not understand them at all. The worms were still fine, but the salamanders were already starting to make sense. Salamanders could not leave water for too long, otherwise their skin would dry up and they would die. How did they climb to the top of the mountain? The fish were even more inconceivable.

Could it be that they evolved from single-celled creatures that floated to the top of the mountain? That was even more impossible.

But no matter what, this was a rich environment, yet the foot of the mountain was so barren, it was extremely strange.

The Leviathan folded its wings and dived deeper into the water. The deeper it went, the more turbid the water became. There were also a lot of creatures here. Lin was surprised to find a large number of fish here, including some species that she had never seen before. For example, a strange fish with a bunch of tentacles growing out of its mouth, or a few that looked like a leaf. These creatures were all different in shape and variety. Lin believed that it was impossible for them to evolve into so many species in such a small place, other creatures must have brought them here.

After diving to a depth of about a hundred meters, the Leviathan's field of vision was surrounded by turbid water. There were a lot of impurities mixed in the water here, but they were not poisonous. After diving to a depth of two hundred meters, the Leviathan had already reached the bottom of the lake.

It felt quite deep.

The bottom of the lake was full of impurities, so Lin released the collectors to study these impurities. Lin found that the majority of these impurities were made up of the corpses of living creatures, as well as a large number of single-celled creatures. They were constantly decomposing these impurities, but due to the low oxygen content at the bottom of the lake, their activity was quite slow.

Lin also displayed this strange environment to the headworm through the monitors. The headworm expressed that it had never seen such an environment before, but its tribe had indeed lived near this mountain for a very long time.

[Flames flow like water, erupt, die, flee] The headworm's description of the disaster was rather vague, but Lin could roughly deduce that there might have been an eruption of lava that destroyed the environment below. But why was there a lake at the top of the mountain, and why were there so many creatures here?

If this lake had appeared after the eruption, there shouldn't have been so many creatures here in such a short period of time. After all, the forest below was still barren without any signs of recovery. Although there were poisonous gases below, the actual area wasn't very large. If the creatures in the lake had evolved over a long period of time, why weren't they affected by the eruption of lava?

What a strange and inexplicable feeling.

As Lin continued to explore the bottom of the lake, the Leviathan turned on the lantern. In the light of the lantern, Lin suddenly saw a familiar figure moving through the water.

That figure, she seemed to have seen it before in the sea …

The Leviathan abruptly activated its jet and accelerated forward. In the blink of an eye, it had approached the creature and caught it with its tentacles …

This is … a shark? There's actually a shark here?

This was a small type of bottom-dwelling shark with a body length of only a bit over a meter. Lin had seen them in the sea before, but unlike the larger sharks that were commonly seen, they only liked to lie on the seabed in search of shellfish, slow-crawling trilobites, and so on. But why would one appear in this place? Did it fly here from the sea?

Lin used her tentacles to tear the shark in half and had the Collectors devour its flesh and decompose it.

There wasn't anything special about this shark's internal structure, so Lin had thought that it might be able to move on land for some reason, but in reality, it was exactly the same as a shark in the sea.

This made Lin even more confused. If a shark couldn't possibly come here on its own, then how did it get here? No matter how strong a tsunami was, it couldn't possibly throw a shark over a kilometer high mountain, right?

After decomposing the shark, Lin continued to explore. The Leviathan had sent out some Collectors to assist in the exploration. They were mainly responsible for turning over the large amount of debris at the bottom of the lake to search for the composition of the substances here.

Based on the degree of decay of the debris and the rate of decomposition of the bacteria here, they were able to determine when these things appeared.

The Leviathan continued to move forward. Suddenly, Lin saw a very strange object appear in the light of the lantern.

It looked like a rock. This rock was very large and round, with a width of about ten meters. Generally speaking, it wasn't strange for a rock to appear. But in fact, Lin had never seen any rock at the bottom of the lake, let alone such a large round rock. It had suddenly appeared before Lin without any similar objects around it. It was a very strange feeling …

Just as the Leviathan was about to approach the rock, Lin suddenly felt a gush of water coming from above. Lin immediately ordered the Leviathan to speed up and leave its original position. As the Leviathan swam away, a loud boom came from its original position, as if it had been hit by something. Countless fragments splashed into the air.

This is …

As the debris slowly settled, Lin saw the figure of a creature emerge from it. The creature seemed to be a fish. Its body was long and flat, about six meters in length. It was quite large, and its body was shining with countless silver lights like stars. (To be continued.)

PS: Thank you ~ Eastern Era ~ SCP _ 233 ~ for the reward ~