Among the eight planets in the solar system, Jupiter has the most satellites with 79 of them discovered so far.
Among so many satellites, Ganymede was the most special.
What was so special about it?
It was not only the largest—larger than Mercury, one of the eight planets—but it also had oceans and oxygen.
Stepping on the surface of Ganymede is no different from Europa. Its surface temperature is about minus 160°C.
The gray-white surface is full of various stones, ice cubes, and gray dust, looking very dirty.
However, it stunned Ling Jiu when he crossed the surface of the land and came to the ocean below.
Gleaming stars dotted the dark ocean. They were so densely intertwined that together they looked as if the Milky Way, deep and vast, bright and mysterious.
“Is this really an underground ocean?”
Ling Jiu could not believe his eyes. He knew Ganymede had an underground ocean, but the underground ocean looking like a starry sky was so unexpected.
“What a beauty!”
It enchanted Bai Ya, too.
“These light spots are all Ganymede creatures. You will know by catching one.” Leoux’s voice sounded in Ling Jiu’s mind.
“I will grab one and see.”
Ling Jiu nodded and appeared in front of a light spot. As he grabbed with his hand in the void, that light spot froze in mid-air.
Ling Jiu took a closer look, and it turned out to be a creature similar to a jellyfish.
It looked like a mushroom, transparent, with a luminous organ growing in its body. The organ illuminated not only the jellyfish-like creature but also the surrounding seawater.
“This creature is fascinating.” Leoux sounded surprised. “I can’t believe that the luminous organ in its body is rich in dark bio-energy—a pure dark bio-energy!”
“Rich in dark bio-energy?”
Ling Jiu’s heart skipped a beat. “Really? Doesn’t dark bio-energy exist only in the dark universe? How could this thing be rich in dark bio-energy?”
“I am not sure why,” Leoux said. “But my detection cannot be wrong. The light-emitting organ on its body is indeed rich in dark bio-energy.”
“Let me try.”
Ling Jiu sent the jellyfish into the Inner World with a thought.
It did not take long before the flames burned this jellyfish into nothingness and transformed it into two groups of energy: bio-energy and dark bio-energy.
It surprised Ling Jiu after he absorbed these two energies and distinguished their nature. “It’s really dark bio-energy.”
“What’s wrong?” Bai Ya asked in puzzlement when she saw Ling Jiu’s expression.
“We might have stumbled upon a gem!”
He grabbed another ‘jellyfish,’ broke it, and took out the light-emitting organ.
“Feel it with your heart, dear.” Ling Jiu took the light-emitting organ in front of Bai Ya. “Can you absorb the energy inside?”
“There is energy in it, too? Let me try.”
Bai Ya looked puzzled, but she still tried to absorb the energy. She opened her eyes after a while, looking incredulous.
“There is energy in it indeed, very similar to the mysterious energy produced by the arcana trees. Could they be the same energy?”
“They should not be the same, my dear, as I can feel that this energy is obviously more overpowering and more intense.”
Ling Jiu looked at the dense spots of light around him. “My dear, we may be getting rich.”
He could ingest dark bio-energy and had just gotten ten dark bio-energy crystals. These jellyfish were of no use to him in the meantime.
But it was another story for Baiya, Ling-er, and his parents. Since they could not absorb dark bio-energy, these jellyfish came in useful.
“A more overpowering and more intense mysterious energy?”
Bai Ya’s breathing quickened, her eyes lighting up. “Should we do something, my dear?”
“Certainly.”
Ling Jiu moved in a flash to replicate ten splits and issued a command. “Go catch them all!”
“Hold your horses, Ling Jiu,” Leoux said. “I have detected a stronger sign of life deep in the ocean. I am not surprised that they contain more dark bio-energy.”
“A stronger sign of life?”
“Then let’s go check it up.” Ling Jiu’s eyes lit up.
While speaking, he enveloped Bai Ya in his Arcana Field and dived deeper into the ocean. As he continued to descend, there were changes to the life form he encountered.
There were fewer jellyfish-like creatures and more belt-like creatures similar to ribbonfish.
They were also transparent, about three meters long, with a light-emitting organ on the head. But it was larger than the light-emitting organ of jellyfish and contained more dark bio-energy.
He found different life forms as he continued to dive deeper. Strip-shaped life forms gradually replaced round and belt-shaped creatures.
The level of strength of these life forms was constantly improving, from none-Class-1 to Class-2, 3, 4 and so on.
When Ling Jiu and Bai Ya came to a depth of 50 kilometers, the creatures here were mostly flat life forms, similar to sea turtles and horseshoe crabs in the Earth’s oceans.
There was a 60-meter-long ‘giant horseshoe crab’ not far away. It had a thick carapace on the outside, its brain also had a giant luminous organ, just like a giant luminous crab, rampaging in the ocean.
“This guy is comparable to a Class-Eight direbeast on Earth in terms of strength. Its energy reaction is also quite intense. The key is, there are a massive number of them,” Leoux said. “The detector shows that there are over three thousands of them within a radius of one hundred kilometers. They are easy to catch.”
“Over three thousand?” Ling Jiu licked his lips and said to his splits, “Let’s do it.”
“Yes, Principal.”
The 10 splits responded and carried out the instruction.
“Come!”
Ling Jiu remotely grabbed a giant horseshoe crab in front of him and threw it into the Inner World.
After an intense burning session, two groups of energy poured into his body, one absorbed by his body and the other by his Gene Arcana core.
Ling Jiu took a deep breath and smiled. “You are right, Leoux. There is a crazy high level of dark bio-energy in this type of giant horseshoe crabs.”
“Surely they have.” Leoux let out a faint smile. “What if I told you that there is an even stronger sign of life in the deeper part of the ocean on this planet, so much so that it surpasses stellar life forms?”
“Surpassing the stellar life forms?”
Ling Jiu’s jaw dropped as he looked at Leoux in disbelief. “What did you just find?”
“Ganymede is really full of surprises, Ling Jiu,” Leoux said. “It has three oceans, one on top of each other and each layer is about four hundred kilometers deep, separated by a layer of high-pressure ice. The bottom layer is directly connected to the rocky core of Ganymede.”
“So, Ganymede’s ocean depth exceeds one thousand kilometers and contains a vast body of water—over fifteen billion cubic kilometers, over 30 times that of Earth!
“Three layers of ocean, each layer is four hundred kilometers deep, and total depth exceeds one thousand kilometers?” It knocked Ling Jiu’s socks off.
Earth’s oceans are only 10 kilometers deep, Europa’s oceans are about 100 kilometers deep, and Ganymede’s oceans are over 1,000 kilometers deep.
Unbelievable.
“We are now in Ganymede’s first layer of ocean. Here I have detected signs of life comparable to that of Class-Nine Direbeasts,” Leoux said. “On the second layer, I have detected signs of life comparable to that of stellar life forms. And in the third layer, there are signs of life of galactic life forms.”
“Three layers of ocean; the deeper it goes, the more terrific the life forms are.”
“So this celestial body is not an ordinary moon. It could be the most terrifying celestial body in your solar system.”
Ling Jiu’s heart skipped a beat. “Isn’t it very dangerous for us to stay here?”
“You can rest assured at this point,” Leoux said with relief. “The terrifying life forms in the third-layer ocean have not noticed our presence. I believe that as long as we don’t enter the third layer, there is no worry about our safety.”
“Even if they attack, we just need to take shelter in the Leoux. It is impossible for them to break the Leoux’s defenses.”
“That’s great.”
Ling Jiu breathed a sigh of relief. “Can you figure out the details about the life forms in the third ocean? I need to know. Only by knowing your enemy can you win a hundred battles.”
“Give me some time,” Leoux said. “The Leoux is equipped with special probes. I will send them into the third ocean and let them conduct a near-field recce.”
“Then what are you waiting for? Do it now!”
“OK.”
Leoux nodded slightly. After a while, Ling Jiu saw a black mist rising from his wrist and swimming downward.
The mist was an army of miniature robots. They looked like black mist because of their vast number.
“Now all we do is just wait,” Leoux said. “It won’t be long before the robots send back the information of the second and third oceans.”
“I will catch more marine life while waiting for the information. Please help me scan the marine life of Class-Eight and above,” Ling Jiu said.
“Understood.”
Ling Jiu was on a catching spree with Leoux as his guide.
Those poor Class 8 and Class 9 Direbeasts in the first layer of the ocean found themselves in great trouble. Once detected, they all fell into Ling Jiu’s hands.
Three days later, the probes returned with information. Leoux sorted out the information and informed Ling Jiu.
“The ocean conditions of this moon are exactly the same as I last detected. The ocean is divided into three layers, each layer is four hundred kilometers deep.”
“What about life there?” Ling Jiu asked.
“Stellar life forms are widespread in the second ocean. The weakest are the Class 8 Direbeasts and the most powerful is the Class 8 stellar life form. The third layer of the ocean is mostly inhabited by stellar life forms. The weakest one is the Class 1 Stellar and the most powerful one is the Class 5 Galactic.”
“Class 5 Galactic?” Ling Jiu gasped. “Why does an unremarkable moon have such powerful life forms?”
“I have the answer for you,” Leoux replied. “All of this has to do with the wormhole inside this moon.”
“A wormhole?”
