Annihilation

"It's here!"

Hidden in the curtain on the seafloor, Huo Gu noticed, through the visual systems within the covered area, gigantic whirlpools appearing on the water's surface, each with a diameter measured in nautical miles.

Clearly, this was the phenomenon created by giant tornado columns appearing over the sea.

"So it really was drawn here by the large-scale engineering project..."

Huo Gu issued an order, and the scattered gourds within the covered area received it and floated toward the surface.

At that moment, the surface was a raging mass of waves. The average wave height was over twenty meters, and the wind speed was astonishingly high. The orange-red sky had darkened somewhat, thunderclouds flashing with light and accompanied by explosive booms. The spectacle was immense, and from time to time lightning up to a billion volts burst from the clouds and struck the sea.

"Where is that thing?"

Using the eyes of the gourds on the surface, Huo Gu looked up at the sky, searching for the unknown life-form capable of controlling wind and thunder.

Unfortunately, he found nothing. There was nothing in the clouds either. After the visible-light visual system failed to find anything, Huo Gu switched to infrared vision and ultraviolet vision to continue the search, but still could not find any hidden creature.

In other words, the other party either did not exist nearby, or had no physical body at all.

This situation inevitably made Huo Gu think of spirits in Western mythology. They had no bodies, and their very existence represented a certain type of phenomenon. So wherever they went, that phenomenon would occur.

"But that's mythological superstition!"

"Life is a phenomenon. It feeds on negative entropy and actively draws negative entropy from the outside world to maintain its own state unchanged. So wherever life exists, changes in entropy intensify."

"Leaving aside the energy needed to form tornadoes for now, just take lightning. To maintain a life-form with a voltage as high as a hundred million to a billion volts, it would need to devour something of an even higher energy level. How could something like that possibly exist on this planet?"

After thinking for a long while without reaching any result, Huo Gu stared blankly at the thunderclouds in the sky.

"I don't believe in mythology. No matter what, I'm still a materialist. It should be some kind of technology..."

"...Could the other party be somewhere even farther away, remotely interfering with this planet's environment?"

Huo Gu thought of Earth's satellites. He had once heard a friend who worked at the International Space Center say that in a few more years, they would be able to use them to control weather across the globe. When some country had a drought and needed rain, or some country was flooded and needed a dry season, they could even customize the weather, artificially creating rainbows to accompany city celebrations.

"If that's the case, the other party is very likely in outer space. Of course, the possibility of a ground base station can't be ruled out either."

"For now, don't worry about all that. Keep expanding the root system's coverage area. Maybe I'll find the other party's ground base station."

Huo Gu withdrew his attention from the gourds on the surface and put it into controlling the entire cluster on the seafloor.

Time passed in a flash. The root system's coverage area on the seafloor grew from two hundred nautical miles to four hundred nautical miles. During this period, the attack Huo Gu had expected did not appear. The tornadoes were still in their original positions, and lightning still fell into the sea from time to time.

But water was an electrolyte. Although seawater could conduct electricity because of its impurities, there was still a certain distance between the seafloor and the sea surface. Before the lightning current could reach the seafloor, it would be absorbed by water molecules and electrolyzed into hydrogen and oxygen.

This situation had continued from the very beginning until now, which could not help but make Huo Gu suspicious.

"Could it be that the other party actually has no means of interfering with the deep sea?"

That meant Huo Gu no longer needed to hide. Since the limit of the other party's ability was merely this, there was no need for him to be afraid.

Indeed, manipulating the weather was an extremely powerful force. But if it was limited only to the sea surface, then Huo Gu could simply not go ashore. In the Hadean Eon, so-called land was nothing more than islands above sea level. Most of the entire planet was covered by seawater.

The wind and thunder over the sea continued for a while longer before dispersing, like an unreasonable brat from next door going home after getting tired of playing.

It's over? After seeing the climate above the sea settle back into calm, this thought subconsciously emerged in Huo Gu's mind.

"No!"

Vibrations traveled through the surrounding seawater into the body of the cell cluster. The entire cluster on the seafloor was shaking.

Huo Gu could sense the source of the vibrations. They came from underground. In other words, this was an earthquake, an earthquake occurring on the seafloor. Clearly, the other party had made its move.

"How did it do this?!"

Huo Gu cried out in shock and uncertainty within his thoughts.

Cracks appeared on the seafloor, and streams of scarlet lava burst out. The volcanoes within the root system's coverage area released even greater force. Large amounts of water vapor appeared on the seafloor, and because of the water pressure, they were confined inside tiny cavities. Any organisms that entered those cavities, without exception, were steamed alive.

The volcanoes within a radius of four hundred nautical miles all seemed to have gone berserk in unison, releasing ever greater power. The original craters were widened and split open by this pressure, and large amounts of lava spread everywhere across the seafloor like flowing water.

Large amounts of gas were released, causing buoyancy to decrease. The Titanium Snails and gourds that had originally been floating dropped one after another into the lava on the seafloor and were burned to ash.

"Damn it! I won't let you run wild like this!"

Before the relay chain was severed, Huo Gu hurriedly issued an order. All the Titanium Snails activated their evacuation propulsion.

Metallic sodium came into contact with water, and immediately came a powerful eruption. The Titanium Snails shot out like arrows loosed from a bowstring. Even with the buoyancy in the sea decreasing, it still could not affect them.

Huo Gu, inside the curtain, also immediately directed the Titanium Snail he was inhabiting and joined this fleeing army of Titanium Snails.

Looking down at the sea from high above, a white ring was expanding at a speed of one hundred and fifty knots. It was the image created by the "tail flames" released collectively by the fleeing army of Titanium Snails as metallic sodium came into contact with water.

Inside the ring, the seafloor was dark red. On the sea surface, surges continuously welled up like fountains, releasing far more water vapor than other waters.

The whole thing looked as if a great pot had appeared on the seafloor, and a delicious pot of fresh soup was being simmered.

It seemed that some existence felt the seasoning in this pot of fresh soup was still not enough, so it added one small change.

"Hmm?! Something's coming?"

In the middle of fleeing, Huo Gu's sense of crisis exploded. All his senses were operating at one hundred percent, and even in this chaotic environment, he could keenly notice changes in the currents.

Directly ahead of the fleeing Titanium Snails stood a "white pillar."

"That is..."

"A whirlpool?! It's an underwater whirlpool!"

Terrified to the extreme, Huo Gu hurriedly issued an order to turn, but some Titanium Snails were still caught by the whirlpool and buried within it.

After escaping for some distance, just as Huo Gu thought he had made it out alive, an extremely powerful suction force surged up from beneath the Titanium Snail he was inhabiting.

Huo Gu's heart lurched, and what followed was the world spinning around him.