The portable grandfathers that appear are all problematic.

As expected, he will complete his dual doctoral studies in three years and successfully return to USTC to teach, which was also the content of the agreement signed when he was recommended for postgraduate studies.

As for Xue's original plan, he also intended to use Austin's connections to lure out his parallel world self, then give him a good beating so that he wouldn't dare to study the occult.

However, things have changed. His parallel world self has been completely unified, and thus he has successfully regained his original identity in this world as well.

Xue Dinglu closed his eyes and slowly released his seal. It was now 2027, and the next US presidential election was in full swing. On television, candidates Vance and Harris were having a passionate debate, both preparing to win votes in the election a year later.

Wait a minute, why does this scene feel so familiar?

How come three years later, Vance and Harris are still arguing on TV?

Given the recent extreme weather events in many states, such as the flooding in New York and the extreme cold in Illinois that killed thousands, the incident a year ago in which numerous Freedom Militia missiles bombarded Boston seems insignificant.

The tragedy resulted in the deaths of several hundred people in the town of Salem, including dozens of "professors" from around the world who had come to the town for academic research. The official explanation given was that Vice Secretary Ma's Starlink rocket accidentally crashed into the town of Salem, causing the tragedy.

It seemed as if nothing had happened, the world remained peaceful, and America's mainstream media were still reporting on the upcoming election.

It seems as if the ancient plant Zigera and the overwhelming spores that appeared in the town of Salem a year ago were fake, as if none of it ever happened.

This made Xue's Law, who originally thought the whole world had fallen, start to think.

At that moment, Xue's law saw his own research, and his pupils constricted.

"An investigation revealed that during basic clinical examinations of over 100 randomly distributed individuals in Boston, more than 99.8% of them had an unknown prokaryotic archaea in their bodies."

This archaea structure resembles organisms from over three billion years ago, possessing characteristics of plants, fungi, and animals. It can combine with the human body, take root in human cells, and assimilate with them. It is tentatively named 'wild fungus'.

No harmful effects of this archaea on humans have been found yet. However, when this unknown parasitic archaea is extracted and cultured separately, it exhibits lignified growth characteristics and seems to have a collective consciousness, automatically tending to merge into other culture dishes.

We must be extremely vigilant against the invasion of this archaea, as it could have unimaginable consequences.

This was an article published by his parallel universe self, but it didn't attract much attention. He was even warned by the FBI to stop conducting this kind of research, otherwise it wouldn't be a warning, but surveillance and an on-site investigation.

Xue Luding frowned; he suddenly had a bad feeling.

I once played a game called Plague Inc., where I controlled a virus with the goal of killing all of humanity.

The most difficult and reliable way to beat the game is to maximize the spread speed without maximizing any symptoms or pathogenicity. First, infect the vast majority of people in the world, and then, once everyone in the world is infected, instantly maximize pathogenicity and lethality to wipe out the entire world.

Now, looking at the research in his hand, he suddenly felt that the strategy of the arid fungus was extremely similar to his own when he played Plague Inc. It was as if they had a unified consciousness. The characteristic that allowed them to grow lignified structures on animals and humans had also degenerated and completely gone dormant.

Xue Lude thought of the mystic who ultimately killed Austin. Was he secretly manipulating the waste fungus?

However, his parallel-world counterpart seemed to ignore the FBI's warnings. He continued to secretly study the Wild Bacteria, even conducting countless animal and reverse experiments on top of the original work. The freezer behind him was filled with culture dishes of Wild Bacteria.

He's researching a drug to inhibit fungi!

Xue Dinglu immediately began searching for traces in his memory. He understood that his parallel world self had been preparing for the worst. As a half-baked expert with one foot in the field of mysticism, he knew some of the inside stories of Salem town and had extracted a sample of Zijra's organization from there immediately after the disaster.

That is, the original strains in his laboratory now. At the same time, he compared these strains with the strains on the people who came for physical examinations. When he found that they were exactly the same, Xue's Law of the parallel world immediately began to use tens of thousands of exhaustive methods to study the special drug.

He tried everything from antibiotics to alcohol to countless other chemical or biological methods, but he couldn't find an effective way to kill the bacteria. He even used a laboratory heating device to heat the bacteria up to 1400°C, but it still didn't kill them effectively.

Meanwhile, his articles warning about this archaea published in major mainstream media outlets all went unanswered.

But perseverance pays off, and he finally made some progress in his research.

T-166 bacteriophage, an ancient virus accidentally extracted from itself, is the only microorganism in all his research that was able to survive the invasion of wild bacteria and even launch a counterattack.

This microorganism is not aggressive towards the human body at all, but it can unleash unimaginable fighting power when facing wild bacteria, and even parasitize wild bacteria in reverse.

Xue immediately took out a petri dish and began to reverse-engineer the bacteriophage and the waste bacteria through the cursed blood. He immediately felt a sense of incongruity.

Because the RNA of this T-166 bacteriophage showed traces of being modified by the cursed blood.

Although it had mutated many times, even to the point of being unrecognizable, the traces of the cursed blood were too obvious, causing Xue Dinglu to close his eyes as he considered a possibility.

“3200 years ago, I used cursed blood to unleash a plague against the gods on Mount Olympus in ancient Greece…”

"But even if there is a host for this bacteriophage, it should be a descendant of the Greeks, so why is it appearing on myself..."

However, looking at the thousands of separately packaged bacterial samples and a small number of bacteriophage samples in the petri dishes behind him, as well as the densely packed manuscripts in his hands, Xue Dinglu suddenly smiled.

Even though he was in a parallel world, he still tried to save the world in his own way. Although he had only just made a small breakthrough, Xue Lude saw that he had tried at least thousands of solutions, trying to find an inhibitor through exhaustive methods like a blind cat stumbling upon a dead mouse, but he never thought of giving up.

Xue Law's lips curled up. Perhaps he was somewhat dissatisfied with his parallel world self entering the field of mysticism, but now it seemed that this "Xue Law" and his essence remained unchanged, only the method was different.

"Use bacteriophages as an antidote to fight the germs? But bacteriophages work too slowly..." Xue said. Now he couldn't be sure when the disaster would break out. Perhaps his parallel world self would fight with all his might, only to end up with an extremely painful future.

"Click..."

The laboratory door was opened with a key. Xue Dinglu was stunned for a moment. In his memory, this was his private laboratory, and no one except him and the administrator had a key.

However, it wasn't the administrator who came in, but a girl with brown hair and glasses wearing a white coat. As soon as she entered, she skillfully took off her coat, revealing her beautiful figure, and then expertly put her coat in the cabinet.

Xue Law: “?”

"Ah Xue, what's wrong?" The girl seemed to have noticed Xue Luding's emotional change and asked with a puzzled look.

At that moment, Xue Dinglu suddenly felt a headache coming on. He realized something: the person in front of him was his wife from a parallel world, and his parallel world self was a married person!

Chapter 181 Aunt and the "Blood of the False Curse"

"Wait, you look younger? And your dark circles are gone?" The tea-haired girl stepped forward, seemingly wanting to take a closer look at Xue Dinglu's face.

However, Xue immediately avoided the situation, a move that seemed to leave her somewhat bewildered.

"Wait a minute, I'm thinking, let me organize my thoughts..." Xue Dinglu said immediately, and he directly activated the overclocking mode, making his mind run dozens of times faster.

It wasn't a "soul transmigration" concept; it was that his original body came to this world. It's just that the parallel entities in this world automatically merged into his original body the moment his original body was born.

Similar to how Xue's Law is based on Buddha, Xue's Law is based on Qiao Ling'er.

When Buddha returned to his rightful place, Qiao Ling'er naturally merged into everything Buddha possessed.

His current state is similar to that of Buddha, which means that he is now in a state similar to "pseudo-unification of all worlds".

This is actually the situation that gives him the biggest headache.

Using the experience of a fairy tale world as an analogy, Xue's Law is essentially Captain Green, while Doctor Xue's Law is like Principal Green in the fairy tale world. When Captain Green achieves self-realization, all the "Old Greens" are united in him.

Originally, it wasn't a big problem. After all, Xue Dinglu didn't have many relatives, and his own interpersonal relationships were relatively simple, which roughly matched reality.

But what no one expected was why this person, whose mind was full of medicine and experiments, would think about getting married so early?

He'll only be 22 in 2027, right?

Xue doesn't think he's a love-obsessed person because human love has its limits, and clearly, his love is more focused on a bright future and hope than on any specific individual.

This results in his "indifference" towards everyone, which can also be interpreted as love towards everyone.

Similarly, in the parallel world, he gave more of his love to the world, so he devoted himself wholeheartedly to learning and experimentation.

Xue Daolu finds it hard to imagine why he, a straight-laced man, would choose to get married, especially since it seems like he just had a whirlwind marriage not long ago, without even informing his aunt who raised him from childhood.

It's almost as if he married into a wealthy family just to get research funding, and once he got the funding, he didn't care who she was and just started researching on his own.

Because at 22, I had very few memories of this "wife" until I saw her and remembered her name and identity.

"Think calmly. The problem is huge. Panic won't help." In overclocking mode, the whole world seemed to stand still, giving him more time to deal with these issues. But now he was horrified to discover...

Given my position, I cannot handle this properly in any way.

People probably prefer the doctor who spends 20 hours a day in the lab writing papers and conducting experiments, not this idiot college student who has just come of age and is still being "contaminated" by knowledge.

Therefore, Xue's Law had to come up with the best solution with the extraordinary wisdom of thinking at dozens of times the normal speed. If he didn't know how to deal with it, then he wouldn't deal with it. The best way to solve a problem is not to solve it. Xue's Law decided on one word: delay!

The answer given by this remarkable wisdom is just that: Xue's Law trusts its own intuition.

Everything will be resolved once I leave this world.

When a momentary thought arises, one suddenly feels the vastness of the world.

Thinking of this, Xue's Law felt relieved; the overclocking mode stopped, and time resumed at that moment.

He didn't know the other person, let alone the name "You Xiaoniao." The only familiar thing was that the surname inexplicably made him hallucinate a family that was very good at playing cards.

But seeing the ordinary brown short hair across from her, which wasn't styled like the seafood, I knew she definitely didn't know how to play cards.

However, when the time was up, she didn't feel particularly confused or upset. It was as if this was how the two of them had always interacted. She went straight to the temperature control cabinet and took out a culture dish containing bacteriophages.

“I just thought of a stupid idea on the way here: divide the T-166 phage into thousands of samples, and then put even fewer uninfected samples in each sample. We can try our luck to select the strongest mutant phage to be our next culture sample.” She put on gloves and looked at the grayish-black sample in the petri dish.

Inside this small box are trillions of dormant bacteriophage samples. This ancient virus, which also existed billions of years ago, was not completely defeated when faced with "Zijera". Instead, it showed unimaginable resistance.

"In the next experiment, I will be responsible for culturing bacteriophages and separating samples, while you will further screen out the mutated individuals, striving to develop an effective drug before the pathogenic bacteria mutate."

"Although I think it's unrealistic to expect a cure for bacteriophages, it's the only option. This virus can only spread through bacteria, and it dies very quickly once it leaves the bacteria."

She stared at Xue Dinglu, who was still deep in thought, and paused for a moment.

It wasn't her imagination; her "boyfriend" really did seem much younger, even as if he had returned to the age of 17 or 8, younger than when they first met.

His dark circles were gone, his hairline had receded, and he looked much more energetic. His eyes no longer held that depressed and lifeless look, revealing the clarity and naivety of a high school student who had just finished the college entrance examination.

Xue Law: "..."

Me, me?

Why would you let a college student who has just started learning clinical medicine conduct this kind of experiment?

Xue Law even just hallucinated the way the two interacted, and it turned out to be the way a professor and his assistant interact in a laboratory.

Did the relationship begin in the lab?

Xue Lude is not good at evaluating his own romantic experiences in parallel worlds, but he doesn't have a good way to deal with it now, especially after using his extraordinary wisdom, he adopts a delaying tactic.

He put down the bacteriophage he had just enhanced with the blood of the curse and said directly, "This is a sample that has become more powerful in suppressing the waste bacteria after mutation. However, I have to go on a business trip for the next two days. You should culture this sample more. When I come back, it may be ready for human experiments."

Xue Law mimicked Doctor Xue's tone as he spoke.

However, these words made her pause for a moment, and Xue Dinglu wondered if he had given himself away.

"Where are you going on a business trip?" she asked.

"The University of Chicago, let's talk to that professor in person." Xue Dinglu immediately thought of his past trip to Chicago and said.

“Okay, then I’ll keep an eye on these samples and results for you. Tell me the methods for separation and selection, and I’ll cultivate a few more samples. When you come back, let’s start doing experiments on mice together.” She didn’t seem to be too bothered by it, as if the relationship between the two was more like that of a doctor and his assistant in a laboratory than that of a couple.

After we came in, more than 80% of the topics we discussed were related to work and research, rather than some emotional problems that Xue's Law couldn't handle at all.

Just as Xue Dinglu was about to leave, a voice suddenly came from inside the laboratory again: "By the way, don't push yourself too hard. We still have time. Get some rest. You looked ten years younger just now. Don't be as anxious as before. Our experimental progress is already very encouraging. Also, I will always support you."

This sentence startled Xue Dinglu. He wondered if it was just his imagination, but he finally realized the pattern of their previous relationship in this sentence.

"Hmm." He simply nodded and left immediately.

I'm too busy right now to think about how to solve such trivial matters. Since the other side has chosen to use a method similar to "Plague Inc." to advance the infection of the wasteland, there must be a deeper conspiracy.

Xue's Law, on the other hand, requires solving the global infection before any disasters erupt, and at the very least, finding the mysterious scholar behind the scenes who has reversed the aging process before the pathogenicity is revealed.

There's no time for him to indulge in romance or feel lost here; if he stays lost any longer, this parallel world will be gone.

Before leaving the lab, Xue Dinglu paused briefly and reminded everyone, "Boston might be in chaos lately. Don't go out; just stay here."

After saying that, he didn't care about the other person's reaction and strode away.

He wouldn't go to Chicago, but rather to Salem, a small town in the northeastern suburbs of Boston, where Ziegler had appeared and which was the first place he needed to investigate.

Before leaving, Xue provided the entire laboratory with a simple procedure for protection and alarm systems.

Soon, he arrived directly in the town of Salem.

This town is considered a holy site for mystics worldwide, mainly due to the trial of a 160-year-old witcher and dozens of witches that took place here in 1692, which resulted in countless wronged souls and widespread panic.

The wrongful conviction resulted in the deaths of more than twenty "witches," and the nearly two-hundred-year-old witcher disappeared without a trace.

Whether the girls who died were real witches or not is no longer important. This place is already infamous, the vengeful spirits cannot be appeased, and occult rituals can easily summon "evil spirits" here.

That was the most recent extraordinary event in the world since the Age of Gods, and naturally it became a sacred place for mystics to investigate.

Xue Law immediately used his imagination to successfully replicate the body of the old mystic "Austin" within him and put his spirit back into the body.

This was the first time Xue Dinglu had conjured something so intricately in his imagination. He was unsure of his technique. He saw the old mystic beside him slowly open his eyes and immediately asked, "How does it feel?"

“I feel great, thank you, sir.” Austin stretched his body, and for the first time, the mystic felt his body was strong and powerful.

……

Shortly after Xue left, a mature woman dressed as a man came to the door of his laboratory and suddenly frowned.

"Xiao Xue, when did he suddenly get married? And when did he learn magic?" The woman looked at the complicated magic incantation at the laboratory door, and finally rang the doorbell.

There was no sound from inside the laboratory. She knew that the girl opposite her was observing her through the peephole, so she immediately said, "I am Xue's aunt. You can call me Xue Sexi, or you can call me Aunt, just like he does to me."

So the witch said.