The evolution of insect swarms from XNUMX million years ago

Chapter 203 The First Surgery in History

Based on the previous experience of dissecting infected spiders, giant horseshoe crabs, etc., including the one infected with leaf claw worms, such a process is undoubtedly very difficult.

Once those fungi become parasitic, they will replace the nervous system with special hyphal tissue, completely replacing part of the host's nervous system to control the host.

The hyphae penetrate deep into the flesh and blood and are mixed with the original tissue. It is difficult to clean them with ordinary means.

But Lin Yi has some bold ideas - the properties of these fungi are somewhat similar to carpets. So, can the fungal carpet be used to dissolve and replace those hyphal tissues again?
After absorbing the genetic sequences of those fungi, Lin Yi has studied and understood the way they parasitize, and tried to integrate their genetic sequences into the carpet, and developed a method of using the carpet to parasitize other organisms in a sense.

The carpet itself has a nervous system, and it is a complex neural structure with myelin and other structures. It is stronger than the nerve-like tissue produced by half-way hyphae and can achieve better results.

Several shadow flies stepped forward, first cutting off the fruiting bodies with sharp bladed appendages, and then clearing a clearing in the forest, one shadow fly began to move towards the pupae of the mother nest. change.

In mid-air, another group of giant-winged divers whizzed past, dropping some fungus carpet proliferation bombs, causing the fungus carpet to spread in advance and connect with the pupating mother's nest, integrating the circulation and nervous system.

As the fruiting bodies were cleaned up, the vine structures mixed with mycelium on the periphery gradually became slower and even stopped moving. This made Lin Yi even more determined. This huge spherical structure is a mixture of plants and fungi. A common brain.

Different from the existence of ordinary nest groups, ordinary nest groups just connect the brains of a large number of ordinary animals together to form a huge cluster consciousness network. Plants do not have complex nervous systems, so they are under the command of a special master brain.

While thinking about it, the fungus blanket has completed its proliferation and spread among the fern forests, stretching out its roots to decompose and absorb the fungi, and extend the special root structure into the gaps where the fungi on the surface of the master brain have taken root, replacing them.

Moreover, if the fungal structures and part of the nervous system in the body are really replaced by a carpet of fungi, it would be very easy to destroy the master brain.

Now, due to genetic linguistics, the problem that gene sequences cannot be shared in real time between broods has finally been solved - as long as the arrangement of the gene sequences is transmitted to all broods, and then arranged in the same way, the same sequence can be reproduced gene sequence.

In a sense, after destroying the main brain and then killing the parasitized giant horseshoe crabs, mesoterrestrial spiders and other terrestrial arthropod nest-level individuals, the entire cluster consciousness network composed of plants and fungi will completely collapse.

In short, apart from being a little troublesome, from all aspects, removing these fungi and curing them seems to be more beneficial to him now.

But at this time, Lin Yi wanted to verify his guess. He could not directly destroy the mastermind. However, once the parasitic fungi were eliminated, he could achieve a similar goal. At least, he could completely eliminate the threat of fungi and leave only plants.

At this time, the gene sequence for the parasitism, or symbiosis, part of the bacteria carpet has been edited and simultaneously transferred to the gene sequence stored in this newly pupated mother nest. On the proliferating bacteria carpet, the gene sequence has been applied. Associated parasitic nervous system.

The internal structure of the fungus carpet root system shows that this is indeed a brain-like organization. And its structure is quite developed, more advanced than the brains of most creatures in this era.

What can be compared to it is probably the astonishingly developed brain of "Kraken" back then, which is the brain template that Lin Yi has been using to this day. While thinking, the carpet roots containing the nervous system gradually dissolved the original parasitic hyphae tissue and replaced it - Lin Yi did not dare to speed up this process, but completed the replacement step by step through precise nerve operations.

The root system continued to penetrate deeper, and the signals transmitted back showed that the fungus had parasitized it to an almost terrifying degree. Almost the entire nervous system of the brain was replaced by hyphae, and almost no intact part could be found in the whole brain.

During the step-by-step replacement, Lin Yi also obtained the cell tissue of this special plant individual, trying to analyze its genetic sequence to see what was special about this plant that was probably directly edited by an unknown intervenor.

Unsurprisingly, the genetic sequence of this plant has also been encrypted like the "Kraken" and the leaf-claw worm, and the encryption method is more sophisticated. It cannot be broken for a while.

As a last resort, Lin Yi could only continue to temporarily analyze the structure of this special plant in a similar dissection method to better study it.

……

The root system of the fungus carpet continued to move forward. Because the brain structure was too complex, Lin Yi did not dare to make too many changes. He just replaced the original fungal parasitism.

It seems that the nerves parasitized by the fungus mainly control the parts of the body. The most complicated part, regarding thinking, has not been parasitized too deeply.

In other words, if this plant body has complex consciousness, then its consciousness may still exist, but it has lost control of its body and can only watch the parasites occupy its body.

I don’t know whether the two are parasitic or symbiotic. But taking over part of the control was convenient for Lin Yi - under his control, a large number of vines swung, taking out the metal remains and laying them flat on the ground.

Judging from previous performances, the plant body seems to retain some control over the body, is not completely controlled by the parasitic fungus, and can interfere with the control of the fungus to a certain extent.

But at this time, the remaining consciousness did not hinder it again, but allowed Lin Yi to control its nervous system and control the body to do all this.

Land workers began to be born from the mother nest, using their chelicerae to pick up and search on the ground to check for more information that might exist nearby. Shadowfly also scanned with its well-developed compound eyes, trying to see as much information as possible in these wreckage.

However, due to the serious damage, most of the wreckage can no longer see its original function. Lin Yi still has very little information about the unknown intervenor. He only knows that it is a highly developed technological civilization and has great achievements in genetic engineering. He has profound attainments.

But at this moment, in my thoughts, a special signal suddenly came - the source of the signal was not any normal individual, but the specialized carpet root structure that extended into the plant body!

(End of this chapter)