Chapter 190: Chapter 188: The Turtle and Its Familiars
Laying eggs?
The moment he heard the strange turtle’s words, Mo Ling had a sudden realization.
No wonder this strange turtle looked so weak.
At this point, Mo Ling was no longer concerned about whether his conversation with the strange turtle would affect history. He asked, puzzled, "Why did you come here to lay your eggs?"
Mo Ling looked at the boundless, harsh desert, utterly perplexed.
Besides, this was the future location of the Oasis. What did its egg-laying have to do with the Oasis?
The strange turtle was still using its clawed hind limbs to dig a pit, trying to bury the rear half of its body within it.
It answered Mo Ling’s question as it dug, "Because we must lay our eggs on land."
Land?
’Did this strange turtle come from the sea?’ Mo Ling wondered. ’No wonder the crevices on its body are filled with seawater.’
But where could a sea possibly be in these Chaotic Sand Dunes?
"You were in the sea before this?" Mo Ling asked.
"Yes."
The strange turtle’s voice was heavy with exhaustion, but it still did its best to tell Mo Ling the story of its race.
...
They were generally known by other intelligent races as Vortex Turtles.
Their tracks could be found all over the 3rd Floor of the Abyss, but they were exceptionally rare, and one would almost never encounter another of its kind.
They are born in the sand pits of the 2nd Floor of the Abyss. They break out of their eggshells, climb out of the deep sand pits, and slowly crawl toward the deep sea of the 3rd Floor of the Abyss.
At this stage, they are still very small and weak, and there are no Shellmen on their shells.
During this journey, they face many dangers:
Sandstorms in the Chaotic Sand Dunes that devour everything.
Hunters churning within the scorching hot sand.
Giant birds circling high in the sky...
When they first crawl out of the sand dunes, their carapaces are still soft, offering no protection, and their minds are muddled.
These newborn Vortex Turtles do not resist Hunters, nor do they avoid danger; they only crawl single-mindedly in the direction of the ocean.
Amidst death all along the way, the newborn Vortex Turtles’ shells are worn harder and harder by the sand. An extremely small number of lucky ones manage to evade all the dangers and make it to the 3rd Floor of the Abyss.
Only after entering the sea does a Vortex Turtle’s life truly begin.
Hunting, fleeing, growing...
Once they grow to a certain size, they become hosts to the Shellmen.
The Shellman Race was originally a race that floated in the 3rd Floor of the Abyss. Compared to many other creatures, they were very weak.
Unwilling to simply drift with the currents, they sought a relatively stable habitat.
So, upon discovering the Vortex Turtles, the Shellmen build barnacles on their backs to serve as their homes. They, in turn, protect the Vortex Turtles’ lives.
When a Vortex Turtle grows powerful, it will, in turn, shelter the Shellmen. Every Vortex Turtle gradually accumulates many Shellmen.
The Shellmen have short lifespans. Through generation after generation, as the Vortex Turtle grows larger and larger, they forget their own origins and come to believe the turtle’s shell is their entire world.
Eventually, they come to see the Vortex Turtle as their god, gradually becoming its kin.
This is the inevitable destiny of every Vortex Turtle and the Shellman Race.
Once their bodies mature, the Vortex Turtles are already immense. At this time, they begin to seek mates to reproduce.
Then, they crawl ashore to the 2nd Floor of the Abyss, retracing the path they once walked, and find a suitable location.
To lay their eggs.
At this time, the Shellman Race, who now worships the Vortex Turtle as a god, will protect it with their lives until it finishes laying its eggs and returns to the ocean once more.
And the Vortex Turtle eggs buried in the sand dunes will face the same plight after hatching, returning to the sea only after enduring endless hardships.
This is the life cycle of the Vortex Turtle race...
The Vortex Turtle calmly narrated everything about its race, as if doing so helped it distract itself and alleviate its pain.
The hostility in its voice from the beginning was also gone.
The pit was almost finished. The Vortex Turtle kicked away the sand and sank its body down, burying the rear half of itself in the dune.
Although the Vortex Turtle had let its guard down around Mo Ling, the Shellmen were still looking around warily.
"God! Where is the enemy?"
They were extremely anxious, still reinforcing the shell fortifications on the Vortex Turtle’s back.
The Shellmen also used the barnacles to fire a type of white, spherical cannonball at the surrounding sand dunes.
When the white cannonballs landed, they would instantly create a large number of shells, solidifying everything around them.
However, these Shellmen couldn’t see Mo Ling and were just firing randomly.
Thanks to the Shellmen’s "efforts," the surrounding sand dunes were covered in white shells and solidified, forming a large, stabilized zone.
The Vortex Turtle seemed to be in great pain at this moment, in no mood to pay attention to the Shellmen’s actions and completely ignoring the Mo Ling before it.
But its condition only made the Shellmen even more panicked. They intensified their efforts, unleashing a barrage of shell cannonballs on the surroundings.
Watching this scene unfold, Mo Ling didn’t know what to do.
The Vortex Turtle’s current situation reminded Mo Ling of sea turtles on Earth laying their eggs.
Sea turtles climb onto the beach to lay their eggs, and this time ashore is when they are at their most vulnerable, with many predators taking advantage of the situation.
But sea turtles don’t have these protective Shellmen on their bodies, nor are they as powerful as a Vortex Turtle.
And in this desolate desert, there didn’t seem to be any predators capable of threatening a Vortex Turtle.
However, just as Mo Ling was thinking, a melodious voice suddenly rang in his ears.
"It’s about time."
Startled by the sudden voice, Mo Ling quickly looked over and saw a purple orb of light appear in mid-air beside him.
The orb of light was continuously pulling out a purple gauze net. Thin, veil-like rays of light curled and burst outward, spreading bit by bit, and in the blink of an eye, the purple gauze covered everything.
The purple gauze seemed to be interwoven from some kind of hard material, yet it also resembled transparent and smooth rays of light, translucent and bright. This purple net covered the sky, but it didn’t feel oppressive, only light and elegant.
A beautiful, pleasant voice drifted out from within the purple gauze. The sound was ethereal and illusory, seeming to shift back and forth between the interwoven strands of the net, at one moment here, the next over there.
The wind and sand that had been stirred up by the Vortex Turtle instantly came to a halt. The swirling grains of sand fell like raindrops, as if knocked down one by one by the purple gauze.
’This is the purple gauze creature the Ancient Mine Race talked about!’
Mo Ling recognized it in an instant.
He knew he couldn’t be mistaken, because the gauze creature’s appearance was simply too distinctive.
After the Ancient Mine Race had spoken of this creature, Mo Ling had imagined what it looked like.
He had thought the Ancient Mine Race’s description might have been an exaggeration, but seeing it with his own eyes, it truly did look like a bizarre sheet of gauze.
But Mo Ling had never imagined that the gauze would cover the sky, stop even the wind and sand, and dye the dim yellow dunes purple.
After the gauze had fully spread out, the ethereal voice began to echo in the sky again.
"It’s about time."
