Cat and Rose - Cat & Rose - Chapter 52 - Reappearing Yesterdays (1)

Chapter 52 – Reappearing Yesterdays (1)

A light breeze blew across the jungle. The vines and leaves swayed gently, and the jungle that was boundless from where they stood quivered along with the wind.

The translucent, lustrous tree trunks were like purple crystals; one could not help but wonder whether they would glitter and glow at night. By then, the entire world would be overflowing with kaleidoscopic light, as if they were in a dream.

Ling Yi examined a tree next to the spaceship.

It was said to be a tree, but in reality it was vastly different to the trees on Earth. Its actual appearance resembled an acetabularia algae that was magnified countless times, where the main stalk grew from the ground, then at fifteen or sixteen metres, it suddenly split into dozens of branches, spreading outwards in a circular shape. The twigs followed the same rule, suddenly splitting open at a certain place, continuing, and afterwards they would knot and tangle with each other, forming many strange shapes. Even the gleaming vine-shaped objects also looked like they were part of the plants.

Separated by the spaceship window, he looked closely at the grass that was so thick it covered all of the soil, and discovered they had the same shape as the trees. The only difference was their size.

He was conflicted. He wanted to pick a small clump to observe in detail, but after recalling that strange creature from before, he decided to give up on the idea.

Their next instruction was not announced yet, so they wore their Skeletons and entered a temporary deadlock.

After witnessing that scene, everyone felt a slight fear in their hearts.

The Colonel stomped in frustration. “What’s going on with you guys?”

He was asking the other teams.

The team captains reported back one by one, the contents were very similar—that the scenery was very beautiful from the strange, purple vegetation they stood on. Three teams also discovered unknown lifeforms in the water, in various sizes and similar shapes, but they did not attempt to do anything to them.

Ten minutes passed without any abnormal situations and without any new alerts from Lucia either. Svena gave them the go to continue exploring, and only then did they walk off the ship and spread out—this time they were much more cautious than before.

According to the procedure, after placing various measurement devices, the next step for the ground members was to collect soil samples.

On the ground, the soft grass and trees crowded and leaned on each other. They still had not seen what the soil looked like, so they needed to clear out parts of the grass first.

Someone made a gasping sound.

He moved downwards along the stems, attempting to push them away from each other to reveal the soil, but as a result, discovered that these plants looked like they were grown into a singular body, with every stem leaning tightly against each other with no gaps in between.

They could only clear them through violence.

Unexpectedly, these translucent glistening plants were very tough, unable to be torn apart by regular tools.

The Colonel did not believe in heresy, so he jumped several times consecutively on the grass.

A Skeleton was six to seven metres tall, and in addition to the special high-density material it was built from, its mass was measured in tons. With a few hops, its great strength could cause complete destruction to a field of grass.

But the exact opposite happened. The grass retained the same beauty as before, as if nothing had happened to them. The stem and leaves were pressed down by the Colonel’s stomps, but after the foot of the iron Skeleton moved away, it instantly recovered to its initial shape.

“What kind of damned place is this?” yelled the Colonel.

He took out his energy weapon. The high energy particles it sprayed out was the sharpest weapon they had. If even that did not suffice, then they were truly out of options.

The particle stream aimed at the faraway spot, and a blue laser-like knife made of light began to cut away at the grass.

This time, he finally succeeded.

At the points where the light knife touched, these unyielding plants finally fell. The Colonel strode forwards, wanting to push them aside, but a familiar scene occurred yet again: the corpses of the broken plants corroded away.

The purple mucilage reflected a watery light, as if a one-metre puddle suddenly appeared within the bushes. They could not touch that thing, as the image of the protective gear burnt to a black liquid was still deeply ingrained into their minds.

The Colonel shouted profanities. “I’ll fucking give you hell!”

Ling Yi frowned. He decided not to stay and watch how on earth the Colonel would “give it hell”, simply turning towards the riverside a dozen or so metres away.

The soil on land was untouchable, but surely the ones in the river were?

Next to the riverbank, the height of the plants were evidently lowered, but they were still just as dense. Ling Yi made a few testing strides, arriving at a spot very near the riverbank. Looking at the same purple base colour, his heart felt great unease.

He controlled the Skeleton to lean down, reaching its hand inside the water and feeling downwards.

It was slippery and cool, like jelly, or the colloidal culture mediums in Lin Si’s laboratory.

His pupils dilated sharply.

The riverbank, the riverbed, they were all the same thing—the same thing as the plants on the ground. Not only these…the trees, the shrubs, the grass, they were all in the same form, the same composition, spreading all over the planet.

He let out a shudder, then ran back to where the other people were gathered.

The Colonel was still tussling with that puddle. He took out almost every kind of material he had and put them inside.

It was useless—they all corroded.

The other small teams also resulted in a deadlock in their exploration. Although they were scattered around this planet that was no less than Earth in size, the situation they encountered seldom had any difference—or perhaps there was no difference at all, completely identical.

Apart from recording the temperature, humidity, and wind direction, they could not do anything.

Svena sighed deeply through the communication channel and could only speak words of meaningless encouragement. “We’ll find a way.”

“It’s hopeless.” The Colonel gave up on investigating the puddles and was led by Ling Yi to the riverside.

After feeling how the leaves were the same texture as the riverbed, they faced each other, exchanging looks.

“I read a story once, about a starwhale,” said Ling Yi all of a sudden.

The Colonel was distracted by his annoyance, so he did not comprehend anything and only made a noise of acknowledgement. “It’s like this rotten planet is playing tricks on us. Why do I feel like I’m dreaming?”

“In the story, the starwhale is a creature that lives in space and has the size of a planet…When the apocalypse descended upon Earth, the human government caught a starwhale, rebuilt the entire civilization on the back of it, then used weapons, as well as methods such as electric shock to force the starwhale to carry them wherever they wanted to go.”

The Colonel raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

“Nothing much…if there’s one in a million chance that these things are really part of a whole, and if it had a life as well, then it would be really scary.” Ling Yi craned his head, gazing at the few clouds floating in the pale purple sky. “These things are all alive, right?”

The Colonel kicked the grass. “It’s definitely alive.”

Lucia, who had been silent for a long time, spoke up. “The possibility of unknown matter as inorganic matter is zero.”

In this universe, no matter how the environment changed, its basic rules would not.

The interaction of quantum fluctuation and the Big Bang created basic particles. The structure of the atom was fixed there—even if the periodic table went onto a thousand elements, it would still be impossible to create such strange things. As such, even if they could not observe the composition of these things, they could still confirm they were definitely not simple inorganic matter.

As to whether or not it had a life, it was hard to say. Everything needed further exploration.

They explored so many planets, but this was the first time they had no way of starting.

In the end, over ten teams decided to return to base; the only things they acquired were the few litres of air each person packed away.

*

The author has something to say:

A transition chapter for the plot~ Next chapter i’ll stir things up

My last exam is on Friday, so I’ll continue to study =w= that’s why the next update is on Friday. If it shows I updated on Thursday it means I’m editing =w=

Thank you for reading on myeasynovel.com