Good and Bad

"Why was this happening? While it wasn't necessary for every single-celled organism to have an eyespot, a light-sensitive organelle, it couldn't be that none of them had one..."

Huo Gu then noticed that among the single-celled organisms, there were likewise no chloroplasts, chlorophyll, or anything else that required "light" to function.

"Could it be that I was wrong from the very beginning?"

"Is it possible that there really is no 'light' in the external environment, so these single-celled organisms never evolved organelles associated with it?"

From the state of the single-celled organisms, Huo Gu inferred this conclusion.

Life and the environment influenced each other. If there had been no life from the start, Earth would gradually have become a barren planet.

The surrounding environment also determined the forms organisms could develop, influencing their evolution.

There was no way living things would pass up an energy source like the sun. Even if they lacked organelles related to "light" at first, they would find ways to evolve them.

However, Huo Gu was in no rush to draw a conclusion. After thinking it over, it decided to carry out several more large-scale microorganism captures.

"It would be too hasty to reach a conclusion based on this alone. This is only the first capture. I'll try a few more times. If there's still nothing, then I can probably confirm that my current location is either the bottomless deep sea or a dark underground lake with no light whatsoever."

It used trace enzymes to break down the cell membranes and cell walls of those dead single-celled organisms, then drew their internal organelles and genetic fragments into the inner cells beneath the surface cells of the cavity, securing them to the inner walls of the cell membranes with binding proteins.

For a moment, Huo Gu actually felt as though it had become rich overnight.

But at the thought of potentially existing multicellular organisms, that excitement quickly cooled.

Huo Gu knew very well that while the current multicellular cluster was invincible against countless microorganisms, the moment its opponent became a multicellular organism, it would be as fragile as a newborn infant.

Cell walls capable of blocking bacteriophages were thinner than paper in the eyes of macroscopic organisms.

Enzymes capable of breaking down cell walls were utterly harmless to macroscopic organisms.

The sharp teeth and claws of macroscopic organisms, which could easily tear apart epidermal tissue, were like the nuclear weapons of great powers to the current single-celled cluster—just as they were to African tribesmen.

"It's still not enough... There's still a long way to go before I'm no longer threatened by life."

As Huo Gu warned itself of its current predicament, it directed the cells to open their mouths.

A gaping maw that seemed like a black hole to microorganisms slowly opened. Propelled by the current, Huo Gu's single-celled cluster advanced, and countless microorganisms, proteins, amino acids, and other substances were swept into that land of death without even realizing it.

It used enzymes to kill the viruses that no longer held any value, extended binding proteins, captured microorganisms in large numbers, dismantled them, and carefully extracted their genes and organelles.

With two successful attempts behind it, the third became far more practiced. The mouth opened and closed more frequently, and the coordination between Huo Gu's commands and the cells within the cluster became more harmonious, no longer as mechanical as before.

After opening and closing more than a hundred times, the mouth's movements seemed no different from those of a normal macroscopic organism in Huo Gu's eyes.

This was good news, but there was bad news as well.

The cause was the single-celled organism Huo Gu had captured earlier, the one with suspected mitochondria. It was a sulfur bacterium that carried out its life processes using sulfur.

Huo Gu was no stranger to sulfur bacteria. It had seen this type of single-celled organism through an electron microscope in the volcanic rock samples it had collected.

These organisms were commonly found in waters containing sulfur. Just as their name implied, they could not live without sulfur.

Even during the age of humans, sulfur bacteria had not gone extinct. They were mainly concentrated near active volcanoes or hot springs, and could survive even in boiling water at one hundred degrees Celsius.

Since it had captured such an organism, it could infer that there was certainly a large, stable sulfur-rich environment nearby.

"I only hope that place isn't an active volcano."

Huo Gu shuddered inwardly at the thought, even if the volcano was not erupting and merely belching thick smoke.

Harmful substances would mix with rainwater in the atmosphere along with the smoke and dust. The result would be either acid rain or alkaline rain. After a single heavy rainfall, the water environment could change completely in an instant.

Then there was the magma. Without eyes to observe its surroundings, magma was also extremely dangerous to Huo Gu and the single-celled cluster. Lava would boil the surrounding liquid, and in such a high-temperature environment, the cells that formed the whole would all die within seconds—or rather, be cooked.

There was no helping it. The multicellular organism currently formed by the single cells was simply too rudimentary. It did not even have a temperature-sensing system, so Huo Gu could only indirectly observe the water temperature through changes in the proteins within the cell cluster.

If the sharp teeth and claws of macroscopic organisms were equivalent to great-power nuclear weapons for the current single-celled cluster, then an active volcano was equivalent to the sun. All Huo Gu could do now was hold it in awe. If the volcano erupted, the cluster's current movement speed meant certain death.

"Only after losing them did I realize how precious those things were..."

Huo Gu missed the eyes it once had beyond measure, as well as the international civilian airliners of the human world that could reach twice the speed of sound.

It cleared away the distracting thoughts. It did not have that much time to waste now; the threats lurking in the darkness would not wait for it to be ready.

There were currently two things it could confirm.

First, from the single-celled organisms it had captured, it could confirm that the surroundings were completely dark, which was why not a single one had evolved organelles related to "light."

Second, there was an unknown sulfur-dense region nearby.

"Assuming the worst-case scenario, suppose there is such an active volcano nearby..."

Huo Gu's analysis came to an abrupt stop. It was not that it did not want to continue its deductions, but that its thoughts had crashed.

Before absolute power, all of this was nothing more than futile struggle.

"...It seems I really do need eyes."

A thought surfaced in Huo Gu's mind—since it could not find any organelles related to "light," why not simply create a pair of "eyes" independently?

The instant this thought appeared, it was like wildly growing weeds. In the blink of an eye, it occupied Huo Gu's mind and could not be shaken off no matter what.

"That's right. I can completely design a visual system myself, one more sophisticated and capable than the 'eyespots' of those single-celled organisms."

"As for the standard, I'll use human vision as the benchmark."