The shadows did not dare to approach the ship, but only to drift around the ship's fire, in awe, caution or curiosity...... For example, if you are seeing the sea for the first time or climbing a mountain for the first time, you will see the infinite changes in the fire of the ship. Each change is new and interesting in the eyes of the shadows, even mysterious and majestic.

The flame of the Death or Life was so bright in the lonely water that it was like the moonlight reflected in the lake, still hanging in the dark and cloudy sky.

The wild trails are dark, and the river boats are bright.

The people in the boat continued to observe the strange shadows outside the window, and in the discussion with each other, they quickly confirmed that the shadows they saw were indeed not thick. They are thin, they are patches, they are really like shadows.

"Do you want to drive these shadows away by force?"

Zai Yan suggested.

Gu Chuan hesitated slightly, since he met Ziyuan and began to realize the intelligence of the extrahuman species in this world, he had restrained a lot in his behavior. He said:

"Don't you yet...... Let's observe the situation, or...... Test it with something small, non-aggressive. ”

There are some small, non-offensive things in the gear man's gear. But these things are difficult to move freely in the body fluids of jellyfish, and they are not suitable for sleeping. Zai Yi sorted it out, thinking that at most they could throw a few balls from the exhaust chamber hatch. But opening the hatch is also a hesitant choice.

The strange unknowns of the shadows make anything they do feel like a terrifying expedition, even though it's ...... It's just a touch.

A deep barrier of communication and cognition separated them from the shadows, and the result of this barrier is the seafarers who were suffering from scurvy for the first time due to vitamin deficiency in the history of the earth, or the sailors who exclaimed for the fire of St. Elmo for the first time when they saw the phenomenon of cold light coronatic power generation in a thunderstorm for the first time.

"Otherwise, wait a little longer and see."

The young man said, who had become hesitant.

Both Zai Yi and Chu Yun obeyed Gu Chuan's idea and chose to wait, and everyone knew that time would never make them wait too long.

It doesn't take much judgment. Anyone with a discerning eye can see that the jellyfish swarm is still migrating south.

Even in non-towery areas, they could clearly feel that the clouds were getting denser and the world was foggy, as if it had been smeared with some kind of cheap cyberpunk filter. Some clouds have drifted past jellyfish, while others have skimmed over clouds. The scaly clouds are disrupted by jellyfish, and the whale-like clouds are the ones that separate and retreat the jellyfish swarm.

Jellyfish seem to be willing to only brush over the edge of the clouds, rather than into the clouds.

In successive logs, the explorers agreed that the clouds that had been grazed by the jellyfish had become smaller.

"Maybe they're feeding on cloud ......? Or microscopic creatures hidden in clouds. ”

Zai Yan guessed.

"Let's say they're eating something, but they don't have mouths, do they?"

Hatsuyun was puzzled, and Mr. Dandan nodded.

Gu Chuan pinched his chin and said:

"If it's a kind of food, then it's probably a filter food."

A typical example of filter feeding is whales, whose mouths are like a large net and suck in the water and the debris of all kinds of small creatures, alive or carcass, in one go. The small creatures are then left behind by the large net and sent to the digestive tube. The water stream and microorganisms that are too small are filtered out.

There are no filter feeders in Sunset City and the Great Wilderness, and Gu Chuan has a lot of brains to explain, but fortunately, Zaiyun and Chu Yun are not people who will doubt his knowledge, but people who believe in him very much.

The exterior is dark, while the interior is brightly lit.

As Chu Yun listened, his eyelashes trembled, and his innocent eyes naturally showed an innocent expression of worship.

When the young people found out about this, they felt a sense of guilt in their hearts for selling common sense about the earth to attract the attention of others.

The more he spoke, the lower his voice became.

In his guess, the jellyfish are likely to be filter-feeding on nutrients. They can't see their mouths, but maybe their skin is a terrible net.

It can pass through something the size of a person, but it prevents the outflow of bodily fluids, which is the magic of this kind of skin.

"If you want to talk about strange things, I'm afraid this can also be said to be a strange thing, right?"

The young man thought.

The Dead or Alive continued to drift forward with the swarm of jellyfish, gradually approaching the new towery cloud.

This new pillar that runs through the heavens and the earth is not in the records of the Cogwheel People, and it is already in a territory that the Cogwheel People of the outpost have not observed.

Explorers call it a crab cloud.

As the name suggests, the crab-shaped cloud looks like a crab, and its stratification is also obvious, from the bottom to the top of the area, not getting bigger and bigger, nor getting smaller and smaller or constant, the size of the interchange changes, these thousands of meters are large, up a few thousand meters will become smaller, and then a few thousand meters up and bigger, so the protrusion, the concave concave, the cloud is like the silhouette of a crab with open legs. The big cloud is the legs outstretched, and the small cloud is the gap between the legs.

At the edge of the crab cloud, there was a flickering light, around the elliptical arc, like thunder and lightning on a cloudy day, suddenly bright, and there was a low tremor.

As the jellyfish swarm approached the crab-shaped cloud, the explorers quickly met to discuss countermeasures.

Zai Yi believed that as long as the jellyfish group entered the crab cloud, they should directly break the jellyfish's body and forcibly get out of the jellyfish's control after measuring the content of the ghostly matter in the crab cloud.

The other two agreed.

Unfortunately, at the end of the line, the jellyfish swarm is just about to brush past the crab-shaped clouds. In telescope observations, only the outermost jellyfish in the drifting path of the jellyfish swarm will skim the edge of the crab-like cloud.

"Then we still can't land, and we're going to fly in the air......"

Zai Yan was disappointed.

Gu Chuan laughed and comforted him:

"There's no way around it! It seems that we will only have to go a long way with the jellyfish...... It also saves us the effort of being at the helm. ”

Zai Yan didn't say much, just sat down silently, waiting in the narrow and empty external observation room. Gu Chuan got up from the mechanical hand and went to the tail cabin to repair their little lifeboat.

And the wonderful change of things always happens at the moment when people think everything is settled, and it is always connected to something that people don't expect.

The Zai Yan who was on duty at that time quickly sounded the alarm on the entire Death or Life Number, which shocked Gu Chuan's heart to his throat. When everyone gathered, Zai Yan didn't say a word, but used his searchlight to illuminate the side of the Death or Alive, where the jellyfish swarm and the crab-like clouds had grazed.

Several people's eyes followed the direction of the light and looked at the dim and deep sky.

The swarm of jellyfish is like a cloud, drifting over other clouds. And the original clouds still roam alone in the air, and have nothing to do with people's fate.

But the shadows are moving.

Not a single shadow continued to remain beside the Death or Life because of the strong light of the Death or Living, and as if they had found a light elsewhere, or had been attracted by something else, they swam out swiftly and in an orderly manner, like soldiers in formation.

"Where are they going, isn't this world of the dark sky and the dark earth almost the same?"

Mr. Dandan lay on his stomach in the sleeping box, blinking his little eyes, and said.

All are too lazy to answer its questions.

Everyone knows that they just have to wait and the answer will come naturally.

This netherworld was not much different from what it was when they first saw it, and in fact it was not much different from what it looked like tens of thousands of years ago, or tens of millions of years into the future that was to come.

Explorers saw vast expanses of familiar snowflakes or raindrops that were thrown out of dense clouds, leaping through a swarm of jellyfish, or sinking into a swarm of jellyfish, emitting a series of splashes, and then crossing the bodies of the jellyfish as if they were transparent until they disappeared on the other side of the world.

Bursts of rain and snow could not hinder the movement of the shadows. They still maintain the same coincidence as they had just left, from beginning to end, passing through the skin of the middle jellyfish against the others, and from one jellyfish to another, just as they had been from the other jellyfish to the middle jellyfish at the beginning.

"The shadows have always been different from jellyfish, and I suspect they can't move independently in the netherworld."

The young man looked at the flow of shadows and remembered the schools of fish swimming in the great river of sunshine in the past.

The swarm of shadows did not stop in the second jellyfish, but quickly and continued to fly, approaching the jellyfish farther outer.

"Do they want to get out of here?"

Hatsuyun leaned against the window and looked out the window at the endless clouds, and the swarm of jellyfish illuminated by the Death or Life Horn seemed to be attracted by a storm of crab-like clouds, and made an arc in the air, slightly deviating from their original direction.

This makes the contact between the jellyfish swarm and the crab cloud very long.

And the jellyfish closest to the crab-shaped cloud has been hovering on the edge of the cloud, gently stirring the skin of its whole body. Almost clinging to the edge of the clouds.

The bodily fluids in its body were trembling slightly, and many bubbles kept coming out.

The bubble traveled all the way through the water, spreading to the other jellyfish.

And the shadows are gathering at this jellyfish.

If they are schools of fish, then the fluids connected to the jellyfish are their channel, and at the end of this channel is a crab cloud.

"It's time to stop, and beyond that is the Netherworld...... The environment there is completely different from that inside a jellyfish. ”

Zai Yan touched the ghost in the window and said.

Hatsuyun blinked from the side, and she began to think that her parasitic theory was wrong.

And Gu Chuan stood on the edge of Chu Yun and thought:

"Suppose, you say, they use jellyfish as a means of transportation?"

"Means of Transportation...... What do you mean? ”

Zai Yan turned his head sharply and looked at Gu Chuan.

In the ghost of the window, there are boundless clouds, dark spots of shadows that are moving towards the crab clouds in an orderly manner, the vast outline of jellyfish, and the thinking people reflected in the windows.

Gu Chuan watched the shadows leave in a hurry and said:

"It's like we're on the Death or Life and want to rely on this ship to cross the Netherworld...... Maybe the shadows can't move alone in the netherworld, just like us...... Very...... Weak...... Therefore, they need a vehicle. ”

And this means of transport, it is better not to build them themselves, but to be built by nature...... It's like a domesticated horse, a cow or a sheep...... It's like—

Jellyfish.

Zai Yan looked sideways, and for a moment of conversation, the explorers could no longer see any movement of the shadows. All the shadows are like tired passengers who have been riding a train for several days, hurriedly getting off the train, submerging into the crab-like clouds, and completely leaving the field of vision of the dead or alive.

The jellyfish continue to fly lightly in the air, like birds at ease.

"Surely they're not some kind of parasite?"

Hatsuun is not very happy because his guess has failed.

"I can't tell......" said the young man, narrowing his eyes and continuing to look in the direction of the crab cloud, "the eggs of parasites are sometimes not laid in the host's body...... Do you remember that in the past, people would periodically burn aquatic plants and animal manure on the great river of sunshine? Because the eggs may be excreted by the host with the feces...... In vitro, such as on the surface of the water, develop, and then wait for an opportunity to find an animal to re-parasitize. ”

Chu Yun remembered the relevant records in the medical codex, and she rose a little hope:

"That's true......"

But Gu Chuan said as if teasing her:

"But it's really unlikely for the shadows, they've been in the jellyfish for too short a time, and nothing has changed, has it?"

Zai Yi didn't care about their parasite research. He said:

"It's okay, and it saves us a lot of trouble."

He walked away, ready to rest.

The young man still stood in front of the mirror, motionless, and even more serious than before.

Gu Chuan's concentration made Zai Yan feel curious and confused, he raised his lion's head and asked puzzledly:

"What are you still looking at? Is there anything that still matters? ”

The shadows are gone, and the jellyfish are just a common thing, so what's there to keep watching?

"That's not the case, Zaiyi, have you ever thought about it?" The young man in front of the window, the young man in the reflection, opened his mouth together and explained, "It's also what I said before, hypothetically, I mean suppose that this group of shadows is indeed using a swarm of jellyfish as a boat......"

"Well, I think it's possible."

"So if one batch of shadows goes down, will there be a second batch of shadows? One group came over, while the other group left. ”

He said.

Jae-san paused.

"Even ......" Gu Chuan said calmly in front of the window of the dark world, looking sideways and back, "It's not a shadow, but other passengers who are about to board the 'ship'?" ”

And just as he turned his head, Zaiyan, who hurriedly got up, saw that in the crab-like cloud that hung over the sky and earth not far away, there were people and things like the same thing, jumping into the jellyfish's body one by one, swimming over like the death or life signal of the light source.

The human form in the water is like an open five-pointed star.

In the distance, it was not easy to see, except for a dark, red spot that landed like scales on their slender bodies.

When you get closer, you can see that they don't have any hair on their bodies, and second, you can see that they don't have any nails on their humanoid fingers.

In the words of the past, they are a bunch of toeless people.