The No. 1 Hunfen King in the Entire Server [Interstellar] Chapter 25

Xu Wanzhi led him to another area filled with towering coral reefs, their surfaces covered in moss.

The coral formations encircled clusters of hydroids and sea lilies, creating an almost sacred and tranquil marine haven. This location was far from the others, and the din of noise gradually faded away.

In the slightly dreamlike ancient ocean recreated by Survivor, the water was faintly blue. Light refracted off the coral, casting flowing patterns on the rocks.

Trilobites were scattered across the ground, lying there in quiet repose.

Xu Wanzhi crouched slightly and took a photo of a cluster of hydroids with his camera, then handed it directly to Lin Jing.

Lin Jing felt like he was just reaping the benefits of tagging along, and it made him a little embarrassed. “Are these plants another form of jellyfish?”

“Mm,” Xu Wanzhi responded. “Do you remember the ‘Door of Life and Death’ from the last game?”

Lin Jing blinked. “I remember.”

“Well, in truth, immortality does exist in this world.”

Xu Wanzhi looked upward, his gaze resting on the jellyfish floating above them. In the shifting light of the ocean depths, his expression turned cold for a fleeting moment before softening again into a smile. “At least, immortality as defined by biology. And that’s enough.”

Lin Jing followed behind, holding the codex. “What?”

Xu Wanzhi asked, “What do you think jellyfish are made of?”

Lin Jing hesitated. “…Water?”

Xu Wanzhi looked at him seriously for a few seconds, then said, “I thought you’d at least say ‘cells.’”

Lin Jing: “…” What’s with that attitude? Fine. We’re here already, so let’s chat.

Xu Wanzhi explained, “Cnidarians have a unique method of reproduction. Budding reproduction, where the offspring don’t separate from the parent body. Jellyfish share this trait. There’s a term for it: ‘coenosarc.’”

Lin Jing processed the concept of budding without detachment and found it oddly unsettling. “Wait, are you saying they’re essentially a colony, not individuals?”

“More or less. Descendants of colonial jellyfish evolved this characteristic further.”

Xu Wanzhi was uncharacteristically patient, his gaze lingering on the floating jellyfish above. “If you know about a creature called the immortal jellyfish, you might find its longevity fascinating. The immortal jellyfish rejuvenates through reverse aging, but jellyfish from the Cambrian era… you could call them reincarnations.”

The algae cast soft, transparent light, playing across Xu Wanzhi’s features. His voice, cold and melodic in the underwater setting, carried a detached beauty. “Jellyfish reproduce in the ocean. Fertilized eggs grow into planula larvae, which settle on the seabed and become hydroids. These hydroids then divide into medusae, which drift into the sea as jellyfish. The cycle repeats endlessly.”

Walking alongside him, Lin Jing pondered. “That’s just an alternation of generations, like how higher plants reproduce—seeds grow into trees. It’s not really reincarnation.”

Xu Wanzhi didn’t argue, simply smiling. “Mm.”

But as Lin Jing thought it over, he realized something was off.

Jellyfish were different from higher plants.

They were cnidarians, reproducing by budding without separation. Fundamentally, each “cell” was an offspring, capable of independent growth. Terms like “egg” and “sperm” were merely external labels.

Lin Jing was stunned.

He began to grasp what Xu Wanzhi meant by reincarnation.

A single cnidarian cell, which could be seen as an independent lifeform, shifted endlessly between the “jellyfish” and “hydroid” forms within the collective, achieving a kind of eternal cycle over billions of years.

Above the coral reef, a translucent jellyfish floated past, its tentacles brushing against moss in slow, graceful movements.

Drifting in the interplay of light and shadow, existing beyond life and death.

Lin Jing stared in a daze, then shook his head, feeling like Xu Wanzhi’s perspective was pulling him off course. Xu Wanzhi always had a peculiar way of viewing things—like the “life and death” from the last game.

Frowning, Lin Jing said, “I still don’t think that’s immortality—not for the jellyfish, at least.”

Xu Wanzhi’s eyes glimmered with amusement. “Then what is immortality?”

Lin Jing hesitated. “…At the very least, it’s not immortality on the individual level.”

Xu Wanzhi’s fingers lightly brushed a few ephemeral organisms as he smiled. “If you broaden the definition of immortality a little, everything is immortal. Collective immortality, individual immortality, cellular immortality, material immortality—what’s the difference?”

Lin Jing rolled his eyes. “I get it. You’re going to bring up the law of conservation of matter.”

Xu Wanzhi chuckled softly. “You’re really not a romantic.”

“If you must use the conservation of matter to explain death, it’s actually a beautiful thought.”

“After death, over billions of years, elements recombine. Humans might become soil, or plants, or mountains, or rain and snow, or particles in the universe.” His voice grew faint and distant, as if recalling something. “Dust, meteors, planets.”

“Planets?” Lin Jing murmured. “My mom used to lie to me when I was little, saying people turn into stars after they die.”

Xu Wanzhi nodded and said, “Someone once told me the same thing, but I didn’t believe it back then.”

After chatting with him for a while, Lin Jing gradually shed his initial guarded hostility and even shared some embarrassing stories from his childhood. “I believed it and made wishes to the stars every day. It wasn’t until I grew up that I realized the truth. It seems like you and I are opposites—you didn’t believe when you were young, but started to as you got older?”

Xu Wanzhi curled his lips into a faint smile. “When I was a kid, I didn’t believe in anything.”

Lin Jing: “….” 

It really confirmed that he and Xu Wanzhi were complete opposites.

He didn’t even want to admit that as a child, he believed in everything.

If his mom told him a fairy tale, he took it as gospel truth. He cried his eyes out for the Little Mermaid, was enraged by the Evil Queen in Snow White, and genuinely believed Sleeping Beauty was real.

“Let’s just finish the codex,” Lin Jing suggested, eager to shift the awkward topic. He squatted down and started photographing a trilobite.

Of all the creatures, he had a soft spot for trilobites, the only ones he could recognize.

He spent a long time finding the perfect angle, capturing a portrait-like photo of the creature.

To be honest, the trilobite looked way more sophisticated compared to the other creatures around it. Symmetrical body, antennae, compound eyes, and armor—it really seemed like the chosen one of the Cambrian Period. However, Lin Jing noticed that even this seemingly dominant creature bore scratches on its back, marks left by a higher-tier predator.

He soon encountered this marine apex predator: the anomalocaris.

It was unexpectedly… cute.

With stalk-like black eyes, shrimp-tail-like frontal appendages, and a tail equipped with fins and spines, the creature zipped through the water at lightning speed. In the Cambrian seas, it was nearly unrivaled.

Xu Wanzhi asked, “Doesn’t it look familiar to you?”

Lin Jing frowned. “Not at all. It looks so strange. If it was in the codex, I’d definitely remember.”

Xu Wanzhi flipped to the first page of the guide and pointed at a partial image—a shrimp-like limb.

Lin Jing fell silent. So the fragment was actually the anomalocaris’ appendage?

This guide was downright malicious, seemingly designed to thwart players like him who relied on “cheat” methods. Some entries only provided fragments or single parts of the creatures.

Lin Jing quietly closed his mouth.

Cambrian creatures were generally small, and even the apex predator anomalocaris could be captured with one hand. Pinning it down, Lin Jing photographed its appendage while the anomalocaris glared at him with its big eyes in futile rage.

As he worked, Lin Jing realized something. “Wait a second. The creatures are getting progressively bigger. Doesn’t that mean the photography is going to get increasingly difficult?”

The game had an annoying stamina mechanic. Physical exertion, attacks, or being startled all drained stamina. Once stamina hit zero, players were forcibly teleported back to the submarine. It seemed like achieving the elusive 60% collection rate wouldn’t be so simple. Lin Jing resolved to gather as much as possible while Cambrian creatures were still relatively harmless.

In a cave, Lin Jing found a creature resembling a fleshy strip with symmetrical shells at both ends: a lingula, a type of brachiopod.

With Xu Wanzhi, a walking encyclopedia, by his side, Lin Jing learned plenty of new terms: hexactinellid sponges, scyphozoan jellyfish, torch worms, and others with increasingly bizarre names.

Then there was Yunnanozoon, a small segmented worm-like creature with a row of pores along its body, whose purpose was unclear.

When Lin Jing learned that Yunnanozoon was an early chordate and the ancestor of all vertebrates, he stared at the worm for ages. His mind raced through billions of years of evolution, struggling to comprehend that he had descended from such a creature. Suddenly, the flowing seawater around him felt laden with gravity.

By the time he’d photographed every creature from the first page of the guide, his stamina was nearly depleted. He and Xu Wanzhi returned to the submarine as the last ones to arrive.

The conference room was already bustling with players sharing their day’s experiences.

The first to be forcibly returned was a rebellious young man in a black jacket, whose every action screamed “I’m a rebel.” True to form, he’d tried testing the anomalocaris’ bite strength by sticking his finger in its mouth and gauging the toxicity of ancient jellyfish by grabbing them barehanded. Unsurprisingly, his stamina plummeted, and he only managed to log three entries in his guide.

But he had no regrets, clearly enjoying himself.

Ke Lingxuan, on the other hand, had missed a few minor species but still achieved an 80% completion rate. She was comparing notes on where to find the missing creatures when Lin Jing and Xu Wanzhi walked in.

Startled, Ke Lingxuan asked, “You two were out there so long—did you manage to find everything?”

Before Lin Jing could respond, Xu Wanzhi smiled and answered for him, “Not everything. We were doing… other things.”

Ke Lingxuan: “???”

The atmosphere turned oddly ambiguous.

Lin Jing: “….”

He didn’t want to reveal his 100% completion rate, but surely the excuse didn’t have to be this suggestive?

Ke Lingxuan quickly coughed to redirect the conversation, spreading her codex on the table and saying, “While collecting these creatures, I noted where each could be found. Tomorrow, we’ll enter the Ordovician Period. Many of its species evolved from Cambrian ones, so their behaviors shouldn’t differ much. Comparing them with their ancestors might save us time.”

Elena, seemingly done with her interest in the two “gay guys,” now focused on the game. She chuckled softly, “Don’t be so sure. From the Cambrian to the Ordovician, millions of years have passed. The changes might be… dramatic.”

Ke Lingxuan forced a dry laugh.

The chubby short-haired girl sneered, “Oh, please. You had a 0% completion rate on day one. How about staying out of the discussion and sticking to your main job—flirting with men?”

Elena, her strikingly beautiful features tinged with a faint icy blue in her eyes, smiled as her red lips curved. Propping her chin on her interlocked hands, she replied, “Sorry, but flirting isn’t my main job.”

The chubby girl scoffed, her disdain palpable. “Who knows what your main job even is.”

The man in the floral shirt naturally seized the opportunity to play the hero and snapped, “Ugly freak, do you even know how to talk? If not, just keep your mouth shut.”

The plump girl responded leisurely, “Just don’t let yourself lose 25 points later.”

Elena said meaningfully, “No, I won’t.”

The submarine’s alert chimed twice.

Everyone began sitting down to eat.

While cutting her steak, Elena glanced at Xu Wanzhi, her gaze flirtatious and sultry. “I didn’t see you all day today, and I almost forgot to apologize. It was my fault for not keeping things in check on the first day. I just thought you resembled a good friend of mine, so I wanted to get close to you. I hope you don’t misunderstand.”

Xu Wanzhi lowered his gaze and continued eating with calm elegance.

The short-haired plump girl chuckled maliciously, “With such an obvious attitude, how can someone still not get the hint?”

The others avoided looking at anyone, focusing on their food, trying to keep to themselves.

Elena fixed her gaze on Xu Wanzhi and asked, “Wan, do you know Lilith?”