Pinned to the Ground and Rubbed Raw

Collectors: ???

The sudden development caught the Collectors off guard. Before extracting a compositional sample, they had examined the statue through indirect methods such as X-rays. The feedback indicated that it was merely an ordinary statue; aside from its deliberately sculpted bizarre appearance, it was just a very ordinary stone.

Obtaining a sample for analysis was simply standard procedure.

"What is this?"

The hundreds of millions of roots in the room watched the thing at the center in astonishment. Describing its entire body with the word "twisted" would not have been excessive.

Its main body was a lump of liquid. It was called a "lump" because it did not spread out like liquid, instead resembling an enlarged, wriggling droplet of water. The surface of this "droplet" seemed to be boiling, with many native hands reaching out from the churning liquid and constantly waving, like drowning people grasping for a life-saving straw.

The inexplicable sounds grew louder and clearer. They sounded like cries for help from planetary natives in extreme terror, screams from torture under severe punishment, or perhaps all manner of other fragmented grievances.

Most bizarrely, the Collectors discovered that the range of illumination had been reduced. Whether infrared, ultraviolet, or visible light, its energy level would sharply weaken after traveling one meter, until it vanished entirely.

Something in this room seemed to be using this method to prevent observers from obtaining information about it. Of course, it might simply have been an inherent characteristic. The Collectors could not determine which.

But that did not mean the Collectors were out of options. The particles in this world were not limited to photons. After complex adjustments, the roots emitted proton and neutron beams for "illumination." These non-photons would also bounce back after striking solid matter, achieving the same effect as photon-based