So Many Jellies

In the seawater nearly a hundred meters below the surface, sunlight had begun to fade. Jelly's tiny body slowed its descent here.

Searching for food, reproducing through fission, staying away from humans—those were its tasks.

Not far above, millions of sardines swam underwater in a massive school, like a swirling black storm, churning the currents into whirlpools of various sizes.

Flocks of Seagulls dove down, plunging into the water to snatch sardines in their beaks, splashing countless sprays across the surface as they freely hunted this delicious food.

Crustaceans fed on diatoms to grow, sardines ate crustaceans, and Seagulls preyed on sardines.

Energy from the stars passed from one layer of life to another, maintaining their low-entropy ordered forms.

Jelly shot toward the school of fish. Its tentacles stretched from a dozen centimeters to over a meter long, and six long tentacles swiftly stabbed toward the sardines.

The tips of those tentacles transformed into thin spikes, piercing the sardines' bodies like hard metal spears. At the instant they struck, electric currents surged from the tips, completely paralyzing the sardines that still tried to struggle.

Jelly retracted its tentacles. Beneath its large spherical head, flesh writhed as it wrapped around and swallowed the food, while the fluid inside its body rapidly broke it down into usable nutrients.

Hunting, Devouring, digesting—Jelly repeated this process continuously. Its body began to swell, and its tentacles grew thicker. After swallowing nearly a thousand sardines, its body had expanded several times over.

Jelly stopped hunting, and its enormous head slowly returned to its original shape.

At the same time, the ends of its six tentacles began to bulge and expand, forming six spheres hanging from them. Like Jelly's head, each sphere glowed with two faint points of White Light.

Then, the spheres detached from the six tentacles and became six Jellies identical to the original.

The seven Jellies swam neatly toward the same destination. They communicated through electromagnetic waves, forming a small local network. Their identical memories and genes made their seven bodies seem to share one consciousness.

By sending infrasonic waves throughout the seawater, they could detect life several kilometers away. With their numbers having multiplied sixfold, they needed more food to divide and produce more Jellies.

The Jellies moved quickly, reaching speeds of over seventy kilometers per hour underwater. Before long, they found a swimming manta ray a kilometer away.

The seven Jellies swarmed it. The manta ray weighed over three hundred kilograms; after consuming it, they could divide into more than a dozen new Jellies.

The flat-bodied manta ray drifted leisurely through the water, its thick winglike pectoral fins paddling the seawater on either side while its long tail swayed behind it.

The Jellies swiftly surrounded the manta ray. Dozens of extended slender tentacles shot out, forming thin streaks through the seawater as they pierced its body. Once paralyzed, the manta ray had no room to struggle, and even the venomous barb on its tail became useless.

The tentacles sliced the several-hundred-kilogram giant into pieces. The Jellies quickly feasted on the meal, and in only a few minutes, their numbers had expanded to twenty.

With genes modeled after humans, their intelligence approached that of humans. Though they lacked chaotic, ever-changing emotions, their artificial-intelligence-like thinking made their actions more efficient and precise.

Their bodies possessed most of Li Heng's traits: the ability to rapidly break down and digest food, reproduce through self-division, twist and reshape their limbs, and wield tremendous strength.

At close range, electromagnetic waves formed interconnected information networks that rapidly exchanged data between every individual. At long range, they communicated and transmitted information with infrasonic waves. Together with various deep-sea detection methods, this made them invincible in the deep ocean.

As the Jellies continued multiplying, every living thing in the sea would become their food.

A school of Bamboo Fish clustered together underwater. Hundreds of thousands of fish represented tens of thousands of kilograms of food, and the Jellies had already discovered them.

By then, the Jellies' numbers had expanded to more than a thousand. Several kilometers away, they slowly formed an orderly encirclement before attacking at once.

These creatures with two points of White Light on their large heads closed in. Thousands of tentacles stabbed back and forth through the school, and the electric currents at their tips left the Bamboo Fish completely paralyzed, twitching in the seawater.

The entire school was nearly slaughtered. Only a few lucky fish escaped. The Jellies rapidly consumed the food, digested and absorbed it, then divided and multiplied once more, doubling their numbers again.

Only one day had passed since they left the laboratory, yet the Jellies' numbers had already reached two thousand times their original count.

The original Jelly said, "We should split up."

Jelly No. 2 said, "Teams of ten are enough to hunt most marine life."

Jelly No. 3 said, "If we encounter large creatures, we can send sound waves to notify nearby teams."

Jelly No. 4 said, "A major decline in life within the same sea region will attract human attention."

Jelly No. 5 said, "Agreed."

... Jelly No. 2012 said, "Agreed."

More than two thousand Jellies gathered together. Their two eyes emitted faint White Light in the dark seawater, and their tentacles connected with one another as they exchanged information at high speed.

They quickly unified their will. Since they possessed the same memories and had not yet been separated for long, they could still be considered many bodies with one mind, like a schizophrenic with two thousand personalities conversing internally.

However, once they began acting separately, their differing experiences would naturally cause them to develop different personalities.

The Jellies dispersed in teams of ten, waving their tentacles and using their large heads to propel themselves swiftly through the water. Most of them remained in the seawater a hundred meters deep, where food was most abundant.

Foraging, dividing, expanding—within a day, each Jelly underwent self-division roughly four times on average. With every passing day, their numbers would multiply two thousandfold.

A single Jelly weighed roughly twenty-five kilograms. This meant that if they had sufficient food, their numbers would exceed eight billion after three days, with a total mass exceeding two hundred million tons.

Of course, that was almost impossible. All living things in the entire ocean totaled only tens of billions of tons, and for the Jellies to reproduce to such staggering numbers, they would need to consume one percent of all organisms in the ocean.

As their numbers grew, their speed of hunting, consuming life, and reproducing through division would slow further. Besides, if so many creatures vanished in such a short time, it would have long been enough to draw serious attention from human society. They would then have to go to war with humanity ahead of schedule.

That was also why Li Heng had set restrictions on the Jellies. Their brain structure made their thought patterns more like those of biological computers, while their original memories also imposed limitations. Only then could the Jellies remain under control.

If Li Heng's cells were allowed to spread freely, then aside from technologically advanced humans, most other life forms would have their genes corroded and turn into some kind of mutated monster. They would then Devour one another and evolve, and no one knew what sort of creatures would ultimately be raised.

If Jellies could merely divide and reproduce rapidly and possessed intelligent brains, they could not be called a new intelligent species.

A complete race and a Civilization system had to be sustainable. They could not survive solely by relying on naturally occurring food in the ocean.

For them, marine animals were the best means of obtaining the materials necessary for division and reproduction, but they were not the only means of survival.

Several dozen Jellies did not go hunting or reproduce. Instead, they gathered around a pitch-black undersea volcano, where red magma showed through the cracks in its center, making the nearby seawater scalding hot.

Jelly No. 1011 said, "A stable undersea volcano discovered. Proposal: restructure into thermal power generation mode."

Jelly No. 1012 said, "Agreed."

... Jelly No. 1061 said, "Agreed."

Fifty of the Jellies connected their tentacles together, pressing their round heads tightly against one another and tangling themselves into a gigantic sphere.

Then their heads began to twist, deform, and fuse. The dozens of brains within connected in series, their individual consciousnesses overlapping and becoming a single consciousness.

More than a hundred tentacles merged together before stretching and extending, while countless thin black substances appeared inside them.

These long tentacles extended over a hundred meters. One end connected to the undersea volcano, while the other led to the enormous disk-shaped Jelly formed by fusion.

The fused Jelly disk was over a meter in diameter. Aside from the brain formed from fifty merged Jellies, its other internal cells were based on the energy-storage cells in Li Heng's body. Thermal-electric materials in its tentacles converted the magma's heat into electricity, which was then stored in the disk.

This was the Jellies' power station. Fifty Jellies could form the most basic power station. The energy-storage cells within it could hold over twenty thousand kilowatt-hours of electricity, enough to supply the energy needed for the daily life activities of over ten thousand Jellies.

At the same time, it was also a biological computer and signal base station. With abundant energy to support it, it could display the computing power of a supercomputer while providing information support for all Jellies.

Some infrasonic waves were sent into the distance. The nearest several hunting teams rapidly arrived, after which dozens more Jellies fused into it.

An undersea volcano contained enormous energy. This small power station would continue growing as the Jellies' numbers rapidly increased, eventually becoming capable of sustaining tens of millions of Jellies.

They would use these undersea volcanoes as bases, spreading throughout the oceans of the world. Their population would continue to expand as they waited for the day they stepped onto the battlefield.

On a beach in a Southeast Asian country, over a thousand kilometers from the Dongsha Islands, several Jellies whose surfaces had changed to an earthy yellow wriggled toward the forest ahead.

Naturally, Jellies could not live only in the sea. As long as they had a source of energy, they could survive in most places on Earth's surface.

The earthy yellow Jellies entered the forest and wrapped themselves around a large tree. After the colors on their surfaces shifted, they became mottled dark green. Once removed from seawater, a keratinized layer had formed over their surfaces, protecting them like scales.

A small emerald-green snake flicked its tongue from the treetop, sensing the strange creatures before it. Before it could react, several sharp tentacles pierced its body. One Jelly Devoured it into its body, and moments later, it had been completely broken down and digested.

These forests Shrouding the Heavens and blocking out the sun were enough to conceal them from satellite observation. Human Civilization had barely set foot here, and the Jellies would quietly divide and reproduce in every remote place untouched by human traces.

Their green tentacles began to swell and deform, turning into thin branchlike structures covered with many enlarged dark green leaves. They extended to the very top of the tree, blending perfectly into the forest.

The Jellies were absorbing sunlight to replenish the energy consumed during their journey of over a thousand kilometers. Then, like their companions in the sea, they would hunt and reproduce in the forest.