I, a cultivator, have ended up in the wizarding world

Chapter 758 Special Life Forms

Before the smoke from the battlefield had completely dissipated, Viola had already carried the eight unconscious level-eight octopus-men and flown towards the wreckage of the flagship. She didn't even turn her head back, but simply raised her hand and waved casually at Jemin, the meaning of which was crystal clear: she would handle the interrogation, and he would take care of the rest.

Jemin naturally had no objection to this.

The task of interrogating prisoners is best left to a wizard who specializes in the laws of suffering.

He turned around and began to arrange the aftermath for this dimension.

Under the command of the black giant priest, the black giants received the octopus-man prisoners in an orderly manner.

The fleet of the Tentacle Tree civilization, which had been waiting outside the plane, quickly dispersed under his command, with thousands of small squads spreading out like a net across the plane.

The fleet began systematically taking over indigenous settlements, octopus-man remnant facilities, and resource nodes scattered across the surface that had not yet been processed.

Meanwhile, Jemin himself slowly descended from the sky, finally landing in a hilly area ravaged by the aftershocks of the battle. The scene on the ground was completely different from what it had been a few days earlier.

The trail of the Fiery Annihilation Light carved dozens of bottomless canyons into the earth. The rock layers at the edge of the canyons were melted red by the high temperature, and scalding lava gushed out from the cracks, forming lava lakes that were still bubbling in the depressions.

The massive body of the nest crushed the terrain, leaving behind a smooth, mirror-like blue crystalline surface that gleamed coldly in the sunlight.

While Jemin managed to withstand most of the high-compressed energy attacks fired by the octopus-man fleet, each of the beams that missed, went astray, or were swept towards the ground by the aftershocks was enough to vaporize large areas of mountains.

The hills that were once covered with lush vegetation have now become a scorched wasteland.

The air was filled with the smell of burning and strong ozone, mixed together, making one's nose sting.

Clearly, under such terrifying aftershocks, very few of those vegetative patients who were collecting life energy in the depressions would survive.

Although both sides intended to keep the battlefield as high as possible before the war began, the simultaneous unleashing of firepower by tens of thousands of level 6 warships and hundreds of level 7 creatures was enough to cause devastating damage to the ground with the aftershocks alone.

The villages of people in a vegetative state in this area are mostly located in hilly depressions, directly below the battlefield.

The casualties were extremely heavy.

Jemin silently walked to a patch of scorched earth and squatted down.

In the mud, a broken vine arm was half-buried in the ruins, its fingertips still curled up in the same position as when it was alive, as if it was instinctively trying to grab something in its last moment.

"what?"

Suddenly, Jemin realized something. He looked down at the severed limb, and the vertical eye between his eyebrows slowly opened. The Eye of All Uses and the True Delusion-Piercing Pupil began to operate simultaneously.

"It's not a plant."

This was his first conclusion after scanning the remains of the first corpse.

The biomass composition of these vegetative-phytohumans looks highly similar to that of plants.

It contains cellulose cell walls, chloroplasts, xylem vessels, and more.

However, inside their cell nuclei, there is a complete animal nerve signal transduction system.

Beneath those seemingly bark-like surfaces lie extremely delicate and complex neural networks.

Its complexity far exceeds that of ordinary plants.

It is even much taller than many lower animals.

Rather than saying that plants have gained the ability to move, it is more accurate to say that an animal is able to perfectly mimic plants.

Jemin continued scanning deeper.

Soon, he discovered an even more astonishing fact.

Inside each vegetative state corpse, there are a large number of extremely tiny independent nerve ganglia.

These ganglia are not part of the central nervous system of a person in a vegetative state.

They belong to another, smaller unit of life.

He increased the scanning precision and found extremely fine synaptic connections between those ganglia.

Then, he pieced together a complete structure bit by bit.

"Interesting... What a peculiar life structure."

Each individual in a vegetative state is actually a collective of tens of thousands of tiny organisms connected by neural synapses.

These tiny organisms have each differentiated into different functions.

Some are responsible for sensing light, some for transmitting nutrients, some for coordinating movement, and some for recording information.

The entire group collectively manipulates this vegetative body through a neural signaling mechanism similar to a democratic vote.

The reason Jemin was able to confirm that these tiny organisms were individuals rather than a special kind of cell was that, based on his calculations of these nervous systems, these tiny organisms should also have the ability to think.

These tiny individuals have a more transparent understanding of each other's thoughts than humans, and can even think collaboratively to a certain extent. Therefore, the intelligence of people in a vegetative state does not come from a single brain, but from the collective intelligence of the entire group.

The larger and more closely connected the population, the higher the intelligence of the person in a vegetative state.

A hint of surprise flashed across Jemin's eyes.

"These are truly unique life forms, so these vegetative people are less like individual beings and more like a collection of groups." Therefore, their humanoid appearance is not a result of natural evolution.

The body structure of these vegetative state patients is malleable, and their morphology depends on the external neural signal templates they come into contact with.

These vegetative patients, while being enslaved by the octopus-men, were also learning from the octopus-men's "templates".

Thus, without realizing it, they mimicked the humanoid silhouette of the octopus-man.

Jemin even discovered a nervous system structure resembling that of an octopus-man inside a piece of remains.

This shows that they are not just imitating the appearance of the octopus man, but are "becoming" the octopus man in their own way.

That is a distortion of unconscious convergence.

Later, Jemin turned his attention to the "talent" that the octopus people valued most about people in a vegetative state.

The life energy extraction ability that the octopus-men considered a gift from heaven was actually not an innate talent of the plant-like race. Inside one of the relatively well-preserved corpses, Jemin found a miniature biochemical reaction chamber that was exquisitely crafted and breathtaking. It was a miniature factory composed of specialized ganglia from within the race.

It can combine free energy in the air with trace elements in the soil to synthesize high-concentration life energy.

For vegetative patients, this life energy is merely the basic nutrient for maintaining the activity of their population.

This is equivalent to the basic metabolism that all living organisms undergo.

The reason the octopus-men consider them treasures is simply because the basal metabolic rate of the plant-like race far exceeds that of ordinary organisms. They need to maintain the life activities of tens of thousands of race members, so their metabolic rate is naturally on a completely different order of magnitude.

Collecting this metabolic output became what the octopus-men considered their "gift ability".

The octopus-man thought he was mining a natural mineral deposit.

In reality, they have been using a primitive and ridiculous collection method to try to scoop out byproducts from a sophisticated factory.

Jemin clicked his tongue in amazement.

The level of biological civilization in this plane is unexpectedly high, and their exquisite control over living organisms has reached an almost unbelievable level. They are capable of evolving collective intelligence, autonomously developing into any form, and even constructing miniature biochemical reaction chambers within their bodies.

If this kind of biological civilization were allowed to develop normally in the endless chaotic void, its potential would be immeasurable.

Unfortunately, their evolutionary process was abruptly interrupted by the octopus-men in the simplest, most brutal, and most unreasonable way.

Jemin stopped in front of a relatively intact vegetative corpse, took out a row of sampling tubes from the body's internal cavity, and slowly and steadily extracted some active ganglion samples.

These samples, if stored in a suitable nutrient solution, can continue to maintain population activity in vitro.

The Purgatory Sulfur Plane now has enough open space.

Moreover, after merging with the Tentacle Tree plane, there are many undeveloped planets, which can be used to allocate several suitable planets for the plant people, allowing them to reproduce and rebuild their population.

This biological civilization has extremely high research value.

Whether as a source of replenishment for the faith of the incense-burning deities or as a gene bank for biological modification technology, it is worthwhile to invest resources in its cultivation. Just then, the light of a teleportation array shone behind him.

A black giant priest strode forward, his chest opening and closing slightly, producing a deep, respectful vibration:

"Master, a message has arrived from the Tentacle Tree Civilization's scouts."

Jemin turned his head curiously: "Did you discover something?"

"Yes, we've discovered an octopus-man factory, which appears to be their core facility in this dimension."