Chapter 63: Gene Mutation

Actually, at the very beginning, he had also suspected whether these abilities grew along with his own growth, but he later found that was not the case.

Because over such a long period of time, his body had already grown from just over three meters at the start to a massive seven meters.

But his own abilities, which originally belonged to the Yanjingwangshe, had never shown any growth that followed along with his body's increase.

That's true—these abilities essentially do have a certain connection with the genes he knew of in his previous life, so for now let's just treat them as genes.

But they probably aren't entirely genes. He vaguely recalled a little piece of knowledge from his previous life: the human body has roughly twenty to thirty thousand genes, and these genes are collectively called a genome—the human genome.

If these abilities were really entirely genes, then the human ability template back then wouldn't have only had a few abilities—it would have had tens of thousands.

But what's worth affirming is that they should have some degree of connection with genes, so here Baichuan will just treat them as genes for now.

Can this creature's genes grow along with the growth of its host?

Baichuan only thought about it briefly, then decisively rejected the idea.

How could that be possible!

How could these abilities that represent genes grow and change so simply?

If growth does appear, then there's only one situation!

That is, within the genes in his body, the stored information has developed a more excellent expression structure.

Only in this way would ability growth appear. Then why has he naturally birthed some new abilities now?

Then where do they share something in common?

Baichuan thought carefully for a while and discovered that among these three times, two of them were born shortly after he finished evolving.

Only the Linpian LV2 appeared because his body size surged explosively, causing his own scales to fail to keep up with his body, and after a full half year of time it appeared naturally on its own.

He vaguely recalled another little piece of knowledge he had seen in his previous life: genes will mutate under chance circumstances, and the majority of factors that influence gene mutation are environmental changes, as well as during internal cell division.

Cell division isn't hard to understand—every time he evolves, a massive amount of cell division must occur.

Then the appearance of Minjie LV1 back then and the appearance of Renwei LV1 now—is there a possibility that because he evolved too many abilities, the various information within his body became too rich, and thus in this evolution he more or less absorbed some of the original owner's characteristics of that gene?

He can't be blamed for thinking this way, because the Renwei LV1 ability that appeared this time is too obvious—it comes from the Caiman ability model, and what he strengthened this time was precisely the Caiman's ability.

And among the abilities he had strengthened before, Baichuan thought about it, and it seemed there was no ability model that contained this aspect.

In other words, this possibility is extremely high.

As for the other mutation, the environmental factors that influence gene mutation include external radiation stimulation, temperature factors, and chemical substance stimulation.

And during the period when his Linpian LV2 appeared back then, among those external factors that caused gene mutation, the radiation stimulation—he happened to possess it.

During that half year, in order to quickly accumulate points, day and night he was in an environment with extremely abundant food. At that time, every night before resting, he had to activate the panel's built-in Frenzied Digestion once.

And because his own absorption ability wasn't strong enough at the time. Actually, among that energy, although part of it was absorbed by the panel and converted into points, there was actually still a very large portion that kept escaping from his body.

This continuously escaping energy precisely provided a high-energy environmental stimulation factor for the birth of his Linpian LV2.

Thinking this way, Baichuan increasingly felt the possibility was very high.

Whether it is or isn't, he'll have a chance to test it out in the future and then he'll know.

At least now he has a direction.

Having now resolved a certain doubt from back then to some extent, even Baichuan felt a surge of cheerful mood.

He gently swayed the tip of his tail standing upright before his eyes, and the next moment he looked at the large tree not far away, and a thought suddenly sprang up in his mind.

"Slap!"

The wind whistled, a whip-like black shadow swept past and smashed hard against the tree trunk, shaking the great tree until it rustled and dropped countless branches and leaves.

At the same time, a slight smash mark also appeared on the tree trunk.

Seeing this, Baichuan was of course very unsatisfied—this power was still too weak.

It seems he was overthinking it. A mere Renwei LV1 being able to make the tail of his enormous body flexible was actually already quite remarkable.

But if he wanted his current self to be able to use it as an attack method, that was far from enough. Not to mention the speed was too slow, just the striking power probably couldn't even hurt the target—could only be said to be barely usable.

Baichuan clicked his tongue regretfully.

Fortunately it was free, so he didn't feel any disappointment.

After testing out his brand-new body, he headed straight into the forest. As he crawled forward meter by meter, his body once again slowly vanished from the air.

And compared to before when there would still be obvious traces, his stealth was now even more concealed.

Now that his injuries had healed, he was afraid he would have to eat heartily until full.

Otherwise it would be a disservice to the misery he had experienced during this period.

……

After eating and drinking his fill, Baichuan didn't go back to the cave either, and plunged straight into the river, drifting away along the direction of the current.

Because of various factors, he had already been delayed long enough—it was time for him to leave.

Drifting down the water all the way, only six days had passed before Baichuan no longer had any idea where he had floated to.

But he had a feeling—had he perhaps gone in the wrong direction? Because……

What met his eyes was no longer a bottomless river that could completely conceal himself, but a dense forest swamp that stretched beyond sight.

A dim environment, like a fog that would never dissipate, plus those tall towering trees—looking out, one couldn't see the sky.

The ground was moist and muddy, with occasional puddles of water here and there.

Various insects and poisonous creatures passed by.

It was very obvious—this was a gloomy, muddy, dilapidated dense forest swamp.

And the river he was in cut straight through this dense forest. Although the water was already so shallow that in some places it could barely conceal his massive snake body, the river channel was still there.

At this moment, a monster like a snake yet like a dragon stood quietly at the boundary between the two, silently standing there and gazing.

For a moment, he didn't know what to say, and could only silently raise his head to look at the sky in speechless exasperation.

Perhaps he still needed to evolve an ability that could distinguish distance and location, such as "Magnetic Field Sense"?

It's a pity he currently only knew that sharks and pigeons had it. Pigeons he hadn't encountered yet. And sharks? They were in the sea……

This situation suddenly reminded Baichuan of a joke from his previous life — if that joke were placed here, it would be:

I need to get to the sea, but I don't know the way.

Then go get the shark's ability!

But the shark is in the sea, and I don't know how to get to the sea.

Then go get the shark's…

You're all welcome to point out any errors or typos — when I have the Time I'll look at them and fix them. But regarding the setting, that cannot be changed; it is the basic framework of the entire book. The entire book's outline and main plot are all built upon it. Once it's changed, not to mention the logical conflicts earlier on, the entire outline and main plot later on would be lost, and by then I wouldn't know how to write it either.

(End of this chapter)