4.6 Billion Year Symphony of Evolution

Last chapter recap: Lin prepares to board land.

The new combination was called “explorer.” Half the size of a protector, it had a oval body covered in chitin. The shell had many small pores used to absorb oxygen. Two eyeballs on the head and a lantern tentacle used for illumination. The explorer had a small heart and blood vessel structures inside.

It had eight armored and segmented limbs around the body. Lin added joint structures similar to those of the oval worm onto these limbs. The segmented limb filled with muscles could move quickly.

Lin didn’t create the “explorer” to hunt or kill enemies, but to explore the world outside the water!

Lin enjoyed exploring unknown areas. After it accidentally encountered the water surface, it had this thought. After successfully making armor to protect it from the UV light, Lin could finally realize the idea.

Lin did not come to this place in daytime but chose the safer nighttime. While Lin had armor, it didn’t know if the armor could block the ultraviolet light outside of the water.

The explorer left. It climbed quickly uphill over the environment created by small stone fragments. Doing this was an easy task for the explorer.

During the night, water levels were higher but this could not be seen. However, the lantern Lin created for the explorer was not the same. Lin made it so that not all of the round ball was giving off light, and gathered the light to shine into one direction. The lantern was covered by shells on two sides. This way, the light it gave off could still illuminate a great distance. The explorer only had to raise the lantern tentacle to see the water in front of it.

As the explorer moved up the hill, the level of the water grew even lower. The surrounding environment slowly turned from shattered stone into dark yellow small grains of sand. Lin was introduced to this sand for the first time.

The explorer quickly grew close to — — the place where water and land met.

If Lin went in there, Lin could leave the water and go into the domain belonging to the gases.

Lin felt an emotion called “Excitement.”

Leaving the water seemed to be an important matter which was why Lin had such a feeling.

Lin itself didn’t feel the same. It only thought that this was a new area to explore. Lin didn’t plan to enter with its true body. This was just to satisfy his “curiosity” but why did it feel like this? Lin didn’t know.

Anyways, Lin would fine as long as it continued.

The explorer’s body slowly floated out of the water with its steps. Lin could feel again that empty feeling belonging to the region of The light of the stars flashed above this pace, and illuminated the bath ahead for Lin.

Lin called this completely new world “land.” Without needing the lantern, Lin could see everything by the light of the stars.

The “land” was a desolate place. It was covered in yellow-brown fragments and sand. Other than several pieces of enormous stone that occasionally popped up, there was nothing else.

But Lin didn’t stop

The explorer started to move its legs again. Its segmented limb left the water along with its body and stepped onto the new world.

Then, it fell down.

After leaving water, gravity seemed to increase greatly. It immediately pulled Lin’s explorer onto the ground and kept it motionless.

Lin’s armor had been made to deal with this. However, it seemed Lin had to adjust the muscles.

As it thought about this, Lin quickly repaired the muscles inside the segmented limbs. The cells quickly divided and grew stronger. until it could support the body on the land with its increased gravity.

As the cells quickly repaired, the explorer soon stood up again. This time, it did not fall down.

The explorer moved the segmented limb around its body and walked towards this desolate world … …

On land, the cold air currents replaced the water flows. The air currents were faster than water currents. They blew up sand from the ground that hit the explorer’s outer shell. Lin had a term to describe them –“wind.”

Lin found, in this world, water became small round drops just like gases in water. When the wind blew by, it would carry off countless drops of water. Under the endless stream of wind, the explorer’s originally moist outer shell quickly grew as dry as the sand under its feet.

Lin obtained many new terms walking onto the new world, but it started to feel … …

Bored.

The explorer moved relatively slowly on land, but it only saw endless yellow sand or occasionally large pieces of rock.

Other than this, there was nothing, no multicellular organisms, no single cells, only the constant wind and flying yellow sand. The sky full of stars was so beautiful, but the land was so desolate and empty.

Lin’s original curiosity and excitement about land was almost used up. It wasn’t in the mood to manage these interesting new terms. It just had the explorer wal step by step.

There were no organisms here, which also meant there was no food. Lin found a new problem, after the wind dried up the water in the outer shell, Lin felt the water inside the explorer slowly slip away.

The water escaped out of holes or small cracks in the shell. When the wind blew, they turned into water droplets that flew away and disappeared without a trace.

Lin had always lived in the water. It had never felt what it was like to lose water.

Now it knew, and this meant death.

When a cell lost all of its water, they would instantly die. The cracks on the shell have to be repaired.

Lin;s explorer contained large numbers of gland cells. They could quickly secret chitin to repair all kinds of cracks. Lin’s original shell had not covered the entire area, but it seemed that everything had to be covered.

Lin quickly filled in all the cracks, leaving behind only two small holes to exchange gases.

Lin knew why there were no other organisms here. They couldn’t safely leave water.

Also, this desolate had nothing else that could attract other organisms.

But Lin didn’t give up. The explorer continued to walk towards the deeper parts.

If Lin turned back now, it couldn’t see the water. However, the surrounding scenery was still the same. Other than sand, there were only rocks. This caused Lin to think of when it had been younger.

At that time, it had similar feelings, such as “other than water, there is water.”

The explorer’s fat cells stored inside its body meant it could walk for a long time. However, Lin started to doubt the meaning of this journey.

So bored.

In this repeated environment, Lin moved its attention upwards. It found the stars in the sky would slowly change. The dots of light would slowly move. Occasionally, a line of light would flash across the sky at high speed but most dots of light would remain motionless.

After going onto land, Lin found that the stars were extremely distant. Maybe, it needed to be swim in air like it did in water to get close to them.

That was … … too difficult.

At this time, the explorer found some different things up ahead.

Sand dunes

The sand dunes were frequent on patches of sand, and Lin usually ignored them. However, on land, the sand dunes should be able to increase the range of Lin’s vision on land.

The explorer climbed up and looked into the distance from the top of the sand dune.

As Lin expected, sand stretched to the end of Lin’s vision.

There was no meaning in this kind of place.

Lin did not want to keep moving. It had the explorer lay on the sand dune and raise its head to look into the starry sky.

Lin found that all of the dots of light in the sky would move. As the sky changed, the surrounding light would also change.

Slowly, the surroundings brightened, and the stars in the sky slowly disappeared.

They were covered up by the light of “daytime.”

Daytime arrived.

When daytime completely enveloped the surroundings, Lin felt the surrounding temperature rise greatly. The powerful ultraviolet light entered through the segmented limbs and pores of the explorer, and destroyed the cells inside at a rapid rate.

As the light of daytime got brighter, its ultraviolet light was able to penetrate through the outer shell of the explorer. The cells inside rapidly died.

In the next moment, the explorer died. Lin’s first journey onto land ended here.

Return … …

The mothership that was waiting on the beach slowly twisted its body and swam into deeper waters.

This really was … … a meaningless journey.

Translator Ramblings: The theme of this chapter is ‘land is boring’. Which pretty much describes the continents pretty well for a few billion years. Even now, we cannot live without sources of water.