They had returned.
Or rather, they had never left.
The creatures known as Limb Breeders were gathering in the tunnel they came out from.
They seemed to want to attack the Earth Mirror again, but when would they do so?
For the time being, Lin did not care about these things, because Lin was now concerned about the Star Bus and the soft-bodied creatures.
Lin was very interested in the soft-bodied creatures' lifestyle and their relationship with the Star Bus.
So, Lin wanted to study them a little bit … But they were very unwilling to cooperate or communicate, so she needed to use … a more direct method.
Previously, Lin was observing the situation in the tunnel. The soft-bodied creature was here slowly decomposing the hardened crystals on the ground, while Lin's Mimic Stone was observing it from the tunnel entrance.
However, this behavior did not last long. It soon noticed Lin's Mimic Stone. After all, it was too close to it, so it was not easy to hide.
Then, it decided to attack, but it did not have any special attack ability, so it was quickly caught by Lin's Mimic Stone.
Just as Lin was about to grab it, Lin noticed some movement outside.
The soft-bodied creatures that had gathered outside the cylindrical organ suddenly began to move towards it. They seemed to have noticed Lin's attack on the soft-bodied creatures here.
So, Lin decided to finish her research before they came in.
Now, in the tunnel inside the pillar, Lin's Mimic Stone was transforming into the shape of a ball. The ball was hollow inside, and the soft-bodied creature was trapped inside.
This soft-bodied creature was several centimeters in size. Although its shape was not fixed, it could not grow very big. Lin's Mimic Stone was more than twice its size, so not only could it trap it, but it could also split off a part of it to block the tunnel entrance.
The fastest group of creatures outside was approaching through the tunnel, so blocking the tunnel entrance should buy some time.
With that in mind, Lin began to examine the soft-bodied creature trapped inside the ball …
Fortunately, these creatures did not self-destruct or dissolve. Although it was constantly struggling to get out, it was easy to study it.
This soft-bodied creature's body structure was different from those seen above, but it still felt like a Star Bus organ … a 'simplified version'.
The Star Bus organ structure was very complex. Generally speaking, part of it was cells. There were also a large number of hybrid structures that worked together to form them.
However, the soft-bodied creature had greatly simplified these structures, leaving only the most basic parts. This soft-bodied creature's internal structure allowed it to rapidly transform, but it couldn't harden or grow wings like the one Lin saw last time.
But this was closer to the organ of a Star Bus.
Lin was more concerned about its thoughts. It should have something similar to a brain, but Lin could only find a very small 'nervous system'.
The nervous system is made up of cells. But there were only ten cells.
With such a small nervous system connecting and controlling the soft structures of the body, Lin felt that such small nerves would not allow the soft-bodied creature to control its body.
So it was obvious that this soft-bodied creature was not a single organism … It was more like a division of labor.
These tiny nerves were connected to other soft-bodied creatures or received signals from somewhere else. The location was still unclear.
Lin could vaguely sense … that these tiny nerves were connected to a very distant place. This connection seemed to be disconnected from time to time, it was very unclear.
However, Lin also had a distinct feeling that it was connected to other soft-bodied creatures.
Including the soft-bodied creatures that were currently in the cave. They had now arrived at the entrance of this place. Because the entrance was blocked by Lin's pseudo-rock, they couldn't enter … but they had already begun to attack the part Lin used to block the way.
These soft-bodied creatures hardened part of their bodies into sharp claws and constantly tried to dig through the pseudo-rock.
Although the pseudo-rock was also hardened, the soft-bodied creatures had already dug out many cracks on it. This obviously wouldn't last long, and the structure of the pseudo-rock prevented it from hardening further.
However, Lin felt that it was very strange … it felt like the soft-bodied creatures' attack and way of life were very simple. They weren't even as complicated as the civilizations outside.
With that in mind, Lin had the pseudo-rock blocking the way send out a communication signal to the soft-bodied creatures.
Although Lin had tried to communicate several times before and failed, this time she sent out a signal because she completely understood their nerves. This should allow them to feel … like they were the same kind.
"You guys, stop attacking."
When Lin sent out this message, the soft-bodied creatures that were constantly attacking suddenly froze and stopped attacking.
"What … are you?"
The attacking soft-bodied creatures sent out a questioning signal. This seemed to be a good start, meaning that they wanted to communicate with Lin.
And so, Lin explained a few things to them, saying that she came from the outside and was harmless to them, she just wanted to understand the situation here.
"You must leave this place" the soft-bodied creature sent a message to Lin: "You can't stay here any longer. Leave. "
"Aren't you concerned about the war above?" Lin asked: "A type of creature wants to invade you"
"Hurry and leave." it repeated its previous message: "If you don't leave, we'll attack."
It seems they still don't want to communicate. If that's the case …
Bam!
A tentacle suddenly reached out from the pseudo-rock and instantly pierced through the soft-bodied creature that was about to attack.
Then, Lin opened up a large number of openings in the tentacle and began to absorb the soft-bodied creature. Like a straw, half of the soft-bodied creature's body was instantly absorbed.
As for the remaining part, it quickly reacted and hardened its internal structure to prevent it from being absorbed by the pseudo-rock. While absorbing the soft-bodied creature, Lin was also inspecting its internal structure.
Its internal structure was very similar to the soft-bodied creatures on the surface, it had the ability to rapidly transform and harden any part of its body at will.
Furthermore, there were many neural structures inside its body, different from the one that Lin trapped earlier. It seemed they were two different types of soldiers.
The hardened type was responsible for combat, while the non-hardened type was responsible for transforming the organs of the Star Bus.
The hardened type seemed to be able to eat organs as well, but they didn't have the ability to directly transform organs. More importantly, through the neural structures inside this hardened type, Lin understood that it was connected to all the soft-bodied creatures around it, and these soft-bodied creatures were all connected to something far away.
Lin felt that the location of this connection was very important, but in order to obtain accurate information, Lin believed that she would need to obtain more … neural structures.
If she only used a few neural structures to sense it, it would only be very vague, but if she used a large number of neural structures … she would be able to sense it clearly.
To put it simply, Lin needed to capture all the soft-bodied creatures in this place.
The pseudo-rock alone wouldn't be able to do that.
Although it had already captured two soft-bodied creatures, there were more soft-bodied creatures coming this way, and the pseudo-rock would soon be dealt with.
However, Lin had already left a large number of miniaturized soldiers in the mud outside the cave.
These miniaturized soldiers were originally meant to be used for observation, but now Lin planned to use them to create an army.
She would need a large enough army to capture all the soft-bodied creatures here.
In fact, rather than directly capturing them, Lin believed that it would be better to communicate with them, but since they weren't willing to communicate, she would just have to do that.
With that in mind, Lin had the miniaturized soldiers begin to move. They began to attack the various microorganisms in the mud and devour them as nutrients.
While Lin was doing that, more soft-bodied creatures had arrived at the pseudo-rock's location. Lin didn't have the pseudo-rock retaliate, so they quickly … dealt with the pseudo-rock.
The method they used to deal with the pseudo-rock was to cut the pseudo-rock's body into pieces, then use some dissolving liquid to completely dissolve the pseudo-rock.
Of course, this was only because they thought it was more thorough. Before the pseudo-rock dissolved, Lin had released a large number of miniaturized soldiers to observe the situation inside the cylindrical organ.
After the pseudo-rock was dealt with, the cylindrical organ returned to normal. The soft-bodied creatures continued to dissolve the crystals inside, while the hardened creatures left and crawled outside.
Through the research just now, Lin had a basic understanding of how the pseudo-rock dissolved the crystals. The soft-bodied creatures showed the Star Bus's organs some sort of nuclear information recorded inside their bodies to 'see', then the Star Bus's organs would react by dissolving themselves.
Lin felt that this was similar to the Star Bus and the soft-bodied creatures reaching some sort of 'agreement'. As long as the soft-bodied creatures showed the organs this agreement, the organs would react.
It was also possible that the soft-bodied creatures had used some sort of method to steal the nuclear information, then modified the contents inside to make the organs react this way. However, this was unlikely, because it was very difficult.
The Star Bus's nuclear information was very different from a normal cell's nuclear information, so Lin felt that the creatures she had encountered so far didn't have this kind of technology or ability.
Except for the Star Bus itself …
Because of this, Lin came to the conclusion that the soft-bodied creatures were doing this because the Star Bus assigned them the task of dissolving and transforming all the organs.
This kind of behavior obviously affected the collapse, which was why the miniaturized soldiers attacked them.
While thinking about this, the miniaturized soldiers in the soil had already grown quite a bit through continuous feeding, they were almost ready to be used to attack the soft-bodied creatures.
After capturing all of them and finding out where their commander was, Lin should be able to figure out the overall situation.
On the other side, Lin's spies in the Earth Mirror and the [Limb Raisers] had also discovered something.
And that was … the miniaturized soldiers had appeared. (~^~)
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