Chapter 407: Gene

As the flesh of his fingertip dissolved, the Collective's body actively decoded vast gene libraries, flooding his mind with information as mountainous and oceanic as a sea of data.

Li Cheng's expression turned solemn; he immediately retracted his bloody hand, pulled out a diesel generator, power strips, and row upon row of computers from the 3D storage, connected them to power, then plugged the cables directly into his skull.

Hum!

As soon as all the computers connected, their fans spun at high speed; several blue-screened and crashed outright.

Decoding the gene library is equivalent to determining nucleotide sequences and mapping the genome.

The data volume of a diploid human genome is roughly 3 GB—seems small, but it contains 3 billion base pairs across 25,000 genes.

Some more primitive species have genome data volumes dozens of times greater than humans', such as the South American lungfish's 91 GB and the New Caledonian fern's 160 GB.

As a divine corruption host, the Collective had consumed countless biological genomes, storing them for emergencies.

This caused the initial decoding to feel like a DDoS attack, overloading more than a dozen top-tier computers and Li Cheng's brain, which had activated its multi-threaded brain domain technique.

"Damn, Li Cheng, smoke's rising from your head."

Hui Yu, stunned by the smoke rising from Li Cheng's head, casually pulled a raw egg from the storage, cracked it open, and poured it onto his forehead.

The egg white solidified instantly; Li Cheng rolled his eyes back, and Hui Yu hurriedly dragged out several high-power air conditioners bearing Aunt Dong's portrait and industrial refrigeration units from the storage.

He inserted copper pipes into Li Cheng's chest and temples, then removed the nearly cooked fried egg, placed it on a plate, wrapped it in plastic wrap, and put it in the fridge.

"Phew."

With the help of the air conditioners and industrial refrigerants, the overclocked temperature of his brain finally dropped.

Li Cheng exhaled deeply, tilted his neck, and sipped the ice-cold cola Hui Yu handed him, then calmly browsed through the genome maps.

Textbooks describe Earth's biological evolution as "from lower to higher, from simple to complex, from low Gao Zhishang to high Gao Zhishang."

But this description applies only to the overall history of Earth's biological evolution; for individual species, evolution is full of random chaos.

The Cambrian Anomalocaris, the Ordovician Orthoceras, the Silurian Eurypterus, the Devonian Dunkleosteus, the Cretaceous dinosaurs.

Earth's dominant species changed one after another, each rising as the other fell.

The ultimate survivors were the Purgatorius, once trembling in tree branches under dinosaur dominance, and its primate descendants.

Precisely because of this randomness and unpredictability, the Collective followed the principle of 【Better Excess Than Missing】, devouring every single organism it encountered and storing their gene sequences.

Considering cases like lungfish and ferns with massive code piles, the Collective marked the genome sequences it could understand, like a programmer adding comments to code.

These annotations saved Li Cheng enormous time.

Longevity gene surpassing the 500-year-old Greenland shark;

Anti-cancer gene similar to the naked mole-rat;

Regeneration gene similar to the gecko;

All genes fused perfectly with the infection effect of the Insect Lord, the divine corruption, and could be summoned directly.

Li Cheng furrowed his brow, excerpted several gene segments from the vast sea of sequences, and absorbed and activated them.

The Xuanlei Qilin blood plasma still active in his system acted like a catalyst, continuously supplying potent medicinal energy.

The severed surface of his right shoulder grew microscopic tissue buds at visible speed, forming blood vessels, tendons, and even bone.

The swollen tumors that had grown on his body due to the Xuanlei Qilin blood also rapidly shrank and receded, peeling off spontaneously—the mechanism similar to how genes like p53, bax, and puma induce apoptosis.

Not only that, Li Cheng raised his remaining left hand; ten or more new layers of red, green, and blue pigment cells had formed beneath the skin of his palm.

At his will, these cells expanded or contracted, mixing red, green, and blue to produce neon-like dazzling colors.

Li Cheng pressed his hand against the wall; his arm's skin instantly changed color, blending seamlessly with the surface. He withdrew his arm, thought of it, and generated a detailed sketch of the Collective on his arm's surface—lifelike, every detail clear.

"There's even this trick?"

Hui Yu grabbed Li Cheng's left arm and rubbed it vigorously, but the image wouldn't come off.

After a moment's thought, he suddenly asked anxiously: "Li Cheng, if you've got a tattoo on your arm, won't it mess up my civil service exam?"

"Exam your head—graduate school, you mean."

Li Cheng tapped Hui Yu's forehead with his knuckles, producing a crisp *ding-ding* sound, and said irritably: "Theoretically, players can't obtain a clean criminal record certificate; as a direct relative of a player, you can't take the civil service exam."

In Europe, America, and other countries, transcendent individuals rarely face restrictions when holding public office—Commissioner Smith, Commissioner James, Commissioner Hans, Commissioner Pierre, Commissioner Sato.

As long as you survive the blood sea, power, status, and wealth naturally come to you.

The higher a transcendent's rank, the stronger their bargaining power over the old powers; they can even strangle the old powers' necks and take whatever they want.

For example, the Supreme Mage Hoenheim of the Clock Tower Guild doesn't need Britain—Britain needs him.

Civil officials and the old men of Jin Rongcheng kneel before him, begging him to appear in London for a few days each year.

To stabilize Britain's increasingly shaky international standing and financial advantage.

But here at the Special Affairs Bureau, the situation is different.

Transcendents rarely serve as the primary head of public institutions; even if they do, a normal human deputy must be assigned.

This makes sense: the higher a transcendent's rank, the less they depend on human society; the less they depend, the fewer emotional bonds they form.

It's not so much that high-rank players integrate into society as that some of them, under the inertia of their former lives, pretend they're still part of human society.

If they refuse to pretend, they truly treat ordinary people as tools—or even consumables.

'Hmm, come to think of it, I haven't been one of humanity's members for a long time.'

Li Cheng pulled his wandering thoughts back, looked down at his right shoulder.

A new arm was slowly growing, tender and white as a baby's. In a few more hours, it should function as smoothly as the original.

"Let's go. The camp should be entering the Jin Zita by now."

Li Cheng twisted his wrist, dismantled the remaining corpse of the Collective into several pieces, and placed them separately in the freezer—the gene library decryption is a massive project, no need to rush.

After securing the Collective, Li Cheng took out his camera and photographed the chili tree drawing on the wall.

Then he took Hui Yu back to the third underground level and packed up all the biological modification equipment left behind by the Collective.

Only the immovable bio-electromagnetic cannon and He Sai's head remained.

The latter ultimately didn't survive—his brain died from blood loss and oxygen deprivation. The good news is, since he died of asphyxiation, it doesn't count as Hui Yu's kill.

Indirectly causing the battlefield to lose an outstanding player, roughly speaking.

(End of chapter)