บท 96: Chapter 96
Should I follow it and take a look?
The Leviathan flew above the river formed by the torrential rain. The desert was so dry that this torrential rain should be rare, but where did the water flow to?
Lin felt the need to investigate.
The rain continued, but strangely, it seemed to only rain above the desert. Lin's two bases in the jungle did not feel any rain at all.
Was the Twisted Tree blocking the water? That was unlikely. The only possibility was that the clouds only appeared above the desert.
The Leviathan followed the river and flew in the rain. The speed of the water flow increased with the increase of the rain and finally became an unstoppable flood. It smashed the sand dunes, washed away the boulders, and rushed in the desert with an unstoppable force toward the southwest.
The torrential rain continued for two days and nights. After the rain stopped, the Leviathan continued to follow the river to the southwest. Lin suspected that it had reached the center of the desert. Even if it flew more than a thousand meters above the ground, it could no longer see the Twisted Forest.
However, Lin saw something even more strange in the direction of the river.
A gigantic cavern appeared in the distant desert. Just by looking at it, Lin could tell that this cavern was over a kilometer in diameter. There was a spiral staircase inside the cavern, one level after another leading to the depths. Each level was narrower than the previous one. The entire cavern was several hundred meters deep, and the deepest level was only a few dozen meters wide. Moreover, the bottom layer was covered with a layer of something that looked like white sand.
This was amazing. How did it form? Even from a thousand meters above the ground, the cave looked huge, like a huge wound in the desert. Perhaps it should not be called a cave, but a 'giant pit'.
The giant pit was made of rocks, and the rocks inside seemed to have been dried by the light of day. There was not a trace of water in it. It seemed that this place had never rained before. The surging river rushed into the giant pit and flowed along the spiral structure of the pit to the bottom. The dry rock pit was immediately filled with water, and Lin could hear the sound of the rocks cracking when they came in contact with the water.
Wasn't this called 'thermal expansion and contraction'?
But even with such a huge torrent, it only filled 30% of the huge pit. Just like that, a turbid lake filled with sand and mud appeared in the huge pit.
This was fun. There was no reason not to take a look.
Lin ordered the Leviathan to slowly descend. As they approached the crater, Lin suddenly felt that the airflow around her had become strange. It was as if an airflow was trying to drag the Leviathan into the crater. However, the airflow wasn't very strong. Lin adjusted her flying posture almost instantly and continued to fly into the crater.
On the way into the giant pit, Lin found that the spiral staircase around her had many holes of one to two meters in diameter. It was strange. Were there creatures living inside?
The Leviathan flew to the surface of the lake. Lin could not see clearly because of the turbid water. Lin released a fish-shaped explorer into the water. It mainly wanted to see what was at the bottom of the pit.
Facing the turbid water filled with sand, visibility was only about ten centimeters even under the illumination of a lantern. The explorer used its sense of smell and hearing tentacles to detect objects. When it reached the bottom of the pit, Lin began to carefully observe the composition of the rocks at the bottom of the pit. The layer of white sand that she saw before the water flooded the pit was gone. Was it washed away by the water?
It was too suspicious for such a huge pit to appear in the desert and not be buried by sand. Lin believed that there was a high possibility that some creature lived here and cleaned the entire pit of sand.
But … could this pit be dug by a creature? Lin felt that it was unlikely. Not only was it difficult to dig such a huge pit in the desert, but what was the point of digging here? Was it to wait and collect rainwater that rarely appeared? The Twisted Jungle was in the northeast. Even if they walked on the ground, they would definitely reach it in ten days. There was no need to dig a pit to live here. Even if hundreds of creatures as large as the Mist Worms were to dig here, it would probably take a few years to dig out such a large space.
The more Lin studied, the more curious she felt. She believed that it was necessary to set up a base here to observe any changes.
Just as the Leviathan was about to prepare the Seed of Base, the explorer in the water suddenly felt a strange vibration, as if many small creatures had suddenly appeared and swam around.
This was …
A small worm-like creature, only a few millimeters in size, slowly wriggled its body in front of the explorer's eyes and slowly swam towards it.
A worm? Was it a creature that originally lived at the bottom of the pit?
Then, many more worms appeared in the explorer's field of vision. They seemed to have appeared out of nowhere, and there were more and more of them. Even with such a small visibility, the explorer's field of vision was now filled with countless tiny worms. Lin felt that their numbers seemed to have exceeded the number of sand particles in the water.
Where did these things come from? Were they originally at the bottom of the pit? Or were they washed here by the river in the desert? Hmm … the first possibility was very likely.
Lin had the explorer swim around the bottom of the water. It found many small spherical objects on the ground. The explorer reached out with its tentacles and grabbed one of the spheres. The sphere slowly cracked open, and a small worm crawled out from the crack.
These were their eggs. The explorer had found countless of these eggs on the rocks at the bottom of the water. Could it be that a large worm came here to lay its eggs? And then let the eggs melt when they come into contact with water?
That was quite interesting. So this pit was created by a worm? But that was too careless. There was no telling how big these worms could grow. Looking at their fleshy bodies without a single shell, they shouldn't be the offspring of a monster like the Mist Worms.
Besides, why did they have to lay their eggs in a pit? Why couldn't they lay their eggs in a jungle? There was no food here, it was just a coincidence that there was rain here.
While Lin was thinking, Leviathan suddenly heard a loud noise coming from the sky. Lin looked up and saw countless figures flying above the giant crater.
Those were … Giant Vein Dragonflies? What were they doing here?
The large number of dragonflies, probably hundreds of them, all flew into the pit. They were a bit wary of the Leviathan's gigantic wingspan, but they still flew down. Most of them stopped on the surrounding stairs, while some flew above the water.
Lin thought they were here to catch worms to eat, but after observing for a while, she didn't see any of the dragonflies trying to catch worms. Instead, they were doing something strange.
Some of the dragonflies began to lie on top of another dragonfly, then the one on top would bend its slender tail forward and insert it into the head of the dragonfly below, while the dragonfly below would also bend its tail and insert it into the chest of the one on top.
So that's how it is, it's reproductive activity.
Most creatures in the water liked to reproduce by spraying their cells into the water, but creatures on land couldn't do that, so they were more direct and injected their reproductive cells directly into each other's bodies.
Lin observed a pair of dragonflies. After playing around for a while, they separated. The one on top continued to search for other untouched dragonflies, while the one on the bottom bent its tail and poked at the surface of the water.
It seemed that the one on top was a male, while the one below was a female. The female seemed to be laying eggs on the surface of the water. The male and female Giant Vein Dragonflies had almost no difference in body size. While observing these creatures, Lin noticed that the males were mostly responsible for collecting evolutionary information for their offspring. Normally, they would fight each other to become the strongest to find a female, while the females didn't fight. Instead, they were responsible for producing offspring, so over time, there would be differences in body size.
Although males were usually stronger because they liked to fight, that didn't necessarily mean that males were bigger than females. For example, the females of sharks were usually bigger than males, which might be related to the dangers they faced during their childbirth. After all, the males would run away as soon as they were done, while the females would have to deal with even more terrifying creatures that came to prey on their young, such as the Dunkleosteus.
This method of reproduction was quite interesting, as it could ensure that the offspring would be the strongest, but there were also some problems. For example, it would cause the species to become disunited, causing them to fight each other. Lin believed that evolution was based on unity, after all, only the most united single-celled creatures could become multicellular creatures.
The Giant Vein Dragonflies didn't seem to have these problems, which was why both males and females looked exactly the same.
Leviathan released more explorers. They discovered the eggs laid by the female Giant Vein Dragonflies on the surface of the water. These eggs also melted upon contact with the water, just like the eggs of the worms. A small dragonfly-like arthropod crawled out of the eggs and began to hunt the small worms nearby.
What a clever method of reproduction. But this pit couldn't have been created by the Giant Vein Dragonflies, right? They must have discovered the worms here by chance and came here to lay their eggs.
So, what exactly was going on with this pit?
Lin was becoming more and more interested in this place.
…
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