Chapter 26

"You said she left?" Ding Huan subconsciously repeated.

He had sprinted all the way back to Anhe County and gone straight to the Yilan Hotel. The information he received from the front desk was that Qu Yi had left Anhe County, and she had left as early as six in the morning.

Because of that mutated Golden-Faced Coarse-Tailed Ape, it was already past eight in the morning by the time Ding Huan arrived.

Leaving the Yilan Hotel, Ding Huan immediately planned to buy a ticket to Pujiang.

Even if Qu Yi did not believe in his gene agent now, he had to find out where her home was.

According to his memory, Qu Yi had at most four or five months before she would be taken by the Gene Alliance to be used for experiments.

Wait...

Four or five months? Wouldn't that be exactly after the conclusion of the Blue Star Ten Academies' enrollment assessment?

The Blue Star Ten Academies' enrollment assessment was less than three months away. If Qu Yi were taken after the assessment and then used as a gene test subject four or five months later, it was entirely possible.

For the Blue Star Ten Academies' enrollment, the Gene Alliance definitely held a small portion of the decision-making power.

After all, the Blue Star Ten Academies were jointly founded by over a hundred countries worldwide, the Martial Dao Alliance, and the Gene Alliance.

Qu Yi said she was going to Puhai to take a chance; it was one hundred percent certain she was going to participate in the Blue Star Ten Academies' enrollment assessment.

If he went to Puhai now and found Qu Yi, would she believe his words? Would she be willing to fuse with a gene agent provided by a stranger like him?

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Since Qu Yi would definitely not fuse with the gene agent he provided, there was no need for him to go to Puhai first.

He would still follow his original plan to find a Fire Lizard, then return to Luohe City to produce the gene agent.

Once he finished producing the gene agent, he would go to Puhai early.

At least during this period, Qu Yi was safe.

One needed to transfer vehicles once between Anhe County and Lujiang City.

The wilderness was very unsafe now; for instance, the route from Anhe County to Lujiang City passed through many uninhabited areas, which were places where genetic fierce beasts ran rampant.

Under normal circumstances, vehicles on these routes stopped running at night.

Ding Huan bought his ticket in time and arrived in Lujiang City at dusk.

Originally, Ding Huan intended to rest for a night in Lujiang City and then go out to find a Fire Lizard the next day.

But when Ding Huan arrived in Lujiang City, he realized he had underestimated others.

In Lujiang City, if you wanted a Fire Lizard, there was no need to go out and search; you could just buy one directly.

Almost everywhere here were shops selling Fire Lizards, and the prices were very cheap.

Whether you wanted dried or live Fire Lizards, you could buy them here.

Not only that, even Fire Lizards from Central Europe were sold here, though the price was much higher.

After asking around a little, Ding Huan learned the reason.

Fire Lizards could now be used in medicine, having the effect of strengthening meridians and healing wounds for martial artists. Furthermore, major gene laboratories also had a great need for these things.

Ding Huan spent over a hundred Alliance coins and easily purchased several live Fire Lizards.

"Friend, the Fire Lizards you bought are of average quality. I have six-horned Fire Lizards here..."

Seeing Ding Huan carrying a cage containing Fire Lizards, a street vendor hurriedly tried to promote his own goods.

Six-horned Fire Lizards?

"Let me see." Ding Huan stopped, and he indeed saw several six-horned Fire Lizards on the other person's stall.

"These are quite large." Ding Huan was very satisfied.

The stall owner chuckled upon hearing Ding Huan's words, "My Fire Lizards are all wild; the ones you bought are mostly farmed."

"You caught them yourself?" This surprised Ding Huan a little.

The vendor said proudly, "Those who know me, Liu Tou, know that my Fire Lizards are caught from Mount Penglu. Even people from the Blue Star Ten Academies have come to me to buy Fire Lizards."

"Impressive. Those who can go to Mount Penglu to catch Fire Lizards themselves are not simple; the genetic fierce beasts on Mount Penglu don't show mercy."

Ding Huan casually complimented him, preparing to buy one more from the stall owner.

Ding Huan was indeed giving a sincere compliment; Mount Penglu also had many genetic fierce beasts, and anyone who dared to go and get wild Fire Lizards naturally had some skills.

The stall owner became very talkative, "The genetic fierce beasts are one thing, but I once saw a two-horned Fire Lizard on Mount Penglu.

To be honest, I have lived for so many years and have never seen a one-meter-long two-horned Fire Lizard."

"A two-horned Fire Lizard? One meter long?" Ding Huan's eyes immediately lit up.

This was definitely a top-grade mutated Fire Lizard. It was rumored that Fire Lizards possessed a trace of divine beast bloodline, referring to the dragon.

In Ding Huan's mind, a one-meter-long two-horned Fire Lizard naturally appeared; this was an atavistic mutated breed containing the divine beast bloodline.

"It's absolutely true, maybe even longer than a meter; I saw it with my own eyes. But that was a mutated fierce beast, so I ran as soon as I saw it." The stall owner was adamant.

"Oh, then I'll take one of your six-horned Fire Lizards." Ding Huan did not continue to ask, but instead bought one six-horned Fire Lizard.

If he weren't in a hurry to get to Puhai, Ding Huan would have loved to enter Mount Penglu to search for the two-horned Fire Lizard.

One could imagine that such a two-horned Fire Lizard would definitely not be easy to find.

Even if he wanted to search, he could only wait until he saw Qu Yi. He could not let Qu Yi fall into danger because of himself.

Ding Huan stayed in Lujiang for one night and returned to Luohe on the third day.

Geng Qianxing and the other three were still crazily practicing the Thousand-Luo Gene Art and the Basic Long Fist; after Ding Huan returned, no one even knew.

Ding Huan didn't even rest and went straight to the gene laboratory.

If it weren't for the fact that Tan Bei, the principal of Yujiang University, was eager for someone to represent the school and get into one of the Blue Star Ten Academies, the laboratory would probably have been sold by him long ago.

The school's neglect of the laboratory was truly convenient for Ding Huan.

What Ding Huan did first was not to extract the injury-recovery gene from the Fire Lizard, but to choose to extract the anti-toxin gene from the Golden-Faced Coarse-Tailed Ape first, and then synthesize a gene agent that could be fused.

He would also synthesize the healing-recovery gene of the Fire Lizard, but he didn't plan to use it for the time being even after it was finished.

When he had time, he planned to see if he could find that one-meter-long two-horned Fire Lizard.

Extracting and synthesizing gene agents from organisms that could fuse with the human body was not the first time Ding Huan had done it, and the last few times had gone extremely smoothly.

Every time he extracted a foreign gene agent that could fuse with the human body, Ding Huan felt as if he had gained a little more understanding of gene agent production.

So this time, extracting the anti-toxin gene from the Golden-Faced Coarse-Tailed Ape, Ding Huan was not worried that he wouldn't be able to do it.

However, things were often hardest to achieve when one felt they were easy.

Ding Huan had been in the laboratory for two days, and the recorded data had filled up a notebook, yet he had no way to extract the anti-toxin gene of the Golden-Faced Coarse-Tailed Ape.

If he hadn't cut off half of the Golden-Faced Coarse-Tailed Ape's tail and brought it back, he might not have had the materials to continue the experiment.

On the third day, Ding Huan felt he couldn't go on like this; there would be no progress this way.

He left the gene laboratory, took a shower, ate something, and rested for a night before he began to rethink his strategy.

Once he calmed down and thought carefully, some vague genetic knowledge points gradually appeared in his mind.

Things that he originally couldn't understand at all slowly became clear as he spent time organizing them.

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First was the Spirit Root gene; in the era before genes were brought up, the Spirit Root should have been a type of gene.

It was just that later on, the heaven and earth spiritual energy became scarce, and humans living on Earth gradually regressed in some aspects.

The Spirit Root gene thus regressed; without a Spirit Root, even the best cultivation techniques and the densest heaven and earth spiritual energy couldn't be cultivated, right?

He could produce the Spirit Root gene not only because he had the Reincarnation Blood, but more importantly, his Spirit Root gene was for his own use.

In other words, if he produced a Spirit Root gene agent for Qu Yi, could it really be fused?

Secondly, there were skill genes; the anti-toxin gene produced this time also belonged to the skill gene category.

Could one not simply borrow the genetic ability of a foreign gene, such as the anti-toxin ability of the White-Faced Coarse-Tailed Ape?

Instead, could one change this genetic ability into one's own physical quality gene? This was different.

One was simply taking it to fuse and then possessing this ability.

The other was turning it into one's own physical instinct, and one could possess this instinct without needing to fuse with a foreign gene.

On the surface, it looked like there was no difference, but Ding Huan vaguely felt that there was a huge difference, a difference that could even determine his future height.

Unfortunately, he couldn't figure out where this difference lay right now.

If he couldn't figure it out, he wouldn't think about it for now; he would first think about how to produce the anti-toxin gene agent.

As Ding Huan thought more and more with the help of that vague genetic knowledge, the means of synthesizing foreign genes to fuse with the human body gradually became clear.

For any foreign gene, if humans wanted to extract it and then make it into something that could fuse with the human body and allow humans to possess the attribute ability of this foreign gene, they had to search.

That's right, search.

If what he wanted was not simply to extract a foreign gene and then fuse it, but to transform the genetic ability into his own instinct, then what was needed was not just a gene fragment...

What he had extracted before was only a tiny fragment of the Golden-Faced Coarse-Tailed Ape's anti-toxin gene, and there were many types of such fragments on the Golden-Faced Coarse-Tailed Ape.

His previous approach was to take this tiny gene fragment to synthesize an anti-toxin gene agent that could fuse with the human body.

Fortunately, he hadn't succeeded before.

Now that he wasn't doing it that way, he had to intercept countless such gene fragments, then add other genes, or even fuse his own genes with these genes to form a new gene...

This was the synthesis of a new gene.

This kind of new gene synthesis was not simply relying on the innate ability of a foreign gene.

It was transforming this skill into his own attribute ability through the expression method of the foreign gene.

Ding Huan was very excited; he felt that his utilization of foreign genes had gone from a quantitative to a qualitative change.

No longer just superficial gene utilization.

But how difficult was it to extract a complete gene he needed from billions of genes?

Ding Huan looked at the notebook he had kept; he knew that if he continued like this, even if he filled several truckloads of notebooks, he might not necessarily be able to find all these gene fragments.

An abrupt method appeared in Ding Huan's mind; he could use the gene-like death screening method...

By adding a certain type of gene into billions of gene fragments, as long as the gene fragments did not meet his needs, they would be dissolved and killed; wouldn't what remained be what he needed?

Others wouldn't know how to add dissolving and killing gene fragments, but he did.

With a method, Ding Huan let out a long sigh of relief; he didn't even waste half a second and hurriedly turned back to the laboratory.

Continuing to extract the anti-toxin gene of the Golden-Faced Coarse-Tailed Ape, producing the agent, adding the dissolving gene...

One day, two days...

One piece of data after another was recorded by Ding Huan, then screened, and then new dissolving genes were added...

On the sixth day, Ding Huan excitedly grabbed two test tubes containing fire-red gene reagents.

He had succeeded; he had successfully produced two doses of the anti-toxin gene agent.

Ding Huan felt that these two bottles of gene agent were even more precious than the Spirit Root gene agent he had produced before.

It wasn't that the Spirit Root gene agent was easier to produce, but because he had found a new direction for gene fusion, no longer just simply producing gene agents.

With this method, Ding Huan had greater confidence in producing the Spirit Root gene agent for Qu Yi.

However, the prerequisite was that he needed Qu Yi's cooperation; he had to find a Spirit Root gene agent that could fuse with Qu Yi.

He would need to use Qu Yi's blood; he had to find a way to fuse the Spirit Root gene agent from Qu Yi's genome.

He had to go to Puhai in advance.

After Ding Huan made up his mind, he immediately carefully packed one tube of the anti-toxin gene agent into a glass bottle, and drank the other tube of gene agent directly.

The fire-colored agent felt like a thread of icy snow as it entered his mouth, and these snow threads instantly spread throughout Ding Huan's body.

Ding Huan had a flash of inspiration and hurriedly operated the Luo-Knowledge Scripture to begin cultivation.

The next moment, Ding Huan felt constant sharp pains coming from within his body, but those pains seemed to be swept away and dissolved by these icy snow threads.

Drops of gray liquid seeped out from his fingertips, and a sense of lingering fear and anger welled up in Ding Huan's heart.

He had actually been poisoned by someone; if he hadn't taken the gene agent he synthesized himself today...

Even if he didn't die, his future cultivation path would probably have been blocked at the Gene Foundation Establishment.