The sky above the Northern Continent was now shrouded in a storm. The pompom pierced its fur into the ice on the ground and pulled its body tight. Although it was swaying in the storm, it could still observe the changes in the sky.
In the dark storm mixed with ice and snow, a group of creatures appeared in the sky. There were many of them, and they danced in the air with the strong wind as if they were cheering for the arrival of this continent...
Those were... Atmospheric Slimes. Lin had been looking for them for the past hundred years, but they were nowhere to be found. Although Lin did not look very seriously for them...
It was only now that Lin saw them again. Lin originally thought that they had frozen to death long ago.
These creatures spread their wings and flew in the air. Although their bodies were very light, they seemed to know the direction of the storm very well. Under such circumstances, they could still move freely. They only needed to flap their wings slightly to change the direction of their flight. Two Slimes would never collide with each other.
They approached the frozen land of the Twisted Jungle with the storm. Although they could not get close to the ground due to the strong wind, Lin could feel that... they seemed to be watching here, watching the pompom on the ground.
Why would these creatures appear here now? And there were thousands of them, flying everywhere with the wind, covering a large area of the sky. It seemed that they lived well in the cold environment, or at least they had the advantage of numbers.
However, Lin was more concerned about the situation inside their bodies. The composition of these creatures might be completely different from normal creatures. As the moon approached, there would be more interesting things.
Lin looked at the creatures flying around in the air. Until the storm slowly weakened. Storms were common after the weather turned cold. But they usually did not last long.
After the storm subsided, these Slimes did not leave. They kept circling in the air as if they were performing some kind of 'ritual'.
Suddenly, a few Slimes rushed down from the sky. They dived at the pompom at an extremely fast speed, but the pompom pulled its fur out from the ground and dodged them at an even faster speed.
So that was it. They were looking for food...
Lin also noticed that some of the Slimes were riding on the storm to fly towards the canyon. They were flying around the outer shell. Some of the Slimes were sticking their bodies to the outer shell as if they were trying to find a place to burrow into. Although they did not have eyes, they could accurately target the creatures in the canyon …
What they didn't notice was that Lin was also targeting them.
Boom … On one side of the canyon, the frozen ground cracked open, and a huge cannon shot out from the ground, aiming at the slimes flying in the air.
Bang! An explosive bullet flew towards a Slime at high speed. As the bomb approached, eight pairs of sharp appendages suddenly extended from the surface of the bomb. The appendages instantly wrapped around the Slime in front of it. Then, he fell heavily to the ground with Slime.
When the surrounding Slimes saw this, they were frightened and fled in all directions. The one that was caught by the bomb was still struggling.
No matter how hard the slime struggled, it couldn't fly. Although its wingspan was over 5 meters, its weight was extremely light. The ends of the appendages that grew out of Lin's bombs had already pierced into its body and released a small number of troops.
This creature … was indeed so.
Under the subtle probing of the troop class, Lin once again felt a sense of surprise. Although Lin had thought about it before, she didn't expect such creatures to actually exist …
In the body of an Atmospheric Slime … there were no cells.
The structure of this creature's body was completely different from common creatures. To be precise, it had no internal organs, but there were some sac-like structures in its body that were similar to internal organs, such as a net. However, all of these were not made up of cells, but a whole mass of things.
However, the composition of its body was still the same as that of cells. To be precise, this creature was very much like a slime, a slime that had been magnified countless times.
It was a creature that retained the form of a single cell, but grew to such a large size.
In fact, Lin had also seen some creatures that were larger but didn't have any cells, such as a creature called a 'slime mold'.
That creature looked very much like a fungus, but in fact, it was a creature that could transform and move around like a slime mold. Compared to a slime mold that was about the size of a cell, that slime mold was very large.
However, whether it was a slime mold or a slime mold, there was an incomparable gap between them and this Atmospheric Slime. Its structure was also countless times more complex than a slime mold, just like the gap between a primitive multicellular creature and a humerus dragon today.
However, they had similar characteristics. This Slime … might be an evolutionary product of the previous two creatures.
Because there was no reference material, Lin didn't know what many parts were used for. Lin thought that some parts were similar to the internal organs of ordinary animals, they also used dissolving fluids to digest their prey. As for the head … it actually didn't have a head, but there was a structure similar to an eye in the front. It was completely different from the structure of an eye, but Lin thought that it could see things clearly.
This Slime's entire body had many holes. In addition, it was very light and could fly in the sky without consuming any energy. There was also a jet at the back of its body, which seemed to be used for emergency acceleration. There were also some hardened structures in its body that maintained its overall shape …
In addition to these, there were also some very strange structures whose functions were unknown. Although they used the same composition, Lin had never seen such a way of combining them. Some of them might have a very powerful effect, perhaps there was some structure in its body that could resist the cold. If she studied it, she might be able to discover some of these characteristics that Lin had never seen before.
For example, before Lin saw spider silk, she also didn't know that such a flexible object could be made from such a simple composition.
Lin wasn't sure if it had a brain or not. She could sense some faint electric currents inside its body that felt like brainwaves, but they weren't concentrated at any specific point, so she couldn't confirm it. This was because this was a combination that she had never seen before. Even if it did have a brain, it shouldn't be the same as the commonly seen multicellular brain.
So it turned out that even a non-multicellular brain could develop to such a degree. This was a miracle. Lin believed that arthropods and vertebrates evolved separately from the age of worms a long time ago, while this Slime might have evolved separately from the commonly seen creatures of today during the age of cells.
After she was almost done with her investigation, Lin had already drawn a picture of this Slime in her mind and recorded the composition of every part of it.
Then, she released it.
The current Lin was different from before. She didn't need to kill or dissect a creature to observe it. She could observe it from all angles without harming it, which was very helpful for observing rare species.
So, was this Slime rare or not? Lin felt that since they could maintain such a large population in this world that had been frozen for so long, they definitely weren't rare.
However, how they reproduced, how they lived, and whether they usually lived in a fixed place or flew everywhere was still a mystery.
After the Slime was released, it immediately flew into the sky, but it didn't fly too far away. Instead, it hovered in the sky, as if it was ready to attack at any time.
Lin could sense some 'aura' from it through her brainwaves, which might be its emotional reaction. However, it was different from the secretion produced by other creatures when they were emotional, so Lin still couldn't tell what kind of emotion this Slime was feeling.
But it was probably anger or something similar.
This kind of creature should be classified as a new type of creature: 'large non-multicellular organism', but because it was too troublesome to call it that, it was better to just call it an atmospheric organism.
This kind of creature didn't need to touch the ground. It didn't even have 'legs', only wings were enough. So, Lin believed that it lived completely in the clouds, but when it needed food, it would come close to the ground …
And there was definitely more than one type of Slime, just like how there were countless types of multicellular organisms. Lin believed that there were quite a few types of Slime, and this' Slime 'was just one type of atmospheric organism.
The olive-shaped Slime she saw fighting the Incan swarm was also an atmospheric organism. They had different forms and could make some strange sounds to attack.
Lin also felt that the thing she found at the bottom of the mountain where Li Xie dug was also part of an atmospheric organism. That thing was very big, so Lin believed that it was a rather large atmospheric organism …
She should be able to see more similar creatures … if they weren't frozen to death.
As for the Slimes that Lin had communicated with Moketu before, she felt that they were very similar to these Slimes. However, they might be different species because these Slimes did not seem to have high intelligence. It was unlikely that Moketu would go and meet them.
Lin felt that these Slime's intelligence was similar to that of a pterosaur, and their attacking behavior was also quite similar. She couldn't see anything special about them. Although they were in large groups, they didn't show any signs of teamwork.
But at least she could confirm that they did indeed have a brain … or at least an intelligence similar to that of a creature with a brain. It might be an organ, or it might be like the Cashew Tree, which had nerve nodes all over its body.
Some creatures in the canyon were also observing these creatures with Lin, including a few Cashew Trees.
These trees could be said to be the only living creatures in the canyon that had experienced the dinosaur continent, the cold, and the canyon incident at the same time.
Their lifespan was especially long, similar to that of ordinary plants. Some of these trees were called 'elders' by the Humerus because they knew a lot of things.
But they also couldn't explain the wonderful scene in the sky.
Looking at the Slime flying around in the sky, Lin didn't have any special plans for now, because she didn't know where they came from, and there was no way to find their habitat.
Moreover, the most important thing right now was … Yue. Floating astronomy.
PS: Thank you ~ Yuantu ~ 588 ~
Thank you ~ Liuyan ~ for the tip ~
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