BXBX NOVEL Chapter 124 - 121: Walking into the Trap
[Damn! Isn’t it invincible underwater then?]
[So strong, it turns out that what Old Fang faced before was a weakened version!]
[How should we capture it, lure it?]
[Can only lure it with traps, right? Otherwise, we can’t beat it.]
But that was not all; Gu Qingyuan’s next words made the Shuiyou realize that the situation was even more serious than they had thought!
“The fact that such a creature still exists today means that it has already adapted to this environment, and especially in a place like Qaidam where human activities have hardly caused any disturbance. In other words, there is no possibility of it becoming functionally extinct!”
“There is a population here!” Bi Fang blurted out, unwittingly revealing the rest of the sentence Gu Qingyuan had intended to say.
But the audience was puzzled, what is functional extinction?
Facing the barrage of questions from the Shuiyou, Bi Fang offered a simple explanation.
“For any species to continue its lineage, there must necessarily be a minimum viable population to cope with the random changes in individual births and deaths, genetic drift, a series of random environmental changes, and various catastrophic events.”
“Below this number, the species will functionally go extinct! They can no longer reproduce on their own!”
“Therefore, species that have functionally gone extinct are called ‘zombie species,’ and the remaining last few individuals are referred to as ‘the living dead.\'”
“The most famous example is probably Lonesome George, who, even though still alive, meant that the Pinta Island Tortoise species was actually already extinct.”
There are many such species in nature, and the Northeast Tiger is one of them!
If humans do not intervene to allow the Northeast Tiger to breed with other tiger populations, even if their living conditions are optimal, various problems would arise due to inbreeding, and they would naturally go extinct in just a few decades!
In short, there are many more of such monsters like last night beneath that pool of water!
Holy shit!
What do we do now?
The Shuiyou were stunned, just when they thought that the danger level of this issue couldn’t get any more outrageous, Gu Qingyuan dropped a bombshell!
“I’m afraid it’s not just that. The Tiktaalik here may be even more dangerous than those from three hundred million years ago. Do you know about Wu’s Fish Offering, the famous fossil creature from Qaidam?”
Bi Fang wiped the sweat from his forehead and nodded, “I know a little, a kind of fish with incredibly robust bones, if it were any other fish, such a condition would’ve been a disease.”
The Wilderness Survival Skill that the System gave him was now of no use; the knowledge of flora and fauna it imparted was mostly about species that had not gone extinct.
Extinct species that had been gone for millions of years were beyond the scope of his Wilderness Survival knowledge; what Bi Fang knew was all thanks to the accumulation of knowledge from his past life.
“Exactly, the skeletal robustness of Wu’s Fish Offering is incredible, and the only fish similar to it is the Thick-tailed Secretory Fish. Both creatures had a similar living environment back then and underwent almost identical processes. Although there’s no consensus in the biological community yet, we’ve always suspected that the robustness of Wu’s Fish Offering’s skeleton was related to these environmental changes.”
“Let me put it this way, I suspect that the Tiktaalik that went through the same process might undergo the same transformations!”
Gu Qingyuan stated his conjecture, offering a small piece of advice at the same time.
“If live capture is impossible, I suggest you use blunt weapons when facing danger, or aim for the joints in the skeleton, otherwise, a regular knife might not inflict any damage.”
[What does that mean, I don’t understand, what does this have to do with Wu’s whatever fish?]
[Don’t understand plus one, Old Fang explain it please, your talk is too high- end.]
[Back when the teacher asked me to study hard, I didn’t listen, until I went to work in the factory, I had no regrets, but now, I’m tearful for not understanding the livestream.]
[Don’t cry, those of us who graduated from 211 universities are also baffled here.]
“To put it simply, the fish here might have gotten armored up.”
If it’s indeed as Gu Qingyuan said, the bones of the Tiktaalik here could be much harder than imagined, doesn’t that mean they’ve layered up their armor?
[If you had said it like this earlier, wouldn’t that have been the end of it…]
[Damn, how do we fight this? The other side is all decked out in holy gear, and it counters Old Fang’s dagger too!]
[Or should we just give up, isn’t it better to live well?]
“But one can seek survival opportunities anytime, discovering a new living fossil might happen only once in a lifetime!”
Unperturbed, Bi Fang was in fact eager to try.
He headed straight to the edge of the pool. Since it was daytime with ample light, the pool was very clear at that moment, and the surrounding rocks could be seen more than two meters down.
What exactly does the underground cave look like?
What kind of creatures are down there?
Bi Fang was very curious about these questions. He held the flying drone in his arms, pretending to take apart the camera, but in reality, he was transforming the livestream device into a wearable camera, which he then put on his head.
“Don’t you want to see the habitat of such creatures? What does it eat? Its range of activity, the composition of its food web, does it cluster? What are its habits?”
Surely, they wanted to.
On the other side of the screen, Gu Qingyuan nodded frantically, but as he did so, he suddenly froze.
Gu Qingyuan scratched his grizzled hair, feeling like there might be a problem.
Something wasn’t right.
The situation was wrong.
Wasn’t the plan to catch a live Tiktaalik?
Just like last night, wouldn’t setting up some bait to lure the Tiktaalik ashore do the trick? How could all this other information be obtained?
When he saw Bi Fang begin to strip off his clothes, a jolt of electricity suddenly shot through Gu Qingyuan’s brain, causing a complete mental shutdown.
It took a while before he could reconnect to the internet before it crashed.
Damn!
This kid is going to dive in and catch it!
[You absolutely must not do that!]
How could he dive in to catch it?
Wasn’t this just the same as an old man hanging himself for fear of a long life?
But the barrage of messages sent by Gu Qingyuan had already been drowned in a sea of comments.
Bi Fang didn’t even glance at them.
“Since there’s such a large creature in the underground river, there must be more than this small outlet; otherwise, the oxygen supply would be a problem. So I believe there should be other exits beneath the pool, maybe even an underground world.”
Stripping down to only his trousers and undershirt, Bi Fang threw the rest of his clothes into his backpack. Then he lay down at the edge of the pool, observing carefully.
He wasn’t sure if it was his imagination, but he always felt there was a fishy smell in the pool.
“The rock walls here are made of talc deposits, and due to sandstorms, the bottom should be sandy. There should be other passages below leading to the underground river—this is a water cave!”
“Water caves are much more dangerous than land caves. Once you get lost underwater, it’s easy to drown. You must not wait until your oxygen is running low to think of coming back; by then it’s too late.”
“If such a situation does arise, don’t panic. The more you panic, the more oxygen you’ll use up.”
“All we can do is reduce our consumption and follow the current. Where there’s a current, there must be a passage, and following the current also helps us reduce oxygen use.”
Since he wouldn’t be able to talk underwater, Bi Fang wanted to clarify the key points with everyone beforehand.
After that, he took a few deep breaths, strapped on his backpack, put on the camera, and jumped straight into the pool!
With a splash, the audience saw Bi Fang dive right in.
Following the camera’s perspective, all they could see was pure darkness below the pool. In the closed environment, many Shuiyou started to have difficulty breathing, feeling immensely afraid.
Silence, a deathly silence.
In the deepest part lurked an unknown monster, just waiting for its prey to fall into its trap!