Just when Donnie discovered the source of the geothermal river, there was a violent shaking at the bottom of the lake, which made him completely unable to control his balance, and in the cave not far away, a dazzling light flashed, a ball of light about one meter floated out, and the small points of light around it quickly converged towards the ball of light, and the volume of the ball of light was expanding rapidly. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info In the silt, there are more small points of light coming out, and the whole bottom of the lake is as bright as day.

Donnie realized that the water around him was accelerating, and that a whirlpool was forming above the orb of light, and he swam as far as he could in the opposite direction. What happened after that was very similar to our experience, the ball of light converged into a behemoth in a short period of time, and formed a dozen huge tentacles like an octopus. And Donnie swam as far as he could near the reef and grabbed the rock crevice.

The luminous body moved in the direction of the salvage ship, and soon reached the bottom of the salvage ship, and the whirlpool reached the surface of the lake, rolling up huge waves. But Downey could only watch the sinking of the salvage ship and could do nothing. In less than twenty seconds, the salvage ship had sunk underwater, and the luminous object emitted a loud roar, clinging to the wreck, and the even more dazzling light made it impossible to look at directly.

At this time, the underwater geothermal river is even more turbulent, and large streams of brown hot water bubble up. Donnie's wetsuit couldn't withstand the heat, and he knew that if he stayed any longer, he would be getting hot. Downey let go of his grip on the rock crevice and let the undercurrent sweep him away, but unfortunately, he had just traveled not far before he hit a boulder, and Downey felt like he was falling apart, and it became more and more difficult to breathe, and he soon passed out.

Downey was rescued by fishermen in the lake in a shoal two kilometers away from the wreck site, treated for some treatment, and secretly sent back to the United States. But about a year later, he developed sepsis, and doctors found that he had been exposed to intense radiation in the lake, but at that time, Donnie did not seem to be in his right mind, and his description of the shipwreck in the lake was thought to be a hallucination in an oxygen-deprived environment. Downey died a little more than a month later, and the search for the Kobe Maru came to an end, thanks to the government's request or because he was too embarrassed to remember, and never said a word about the sinking of the salvage ship.

After reading this file, I handed over the file to Zeng Qian, looked up at Team Cao, and the eyes of Team Cao, who had a few glasses of white wine, were bloodshot. "Did that Captain Joseph also suffer from the strong radiation?" I asked.

"Probably not, Joseph died in 1971, for 30 years, there was nothing abnormal in his body, when you got on the boat, Li Guoliang tested you and the raft, and found no signs of radiation, it seems that Donnie was irradiated because he was too close to the cave, the radiation source should be in the cave, and the luminous body you encountered was not radioactive. ”

Team Cao's words put my hanging heart down. He paused for a moment, then continued, "When I got Downey's file, I initially thought his description was too bizarre and might have been his hallucination, but from your experience this time, Donnie's underwater account is real. ”

Zeng Qian quickly read the dossier and said to us: " If Donnie's description is true, then the luminous body should have originally hidden in a deep cave under the winter melon reef, this is an extremely thermophilic lifeform, once the temperature is too low, it will enter a dormant state, in autumn and winter, the lake becomes colder, after the geothermal river comes out for a while, the temperature decreases a lot, and the luminous body is not very active, in summer, the water temperature rises, and the luminous body flows with the geothermal river, and the range of activity is also larger, Lao Huang's record is correct, the shipwreck accident is associated with the activity of the geothermal river and luminescent creatures. ”

After listening to Zeng Qian's words, Team Cao and I both nodded, "Xiao Zeng, as a zoologist, what do you think of this luminescent creature?" I couldn't wait to ask, in the process of our encounter with the luminescent creature this time, Zeng Qian was more observing, and didn't mention much of her own opinion.

"From what I know now, this is not a creature we know at all, and it is even possible that it is really an alien species that followed the meteorite. As soon as Zeng Qian opened her mouth, she stunned us in place.

"On Lao Qi's boat, I studied the unknown luminescent organisms in the geothermal river, which are at least a few fundamentally different from the traditional creatures we know. One is that these organisms can come together to form a new large organism, and Downey saw in the cave that the first floating sphere should be the brain of the organism, and then the cell units scattered in the geothermal river are manipulated by the brain to coalesce to form biological tissues with different functions, for example, its whipfoot part is the last to form. After the predation is over, the organism disperses again, becomes the smallest cell unit, and enters a dormant state. Essentially, this form of life is the least energy-intensive form that allows organisms to survive in extremely harsh conditions for hundreds or even thousands of years. ”

Zeng Qian's guess cannot but be said, although it subverts our cognition, but the logic is clear and reasonable. But that's still not the most surprising part.

"This survival mechanism of living organisms, if proven, is enough to upend the research foundations of modern biology, and it will also give rise to an age-old thesis, a thesis about immortality. The main brain and cell units of organisms are usually separated, and each cell unit can self-replicate or even adapt to evolve to keep the population relatively constant, and we can also understand that it is a cyclical metabolic process. So this mechanism can ensure that the organism remains healthy and exists forever, is this the art of immortality that human beings have been exploring throughout the ages? Unfortunately, human beings cannot learn and replicate. ”

"The other difference lies in the mechanical characteristics of the living body, theoretically, its form is ever-changing, it can combine all kinds of limbs according to actual needs, for example, the whip foot is the last to be combined, if it wants to swim faster, it can combine fins, if it wants to run on land, it can combine limbs. In short, these all come from the brain's cognition and needs of the external environment. Fortunately, this organism is extremely thermophilic, and most of the earth's environment is not suitable for its survival, otherwise according to the evolutionary theory of survival of the fittest, the earth would have been occupied by this biological form long ago. ”

To be honest, Zeng Qian's cognition of luminous life forms has opened a new window in my heart, and the evolution of human history is, in a sense, the process of continuous exploration of immortality, the study of human ontology, and the transformation of the surrounding environment. It's just that human beings rely on reproduction to achieve the immortality of the race, while luminous creatures use another way to achieve individual immortality.

Of course, thinking from another angle, with the development of human information technology, the communication between people has become more convenient, and more and more people can complete one thing under unified command, such as the construction of huge projects, such as starting a war, so if there are really extraterrestrial intelligences coming to the earth, will they regard a single individual person as a cell unit, and see companies, cities, troops and even countries as a larger life organism? In the long historical evolution, the ultimate evolutionary form that human beings want to achieve is not the life characteristics of luminescent organisms?

Zeng Qian didn't know my wild conjecture, she was continuing her theoretical analysis.

"The third difference is that no life on Earth can survive in a strong radiation environment, while light-emitting organisms seem to be unable to survive alone in a radiation environment. This is like saying that life on earth depends on the sun and the transformation of the sun's energy. However, the luminescent organism obviously does not depend on the energy system of the sun, and its energy transformation lies in the radiation source in the hole at the bottom of the lake. ”

"Of course, there is a fourth difference, the feeding habits of luminescent life forms are different from all living things on Earth. There are microorganisms on the earth that feed on mineral elements, and there are fungi that feed on iron and copper, but there is no second type of organic and inorganic matter that eats almost everything like luminescent organisms. ”

Zeng Qian finished talking about these four differences in one breath, and the amount of information is large, and it will take some time for Team Cao and I to digest it.

The cabin was quiet for a few minutes before I smiled and said, "Xiao Zeng, if these speculations can be confirmed one by one, you can win the Nobel Prize." ”

Zeng Qian didn't mean to be a little happy, but said a little worriedly, "Uncle Chang, I think we should study this creature carefully, it seems to have a strong environmental adaptability, if it is a meteorite that brought it to the earth, then it must have existed in Poyang Lake for a long time, but the shipwreck incident seems to have been slowly increasing since the Tang and Song dynasties, of course, this is related to the development and application of ships, but the frequency of shipwrecks seems to be getting higher and higher." If it evolves to fully adapt to the Earth's ecosystems and no longer depend on radiation sources, it will mean that its range of activities will become more and more extensive, and that will be the time when human existence is truly at stake. Of course, in the absence of systematic research, these may just be my unfounded worries. ”

"Maybe it's not unfounded. Team Cao, who had been thinking about it and hadn't spoken for a long time, suddenly opened his mouth. "I still have something you don't know. ”

(Those who are good at the piano of people, if they have compassion, their voices are sad, if they are thoughtful, their voices are delayed, if they are resentful, their voices will echo, and if they have admiration, they will sound Pei Peiran.) Therefore, those who are sad and resentful are not hands, bamboo, silk, and tong. The heart of gain, the hand of the charm, the hand of the charm, the thing of the charm. Those who have the way are not in the middle of the way. --Guan Yinzi's "Wenshi Zhenjing") (to be continued.) )