"Rustling and hissing sounds"
The giant cockroach sister crawled and traversed through the fleshy cave, swift as lightning, adeptly maneuvering with her six limbs to nimbly change directions. With a swift swoosh, she vanished into a crevice without a trace. She could move freely in any direction, as long as three legs were in place to provide support, seemingly designed for such dim, humid, and narrow spaces.
Tie Dan crawled behind her, noticing the purple-black fleshy wall gradually turning into a tender pink hue. Initially, it felt hard like some mineral or chitinous shell, but as they delved deeper, the texture transformed into a soft, elastic one, reminiscent of some non-Newtonian fluid or gel, sinking slowly when still, but becoming firm and supportive with slight pressure.
A warm, humid breeze with a slightly sweet yet rotten scent, interwoven with a great deal of turbid Dao Breath and Sha Qi, rushed ahead. Indeed, there was wind, and there was Qi. Inside the Taixu Shrimp, as one gets closer to a natural ecosystem, passing through the fleshy walls that lock in pressure, one enters the internal organs cavity. The scene before them shifted from purple-red to green-blue.
Tie Dan poked his head out through the fleshy wall, momentarily surprised by the sight of a Grotto Heaven, revealing a dense forest. Yes, inside this cosmic organism grew a forest, a tropical swamp rainforest at that. Mosses clung to the fleshy walls in clumps, with sheets of green algae covering the marshy ground, resembling muddy soil soaked soft, spurting green sap with every step.
Numerous lush fern plants grew in this swamp, scattering bioluminescent spore sacs, like a swarm of fireflies flying about, converging into a thundercloud-like spore cloud in mid-air. That spore cloud shimmered and flickered with aurora-like green glow, forming a crystalline sky canopy.
Tie Dan scooped up some water and splashed it, watching the droplets fall back to the ground,
"Aren’t we on an orbit? And inside a living organism, how do you generate gravity?"
"Oh, it’s the Earth Mother Fungus. Here lies the Grotto Heaven, a Tao Domain created by the Fungus Mother."
The cockroach sister spoke from above, peeling away the moss layer hanging on the fleshy wall, and dug out a handful of semi-transparent, flesh-colored, jelly-like, slowly wriggling stuff, showing it to Tie Dan,
"This is the choice of Mo Family Giant, using the soil of All Heavens and Myriads of Worlds, Tai Sui, to meld and cultivate the flesh, incorporating multiple microbial fermentations, blending multiple microbial nutritional bases for cultivation. Fed to the Taixu Shrimp from a young age, it forms a symbiotic microorganism colony inside.
Not only can it recycle the difficult-to-digest resources in the Taixu Shrimp, generating sugars, oxygen, and various nutrients to supply the host, but it can also harmoniously coexist within the shrimp’s gut, creating the Earth Cave Heaven.
In doing so, not only can it form a gravity environment suitable for habitation and cultivation, but it can also further block the erosion from the Great Evil, absorbing and utilizing the Jidu radiation for warmth, emitting light and heat to nurture and expand the fungal colony.
Of course, these types of fungi themselves are considered living non-entities, Fungal Plant Demon Gods. If they absorb excessive radiation and Sha Qi, eventually, they could completely overtake the host, even evolving themselves to a Taoist Ancestor Level entity.
However, the chosen Earth Mother Fungus by the Giant is a specially cultivated docile variety, growing at a relatively stable pace, neither too intense nor too slow, with a gentle nature. When mature, portions can be directly cut and fed to the young Taixu Shrimp Seedlings to continue flourishing in the shrimp’s body, planting various Heavenly and Earthly Treasures, creating such natural respire Cave Heaven Blessed Land for us to dwell in when traversing the Void.
Originally, we were also living inside the Earth Cave Heaven, but now we’ve reached our destination, so we’ll move the egg capsule to the shrimp’s mouth to adapt to the Yinghuo atmosphere.
We originally planned to survey the mineral veins of the Lower Realm while waiting for the Taixu Shrimp to form a stable fungal mat on the Yinghuo surface, so that these Earth Mother Fungus could be transplanted down to propagate new fungal Grotto Heavens. With this plan, it should take only a little more than a decade to transform the barren Yinghuo surface into an oasis coexisting with myriad beings."
The cockroach sister whispered a lot, seeing that Tie Dan did not seem grossed out or annoyed, and continued explaining,
"The Giant said that the ferns can produce numerous spores, which can travel long distances with the help of wind, showing strong dispersal potential. Even if the colony has a highly heterogeneous habitat, there can still be effective driving of genetic differentiation.
These Mo Mountain Jue are also cultivated and bred by the Giant, genetically coordinated, with specially modified spore sacs of Spirit Plants, evolved to have stronger resistance and adaptability to various cosmic radiations.
Even if climatic variation occurs in the future, radiation storms destroy the ground vegetation, under the protection of the spore sac, there is a chance of surviving and sprouting again the following year."
Tie Dan couldn’t help but look at her,
"Aren’t you a Mechanical Master? How do you even know so much about botany?"
The cockroach sister, appearing shy, toyed with her braid,
"No, it’s all stuff the Giant wrote in the textbooks, I am just good at rote learning. After all, the slots for crossing over are limited, and the early members participating in the colonization of Different Worlds naturally need to know a bit of everything... ah, this is delicious."
The cockroach sister made a swift movement, diving and catching a bizarre-looking fish from the pond. Well, it was called a fish, but it seemed more like a snail or soft-bodied creature, with a shell-like crest on its head, attached to the fleshy wall.