Monster Bird

He saw an unknown creature covered in black feathers, with enormous wings, like some kind of monstrous bird.

This monster bird stood about two and a half meters tall, and its wingspan stretched four to five meters. It had enormous mouthparts filled with sharp protrusions, whether teeth or something else, he had no idea.

It appeared beside one of the clones without warning, lowered its head, bit the clone in half, tore it apart, and swallowed it.

What was that thing?!

This thought flashed through Li Qingsong's tens of thousands of brains at once.

This was a vacuum! Without Spacesuit protection, a clone would die in at most one minute! And the temperature here was incredibly low, more than two hundred degrees below zero Celsius!

There was also intense interstellar high-energy radiation, enough to destroy the DNA of any living creature!

How had this unknown creature survived in such an environment?!

Li Qingsong's thoughts raced, and an idea even surfaced in his mind: How many of these monsters are there? Could these strange creatures be the reason Earth's people suddenly disappeared?

Earth's humans were far more technologically advanced than he was. If even Earth's humans had been destroyed by these monsters, then he probably had no ability to fight back against them!

Li Qingsong's heart instantly filled with gravity.

With a thought, more than a hundred Branch Bases scattered outside the Main Base reacted at once. The several thousand clones stationed outside simultaneously stopped what they were doing and rushed into the base structures.

At the Main Base, numerous clones moved as well, rushing toward the edges of the base in teams and guarding against any unexpected developments.

Although only this one base had encountered the monster bird, and only one had been seen, who knew whether there were more of these things elsewhere on Luoshen Star.

No matter what, caution was best.

There were also more than a hundred clones in Base No. 45.

Li Qingsong gritted his teeth and controlled the clones to grab whatever could serve as a weapon nearby—kitchen knives, Steel Pipes, wrenches, and the like—before charging at the monster bird that had just swallowed a clone.

The ferocious monster bird let out a silent roar, opened its hideous maw wide, and charged fiercely toward the clones.

The clones feared no death as they struck at it with the weapons in their hands.

Li Qingsong had sent these clones to their deaths. The purpose was simple: to test this unknown creature's Combat Power.

If this creature possessed overwhelming combat strength, was impervious to blades and bullets, could fly through the skies and burrow through the earth, and could wipe out hundreds of people with a single attack, then he would be better off abandoning this base and fleeing aboard the Deep Space spacecraft.

Under such circumstances, flesh and blood flew as more than a hundred clones fought. One clone after another lost contact with him.

Losing contact meant they had died.

Yet Li Qingsong felt no worry. Instead, he let out a long breath of relief.

He saw that the monster bird was not impervious to weapons.

One clone swung a kitchen knife down with all his strength and actually chopped a gap into the monster bird's wing.

Another clone thrust a sharpened Steel Pipe straight at it, piercing more than ten centimeters into the monster bird's body. A large amount of unknown fluid flowed out before rapidly freezing.

In the end, at the cost of more than twenty clones, the monster bird finally collapsed to the ground and stopped moving.

These monsters weren't what caused Human Civilization to disappear!

Li Qingsong immediately reached that conclusion.

A monster that clones armed with kitchen knives and Steel Pipes could kill would be nothing to Human Civilization even if there were a hundred million of them.

Several clones cautiously stepped forward and carefully examined the monster bird's body under the lights.

Li Qingsong saw a distinct layer of ice covering the outside of the monster bird's body, as hard as steel. Yet beneath the ice, there was a certain amount of warmth. Some unknown substances remained liquid and could still flow.

At the same time, its wings probably were not used for flying. Li Qingsong had not seen sufficiently powerful muscles, or any muscle-like structures.

Wings that large, yet not for flying... could they be some kind of material-collection net?

What did it rely on to survive? What was its food?

They cut open the monster bird's stomach—clearly a stomach, since the first clone to die was inside it.

Besides the corpse, Li Qingsong also saw some dissolved substances.

He recognized them at once.

There was methane, ethane, acetonitrile, tholin, formaldehyde, and more.

They were all organic compounds!

A thought that left Li Qingsong somewhat shaken arose in his mind.

Could this thing be a space-dwelling lifeform?

It feeds on the simple organic compounds on planets as food and an energy source. After consuming all the edible organic compounds on one planet, it migrates through space, using its enormous wings as collection nets to gather dust and matter from space as supplies, sustaining itself until it reaches another planet, where it repeats the process...

Th-this... does such life really exist in the universe?

Li Qingsong's biological knowledge instinctively rejected the possibility. But at this moment, solid evidence lay right before him, forcing him to admit it.

If that's the case, then this is bad.

Clearly, planets are the rarest thing in the vast Sea of Stars.

Every planet here contains huge amounts of the organic matter they desperately need. To these monster birds, each planet is like a lush grassland in the eyes of cattle and sheep.

What's more, large numbers of clones are active on Luoshen Star, and their activities have created huge amounts of more complex organic compounds.

Even the human body is made of these complex organic compounds.

Perhaps these complex organic compounds are even more attractive to these monster birds.

If simple organic compounds are wild vegetables and coarse bread, then organic matter such as human bodies, livestock, aquatic products, and grain are lavish feasts!

Perhaps it was precisely my activities on Luoshen Star that drew this monster bird here!

Li Qingsong's mind raced.

At this moment, the only thing Li Qingsong could hope for was that not too many monster birds had come to Luoshen Star.

He had to remember that he had not developed even the slightest bit of weapons technology. Other than kitchen knives and Steel Pipes, he had no weapons at all!

Who could have imagined that such life existed in the universe—and that it had come knocking at his door, of all things?

The clones dragged the monster bird's corpse, intending to bring it back to the Main Base for further study.

But at that moment, the ground suddenly began to tremble faintly.

A massive searchlight swung over, and the clones saw a terrifying sight.

The dark-red ground of Luoshen Star was now covered by a black mass of monster birds.

At least a thousand monster birds were charging toward Base No. 45!