Chapter 802: Mother
Meng Chao immediately felt weird.
Other than the wrinkles and bulges on the inner walls of a biological organ, they also saw a lot of structures that looked like pipes and even gears.
It was really hard to imagine that this was a natural creation.
“Imagine such an ancient creature. Its cells have plant and animal characteristics at the same time. Not only can it produce chlorophyll and absorb energy from sunlight, but it can also grow roots that resemble earthworms and octopus tentacles. It can drill and extend into the depths of the earth and insert itself into rock layers where the crystal veins are most abundant. It’s able to continuously absorb the spirit energy within the planet.”
Wu Haibo narrowed his eyes and said, “Perhaps, its main body is just a tiny seed, a plant as tender as a weed. But as long as it is ‘planted’ in a place with abundant spirit energy, it will be able to take root, grow, and expand underground. It will be like a towering tree that has been turned upside down 180 degrees and is growing downward.
“We extracted some active substances that have not yet been annihilated from the depths of Ruins No. 2 and tested them in the culture medium. We’ve found that its mass-energy conversion efficiency is extremely high, and its cells are dividing at an extremely fast rate.
“It is really hard to imagine how astonishing its growth rate was before it was hit by the destructive attack of space-based weapons.
“For it to grow from the initial seed to the towering tree dozens of meters high… no, dozens of meters deep, and then to the behemoth hundreds of meters deep, it may only take a few years or even a few months.
“Before long, it will be able to swallow the underground space within a radius of ten kilometers. Its roots can even be inserted into the crystal veins hundreds of kilometers away and absorb the power of the entire Monster Mountain Range.
“Inside its body, there are a lot of ‘vesicles’ and ‘tubes.’
“Every vesicle is a ‘production workshop’ or ‘command room’ with different uses, just like different cabins on an aircraft carrier.
“In the production workshop, the ‘mother’ can use the spirit energy absorbed from all directions by its roots to create and incubate thousands of monsters, including the Apocalyptic Beasts that are evolving and becoming more powerful.
“In the command room, the mother can grow carbon-based computational units that are similar to a human brain but are hundreds of times larger and more complicated than a human brain.
“Countless computational units can form a super large-scale computational matrix that can perform the most precise gene splicing and pasting. It can also command hundreds of different monsters to form a monster horde that is well-coordinated and fearless of death.
“Obviously, such a mother cannot have evolved naturally.
“It is a creation of the ancient civilization.
“The ancient civilization nurtured the mother’s body just like how humans built aircraft carriers. Of course, compared to the pure combat purpose of aircraft carriers, the functions of the mother’s body are much more advanced and complicated. It integrates resource collection, environmental modification, scientific research, production construction, and combat command. A series of functions are simply like an all-encompassing and omnipotent colonization base.”
Everyone was engrossed in the conversation.
However, they had reached the end of the tunnel.
The road ahead suddenly opened up, revealing an endless underground cave.
It was lofty, grand, and deep, just like a holy temple for the Apocalyptic Beasts, which were more than a hundred meters tall.
The curved walls around them were still full of wrinkles and bulges. Simultaneously, they emitted a magnificent and deep light.
There were also countless neatly arranged holes that looked like pores, and they released a hissing sound.
Meng Chao moved closer and extended his hand to sense the air that was flowing out of the holes. He found that it was extremely pure spirit energy.
No wonder the spirit energy in the large space was so dense that the cells all over his body were eager to give it a try as soon as he walked in.
“These holes are connected to the mother’s root system, and they lead to all the crystal veins within a hundred square kilometers. The mother absorbed spirit energy in such a way so that it could nurture and command a surging beast horde,” Wu Haibo explained.
Meng Chao nodded.
He had made a new discovery.
Aside from the wrinkles, bumps, and “pores,” the curved walls were embedded with countless spirit tattoos that looked like cocoons or beast eggs.
The “cocoons” and the “beast eggs” were of different sizes. The smallest one was more than one meter in diameter, and the largest one was dozens of meters tall. It seemed to be wrapping a living adult Tyrannosaurus rex inside.
Other than the curved walls, there were numerous towering pillars in the giant beast’s palace, each of which was more than ten meters in diameter or even thirty to fifty meters in diameter.
The giant pillars were also filled with holes that were constantly spurting spirit energy, and they were filled with weird cocoons and beast eggs.
Some of the giant pillars were connected by intersecting branches as well. Naturally, the ends of the branches were filled with heavy cocoons and beast eggs too.
As far as Meng Chao could see, there were more than a hundred of these giant pillars.
Calculating the hundreds of cocoons and beast eggs that were embedded and hung on each giant pillar, the total number of monsters that were born there would surpass 10,000.
Fortunately, most of the cocoons and beast eggs had used up their last drop of life force over tens of millions of years. Thus, they had turned into gray, black, and lifeless fossils.
No matter how much spirit energy was poured into them, it was impossible to resurrect the monster carcasses that had long dried up and turned into dust inside the shattered cocoons.
However, there was also a small portion of the cocoons and beast eggs that were like crystal clear pearls and diamonds, exuding vigorous life force.
Although their bodies were smaller than usual compared with the surrounding fossils, looking through the translucent cocoons, one could really see groups of embryos sleeping quietly inside. They were developing at a speed visible to the naked eye.
There were also many crystal-clear cocoons and beast eggs that had ruptured with sticky liquid flowing out, but the monster embryos inside had disappeared without a trace.
“The fossilized cocoons and beast eggs were all conceived during the ancient era billions of years ago. As the entire mother was hit by the space-based weapons, the mother lost 99% of its activity and fell into a long hibernation. They lost the nourishment of spirit energy and were naturally killed at infancy.”
Thunder God Shao Zhengyang, who had led the charge into the monster’s lair and fought the monster mastermind head-on explained, “However, about half a century ago, 1% of the mother’s active tissue, which was not completely dead, finally woke up from its long hibernation and began a new round of expansion. It collected, nurtured, expanded, collected, and nurtured again.
“The colorful, crystal-clear monster embryos that were emitting dense spirit energy and intense murderous intent were the products of the past half a century.
“It needs to be said that our Dragon City civilization was too lucky.
“Fortunately, the mother was hit by the space-based weapons in the orbit billions of years ago, and 99% of its active tissues, as well as vitality, were destroyed.
“If we had faced the mother at its peak state, the scale of the beast horde that it bred would have been a hundred times larger than the current one. Plus, its control over the beast horde would be a hundred times more precise than the present. It would not be a force that we could withstand at all. The enemy would devour all of the resources across Monster Mountain Range like passing locusts, then expand crazily to the entire Other World.
“Fortunately, the mother hasn’t been awake for too long, so it hasn’t been able to restore its entire body, which is also a nest. Since the attack on the northern front, our Dragon City has firmly occupied the strategic initiative and not left any opportunities for the enemy. Therefore, the mother hasn’t been able to get enough resources to restore the activity in more places within the entire lair and breed more powerful Apocalyptic Beasts.
“The battle of Raging Waves, the Blessed Paradise murderous pets case, the attack on Noble Descent Hotel, the battle in the Lair, the battle in the outskirts of Dragon City, the continuous spread of Blood Flower spores, and the super zombie virus… The reason why the monster civilization spared no effort to create chaos within Dragon City was simply to buy time so that the mother could complete its self-repair.
“Fortunately, we have dismantled every enemy attack beautifully.
“The enemy’s failure resulted in the infant monsters to become half-grown and half-baked. Many monsters couldn’t even break their cocoons and eggshells. Even if they managed to break them, they wouldn’t be able to breathe and stand up straight, let alone add to the battle’s intensity.
“Therefore, we didn’t encounter too many obstacles and fought our way up to the monster mastermind. Speaking of which, you played a part in this, Meng Chao. It seems that our military is going to award you with another big medal. Hahahaha!”
Shao Zhengyang laughed heartily.
Meng Chao secretly broke out in cold sweat.
Fortunately, he had returned from the apocalypse with the help of the memory fragments from his previous life. They had allowed him to predict the conspiracy of the nine supernatural entities.
Otherwise, Dragon City’s tragic victory would have been an inevitable outcome.
In fact, if Lei Zongchao, the Battle God, and countless Deity Realm experts in his previous life had not sacrificed their precious lives one after another, even this tragic victory would have been more than worth it!
“Were all the monsters born in the mother?”
Meng Chao thought for a moment and asked, “Why do I remember many of the monsters having reproductive organs? In the wilderness, weren’t there also many cases where monsters got pregnant and gave birth?”
He wanted to make sure that the monster civilization would not be revived.
“Of course, not all the monsters are born in the mother. Only very few monsters can enjoy such treatment and be born that way.”
Wu Haibo explained, “The biologists of the ancient ruins research center have speculated that the first monsters should be species that originated from the Other World, just like the green algae, nautilus, trilobites, and dinosaurs on Earth.
“When the Ancients used the transmigration engine to come to the Other World, perhaps they didn’t have many people, or perhaps they had other important missions to complete, or they were impatient about carrying out the long and complicated colonization work personally, or they felt that the primitive creatures in front of them had a certain potential for evolution. Hence, they created the mother body and used it to modulate the primitive species on this planet to help them collect resources, modify the ecosystem, and serve as servants, turning this place into a new home suitable for the ancient civilization’s reproduction.”