Chapter 1213: Absolute Adaptation, Infinite Evolution

Absolute Adaptation, Infinite Evolution

As more and more roots poured into the underground, Chu Changqing gritted his teeth and violently charged toward that broken piece of root on the ground!

Whatever,

He had to get through this hurdle first!

Chu Changqing rushed through the crowd and picked up the piece of root. A faint emerald green glimmer, like a gemstone, flashed deep within his eyes, as if he were perceiving the cellular structure of this thing through touch...

"Chu Changqing!!"

"I know! Activating my ability takes time!!"

Hearing another urge from Su Zhiwei in the distance, Chu Changqing could only bite the bullet and reply.

At this moment, Chu Changqing's mind was blank. Just like when he bred those spiders in the bathroom, biological codes flooded into his consciousness like a torrent. He couldn't use any of humanity's existing scientific theories to explain a single fragment within it, but he could simply perceive its characteristics... like a Creator standing high at the end of the food chain, looking down upon all living things.

Then,

He violently pierced its sharp end into his own blood vessel!

The severed limb of a Calamity from the Gray World mingled with the flesh and blood of humans from this era for the first time. Although the writhing plant tissue had lost its vitality, Chu Changqing's own blood vessels seemed to come alive, actually beginning to devour the root instead...

He was using a human body to devour a Calamity!

As the Calamity tissue from the Bitter Flesh Forest was devoured and broken down bit by bit by Chu Changqing's blood vessels, his entire person visibly mutated to the naked eye...

First, plant-like dark green husks appeared on the surface of his skin, and then his ten fingers continuously grew slender, like willow branches or the tips of grass. Roots pierced through his shoes and plunged deeply into the earth. At first glance, he looked like a half-human, half-Calamity monster!

"...Chu Changqing?"

Lu Xun, who had been paying attention to this side all along from a distance, saw this scene, a look of shock surfacing in his eyes.

It wasn't just him; the masses originally around Chu Changqing also shrieked in terror upon seeing this, madly beginning to distance themselves from that half-human, half-tree monster. But Chu Changqing himself seemed unresponsive to this. His consciousness was still immersed in the process of biological decoding...

...

"Professor Ye... I don't understand, why did they reject my paper?"

Chu Changqing, a university student wearing a checkered sweater and black-framed glasses, held a thick stack of documents in his hands. The gaze he leveled at Professor Ye was full of resentment.

By the sports field under the sunlight, Professor Ye flipped past the last page of the paper and smiled helplessly.

He flipped the paper back to the cover, where several large black characters appeared before his eyes:

—"The King of Cryptobiosis: A Cross-Dimensional Analysis of the Tardigrade's Adaptation Mechanism to Extreme Environments"

"You wrote it very well," Professor Ye praised sincerely. "The theory of anti-dehydration molecular machines, the quantum biology hypothesis of radiation resistance, and even the quite bold space-time folding model of cryptobiotic metabolism... Every point is written very aptly. But from the perspective of traditional cell biology, your angle of entry is wrong."

"What's wrong with it??"

Chu Changqing was very unconvinced. "Tardigrades can adapt to various extreme environments, and can even survive in a vacuum. It is the most powerful creature on Earth, there's no problem with that!"

"I have no objections to tardigrades being the strongest creature on Earth," Professor Ye paused for a moment. "But why do you think it can be the strongest? Is it simply because it can survive in a vacuum? Or is it because it can withstand an impact of 1.14 GPa?"

Chu Changqing opened his mouth, but didn't know how to refute.

"Let me put it another way... what do you think the strongest creature looks like?"

Chu Changqing pondered for a moment. "Able to adapt to various extreme environments, doesn't need to intake energy in the traditional sense... No, it would be best if it could directly absorb dark matter as energy, has a massive body size, strong regenerative abilities, and..."

"Too much." Professor Ye shook his head. "I only need two phrases to create the strongest creature."

"What??"

"Absolute Adaptation, Infinite Evolution."

Professor Ye set the paper aside, speaking unhurriedly, "As long as it's a living creature, there will be weaknesses. For example, tardigrades used to lack the ability to resist ultraviolet rays, but a couple of years ago in India, a scientist discovered a new tardigrade that had evolved a fluorescent protective shield capable of withstanding four times the lethal dose of ultraviolet rays...

Imagine this: if a creature possesses the ability to evolve in an extremely short period of time, throw it into the sun, and it can evolve skin capable of withstanding high temperatures of 5,500 degrees Celsius; throw it into a hydraulic press, and after a corner of it is crushed, it can evolve an exoskeleton capable of resisting tens of thousands of tons of pressure; even if you throw it into a black hole, it could draw energy from dark matter to evolve itself...

In the beginning, there is no such thing as an absolute strongest creature. But when a creature can evolve to the point where all environments or other creatures it comes into contact with are weaker than itself, then the relative strongest becomes the absolute strongest."

Professor Ye looked at his proud disciple, who was deep in thought, and gave a faint smile. "Now, do you know where the best angle of entry for this paper is?"

Chu Changqing's eyes brightened slightly.

He seemed to have thought of something and spoke without hesitation:

"'The Evolutionary Revolution of Horizontal Gene Transfer'."

...

"There are more and more of them... Damn it!"

Feeling the plant roots surging from all directions, sweat constantly seeped from Su Zhiwei's forehead.

Lu Xun's starlight was tottering, causing Su Zhiwei's pressure to skyrocket. If she really let loose, she could indeed clear out all these roots... But Lu Xun had said that no one here would die today.

Su Zhiwei was very clear that there absolutely could not be any casualties among the masses in this shelter right now. Otherwise, panic would rapidly spread, and the image Lu Xun had painstakingly built up would shatter. What she needed to maintain wasn't just the title "Lord of Tianshu," but the masses' confidence in them.

However, no matter how good Su Zhiwei was at fighting, she couldn't split herself into multiple bodies. With so many refugees here and so many Calamity roots, how could she possibly clear them all out on her own?

And that guy Chu Changqing was so slow... he was really useless!

Bang—!!

Su Zhiwei blew away a few terrifying roots with another punch. The next second, roots actually began to drill out from under her feet, winding around her body like pythons.

"Oh no..." Su Zhiwei's heart skipped a beat.

Just then, those roots that had wound their way up suddenly seemed to be yanked by some force. They actually began to struggle wildly, directly breaking free from Su Zhiwei's body and being forcibly yanked back underground!

Su Zhiwei was startled. Before she could react, the surrounding earth exploded with a loud bang!

Super roots, several times thicker than the other roots, extended from under Su Zhiwei's feet. Radiating an emerald green light, they overwhelmingly charged toward those Calamities!