I Am Also An Extraordinary Creature-Chapter 1388 - 988: The Farthest-Fallen Failures
When the first death occurred in the dormant zone, the death toll began to rise immediately, and those who survived afterward were the resilient ones.
The further along, the more resilient they were, even developing an adaptation to those tiny genetic diseases.
And in nearly five hundred years, no new deaths have occurred here, although the condition of some hibernators has become very dangerous. The equipment of the glittering crystal beings analyzed that the survival rate will decrease to 40% within two hundred years.
The fewer people left, the slower the survival rate declines. According to this trend, when the energy reserves of this shelter are consumed to the danger line, a portion of the glittering crystal beings may still wake up and take another look at this world.
And then welcome the true end.
"Civilization is so fragile." Tanshia Firlo lay on Zheng Yichen’s back, her small head resting on his shoulder, not very enthusiastic.
The glittering crystal beings were truly pitiful; their civilization’s growth was filled with adversity, constantly fighting against "natural disasters," grown to a certain height in adversity, and ultimately crushed by it.
She even wondered if the Dragon Tribe could withstand this kind of adversity? Probably... they can, right?
After all, they have the presence of a True God, whereas the glittering crystal beings, although they possess formidable strength and technology, have nothing related to the God Realm in their midst.
Moreover, their strength is all reliant on the environment of this planet, even if a True God was born, they might still appear fragile when facing the environmental changes of this planet.
As for the outsiders, they either couldn’t adapt to this environment and died immediately, or their inherent strength was high enough to reject everything unfavorable from the environment.
This can be considered a privilege that the natives don’t have, akin to breathing.
The glittering crystal beings cannot go without breathing, but during breathing, if the environment changes, and the air composition alters, it becomes a quite unfavorable factor.
Filtering masks can combat this threat, but such a change is merely one of the many predicaments they encounter, seeming insignificant.
They are too closely tied to this world’s environment; there are too many parts that they can’t bypass, and can only passively accept the changes in the environment.
"If they were a bit luckier, if the Dusk mercenary showed up, it might not have ended this way," Zheng Yichen said with some regret.
In the records, the glittering crystal beings did not initially discover the Dusk Territory, and regarding those meteorites, the planet has meteorite resistance, the threat isn’t in the meteorites, just in the environmental changes. 𝘧𝓇ℯ𝑒𝓌𝑒𝑏𝓃𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭.𝒸ℴ𝓂
And the environmental changes are global, hence why the glittering crystal beings focused more on stability in construction, thus their development centered on the form of a mobile city.
In this way, when faced with certain meteorite threats, the smaller ones would be directly destroyed, for the larger ones they couldn’t handle, they would just mobilize the city itself, relying on their technology, they could detect meteorites well in advance.
And those they couldn’t detect in advance were basically non-threatening.
The glittering crystal beings have attempted to leave this planet, but once they leave, their power declines rapidly, and if it’s for survival, abandoning power is acceptable.
But the problem is that their technology also runs into issues; the technology of the glittering crystal beings is not purely scientific.
This results in their technology being affected after their power depletes.
Just like those viscous liquids in the energy pool, the boiling liquid can be considered a special biological entity, called World Fat by the glittering crystal beings.
This substance serves as their core energy, used in every household, yet this core energy restricts them, much like the power of the glittering crystal beings.
After parting from this planet, it will deplete; without adequate energy, how will they escape this planet? By burning firewood?
Just through words, it is evident how desperate the record keeper was at that time; they had withstood so many disasters and even found new vitality.
But because of a single energy constraint issue, they were utterly trapped on this planet, giving up power couldn’t exchange for new opportunities.
"World Fat..." Zheng Yichen glanced at the energy area; the name suited it well, but this thing was bound by the influence of the planet itself.
Within the planetary environment, it is a robust energy source, not to mention how long the same volume of petroleum could last?
Yet the World Fat stored here has burned for over twenty thousand years!
The energy consumption to maintain this shelter is not small, primarily in the dormant area. While the other areas save wherever possible.
However, the builders of the shelter clearly did not plan to save across all aspects.
After predicting the timeline, excessive frugality held little meaning, with the minimum requirement of forty thousand years and then a 20% excess; once these standards were met, the surplus was used freely.
For so long, there’s been no new turning point, truly unnecessary to continue in despair waiting for a turnaround. Just let the still-living glittering crystal beings enjoy their final life.
That would be better than dying in endless hibernation.
"What a pity." Zheng Yichen felt some regret for this World Fat energy, such a powerful resource, yet it is bound to the world itself, leaving no known way to adjust it.
Looking at the other information, this shelter can connect with others, synchronizing information.
Comparatively, the situation of this shelter is not bad at all, at least with a survival rate over 40%.
Among the remaining six shelters, the highest survival rate barely reaches 35%.
One even has a survival rate of only 24%; however, regarding death, it’s at a very stable level.
In the past hundred years, across seven shelters, only a little over twenty glittering crystal beings have died.
"BOSS, should we wake them up?"
"Don’t they have some kind of... virtual reality technology?" Zheng Yichen asked curiously; the technology of the glittering crystal beings is not inferior, possessing psychic abilities, and powers akin to magic.
They could even conduct extraterrestrial exploration and migration. If it weren’t for the major problems in energy, they would likely have succeeded in migrating.
Since it’s hibernation, shouldn’t it make the collective hibernation experience a bit better?
"Yes, but the glittering crystal beings who chose to hibernate did not activate this technology." Lilith explained the reason: "In the hibernation plan, this technology is for the last surviving glittering crystal beings to decide whether to activate it.
During the forced awakening phase, the resources in the shelter can ensure the survival of 10% of the survivors for four hundred years.
Activating this function before that point, glittering crystal beings predict, would cause even bigger problems."
"Hibernating unconsciously for tens of thousands of years and spending tens of thousands of years in a virtual environment indeed can easily lead to problems."
No matter how long the hibernation, as long as the technology is up to standard, it’s just a blink of an eye and it’s over, probably much like the freezing over there in Dusk.
But living in a virtual environment for tens of thousands of years, such a long time can easily cause one to deteriorate, not to mention that these glittering crystal beings are all survivors.
With such a mindset, in a virtual environment, you can fool yourself for a while but cannot fool yourself for tens of thousands of years, right? It’s very satisfying to slack off for decades or centuries, but what about thousands or tens of thousands of years?
Slacking for so long, it’s inevitable to develop some crazy ideas.
Hmm... thinking about it, it’s better to just sleep well and restart after waking up.
"Awakening... how is the environment here?" Zheng Yichen glanced at the ceiling.
The doors are open, so this closed environment here should be broken, right? No, there’s another layer of protection at the door.
"Wake up one first, is the leader of this shelter still alive?"
Lilith brought up a file: "Dead, not only the leader, but many of the management have died as well."
"That means these glittering crystal beings really did some real work." Zheng Yichen exhaled and said sincerely.
The life-sustaining technology of the hibernation pods here is very advanced, guaranteeing the preservation of people inside for over forty thousand years without disease or disaster.
Under such conditions, incidents occurred due to diseases caused by dramatic environmental changes.
The more contact with the environment, the more severe the related diseases become.
The complete annihilation of the management left in charge during the collective hibernation period in the shelter indicates they really did a lot of work before hibernating.
There are one hundred thousand hibernators in this shelter. Adding up the people from seven shelters is only seven hundred thousand. According to records, it’s not that they don’t want to accommodate more survivors.
But they could only accommodate this many people, and many glittering crystal beings contracted severe genetic diseases. In the final period, only those with relatively mild symptoms could enter.
Even so, under advanced hibernation life-sustaining technology, the survival rate still didn’t exceed half. If the selection wasn’t strict enough, it’s likely when Zheng Yichen arrived here, not many people would still be alive.
Therefore, this selection was extremely cold-blooded.
With Lilith’s retrieval, from the records of personal files, even those who were considered relatives aren’t many, though there were lovers, but these were new relationships formed just before entering the shelter and starting hibernation.
These records are particularly detailed; among the survivors, the oldest is 60, the youngest 12, and no younger than that.
The youngest survivor caught the ’last train,’ so to speak, as the genetic disease made it difficult for glittering crystal beings to normally reproduce offspring.
The average lifespan of glittering crystal beings is about a hundred and fifty, not that they can’t live longer, but the harsh changing environment prevented them from living longer.
"Select those with good character and strong acceptance ability from among them."
The files Zheng Yichen was looking at quickly disappeared. Those glittering crystal beings who are here wouldn’t have bad character, with equally strong acceptance ability. The glittering crystal beings have recorded this information as well.
Lilith is looking to find the more outstanding ones.
While Zheng Yichen was waiting for the list, Senluo proactively spoke: "I plan to take them in."
Of the seventy thousand survivors from seven shelters, only a little over two hundred thousand remain now.
Among them, quite a few couldn’t withstand the genetic disease. With this batch that didn’t survive, the number falls to less than two hundred thousand.
"They also count as extraterrestrials." Zheng Yichen reminded Senluo.
Actually, his idea was to place these glittering crystal beings in the Savage World, where it’s sparsely populated, and an extra twenty thousand people wouldn’t have much impact.
"Arrange for them to the Moon base."
"That’s fine, you take care of it. Anyway, with you and me here, they won’t be able to cause much trouble."
These people are too pitiful, Zheng Yichen deeply sympathizes with them. But no matter how pitiful, if their actions create a batch of invaders, he will personally eliminate it all.
As for what Senluo thinks, Zheng Yichen feels it’s mostly not about sympathy, but rather that piece of soil containing the world’s environment.
The glittering crystal beings are failures, but in the struggle against the environment, they indeed walked a long path.
In the following twenty thousand years or so, it seems that no civilization more powerful than the glittering crystal beings has appeared.
"Let’s start the awakening."
