Roots

Waves struck the stone wall made of columnar joints, then retreated, then struck again, the cycle repeating over and over. The earliest seabeds and beaches had been formed through just such endless interaction between seawater and rock over tens of millions of years.

At that moment, an incongruous "outsider" was lodged in the cracks of the stone wall, slowly, little by little, gripping the gaps between the stone columns as it climbed upward.

This "outsider" looked very much like a plant's root system. Countless rootlets extended from the main root, and through molecular-scale embedding, even the hardest stone could not stop these rootlets from burrowing deep into the columns.

In addition, while the rootlets fixed the main root in place, they could also extract inorganic elements such as calcium, magnesium, iron, silicon, and zinc from the stone columns.

With the massive stone columns serving as its main load-bearing pillars, the root system did not need to worry about being torn apart by the waves. The main root extended all the way below the sea surface.

The source of the main root was a tumor-like mass, which likewise extended a vast number of rootlets, firmly anchoring itself among the ellipsoidal and pillow-shaped rock formations at the bottom of the volcanic island, resisting the scouring of the seawater.

The tumor-like mass had more than just one main root. Aside from the one currently "rock climbing," the other main root systems clung to the volcanic rocks on the seafloor and spread in every direction, each extending several kilometers, forming a vast lichen-like network.

It was hard to imagine that not long ago, these things had still been a massive population suspected to be animals.

"Phew... finally finished the design. Next, all that's left is the gradual 'construction' work."

As his thoughts pulled away from the work of "design," Huo Gu felt his mind loosen. At last, he could catch his breath.

If, when he had been human, mental labor had been easier than physical labor, then his current situation was exactly the opposite.

Huo Gu, who could not feel physical fatigue, now found tedious and time-consuming mental labor to be hard drudgery by comparison.

Everything near the volcanic island was Huo Gu's handiwork. He had transformed the entire Hu swarm into its current plant-like form.

In terms of design, Huo Gu had followed the structure of plant roots and stems on Earth. The outer layer was no longer the fragile skin that would split open if scraped by a stone, but a thick cocoon formed by the overlapping accumulation of dead cells.

To ensure the strength of the main root system, he adopted a spider-silk-like method of tangling multiple roots and stems together. While providing a powerful nutrient transport function, it also ensured that the structure would not snap apart.

Within the entire vast system Huo Gu had arranged, the tumor-like mass was the most central part. All the sensory cells of the Hu swarm converged there.

At the cost of sacrificing mobility, the influence radius of the life field had expanded directly to around six kilometers!

Moreover, under the premise that there were absolutely no relay commands, Huo Gu was astonished to discover that the command delay had suddenly weakened quite a bit.

Because of this, the veil over that mysterious life field grew much thinner.

The roots and stems laid out on the seafloor were meant to collect enough organic material to satisfy the system's overall consumption. The rootlets extending from the main roots could capture that organic material very well.

A certain number of "flowers" also grew on the main roots on the seabed. These were all the original "mouths" of the Hu. Huo Gu had not modified them, merely transplanted them intact onto the main roots, making them look like "flowers" that had grown there.

Facts proved that Huo Gu's thinking was correct. These "flowers" had indeed brought him an additional and considerable batch of organic material.

What surprised him even more was that among the microorganisms, he had captured a genetic sample from a microorganism with a "cell nucleus." Calling it a pleasant surprise would not be an exaggeration.

The development of the cell nucleus was, in the history of biological development, a milestone on par with the first life built from organic macromolecules such as amino acids and proteins, or the terrifying upright apes establishing civilization.

Its function was that the cell nucleus served as the repository of genetic information and the control center of cellular metabolism and heredity. In other words, it could maintain the overall coordination of cells even without a superconsciousness like Huo Gu.

Its existence meant that single-celled organisms now possessed the qualification to develop and evolve toward multicellular organisms.

"But this cell nucleus is still extremely crude..."

"It only has a simple double nuclear membrane and nuclear pores. It doesn't have structures such as a nucleolus, chromatin, or a nuclear matrix."

"From what I can see at present, this kind of cell nucleus can only play a certain role in defending against phage invasion."

Huo Gu summarized the information he had obtained from the genetic sample.

Once his interest rose, his occupational disease kicked in, and Huo Gu could not help beginning to study this microorganism sample with a cell nucleus.

"Nitrifying bacteria..."

In that case, finding this kind of bacterium nearby was easy to understand.

At this time, active volcanoes were everywhere across the planet, and nitrous acid was all over the oceans. This area in particular was near a volcanic island that was still active.

"Huh? It maintains life activity by taking in carbon dioxide and methane, reacting them with nitrous acid, and finally expelling oxygen?"

"What the hell?"

Huo Gu once again felt the same sensation he had when he discovered the cell nucleus earlier, as though he had found a new continent.

As everyone knew, carbon dioxide was an inert gas. Even on Earth, those plants that produced oxygen still needed to perform oxygen-consuming respiration to maintain normal life activity.

Oxygen's chemical properties were unstable, which was precisely why it was suitable as an additive in reactions, not as a waste product expelled after a reaction.

"Wait!"

"I seem to have fallen into a misconception. Oxygen's chemical properties are unstable, doesn't that make it a very powerful 'attack method'?"

A sudden flash of insight struck him. Huo Gu, who had originally held a trace of disdain toward this type of bacteria, immediately put that thought away.

Oxygen itself could react with unsaturated fatty acids without enzymatic catalysis, and could destroy the phospholipids that stored these acids. Phospholipids were also the main components of cellular biological membranes, ultimately causing microorganisms to die.

In the microbial world, the nitrifying bacteria Huo Gu had captured could be considered an extremely terrifying "poison." No microorganism wanted to get close to them, especially in the current atmospheric environment, where the evolution of oxygen-consuming microorganisms was basically impossible.

"As expected, no organism that can exist in nature is simple."

After a round of admiration, the sample information was added to the genetic sequences Huo Gu had saved, while the nitrifying bacteria were digested and became nutrients for the entire cluster.

The law of the jungle was everywhere!

Under genetic transcription and expression, the root cores in the middle of the root-and-stem-like system extending for several kilometers gained the ability to produce oxygen. The purpose was to kill any microorganisms that might invade the root-and-stem system.

Of course, this was done just in case, to prevent microorganisms from invading after stones damaged the outer skin defense line.

With the strength of microorganisms alone, the possibility of breaking through head-on was vanishingly small.