Longzang

Chapter 786 On the Shackles

Upon entering Building 4, Wei Yuan was greeted by a light strip indicating the research station assigned to him.

Following the instructions, Wei Yuan arrived at a room and pushed open the door. The research rooms here had no ceilings, allowing a view of everything inside, resembling the individual cells of a honeycomb. However, the room was very large, equivalent to more than ten times the size of Wei Yuan's original workstation, and fully equipped with all sorts of facilities.

Wei Yuan sat down at the terminal, started the system, and after the permission check passed, the previously empty screen instantly filled with dense icons, each an entry point to a major category of research materials. However, some icons were dark, meaning that additional approval procedures were required before they could be opened.

However, the amount of information available far exceeded Wei Yuan's expectations. After browsing the catalog related to gene fragments, Wei Yuan selected the subcategory of gene sample sources and began to examine them one by one.

The gene fragment in Wei Yuan's hand originally came from a piece of flesh, less than a cubic millimeter in size. However, in the recorded images, this tiny piece of flesh had an astonishing speed of movement and activity, capable of autonomously finding and consuming food in its surroundings, and then rapidly multiplying.

The researchers placed the piece of flesh on a white mouse, which immediately began to thrash about frantically, blood quickly appearing on its fur. It struggled for over ten minutes, until the bleeding increased significantly, and finally it collapsed and died. Forty minutes later, it had turned into a writhing mass of flesh.

The researchers cleaned and separated the meat, ultimately obtaining a piece of meat equivalent to 80% of the mouse's weight. This demonstrates its astonishing energy and nutrient conversion efficiency, with less than 20% of the substance ultimately becoming waste and being excreted.

The other experiment was even more chilling.

Researchers designed a series of sub-projects to test the genes' responsiveness and judgment. The final results showed that any piece of meat larger than one cubic millimeter already possessed rudimentary intelligence. And at one cubic centimeter, it possessed the intelligence equivalent to a two- or three-year-old human child, capable of independent learning and exhibiting hunter's instincts.

Then came the test of adaptability. The chunks of meat were fed to different creatures, and whether it was a leech frog or a scavenging vulture or hyena, they all eventually turned into a moving mass of flesh and blood, becoming part of the chunks of meat.

Tests conducted on various toxic substances and in extreme environments have shown that the meat chunks are quite difficult to kill, exhibiting a survival ability similar to that of tardigrades. Only under certain strong magnetic fields do they show significant sluggishness and weakening.

When Wei Yuan saw the series of terms, he felt a strange sense of disconnect. He felt as if he had never seen or heard of these terms before, yet he also felt as if he knew their meanings.

However, this sense of disconnect was easily resolved. Wei Yuan's current access level was sufficient to search the vast majority of known scientific literature. So whenever he encountered a new term, he would retrieve a series of related papers and then begin to read them carefully, learning from the beginning.

It was only then that Wei Yuan realized that he could read two, three, or even more papers at the same time without any difficulty, and he still had plenty of mental energy to spare, which allowed him to think about all sorts of things, such as what the woman who had kindly helped him did after entering the president's office.

This wasn't just Wei Yuan's curiosity; it was the common curiosity of all ordinary male employees.

As Wei Yuan delved deeper into the research reports, he also accessed more and more papers on related fundamental theories. At this moment, sixteen floating light screens were simultaneously activated in front of him, each displaying different content.

Wei Yuan felt he could watch more, but his eyes couldn't take it. Switching between different screens at high speed was hard on his eyes, not his brain.

Wei Yuan reviewed the reports one by one and discovered that all the microparticle flesh fragments tested originated from the first superhuman discovered. Wei Yuan also found the footage left during the final capture, which should have been highly classified, but Wei Yuan was surprised that he could access it with his current access level.

The chase for that superhuman was incredibly bloody and explosive. That person was like a god or demon, capable of tearing steel plates apart with his bare hands, leaping dozens of meters to easily reach the rooftops of eight or nine stories high, and enduring the direct hits of exploding artillery shells and large-caliber bullets. In short, this was not the behavior expected of a carbon-based life form.

The Umbrella Corporation deployed thousands of soldiers to capture him, but suffered heavy casualties. Countless soldiers were torn apart by the target, and even bulletproof vests could not stop his claws. He even shot down two low-flying fighter jets with stones.

After losing hundreds of elite special forces soldiers, the security department deployed man-portable liquid nitrogen missiles specifically designed to target the bizarre life form, launching hundreds in succession to freeze everything within a radius of square kilometers, finally killing him.

After this superhuman died, his body strangely came to life. The limbs and flesh that had been blown apart seemed to have their own consciousness, growing legs and even wings, trying to escape.

The Umbrella Security Forces sprayed large amounts of freezing agent to freeze all the tissues and blood, then shoveled up the entire ground and removed it. The entire operation cost billions before they finally captured the superhuman's body.

After reviewing the information, Wei Yuan realized that the world was not as peaceful as it appeared on the surface, and that such terrifying inhuman beings existed in the shadows. On the other hand, Wei Yuan was also very calm, as if he had seen far more horrific scenes, and this was nothing compared to what he had witnessed.

At this moment, he opened another research report, which recorded the behavior of flesh and blood primitive cells under an electron microscope.

The images show that individual cells are highly aggressive, capable of actively engulfing other surrounding cells, viruses, and even all proteins, similar to an enhanced version of human immune cells.

When several similar cells meet, they automatically aggregate and have a simple division of labor: some are responsible for movement, some for engulfing, and some for storing energy.

When hundreds of cells gather, there are cells specifically responsible for perception and thinking, and they exhibit primitive intelligence and basic memory abilities, and can pass the most basic electronic maze test.

Finally, an unremarkable paper caught Wei Yuan's attention.

This was a journal entry written by a research director, summarizing the previous arrest operation and a series of experiments, and proposing his own conjecture. However, this conjecture lacked any basis, so the journal entry was not given a higher security classification, only the same level of security as the entire project. Wei Yuan opened the journal entry, quickly glanced through it, suddenly paused, then turned to the beginning and began to read it carefully, bit by bit.

"...I have a very strong intuition that the demon's body, and all the flesh and blood that followed, were not the breeding ground for that gene, but rather like chains that bound it. Its original power was perhaps not even one percent, no, one ten-thousandth."

Deep within that segment of the gene lies the primal demon. We used to think of genes as carriers of life information, but now, they may also be a prison.

I even suspect that organic matter is a cage designed by the universe to divide and bind it.

……

If it doesn't require matter, where does its original energy come from?

Upon seeing this passage, Wei Yuan felt a chill run down his spine for some reason.

Just then, a soft ringtone sounded from the side; it was a time reminder that Wei Yuan had set himself.

The phone rang, and Wei Yuan quickly opened the gene engineering design tool, set up a new project, and began designing a new virus. At the same time, Wei Yuan estimated the time the entire project might take, and then simultaneously applied for temporary accommodation for the night. He didn't want to waste time commuting and planned to stay in the lab that night.

The company has similar temporary dormitories at every important location, with conditions that are at least much better than where Wei Yuan is currently living, and they are specifically for staff working overtime on important projects.

Wei Yuan had just pressed confirm when his application was approved, and the approval process took three days.

This is the norm at the company: the pressure is immense, but the salary and benefits are absolutely top-notch. They always provide all the necessary conditions for those who are willing to work hard, while those who are not willing to work hard may be fired at any time.

The company is full of young people like Wei Yuan, vying for every opportunity. For them, climbing to the next level is the ultimate meaning of life, while standing still will only lead to a fall into the abyss.

After initiating the process of designing the new virus, Wei Yuan began working. This stemmed from his wisdom gleaned from years of surviving in the workplace: after spending half a day reviewing materials, it's best to first do something work-related, even if it's just writing a few pages of empty reports. Otherwise, it's easy to be flagged by the system as slacking off, and even worse, to be secretly flagged by your superior without your knowledge.

Once he started, Wei Yuan immersed himself in his work.

He now has access to all mature papers on genetic engineering, so he learns and designs at the same time, starting from the most basic protein molecule concepts and working his way up to advanced human genome programming.

However, the sixteen screens in front of him were far from meeting Wei Yuan's needs. He felt that there was a way to see all the information on the screens without moving his eyes. The method seemed to be within reach, but he just couldn't remember it.

A thought struck Wei Yuan, and he suddenly remembered the powerful instincts of the gene sample cells. He stopped pondering the specific principles and, relying on his intuition, activated another screen. The new screen appeared, and its contents naturally entered Wei Yuan's consciousness, as if an invisible pair of eyes were watching him.

At this point, Wei Yuan still felt he had the energy to spare, so he turned on a few more screens. He didn't need to look at them to grasp all the content inside.

Wei Yuan suddenly felt as if some invisible barrier had been shattered. His consciousness began to expand, and in the blink of an eye, it covered the entire research building. Everything in the two floors, totaling more than 300 research rooms, was taken into view.

However, he instinctively felt that continuing to expand might lead to something very bad, so he quickly pulled his attention back and focused on the work at hand.

Wei Yuan knew that such an important research base would be surrounded by countless surveillance cameras, and any unusual movement could trigger alarms. Although Wei Yuan was excited, he dared not act rashly, only wanting to wait until he returned home to properly test his newly acquired abilities. He absolutely could not expose himself now; the last person to have their abilities exposed was currently residing in the genetic map in Wei Yuan's report.

Wei Yuan initially set the screen count to 32, but then felt it was too many, so he lowered it again and again, eventually reducing it to 8. He felt this was the balance between security and completing the virus design. Any less and he wouldn't be able to finish the work.

Just as Wei Yuan was immersed in his work, a screen in one of the base's offices suddenly lit up with a glaring red light. One by one, the officers in their seats, with their buzz cuts and muscular faces, exclaimed in surprise and checked the source of the alarm, only to find Wei Yuan with eight screens open.

Eight screens is a bit much, but there are countless geniuses in the company who are almost superhumanly intelligent. While not many can actually do it, there are still quite a few. Under normal circumstances, running eight processes simultaneously shouldn't trigger a system alert.

The crew-cut man was puzzled and couldn't figure out what was going on. But his professional instincts told him that anything he couldn't understand could be resolved by simply reporting it, and then he wouldn't have to think about it anymore. So he chose to report: a suspected genius, or... a monster, had been discovered.

In less than three minutes, a reply from the president of the security department arrived in front of him: Genius.

The crew-cut man breathed a sigh of relief and was about to do something else when a message from the president appeared on the screen: Where is that person? Keep him calm, I'll be there soon.

(End of this chapter)