Chapter 568: The Terraforming (1)
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
The group of men quickly returned to the cave. Among them, there were people who were chatting and some who were cursing, but it was apparent that no one feared the terrifying beast.
Gradually, the spoken voices began to die down and the cave became quieter by the second. No one spoke. Everyone had subconsciously held their breath together as the giant beast's walking tremors had begun to grow louder and louder, almost as if it was heading towards their direction. Resembling rolling thunder, tremors shook off the dust and pebbles from the cave's ceiling.
Oil lamps continued to burn quietly. The impure oil caused the entire cave to have a smell of burning fat.
"It won't collapse, will it?" An evolved human suddenly questioned, breaking the quiet atmosphere.
"Shut up!" Ling Zhong-an suppressed his voice and scolded anxiously. The distance between here and the surface was a total of five hundred meters, give or take. Logically speaking, even if there were several tens of thousands of tons of weight, the cave should still be able to hold itself. The issue was that during these few decades, this cave had been expanded at least ten times of what it originally was, spanning across tens of thousands of square feet. Nobody could guarantee it would not collapse due to the tremors.
Underneath the frozen Earth was a natural refrigerator sealing an incredible amount of food resources. When the cave's food reserve had been fully depleted, all that was needed was a few hours of digging. Eventually, they would find a hefty amount of edible grassroots and tubers. When they were lucky, there were even times when they found a mutated beast or various underground insects that were frozen to death. Naturally, the latter would be more common. However, during these past few decades, the odds of stumbling into a mutated beast was slim.
"I... was only just saying!" He felt everyone was staring at him in anger. That evolved human knew that he had angered the crowd. So he just mumbled a few words and immediately shut his mouth.
Luckily, bringing bad omens was not his evolved ability. Soon afterward, the tremors had grown softer, a clear indication that the giant beast had left the area.
The group of people collectively let out a sigh of relief, anxiously waiting to return to their resting place that still lingered with their remaining body heat.
"Say, this type of gigantic beast, how many tons of food does it need to eat daily? It's been over forty years, how come it's still alive?" an evolved human questioned with curiosity.
"You think every inch of land on Earth has been frozen? Nearby the entrance of the volcano lies a piece of forest. That area is packed with mutated beasts. Who dares to roam around there?" another evolved human answered in disdain.
Everyone knew about this. There were even people suggesting migrating to that area. However, after rounds and rounds of debates and discussion, no conclusion came about in the end.
Firstly, the distance to the volcano from here was about a total of three to four hundred kilometers. Migrating everyone there was not a task that could be completed within a day. Under the extremely cold weather, while lacking the necessary winter equipment and wearing the animal pelts that could barely cover up a person's body, many people would likely be frozen into a statue before reaching the halfway point.
Secondly, that type of place was like an oasis in the middle of the desert. It was not difficult to conclude that such a place would gather all sorts of powerful and strong mutated beasts. Who would dare risk their peaceful days and migrate there?
Although the life here was troublesome, the only irksome part was insufficient meat in their diet, yet filling one's stomach was a relatively easy task. For example, there was a significant supply of edible types of plants like the grassroots and tubers.
The combination of cruel reality and the despair of an unforeseeable future caused everyone over here to be in the state of eat or die. Even if they were alive, they were not truly living. As for the future, it was a prohibited topic to discuss and no one was willing to think about it.
As if to release the stress, a couple had started to stage an indescribable scene. Along with unscrupulous screams spread across the entire cave, there were new couples swiftly joining along by the temptations of these voices.
The atmosphere within the cave had instantaneously become… Obscene!
…
At this moment, an extremely horrifying presence had suddenly shrouded this area, everyone's hair instantly stood on their end.
It was an indescribable type of horror. It was as if one's heart was being grabbed tightly by someone and death was imminent.
Inside the cave, all sounds had immediately disappeared and once again the cave had become silent, to the point that you could hear a needle being dropped.
Everyone's faces were frozen in fear as if time had completely stopped.
Only Ling Zhong-an was slightly better. Although he was like the rest, with his whole body going limp, unable to muster any strength. This atmosphere, luckily, only lasted for a few seconds then it completely disappeared. However, it felt as if a year had gone by to him.
Ling Zhong-an came down from his woman's body, his eyes fixed onto the frozen mud above his head. His whole body was exhausted and suddenly started whirring, leaving his heart palpitating, beating at a fast pace.
This was the second time he felt that he was close to death. However, compared to the time when the aliens were destroying humanity, this time the sense of danger was undoubtedly even higher.
"Something must have happened!" He was even more frightened.
The fact was that this presence had shrouded the entire Earth simultaneously.
The ape-shaped giant beast that was passing by just now was traversing step by step. With its body size as tall as a mountain, wherever it went, the icy layer cracked. However, its whole body suddenly limped and fell to the ground, it was terrified and shaking, not daring to move.
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A huge Ambilight bird was hovering about the great ocean interchangeably, searching for prey, its sharp and deadly eyesight had carried along a sort of haughty manner. Countless nearby airborne birds flew away in terror. Suddenly its body froze and with a cry, the humongous body had dived into the sea surface straight from the sky.
A gigantic tree with its leaves as thick as gray clouds, with the surrounding mountain peaks not even being a fifth of its size, got struck by lightning as wide as a python that stroke down like a storm onto its leaves but there was no damage done to the tree. Suddenly, the tree trunk trembled, causing this area to undergo an intense earthquake.
…
At this moment, all the remaining living creatures on Earth had frozen and did nothing but shiver.
In the blink of an eye, the entire Earth had started having surging winds. Every strand of willpower had been used as they immediately started running for their lives as fast as they could. Concurrently, countless particles of dust had been attracted by a formless force, causing it to converge towards the south pole.
The skies were filled with a dark cloud drifting at a fast pace. When looked at from space, the entire Earth seemed as if it was gradually being peeled off layer by layer.
This was an unmatched shocking scenery as if God's miracle had shown down on Earth.
Dark clouds similar to that of a snowball had rapidly rolled up, surging an endless wave of winds, causing its color to be darker and darker and the clouds thicker and thicker, as if it was an ocean made of ink.
Quickly, a huge vortex above the south pole had been formed, followed by a series of intense lightning and thunderstorms.
The gigantic lightning, looking like a dancing golden snake, repeatedly stroke onto the ice surface, frying out hole after hole of dark charred spots, the entire south pole area had turned into a terrifying area, filled with thunderstorms.
Fortunately, the dark clouds were shrinking at an incredible speed. In about ten seconds, they had shrunken into a solidified sphere with a radius of about ten kilometers or so, a mass comparable to ten Mount Everests.
However, it was shrinking continuously, and together flying straight into the air like a rocket. It pierced through the ozone layer, flew out to near space, and during mid-flight, its material structure was constantly changing. Fission was occurring at an atomic level. These atoms were turned into carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen before being forcefully recombined once again, causing a collapse. From it, a huge amount of energy was released, causing the sky to light up as if a second sun was formed.
All these were caused by none other than Luo Yuan.
Currently, he stood in space, keeping a distance of about several tens of thousands of kilometers from Earth, forming this clump of dust and condensed matter. Luo Yuan prepared to use it to create a positive and negative Klein channel in the micro-universe. From a point of view, this was a type of recycling.
He looked at Earth and frowned, the Earth's environment was even worse than what he had imagined. To recover into its former glory, a great amount of effort must be exerted.
The sun's warm light had once again pierced through the atmosphere and shone directly upon the ground. As of now, it was still August — just in time for summer in the northern hemisphere, the sunlight was strong and glaring. Within a few minutes or so, the temperature which was at -30°C had instantaneously risen.
The icy surface was gradually melting. The intense steaming effect caused the entire Earth, especially the northern hemisphere, to form a slug of water vapor. When looked down upon from space, a huge amount of clouds drifting towards every corner were rapidly condensing and forming rain clouds covering up the planet.
If no precautions were taken, then during the coming few months or even years, Earth would be covered in a continuous storm. Floods would rage across the lands. The land would be turned into swamps, the remaining living creatures on Earth would once again face another great extinction.
During the first apocalypse, the mutated beasts were mankind's greatest enemy, but right now everything's changed. Under the unlocked virus's effect, the creatures of Earth had plenty of variety and diversity, it was already human civilization's most precious genetic wealth.
After thinking for about a hundredth of a second, Luo Yuan had a perfect solution.
The next moment, his figure had appeared above the Pacific Ocean, this was an endless dark gray ice layer. Under the sunlight of a several dozen minutes, countless small water holes had appeared.
Quickly, hundreds of millions of these holes covered the entire world's oceans except for the Arctic Ocean. His consciousness dived into the ice layer's every molecule and began vibrating them at a few billion times per second, accelerating the molecule's vibration and causing the ice layer's temperature to rise rapidly.
Facing this type of base material heating, the ice layer had nothing to go against it. The thick ice layer of a thousand meters had instantly melted into ocean water.
The ocean had finally returned, and the sea level was gradually recovering, suddenly causing terrifying tides. Looking at the intense movement of the sea, Luo Yuan frowned and raised his hand and gently pressed downward, exerting a fearsome force that instantly spread out and calmed the entire ocean forcefully.
His silhouette had once again disappeared.
Up next, from his memories position, he opened up a new great river on every land from the geographical bumps and combined countless branches of small rivers, lowering the low-lying land into ponds, clearing off the mountains blocking the way into the flatlands, and using his power again to begin carving out an underground river network, broadening and penetrating every hidden river and hidden lake.
Controlling the flood was nothing to him. It was child's play.
His consciousness had even dove into every weakness of the mainland's plate. Through the various procedures he used to ease the weakness off the planet. He began to concurrently fix and reinforce the crystal crevice damaged by the anti-matter, putting an end to the volcano's chances of having an eruption.
From Asia to Europe, to North America and South America… Everything except for the South Pole had been preserved to their original state and every piece of the mainlands had been thoroughly looked through by him.
Only in about ten minutes or so, the entire Earth had shown drastic changes, as if the sky was now the sea and the sea was now the sky.
And at this time, the Earth's first storm after a few decades, a great storm that covered half of the Earth, had finally begun!