Daily life of a teacher in the martial arts department

Chapter Thirty-Four: The Undying Worm

"The immortal worms have arrived."

Inside the research room, someone said something, and a group of researchers immediately dropped what they were doing and rushed to the door.

In fact, what they seemed to be studying was just a formality. Without the immortal worm for comparison, determining the origin of this mutated virus would be as difficult as making a major breakthrough in materials science without experimental materials—of course, the latter is even more difficult.

Under the watchful eyes of the researchers, two immortal insect eggs and three guinea pigs were brought in.

Guanju is a magical beast that has degenerated into an ordinary animal. Individual differences are minimal, and it is extremely resilient and has a stable lifespan. Therefore, it is considered the best host for the Undying Worm. The three Guanju are in three different states: 'the spine has not been completely replaced', 'the brain has not been breached by the virus', and 'the Undying Worm has completely taken control'.

The three guinea pigs were in different states. The first guinea pig was as described in textbooks, docile in temperament. The second one would occasionally poke its head into the cage, presumably having discovered the secret of its immortality and thus gained immense courage. However, the gifts bestowed by fate already had a price tag in secret. The third guinea pig was its future, even more docile than the first.

The memories of the immortal worm are inherited, but usually, these memories do not manifest. In other words, even if an immortal worm once possessed a human body and gained human-level intelligence, it would still lose this intelligence and memory as soon as it reverted to its egg form. Each time an immortal worm parasitizes another, it is a new beginning.

There are normal situations, and naturally there are unusual situations. When talking about unusual situations, we have to mention the only pursuit and core purpose of the immortal insect.

All immortal insects share a common core purpose.

"Live on."

This sounds like a truism: survival is the instinct of all living things. How could any living thing not want to live?

Different.

The immortal insect's will to live is extremely strong, to an unbelievable degree. It can endure many scenes that would make people think, "I can't take it anymore, I should just die." Throughout history, no immortal insect has ever died by suicide.

No matter what dire straits they face, they will never despair; no matter what the circumstances, they will always find a way to survive.

According to experiments, if an immortal worm is driven to a dead end, it can activate a portion of its past life, even its previous life, and retrieve memories from those past lives that can help it survive. In most cases, however, force is required to break through this desperate situation. Furthermore, immortal worms were once bestowed as rewards by those in power upon various valiant warriors, so every immortal worm...

They might suddenly unleash their full potential in dire situations and transform into combat masters.

Everything is for survival, and they will do anything to survive. This is the special alien race, the Undying Worms.

Of course, no matter how powerful you become, you can't bring your inner energy and spiritual power from your past life into this one. So these few Qigong masters locked in cages are safe.

"Undead insects..."

Someone murmured softly. After all, the Undying Worm was something prohibited by law, and most of them had never come into contact with it. Now that they had seen it, it was inevitable that they would be curious. After all, most people would only see a special alien race once in their lives.

"Let's begin."

Mu Nandong walked forward with a cold expression.

Once we obtain the Undying Worm, things will become much simpler. If this virus is indeed a mutated Undying Worm virus, then with the Undying Worm prototype in hand, some secrets won't remain hidden for long.

"Let me see..."

-

Two flowers bloom, one branch each.

On Ying Qin Pass's side, with the addition of the Nephalem and the Ten Commandments, they were like a tiger with wings... Well, that doesn't quite add up, since the original three were only good at fighting.

Looking for clues? What do you mean, looking for clues? Just go shopping, isn't that enough?

In this situation, Nephalem joined the group and directly played the role of a core carry. He led Ying Qin Guan and his group to search for a whole day and actually found a clue just as the sun was about to set.

It was a hidden room containing some confidential documents. Thankfully, the documents weren't written in coded language, which relieved the Nephalem. Imagine a country having a hidden room in its palace—that's rather redundant. Unless some martial artist sneaks in, the hidden room could barely be explained. But if the contents were written in coded language...

The Nephalem could only suspect that the other party was colluding with other races to destroy the world. Besides that, there were no other secrets left to keep in this way.

He flipped through the records by date, and with a little effort, he actually found a record about the immortal insect.

On January 12th, "The Silent Dog" returned with the Undying Worm's host, Guanju. He had found Guanju in a laboratory beneath the Black Dragon Ruins. Guanju fed on all sorts of food, consuming soil, planks, rotting flesh, and clothing. When "The Silent Dog" found it, the entire laboratory had been devoured, leaving nothing behind. It had even consumed a portion of itself, lying there barely alive. Judging from the environment, it had been lying there for an unknown amount of time. Whenever it was on the verge of death from hunger, it would choose to consume another portion of itself, using the Undying Worm's power to grow flesh and maintain a minimum level of life. This was the Undying Worm's survival instinct—truly insane, truly powerful.

But even in this state, it doesn't choose to go to the ground to forage... Radiation is truly something more terrifying than all of that.

On January 14th, by relentlessly harming Guanju to exhaust its lifespan, and after the Undying Worm completely takes control of the host's body, this method could reliably kill the host and force it to lay eggs. However, for some reason, Guanju did not lay eggs. What went wrong...?

Nephalem closed the book.

If he could, he truly hoped that the bloodstained words at the end meant that the person responsible for recording these things had come to this secret room before dying and wrote down everything he knew. Unfortunately, there were no "ifs." The disaster in Bird City broke out, and everyone ran away. No one was going to waste time here.

Even so, this intelligence is valuable enough.

There are no immortal insect eggs... How could there be no immortal insect eggs?

Without hesitation or even much thought, Nephalem immediately dialed the walkie-talkie and reported all the intelligence.

He knew that thinking about these questions was not his job. He knew nothing about the immortal worm, the irrigation system, the black dragon, or radiation. He decided to leave these questions to the professionals.

Chapter Thirty-Five Confirmation

You don't need to have seen the immortal insect. Anyone who has learned about the nature of the immortal insect from a book knows how to raise it, and if they are not mentally challenged, they can usually figure out how to quickly remove it.

The safest method, of course, is to torment the Undying Worm with continuous injuries until it is on the verge of death, forcing it to use its abilities to consume its lifespan to recover its body. By repeating this process, the host of the Undying Worm will eventually die of old age, and the Undying Worm eggs will naturally be expelled.

This is a conclusion that can be easily drawn.

Therefore, when the information about the Nephalem was relayed back to the research lab, the researchers realized something was wrong.

Undead eggs are always laid out in this way, and unlike alien races and magical beasts, undead worms do not 'evolve' or 'degenerate'. Since humans first became aware of undead worms, their characteristics have never changed in the slightest.

However, this time, no immortal insect eggs were released.

So where exactly is that immortal worm?

If it wasn't inside that monster's body, that should have been discovered very quickly, using the methods described above. The Ang Empire had no record of it, so we can only assume that the Undying Worm was in effect at that time... But in the end, the Undying Worm eggs mysteriously disappeared.

Aside from the possibility of "human factors" that are now impossible to verify, such as someone in the Ang Empire stealing the Undying Worm Egg through bizarre means right under the noses of many people, the only conclusion is that there is something wrong with that Undying Worm.

"Did the immortal worm evolve?"

Shenxin began to speculate, and she quickly wrote down her guess.

[“They transformed into something like a progenitor alien race, with a mother entity existing within them, and through some other means, without needing to possess the body themselves, they could bestow the abilities of the immortal insect upon other creatures…”]

".."

Mu Nandong was silent for a moment, then said:

"I'd rather believe someone stole the Undying Worm's eggs than this, but you're probably right."

"The giant zombie in the square might hold some clues. But before that, we need to finish the work here first."

"Yes... if it turns out the zombie virus and the undead worm virus are completely unrelated, that would be really hilarious."

Shenxin's statement was truly malicious, and the researchers all showed their ashen faces. They had all experienced this kind of thing to some extent, and it was difficult to simply describe it as torture.

If the zombie virus and the undead worm virus are completely unrelated, then all previous speculations will be overturned, all efforts made in this regard will be in vain, all the information obtained will be meaningless, and everything will be shrouded in complete mystery.

Fortunately, that didn't happen.

Shortly after Shenxin raised the small blackboard, someone spoke up, breaking the silence in the research room.

"Everyone...please look over here. I'm not entirely sure, but I think this is the answer."

-

"Excuse me, Commander." Lan Xiu lifted the curtain, holding a document in his hand, and walked towards Piers.

Piez asked, "Judging from your expression, you've made some progress?"

Lan Xiu adjusted his glasses and said, "If I had to stake my life on it, I wouldn't dare to be too absolute. Strictly speaking, we can't completely rule out other possibilities. The existence of the Primordial Alien Race allows for a turning point, but based on what we know so far..."

Before he could finish speaking, Piez, his expression unchanged, drew his pistol from his waist and placed it on the table.

"I'm giving you a chance to rephrase your words."

Lan Xiu decisively said, "We have confirmed the commonalities between the zombie virus and the undead worm virus. The zombie virus is indeed very likely a mutated undead worm virus."

Piez asked, "What is the probability, and how many of them have in common? Give me an exact number."

Lan Xiu, sporting the expression of an old man from the subway, said, "The probability is very high. This isn't a math problem; there's no standard answer. The commonality isn't calculated like that either, between humans and gorillas—"

He didn't get to finish his sentence because Piez had already released the safety on his gun.

Lan Xiu decisively said, "To be on the safe side, let's go for 98%."

"Rounding it up means 100%?" Piez said.

Lan Xiu dared not speak out in anger. Judging from Pierce's tone, he felt that even if he said 45%, Pierce could round it up to 50% first, and then round it up to 100%.

Piez continued, "What caused the mutation? Can it be found out?"

".."

Lan Xiu looked somewhat weary; he genuinely didn't know how to answer Pierce for the time being.

The alchemical weaponry of the Jue Tian Army was at least ten years ahead of the rest of the world. The United Nations confiscated and dismantled many of them for alchemists to study, hoping to decipher their technological principles. But what was the result?

It's impossible!

More than a year has passed, and if it can't be done, it can't be done. If the basic alchemy is not up to standard, everything is in vain.

Even with alchemical armies conducting research for over a year, they still couldn't crack the Black Dragon Empire's technology. Moreover, with insufficient manpower and limited time, and without knowing what methods the Black Dragon Empire used, in such an environment and under such circumstances, how did it mutate?

Damn it! Only God knows the truth about this!

Lan Xiu really wanted to say that, but as a subordinate, he didn't dare to contradict his superior, so he could only swallow his pride and say, "Not for now."

Pies understood Lanxiu's meaning, knowing that "not yet" actually meant it was unclear how long it would take. He nodded and said, "Understood... confirming they come from the same source is enough."

"If there's no further intelligence today, then it's time to put the exploration of Bird Square on the agenda."

-

night.

The top-tier martial artists returned one after another, but they did not bring any more useful intelligence.

There were no other clues of suspected agents in the residential area, and inside the research institute, most of the data was damaged. Even with some specialized equipment and a relatively comprehensive repair, no useful intelligence was obtained.

The only thing that yielded any gains was the Nephalem's side, but they only found that one place and then found nothing more.

This time, Piez didn't let everyone go back to rest. Instead, he summoned many top-tier individuals, announced the battle plan, and conducted a final search the following morning. If they still didn't achieve anything, they would gather again at noon and head towards Bird Square together.

"If there is anything in Bird City that could pose a danger to your lives, it is only that central square. If any of you do not wish to continue participating in this matter, you can come to me after the meeting. The United Nations will still remember your contributions to this matter... That's all."

Chapter Thirty-Six: An Unexpected Encounter