The evolution of insect swarms from XNUMX million years ago

Chapter 182 Comprehensive upgrade

The scimitar-like dorsal fin cuts through the water waves, and the huge body swims near the sea surface. The streamlined body is densely arranged with fine scale structures called shield scales. The scimitar-like pectoral fins and the Y-shaped caudal fin, which is long at the top and short at the bottom, look like a shark from later generations.

But between the upper and lower jaws, it is not a bloody mouth full of sharp teeth like the sharks of later generations. Instead, there are rows of ferocious and outward-turned teeth like saws on the top and bottom. The whole is like scissors, but even more ferocious. At first glance, You will know that it can easily tear flesh and blood.

Scissors. It is an emerging subclass of cartilaginous fishes, a species of the order Eugeniodonta, and is closely related to the famous Helicoprion shark and a later generation of small deep-sea cartilaginous fish called chimaeras.

Since the placoderms were wiped out by the lack of oxygen at the end of the Devonian period, the cartilaginous fish have stepped on the corpses of placoderms to stand on the top of the sea in the new era, starting a royal journey that lasted hundreds of millions of years. .

After the placoderm fish's jaws spanned the entire world and swept through the eight wastelands, the prosperous age of vertebrates came. In the years to come, dragons covered the sea and whale salamanders stirred up the waves, but no one could remember the former emperor of the sea. What a situation it has fallen into now.

But at least, at this time, a ghost, a ghost belonging to the chaotic era of demons in the early Paleozoic Era, is awakening.

An astonishingly huge signal suddenly appeared in the scissor shark's primitive sensory organ, which was later called the ampulla of Lorenz. It immediately turned around and prepared to attack it - normally, in this era, it could send out such a signal. The only big signal is another scissor shark coming to compete for territory.

But unfortunately, this time, it was not normal.

The moment he saw the person coming clearly, Scissor-Tooth's ferocious vertical pupils with bloodthirsty suddenly shrank - his astonishingly huge body was like a battleship that didn't exist in this era, the armor covering his whole body was shiny, and the appendages on his side were covered with sharp points. The thorns are particularly ferocious.

The most astonishing thing is that there are more than one such huge and ferocious figure, but they come in groups, breaking through the waves, really like a huge and invincible fleet.

All signs indicate that now, it should be within the time range from the end of the Carboniferous to the beginning of the Permian. From the Silurian to the present, the entire Devonian and at least half of the Carboniferous, more than 100 million years have passed. .

Controlling the miniaturized torpedo, Lin Yi couldn't help but sigh in his heart as he slowly swam back to the side of the fearless soldier.

Within a period of time after waking up, he quickly integrated a large number of photosynthetic structures, turned the pupa into a mother nest, collected almost all the nutrients accumulated over the past billion years, and quickly established a huge "navy" force again.

Before it could react, a large number of tiny figures swarmed out from the side of the giant figure and swam towards it at an alarming speed. A feeling of weakness and paralysis came from the body, and the huge body fell over helplessly. In the water, activity stopped.

It has to be said that the structure he designed was quite successful. A single huge structure survived hundreds of millions of years through constant regeneration and proliferation.

Moreover, in the process, Lin Yi also overcame some genetic sequences that were still in the imagination stage during the Silurian period, such as integrating minerals with special ingredients into exoskeletons.

The utilization of calcium by vertebrate bones is a kind of integration of minerals. But now, by referring to the exoskeleton-related gene sequences of leaf claw worms, Lin Yi has successfully designed a special exoskeleton for the fearless soldier that integrates a variety of different mineral components.

With the support of this exoskeleton structure, the Dreadnaught Soldier has been able to grow to a larger size - currently, the largest Dreadnought Soldier and the Pioneer Mother are nearly twenty meters tall. This makes today different from what it used to be. In an ocean where giant beasts are rampant, the newly upgraded Dreadnought is still the invincible and indestructible Dreadnought - times have changed, but it has also changed.

At the same time, ordinary workers and soldiers also received a wave of upgrades. Now, although their appearance has not changed much, their body size has been determined to be between 2 meters and 2.5 meters, and they have double-layer shells and two sets of muscle systems, further upgraded various organ structures, and the same style. Composite armored exoskeleton.

According to calculations, a brand new "third-generation soldier" is enough to defeat five to ten second-generation soldiers without falling behind. Even when faced with the adult form of the former straight helical stone, he can easily fight two.

Their tail clips and stingers have also been further upgraded, but under the current circumstances, ordinary torpedoes are no longer able to use such means, and the main beneficiaries of these structures are micronized torpedoes.

As a military unit that has been defined as cannon fodder, the size of the micron torpedo has not increased further, but the composition of the exoskeleton has been slightly modified to make the exoskeleton at the front of the head shell stronger and able to pierce thicker scales.

In addition to the combat level, ordinary workers have also made great changes.

The most important thing is that they have integrated the same gene sequence for digesting and decomposing food as the mother's nest in their bodies. They can dissolve prey corpses into high-concentration concentrated nutrients at the cellular level, and can pass them to other grades or through special structures. Brood.

In addition, the brand-new workers are also responsible for collecting various minerals and transporting them to the mother nest for the mother nest or pupal sac mother nest to produce individuals of other levels.

Therefore, the new tool has been equipped with a special mouthpart structure that can filter food from the sediment, as well as two pairs of chelae that are stronger and have mineralized inner edges, enough to cut through some brittle rocks and collect minerals. limb.

All in all, the nest is no longer what it used to be. If we were to face the original swarm of snails now, unless the opponent could use "Kraken" as an adult skeletal, there would be no chance of winning at all.

However, becoming stronger did not make Lin Yi feel the slightest joy - all previous land levels had lost contact with the land mother nest. They should have followed the instinct set in the genes and dissolved from the cellular level.

Moreover, at this time, the last mother nest left by the Anomalocaris nest group also disappeared.

In the long years, it is absolutely impossible for the mother nest to survive without the protection of the nest group. Although the life span of the mother nest is theoretically unlimited, it still cannot survive long without food supply - unless a miracle happens.

But in a sense, it was a miracle that Lin Yi could break through the fatal restrictions in the genetic sequence. And somewhere in the dark, there was a feeling that told him that there was something strange behind the mass extinction at the end of the Devonian period.

What role does the nest play in it? Everything needs to be discovered by Lin Yi himself - therefore, he decided to log in again and see with his own eyes what the scene will be like on land 100 million years later!

(End of this chapter)