Frogs' eyes had a very special structure. They lacked the slight tremors of human eyes, as well as the ciliary muscles needed to adjust their unusually prominent lenses. In other words, frogs were severely nearsighted. They could not see things clearly once they were even slightly far away, and they also ignored objects that were not moving. Mo Li and the other two were now too frightened to move at all. Put simply, they were remaining completely still—and precisely because they were staying still, this enormous frog had no reason to notice them.
It was common knowledge that frogs could not see stationary objects. Even Mo Li, who was not highly educated, knew that much. He had simply been too tense earlier and forgotten about it. Now that Wei Dengke had pointed it out, all three of them felt like complete idiots. When they had encountered the slightly smaller frog before, they would never have faced all those dangers afterward if they had simply stayed still. They certainly would not have set the entire Underground Cavity on fire.
The three exchanged glances, all of them wearing bitter expressions. Zhong Lichun grumbled resentfully, "Why the hell didn't you say that earlier?"
Perhaps because they had relaxed mentally, Zhong Lichun's voice was somewhat loud. Almost as soon as she complained, the Giant Frog abruptly turned around and looked toward where the Mo Li Trio was. Clearly, it had heard her voice.
When the Giant Frog turned its head, the three once again held their breath and did not dare move. Wei Dengke even glared resentfully at Zhong Lichun, clearly blaming her for running her mouth.
Although frogs had poor eyesight, they were extremely sensitive to sound. This time, the Giant Frog did not turn away simply because it could not see the Mo Li Trio. Instead, it slowly began approaching the stone platform where they were. As the Giant Frog drew closer and closer, the three grew increasingly tense. They had never seen a frog this large in their lives. Regardless of whether it would attack them, the pressure brought on by that enormous head steadily approaching was already enough to leave all three drenched in cold sweat.
Just as the Giant Frog's face came within a meter of the three, a strange sound suddenly came from the Lakeshore on the other side. It was the clacking of a hard object striking the ground. The sound was not particularly loud, but it was exceptionally clear.
Hearing it, the Giant Frog abruptly turned around and looked toward the Lakeshore. Unfortunately, its body was too large and completely blocked the Mo Li Trio's view, so the three could not see what was happening on the opposite shore.
Just as the three were filled with confusion, the Giant Frog, which had turned around, suddenly let out a deep croak. Then its entire body violently sprang up from the water and lunged straight toward the Lakeshore.
As the Giant Frog leaped into the air, the Mo Li Trio finally saw what had made the clacking sound across the lake. A Giant Centipede nearly a hundred meters long had appeared beside the Lakeshore. Its entire body was dark red, and its exoskeleton made it look exceptionally sturdy. The Giant Centipede had clearly been driven out by the fire in the Underground Cavity. Smoke was still rising from its shell. For it, the only way to cool down was to come near the lake and get close to a water source.
Everything happened in the blink of an eye. By the time the three saw the Giant Centipede, the enormous Giant Frog had already pounced and opened its huge mouth to bite it.
Although the Giant Centipede was enormous, it was remarkably agile. At the same moment the Giant Frog lunged, the Giant Centipede swiftly retreated, dodging the Giant Frog's attack by a hair's breadth.
The two could be considered natural enemies. As the saying went, enemies meeting would see their eyes blaze with hatred. After evading the Giant Frog's attack, the Giant Centipede raised its upper body. Its enormous pincers repeatedly opened and closed, producing a shrill sound like a utensil scraping across a plate. Although they were far away, Mo Li and the others felt their heads splitting with pain when they heard it, as though their skulls were about to explode.
Fortunately, the sound did not last long. The Giant Frog, whose first pounce had missed, lunged at the Giant Centipede again, while the Giant Centipede swiftly dodged just as it had before.
After being attacked repeatedly by the Giant Frog, the Giant Centipede was clearly enraged. Once it evaded the Giant Frog's attack, it did not retreat. Instead, it charged forward, rushed right up to the Giant Frog, and wrapped its body around it.
The Giant Centipede had at least several thousand legs, and every one of them was as sharp as a sickle. After wrapping itself around the Giant Frog, the Giant Centipede tightened its body and drove its sharp sickle-like legs into the Giant Frog's flesh.
With thousands of sickle-like legs stabbing into its body, the Giant Frog let out a shriek. However, it had no way to fight back. Frogs did not have necks, so even if it wanted to turn its head and bite the Giant Centipede, it could not. At that moment, the Giant Frog had fallen completely onto the defensive.
"Holy crap! A centipede this huge was hiding here? If we'd run into this thing earlier, wouldn't we have died even more horribly?" Wei Dengke watched the Giant Centipede and Giant Frog struggling on the opposite shore, raised a hand to wipe the cold sweat from his forehead, and muttered with lingering fear.
"We really were lucky. From what we're seeing, this Underground Cavity is much more dangerous than it appears on the surface." Mo Li nodded and spoke only then.
"The ecology here is strange. Why are there such enormous Giant Frogs and centipedes? It would be impossible for creatures like these to exist in the outside world," Zhong Lichun interjected.
"From what I can tell, neither of these creatures is an ordinary frog or centipede as we understand them. They should be ancient species. I once saw an introduction to this kind of frog in a book. The book called it a Prehistoric Giant Frog, a carnivorous amphibian that lived during the Mesozoic Era. But this creature had already been extinct for over a hundred million years," Wei Dengke said quietly, stroking his chin.
"Were creatures from the Mesozoic Era all this huge?" Watching the Giant Frog and Giant Centipede fighting across the lake, the muscles on Mo Li's face twitched involuntarily. He then asked with a strange expression, ""
"Creatures from the Mesozoic Era certainly weren't small, but they couldn't have grown this big either. There was only one era when insects reached such sizes—the Devonian Period. Many fossils from the Devonian Period have shown evidence of enormous insects," Wei Dengke continued explaining.
"The Devonian Period? What's that?" Mo Li had only graduated from junior high school and could not understand Wei Dengke's explanation at all. After hearing it, the confusion in his mind only grew.
"The Devonian Period was from 400 to 360 million years ago, and it was the first period of the Late Paleozoic Era. Beginning in the Devonian Period, the Xihai Movement occurred on Earth, causing much of the land to rise above the water and form dry land. The main life-forms on Earth at the time were fish and insects. Because the oxygen content in the air was extremely high, the creatures of that era grew to extraordinary sizes." At that moment, Wei Dengke displayed his extensive knowledge and actually began lecturing Mo Li on the history of Earth.
Unfortunately, explaining all this to Mo Li was practically like playing a lute to a cow. After Wei Dengke finished, Mo Li stared at him wide-eyed with a strange expression, then blurted out, "You explained it very well, but what the hell is the Devonian Period?"
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