Megastructure—Regular Octahedron

Roughly seven hundred kilometers away from a small underground cavity, the roots that had been pushing forward with all their might stopped growing. As time passed, the root tip swelled and formed a sphere.

The inside of the sphere was hollow. Within it, a fist-sized tumor-like object, something like an organ, was pulsing nonstop.

More time passed. The suspected organ was still beating, but it was no longer as full of vitality as it had been at first. Both the amplitude and speed of its swelling and shrinking had dropped considerably, and six protrusions had appeared on the writhing wall of flesh, each pointing in a different direction and all equidistant from one another.

Before long, the organ was split open by the object inside it, and a regular octahedron-shaped object was exposed within the underground cavity propped open by the root sphere.

This regular octahedron was as crystal clear as glass. Various crisscrossing pipelines could be seen inside it. It had fifteen edges; apart from the twelve exposed on the outside, there were also three mutually perpendicular diagonals within.

Its slightly pulsing surface indicated that this thing was a living being, a life-form that had so perfectly blended solid geometry and life together. Not only did it not feel jarring, it was instead filled with a different sort of beauty.

The roots continued to perform their function as usual. Vast streams of material were transported from afar through biological pumps made of muscle cells, delivered over in an unending flow.

These material streams were rapidly absorbed by the regular octahedron. Its existing biological pumps swiftly divided these materials among every part of its body, and its form enlarged proportionally without changing shape. The transparent color on its surface gradually faded, replaced by dark metallic scales.

Soon, the hollow structure built by the roots could no longer contain the constantly growing octahedron, and the internal space of the root sphere was burst open.

Under instructions from afar, the broken roots were quickly repaired, and countless rootlets stretched out, plunging into the interior of the octahedron and continuing to faithfully carry out the task of transporting materials.

The octahedron began to show its power to the world. The space within the strata was continuously forced wider, and the octahedron used its own muscle cells to resist the pressure from the layers of earth.

This confrontation had already tilted completely to one side—in favor of the octahedron.

An increase in size often meant a sharp decline in strength. If dimensions were enlarged without limit, even something built from the toughest metal would seem unbearably fragile.

However, even as the pressure from the strata grew greater and greater, the octahedron remained unmoved, always expanding its form at an unhurried pace.

This was all thanks to its own structure. Its internal framework was entirely connected to form triangles, providing the octahedron with an absolutely stable structure. The octahedron's slanted-edge design allowed the pressure exerted by the strata to be dispersed and shared by every part of its body.

Relying entirely on the framework was unrealistic. Among it, the ones playing the role of "strongmen" within the octahedron, shouldering the vast majority of the pressure, were the enormous number of muscle cells in the octahedron's body. They continuously consumed methane to provide the motive force for the octahedron's overall structure, thereby achieving the goal of weakening external pressure.

Corresponding to the octahedron within the strata was the planet's falling sea level. It was as if an invisible planet-class giant beast had lowered its body to drink, causing global water levels to drop by somewhere between one and twenty meters.

The octahedron obeyed its instructions, tirelessly expanding its form. Soon, a new opponent appeared.

They were lava, the fire dragons of the Hadean Eon—both disaster and wealth. Even on Earth, they were existences humanity absolutely did not want to provoke.

Now, the expanding octahedron had probed into their dragon's nest. How could they endure it?

Lava between seven hundred and twelve hundred degrees Celsius poured out, swearing to annihilate the fool who dared offend it, body and soul.

The octahedron's dark scales were burned crimson by the lava's high temperature, but very quickly, that redness faded away, returning to their original darkness.

Inside the octahedron, under the acceleration of the biological pumps, high-speed liquid water rapidly carried the heat away. The heat sped up its metabolism, and the octahedron's volume surged even further—lava instead became the side being "eaten."

After the octahedron's expansion continued for a period of time, the seabed began to rise. At first, it was only a tiny, almost imperceptible curve, gradually becoming a small hill visible to the naked eye. At this point, it was only three kilometers from the sea floor.

When the surging ocean currents washed away the mud and broken stones covering it, the octahedron was finally completely exposed to the surface environment. This process did not create much of a commotion, forming a sharp contrast with its unstoppable momentum within the strata, like a peerless master who had already withdrawn into the mountains and forests.

The octahedron's form continued to expand, and its internal skeletal structure grew increasingly complex. Countless stable triangular structures maintained the main strength of localized areas, while the fifteen main bones that had grown in the earliest stage also became thicker and thicker.

After coming into contact with the ocean, the octahedron's expansion speed increased further, and the rate at which the ocean level fell increased at the same time.

The roots that had been lurking underground all drilled out from the seabed one after another. They connected with the octahedron, increasing the intensity of organic material and other matter transport.

The octahedron soon touched the sea surface, swelling at a speed almost visible to the naked eye.

...one meter... ten meters... a hundred meters... a thousand meters...

The top of the octahedron rose higher and higher above the water. A nearby volcanic island was slowly dismantled in this process from below, like a bulldozer pushing apart a sand pile with absolute, irresistible force.

Everything that happened was fully taken in by Huo Gu through the root system, and he could not help but feel a small surge of self-satisfaction.

"If I didn't have a real sample like the giant underground cavity support pillars, with only the knowledge I had, there's no way I could have designed such a high-strength skeletal structure..."

Of course, relying on the support pillars alone was far from enough. There was also the help of those alien skeletal fossils he had discovered later. Otherwise, Huo Gu truly would not have been able to design such a self-consistent, seamless iron skeleton in such a short time.

Bones were not like alloys, where one could just throw them straight into a furnace, burn them, hammer them a bit, and be done with it. On the microscopic scale, bones had even more microscopic structures. It was precisely because of this that bones could widen and grow larger along with the growth of life.

Huo Gu's perspective swept over the octahedron that had expanded out of the sea from bottom to top, then shifted his gaze from the top of the octahedron to the orange-red sky with its dense cloud layer.

"Looks like it won't be long before I can settle things with these current troubles..."

Not long after that, just as the octahedron's height rose to around five thousand meters above the average surface height, that tornado column Huo Gu found familiar and hated enough to make his teeth itch appeared.