This young planet was blanketed in dark clouds, a quilt woven from potent greenhouse gases and smoke. It clamped tightly over the planet, locking all the heat within and turning the surface temperature into an extreme, searing hell.
Fortunately, the Boundless Tribe possessed powerful bodies and could easily survive in such an environment. Even infants would not be harmed by it.
Many, many years ago, the Boundless Tribe's bodies had not been so powerful. They had merely been ordinary inhabitants who ate dirt.
But they abandoned their home planet, left the ground, and came to the stars.
That choice was like primitive lobe-finned fish choosing to leave the sea and venture onto land, opening a brand-new chapter for life and civilization. Naturally, they too bid farewell to their primitive flesh.
Their bodies had been transformed through the threefold forces of natural evolution, Prosthetic Body Modification, and genetic engineering, becoming capable of adapting to the environments of nearly every planet in the universe. So long as it was a planet, they could land directly in the flesh without relying on any equipment.
At the same time, they could consume most known substances. The entire periodic table lay within their diet.
This allowed them, as a starship civilization, to roam freely through most of the universe without worrying about survival.
Reading City descended onto the leveled ground, then extended tens of thousands of "gangways."
The citizens aboard Reading City used the gangways to reach the surface of the planet.
The leveled ground had no lava, so they could walk about freely.
Only occasionally did a ray of sunlight pierce through the clouds of methane and dust, falling upon Reading City's hull and scattering specks of light across its silvery-white metal.
Abo arrived on the ground. A hovercar was launched from a hangar