344: Planetary life forms

Yang Dian stared into the depths of the Universe, following the direction of the gravitational collapse; the location of a great terror moved, conveying itself to him in the dark. A few minutes later, Yang Dian’s pupils suddenly contracted.

“How is that possible!”

As Yang Dian felt a jolt of fear, Qian Xueming also voiced a question that made him doubt reality:

“This is nearly 4 billion kilometers from Planet 2. A few minutes ago, Young Yang just used spatial means to capture a Cosmic Creature.”

“But now, but now…”

“But now, why is there a planet appearing next to Planet 2 and the Cosmic Creature’s planet?”

“Why am I seeing it at this moment?”

“The speed of light is nearly 300,000 kilometers per second. To travel 4 billion kilometers would take over 13,000 seconds, roughly 3.7 hours.”

“That means even if that thing appeared, we should only observe it after 3 hours. Why am I seeing it at this moment?”

“And is that black creature a whale?”

“A whale bigger than a planet?”

Qian Xueming couldn’t help but be shocked.

Reality was simply too surreal.

Minutes ago, they were still discussing what energy Yang Dian had sensed, and what kind of energy could travel an infinite distance to be directly perceived by Yang Dian.

Minutes later, they saw a planet, about 50,000 kilometers in diameter and more than 60 times the size of Planet 2, following a black whale of similar size. It appeared abruptly next to the Alien Planet and the Cosmic Creature’s planet.

The Cosmic Creature’s planet, with a diameter of only 8,500 kilometers, looked like a baby next to it.

It was one thing for a giant planet to appear abruptly; after all, it could still be explained by theories like spatial jumps and Subspace travel.

What made Qian Xueming and the others doubt reality even more was that after its appearance, such a massive entity had no impact on Planet 2 or the Cosmic Creature’s planet.

It was as if it had no weight, causing no gravitational tidal effects on the Alien Planet.

As everyone was lost in thought, the giant whale that appeared in front of the giant planet opened its mouth and let out a space-distorting shriek.

Then it began to fade and shrink.

Upon closer observation, Yang Dian felt that ‘fading’ wasn’t the right word to describe its current state.

It should be said that its ‘black skin’ was being peeled off and shed, revealing its body, which resembled white clouds and mist underneath.

After detaching from the giant whale, the ‘skin’ drifted in space for a few moments. In a few blinks, it transformed into countless enormous black Wormhole Tadpoles, which drilled into space and vanished without a trace.

“Is this whale a Body Integration of a Cloud Whale and Wormhole Tadpoles?”

As soon as Qian Xueming murmured, someone immediately followed up:

“Wormhole Tadpoles have the ability to collapse gravity and open spatial wormholes.”

“So, the phenomenon just now, can it be considered that the ‘black whale’ was collapsing gravity, pulling the planet for warp travel?”

“Can we ‘receive’ information from 4 billion kilometers away across the speed of light dimension because the spatial dimension was affected by the collapsed gravity, causing the image to spread superluminally?”

“Was the abnormal energy fluctuation Young Yang sensed just now the energy dissipated after the gravitational collapse?”

No sooner had the guesses fallen than all the Wormhole Tadpoles had detached from the Cloud Whale.

The Cloud Whale, now shrunk to a hundred-mile size, flew a few circles around the 8,500-kilometer diameter Cosmic Creature’s planet, then flicked its tail and drilled into the atmosphere of the newly appeared giant planet, disappearing from view.

If Yang Dian wasn’t mistaken, he seemed to ‘see’ joy on the Cloud Whale as it shook its head and wagged its tail.

“Joy?”

As the murmur faded, a scene that shattered Yang Dian’s worldview followed.

On the giant planet, endless mountains and earth veins began to tremble.

A moment later, an ‘arm’ thousands or even tens of thousands of kilometers long extended from the giant planet.

That mountainous hand clenched into a fist, extended its index finger, and, like Yang Dian poking Yang Lele’s head, poked the planet where the Cosmic Creature resided, making it bob up and down in space.

The crowd, which had just been murmuring a few discussions, fell into complete silence.

The cold planet seemed to return to its previous state, with only the biting cold wind howling across its surface.

It wasn’t until the artificial intelligence Taichu intercepted a segment of footage and magnified it that voices of disbelief once again arose from the crowd.

“What’s the point of Taichu playing this footage? Uh? How come there are things falling onto the Cosmic Creature’s planet through that ‘arm’? Zoom in, zoom in more, I can’t see clearly.”

“Wormhole Tadpoles? Black coal balls that can create gravity wells? The black fungal colonies that grow superconductors, which we just captured all of?”

“We just took things away, and they’re replacing them over there?”

No sooner had Yang Xiu’s voice fallen than Li Hongping, whose research direction involved a bit of bio-sociology, spoke with a hoarse voice:

“Old Yang, is now the time to focus on those things?”

“What we should be focusing on now, isn’t it the planet itself?”

Saying that, she looked around at the faces of the others, some appearing to doubt reality, some bewildered, and some eager to try:

“Don’t you feel… feel… feel…”

She repeated “feel” three times, but still couldn’t voice her speculation.

It was simply too outrageous.

Seeing that she still hadn’t finished speaking, Qian Xueming sighed and continued:

“Hongping, are you trying to say that the giant planet is not just a planet, but more like a giant lifeform?”

“Its attitude towards the Cosmic Creature’s planet is like an adult scolding a child, disappointed that it’s not living up to its potential?”

Li Hongping sighed:

“That’s exactly what I mean.”

Li Hongping finished her sigh, turned to look at Yang Dian, then at Dr. Bai, and finally surveyed everyone:

“If planets are life, planetary lifeforms, can we resist?”

Yang Dian was silent, Dr. Bai was silent, and everyone was silent.

Isn’t the answer to that question obvious?

Even if they went all out and blew up the smaller planetary lifeform, what about the larger one?

A planet 50,000 kilometers in diameter, how would they even begin to fight it?

Moreover, judging by how the big sphere was scolding the small sphere, it was clear they had already developed a social structure.

If there are small spheres and big spheres, will there be even older spheres, bigger than the big ones?

And to think of it from another angle, can stars develop their own will and become stellar-level lifeforms?

The Universe is so vast, containing endless mysteries.

Humanity has only encountered two Alien Planets and already stumbled upon such monsters.

So, if they stretched the spatial dimension, looking across the entire Milky Way, across the entire known and unknown Universe, how many beings exist that could wipe out humanity, wipe out Earth, with just a sneeze?

Just as despair began to spread among everyone, Yang Dian suddenly looked up and met Dr. Bai’s eyes.

Although neither of them spoke, the intentions in their eyes were largely similar.

Such a Universe is truly worth witnessing and conquering…