When a colossal creature died.
Its flesh and blood nourished the worms and insects of the earth.
Its bones became silent fossils, becoming part of the land.
From this, an entirely new miniature ecosystem might even emerge.
The nutrients of a colossal creature could circulate and cycle, meeting the needs of countless microorganisms.
On Earth before the descent, there had been the concept of a whale fall.
"One whale falls, and all things thrive" followed the same principle.
A whale fall referred to the phenomenon of a whale sinking to the seafloor after death.
When a whale died in the ocean, its corpse eventually sank to the seabed.
Biologists named this process a whale fall.
The corpse of a single whale could sustain a decomposer-based cyclical ecosystem for a hundred years.
A whale fall was a long process.
Feeding on the whale's body was merely the beginning of this gluttonous feast.
Once the large chunks of whale flesh had been devoured, scavengers such as deep-sea sharks and rattail fish dispersed in satisfaction.
Afterward, polychaetes and crustaceans quietly gathered around. They lived directly off the whale bones and the nutrient-rich sediment nearby, reproducing and expanding rapidly.
Gradually, as the whale's body underwent anaerobic decomposition in the deep sea, it silently released sulfides. Bacteria that relied on sulfides converted them into organic matter, creating a biological community sustained by these chemoautotrophic microorganisms.
In the end, the whale's skeletal remains became reef rock, a paradise where life rejoiced. The entire process was seamless and interconnected, lasting decades or even centuries.
Of course, the growth of a whale often required a long span of time as well.
The power it had drawn upon during that time would eventually return to all living things.
Lentax Great City was now witnessing a scene much like a