Chapter 439 Evil God of Air (1/2)

There are countless worlds of various compositions in the multiverse, just as the radiance of the Initial Flame came in millions of forms.

In this unnamed world, all things began with a dark-red sky.

The gigantic crimson stellar body hung within the universe—the star, past its prime, shone its weak light upon the three orbiting planets around it. The last time it expanded had been countless ten thousand years ago, leaving the system that once hosted seven orbiting planets with just three of its furthest orbiting planets.

The planet closest to this red giant had already been locked on by the tide. Half of the stone planet was under eternal incineration—its lithosphere had already melted, while the other was ice-bound in the chilling darkness. All air remaining were liquefied, surging in the cracks between stones.

The second planet was rotating in a rather unusually sloping angle. Solar winds that were exceedingly violent had already destroyed its ozone in an instant countless of years ago, disturbing the planet's magnetic field, the brutal impact stirring the planet's rotation axis.

And the one furthest from the red giant was a dark blue colossal gas giant. Perhaps because it had been too far away, it did not undergo much change all when its mother expanded all those innumerable years ago, and silently moved in the darkness along its own orbit as always.

There, everything began.

The surface of the gas giant was filled with immeasurably ferocious air currents. The winds that moved at tremendous speed wrought cyclones after cyclones that kept fusing and swelling, with some growing up to super windstorms hundreds or thousands of meters in diameter. The majestic sight could be distinctly observed even above the planet itself.

Joshua's consciousness awakened at this very moment. He stood upon the vacuum of outer space, unable to react for a while.

But in the very next moment, the scene changed and he entered the gas giant.

It was a dark-blue sea of gases.

Curious airflows that escape imagination had always surged endlessly within this vast billowing sea of clouds. The red giant that took up two-thirds of its sky illuminated everything within with its not-too-warm radiance. As the warrior's spirit was led by an indistinct guide towards its inner reaches, Joshua had already reached the gas giants rather warm interior when he finally understood where he was and was left shocked by it.

There were innumerable crystallizations deep below the thin ocean of gases. Frozen ice or metal shards cascaded with the airflow as the energies within the planet's core ejected them away, although they would soon gradually fall back. The process had continued for several dozen millions of years since it first began. Mana of such grand scale it astonished any existence washed out the microscopic debris, time after time.

Joshua looked on at the sight. Although he did not know why he who was attacking an Evil God fragment would suddenly appear here, the warrior took not mind but instead observed the insides of the gas giant interestedly

When he thought about the surprising construct of the Evil God fragment, he could not help having a presage.

And his presage quickly came to pass.

The flow of time accelerated. Under the colossal mana scour of the planet as well as the influence of that mana that could be counted in units of hundred million years, the insignificant material that was assimilated by mana was granulated into a core, giving birth to a unique life.

In the beginning, they were clusters of energy condensation without a fixed form without absolutely no intelligence to speak of. They flowed along the cyclones that moved at hundreds of kilometers per second and wandered the more docile gas oceans, absorbing the mana from the deeper reaches of the planet to augment themselves. Still, the lifeform tended to be killed due to the unstable outer layer construct of the gas giant, destroyed by the incredible air current shifts.

However, as if sensing that the environment it was born within was too hostile, they instinctively head for the depths of the planet where there was stronger air pressure.

Ultimately, these elemental forms of life that resembled gases inhabited the most stable gaseous composition at the deeper regions. They were nourished by the mana radiation the planet releases, interacting with each other using a special mana ripple that was electromagnetic radiation.

But even with the passing of ten thousand years their wisdom did not grow much and naturally did not form any sort of civilization. Despite that, these elementals lifeform that wandered the ocean of gases had their own unique shape of society. The excessive large living gases would combine and form a stable 'artificial' air construct within the turbulent flow while splitting part of itself to give birth to new progeny. The young would then be released when they grew to the point where they could move independently in the gas ocean—just like fungus that releases spore to propagate itself.

The curious morphology of this lifeform born in the gas giant certainly opened Joshua's eyes, but he knew that this was not the end.

In fact, it might just be the beginning.

There were limited spaces suitable for the gaseous lifeform to live within the inner reaches of the gas giant. Stable regions were fewer than imagined, and were partitioned by countless brutal cyclones. Some of the lifeforms had flown out towards the unstable surface layer in search of a new home. However, the potently cascading airflow would mercilessly tear apart the bodies of those adventurers—even the largest gas lifeforms could not resist the bombardment from winds that could reach up to hundreds of kilometers per hour.

As Joshua watched attentively, the illusion swiftly flowed with million and millions of times the normal speed, until a gas lifeform that attempted to compress its own body appeared several millennia later.

Contracting the gases that formed its body and assembling the energy within its body into streaks of urgently cascading squalls, the lifeform shifted its gargantuan body that had a radius of several thousand meters into a dark blue gaseous sphere that measured up to only several meters. Miniaturized, the gaseous lifeform finally broke through the barrier of gales after one swirling adventure, arriving at the surface of the planet.

It saw the red giant that continuously expand and covered more than half the sky.

The elemental lifeform did not have the ability to identify colors, but it could sense the terrifying power within the sphere that hung over its own head. The star's energy radiation, large enough to cover the entire gas giant carried tremendous flow of mana, scouring the surface of the planet and producing a myriad of beautiful radiance as magnetic fields brushed against each other.

The dark-red sky was the beginning of intelligence.

Perhaps due to its proximity to the two different energy radiation that clashed, or perhaps due to the instinct that accumulated over many dozen millions of years, the gaseous lifeform that shrunk itself started to change bizarrely. One way or the other, this was the first time in which intelligence was birthed amongst this unique race.

Returning to its homeland, the gaseous lifeform taught every existence it could interact with the method to contract its own body. And soon, countless blue gas spheres floated into the ocean of gases, receiving intelligence under the star's radiance.

Gradually, the new generations of gaseous lifeform had no need to head for the surface layer of the planet to acquire intelligence. Still, the process slowly became affixed into their coming-to-age ritual—only by compressing their own body, going to the surface independently and safely returning would they be acknowledged as a member of their species.

They called themselves 'Gass', a term used by the gaseous lifeforms to denote 'intelligence' in its primitive language.