Days as a Spiritual Mentor in American Comics Chapter 6202 - 5212: Soul Machine Utopia (69)_2

As expected, upon arriving at the shore, several large squids were seen stretching their tentacles. The fully formed Ancient Ones do indeed resemble cephalopods, with the entire upper body being a head and the lower part consisting of tentacles.

Their posture was very relaxed, indicating that their mood and condition were good. Meanwhile, Bat Cat was flying over the sea surface as if conversing with them.

Shiller flew over. Bat Cat glanced at him, and Shiller organized his thoughts before telling Bat Cat what had occurred while he was away.

"They mentioned," Bat Cat said, "they call that monster ’Shuggos,’ which sounds similar in their language, so I call him that. Although Shuggos’s rebellion worsened the situation, it was the irresistible genetic decay that truly brought about their extinction."

"You can communicate with them?" Shiller was somewhat surprised.

"They’re very smart," Bat Cat said, "smarter than I even imagined. You could say that if Earth’s cephalopods evolved into advanced life, they might be like them. You’ve probably heard of how intelligent they are."

Shiller nodded. You could even say that the reason Cthulhu is a giant octopus is because the evolutionary history and form of this creature seems unlike any Earthly life form; the whole evolutionary path seems uniquely pointed out, yet oddly advanced and efficient, making it a subject of fantasy in many sci-fi and horror works.

Whether this body structure can truly evolve advanced life is debatable, but as long as it evolves, it couldn’t possibly be weaker than the Human race, and might even be far superior.

"They can receive electrical signals with their tentacles," Bat Cat said, "which makes communication much simpler. I’ve transmitted a complete set of human language logic to them, although their vocal organs don’t allow them to speak like humans, they can use tentacles to spell letters..."

Before Bat Cat finished speaking, the squids below used their long tentacles to connect and spell out a word for Shiller: "HELLO."

Shiller was somewhat amused; it turns out that one squid’s tentacles weren’t enough and several were required to communicate. Luckily, they were learning English; had they been learning Chinese, even fifty squids might not suffice. It shows that alphabetic languages do have advantages.

The Ancient Ones seemed to love this game, constantly shifting their tentacles to form various words at sea. Their tentacles were astonishingly flexible, and they seemed able to communicate through non-verbal means. When connected, they acted as one organism, quickly shifting words, flashing a word every two to three seconds, and had already begun mastering complex sentences.

"How are you planning to talk to them?" Shiller asked.

"Morse code," Bat Cat’s response was simple, "I’ve already taught them how to use Morse code to spell letters. So, as long as I make some rhythmic tapping motions, they can understand what I’m saying."

"Additionally, because their vision is more comprehensive and their perception systems more developed, I can tap very quickly, even several times a second, and they can discern it, making communication feasible this way."

Having said that, Bat Cat began manipulating his Mechanical Arm to tap in the air. Honestly, even with a cat’s dynamic vision, Shiller couldn’t track how many taps he made, but the Ancient Ones understood.

They were likely exchanging information about Shuggos; although Shiller couldn’t understand what Bat Cat was tapping, he could infer the content from the words the Ancient Ones formed.

"Some of my kin were enticed," the Ancient Ones said, "they believed in an external god that promised to help us return home. They had a plan but failed. This led to the collapse of our genetic system and eventually brought about the Great Decline."

Shiller squinted. Although the original text described the complete historical process of the Ancient One race, it seemed normal enough - created beings rebelled, were beaten by various forces, and eventually went extinct.

But the biggest problem was the irresistible decay faced by the Ancient Ones. One must understand, the Ancient Ones could withstand pressure from the Deep Sea, construct enormous cities, and even possessed teleportation technology across spacetime, known as the great white space, akin to the Shi’ar Empire’s teleportation technology, enabling temporal-spatial jumps within the cosmos.

Such an advanced civilization ended up on Earth, and after several billion years, became extinct, which is simply absurd - a total deviation from the rules of the Material Universe.

Put it this way, if every Race could end up like this, there’s no risk of entropy increase in the cosmos. They could almost be deemed the first in cosmic freezing technology.

In the Marvel Universe that Shiller was familiar with, the scientists from the Three Great Empires had proposed a "biological evolution constant" theory, which Shiller hadn’t understood in detail, so only knew roughly that any civilization capable of cosmic travel would not be affected by biological evolution, meaning no longer naturally evolving or devolving.

The logic of this theory seems to be: for a civilization to survive stably in the cosmos, it must master genetic editing technology; chiefly, the ability to edit its own genes to adapt to various cosmic environments.

With this genetic editing technology, even if the Star System’s environment suddenly becomes inhospitable and temporarily untenable, they can edit the genes of some fellow beings to preserve the seeds and escape extinction, continuing to develop civilization.

Civilizations unable to achieve this will surely face extinction when cosmic environments change or during star system-level natural disasters, unable to survive long-term or develop advanced technology, unable to create Superluminal Engines or venture into cosmic travel.

Thus, the process of interstellar civilization evolution is: first acquire genetic editing technology, use it to avoid potential extinction disasters, ensure long-term inheritance and development, then advance to cosmic travel technology.

That is to say, no civilization can directly research Superluminal Engines without first mastering genetic editing technology. Because if it can’t evade natural disasters like meteors hitting Earth, the outcome is the same as Dinosaurs; the upper limits of civilization are locked, and improbably would they live unperturbed long enough to research teleportation technology.

Yet, the Ancient Ones, despite possessing extremely advanced teleportation technology, experienced such severe decay over billions of years without recourse, this cannot be mere coincidence. From the Ancient Ones’ description, unusual factors are surely at play.