Alien creatures destroy homes? Start by killing upright apes!

The second one came from Australia.

Seven steamships have been dismantled in the port of Moreburn.

After sorting and stacking the disassembled parts, the upright ape began to assemble its own things using some of the parts.

It's not a loom, it's not a stone crusher—it's a ship.

A three-meter-long iron-hulled boat was assembled using the riveting techniques of steamships, with the seams sealed with rubber salvaged from dismantled ships.

The ship was fitted with a hand-cranked propeller, the structure of which was a direct copy of the propeller of a steamship, but ten times smaller.

"They have conducted test flights," the report from Australia stated.

"In the inner bay of the harbor, two upright apes sat in a boat and cranked the propeller, making the boat move at about three knots. They rowed the boat around the inner bay, then docked, dragged the boat ashore, and squatted down next to the boat to draw on the wooden planks with charcoal sticks. They were drawing plans to improve the boat's structure."

Robert added a handwritten note at the end of the report: They're iterating! The first ship wasn't built for use, it was for testing. After testing, we drew up improvement plans, and then built the second one. This is our shipyard's standard procedure, figured out by the upright apes themselves.

The third one came from the Lion Country.

The irrigation system for upright apes on the Nairobi Plain has been extended to four kilometers in length.

They built aqueducts with stones, drawing water from seasonal rivers formed by the grassland monsoon, passing through three hominid tribes, and finally flowing into a man-made reservoir.

Next to the reservoir was an area enclosed by a stone wall, where grass was planted.

"It's not ordinary grass," the Lion Kingdom's report stated.

"Our botanists have confirmed that it is the original species of wild wheat. The upright apes transplanted the wild wheat next to the reservoir and watered it regularly with an irrigation system. They were not growing food, but domesticating it, just like our human ancestors did long ago."

At the end of his report, Nguji added a handwritten note: They completed the agricultural revolution that took humankind thousands of years in just twenty days.

Lu Cheng finished reading the three reports and stacked them together on the table.

"Crushers, ore dressing tanks, iron-hulled ships, irrigation systems, wheat domestication," he told Carrie.

"It seems that the loom is just one example. Ten countries with Homo erectus populations were selected, and the Homo erectus populations in each country are tracing the path of human civilization in their own way. Not imitating, but retracing. They have broken down thousands of years of human technological history into individual steps, and then walked through them one by one, at an ever-increasing speed."

"And then what?" Carrie asked.

Lu Cheng did not answer.

But everyone knows the answer—after they finish walking, they are no different from humans.

……

August, 5914 of the Blue Star Calendar, the thirty-fourth day since the arrival of alien creatures.

The water dragon beast unearthed something that surprised Lu Cheng.

It's not a gold mine.

He was no longer surprised by the gold mine; the gold mined by the Water Dragon Beast this month was enough to build a gold mine in the Winner Monkey Kingdom.

It's not groundwater either.

Groundwater is a regular harvest.

It is a door.

To be precise, it is a stone wall that has been carved by human hands.

When the water dragon beast dug down to a depth of fifty-three meters from the government square, its digging claws suddenly unearthed a flat stone surface.

It tilted its head and looked at it, probably thinking that the rock was too hard to dig, so it changed direction and continued digging.

But the surveying engineer following behind saw it and scrambled up to report it.

Lu Cheng squatted in the 53-meter-deep cave, the light of the kerosene lamp shining on the stone wall.

The stone wall is carved with patterns—not natural textures, but man-made carvings.

Spirals, circles, and squares, arranged in an orderly fashion, like some kind of ancient script.

But this is not the language of any known civilization on Earth.

"Fifty-three meters deep." The surveying engineer's voice trembled. "The rock strata at this depth are at least 100,000 years old. According to the theory of evolution, 100,000 years ago, humans on Earth were still living in caves."

Lu Cheng didn't speak, but traced the engravings on the stone wall with his fingers.

The engravings are smooth and of uniform depth, which could not have been made with stone tools.

"Keep digging down, don't move this rock face, go around it."

The water dragon cub was carried to the side of the stone wall. It tilted its head to look at the stone wall, and then used its large fangs to pry open the bottom of the stone wall.

A piece of gravel fell down, revealing the space behind it.

It's empty.

There is no space behind the stone wall.

The light from the kerosene lamp shone in, and everyone gasped.

Behind the stone wall is a cavity.

It wasn't a natural chamber dug by a water dragon beast; it was man-made.

The walls are flat, the top is arched, and the ground is paved with stone slabs.

A stone pillar stands in the center of the chamber, its surface covered with the same patterns as the stone walls.

At the base of the stone pillar, there was a pile of black stones, about the size of a fist, with a smooth, mirror-like surface.

Lu Cheng picked up a black stone and turned it over.

On the other side of the stone is a pattern carved into it—a circle inside a square, and inside the square is an even smaller circle.

The pattern made by the upright ape in Kyoto, the land of Taro the Tanuki, with white pebbles... is exactly the same.

The cave was so quiet that only the sound of the water dragon beast digging in the soil next door could be heard.

The cave was so quiet that only the sound of the water dragon beast digging in the soil next door could be heard.

"There are symbols of Homo erectus carved in the strata from 100,000 years ago." Lu Cheng put the black stone back in its place. "This is more troublesome than Homo erectus itself."

When the news spread, the representatives of the seven countries were each squatting at the entrance of their own water dragon beast cave watching the digging.

John Bull, on the outskirts of the foggy city.

David squatted at the entrance of the Water Dragon's Cave, with the Minister of the Navy standing beside him.

The Water Dragon Beast has already dug the first trunk line of the underground network in Fog City.

From the suburbs to the bottom of the Thames, the river is 31 meters deep and 17 kilometers long.

"Have they dug through the bottom of the Taywoods River?" David asked.

"It's through. When the water dragon reached the bottom of the river, it burrowed into the silt layer. Finding the silt difficult to dig, it retreated and changed direction. Our engineers continued digging along the hole it abandoned and discovered something buried in the silt layer."

"What is it?"

The Minister of the Navy handed over a rusted iron plate.

Rivet holes and steam pipe connections can be vaguely seen on the iron plate.

"The wreckage of a steamship, but not the model we recognize. The riveting technique and piping layout are more like..." The Navy Minister hesitated for a moment, "...more like the spiral structure that the Water Dragon Beast dug out."

……

Yakji Kingdom, Licheng Alluvial Plain.

George crouched at the entrance to the Seine's underground network, in front of a water dragon that had just emerged from a hole.

It had something wet in its mouth and spat it out at George's feet.

It is a shard of pottery.

The surface is glazed, and patterns are drawn under the glaze—spirals, circles, and squares.

George picked up the pottery shards and said to the Minister of Works behind him:

"Check! Check the firing temperature and glaze composition of this pottery shard to see what era it's from."

The engineering minister took the ceramic shard, his fingers trembling slightly.

The water dragon beast unearthed this pottery shard at a depth of forty-seven meters.

A glazed pottery shard was buried 47 meters deep in the earth.

……

Zhu Sailang Kingdom, Luocheng Quarry.

Vito stood in the limestone cave dug out by the water dragon, with a carving on the cave wall in front of him.

The arc-shaped marks are not left by the digging claws of a water dragon, but are artificial engravings.

The neatly arranged engravings form a pattern—the course of the Tiber River, the location of the seven hills, and the outline of the Colosseum.

Precise proportions.

"This is a map of Luo City," Vito said in a low voice.

"A map of Luocheng is carved into a limestone layer thirty-nine meters deep. When was this limestone layer formed?"

The geologist stood behind him, his voice trembling:

"At least 50,000 years ago."

……

Taro Tanuki Country, Kyoto.

Massa's dry landscape garden has completely disappeared.

Instead, there is an underground network entrance that is 41 meters deep.