Chapter 775: Shackles (Part 1)

Entering Building No. 4, a strip of indicator light appeared before Little Wei Yuan, marking the research station assigned to him.

Little Wei Yuan followed the instructions to a room and pushed the door open. The research cubicles here had no ceilings, allowing one to see all activity within from above, much like the individual cells of a beehive. However, the room was large, equivalent to more than ten times the size of Little Wei Yuan's original workstation, and fully equipped with all kinds of facilities.

Little Wei Yuan sat down at the terminal and started the system. After the authorization check passed, the previously empty screen instantly filled with dense icons, each one an entry point for a large category of research data. However, some icons were dimmed, meaning additional approval procedures were required before they could be opened.

Yet, the sheer amount of accessible data already far exceeded Little Wei Yuan's expectations. After browsing the directory related to gene fragments, Little Wei Yuan selected the sub-category for gene sample sources and began to review them one by one.

The initial source of the gene fragments in Little Wei Yuan's hands was a grain of flesh, less than one cubic millimeter in size. But in the recorded footage, this tiny grain of flesh possessed astonishing movement speed and vitality; it could autonomously seek out surrounding food, devour it, and then rapidly proliferate.

The researchers placed this grain of flesh onto a white mouse. The mouse immediately began to scurry frantically, and bloodstains soon appeared on its fur. It struggled for over ten minutes, and finally, as more and more blood seeped from its body, it collapsed and died. Forty minutes later, it had turned into a mass of wriggling flesh.

The researchers cleaned and separated the mass of flesh, eventually obtaining a chunk equivalent to eighty percent of the mouse's body weight. This indicated an astonishing energy-to-nutrition conversion efficiency, with less than 20% of the material ultimately becoming waste and being excreted.

Another experiment was even more hair-raising.

The researchers designed a series of sub-projects to test the gene's reaction and judgment capabilities. The final comprehensive results showed that any mass of flesh larger than one cubic millimeter already possessed primitive intelligence. Once it reached one cubic centimeter, it had the intelligence equivalent to a human child of two or three years old, capable of autonomous learning and possessing the instincts of a hunter.

Next was the test of adaptability. The flesh was fed to different organisms, and the results showed that whether it was a leech, a horned frog, or a scavenging vulture or hyena, they would all eventually turn into a mass of moving flesh and become part of the meat mass.

Tests under various toxic substances and extreme environments showed that the flesh was extremely difficult to kill, possessing survival capabilities similar to a tardigrade. Only under certain strong magnetic fields would it show obvious sluggishness and weakening.

Seeing a series of terms, Little Wei Yuan felt an inexplicable sense of dissociation. It was as if he had never seen or heard of these terms before, yet he seemed to know their meanings.

However, this sense of dissociation was easy to resolve; Little Wei Yuan's current authorization was sufficient to retrieve the vast majority of known human scientific literature. Thus, whenever he encountered a new term, he would retrieve a series of related papers and begin to read them carefully, learning from scratch.

Only then did Little Wei Yuan discover that he seemed to have no difficulty reading two, three, or even more papers simultaneously, and his mind still had considerable surplus, allowing him to think about other things—such as what that woman who had enthusiastically helped him had done after entering the CEO's office.

This was not just Little Wei Yuan's curiosity, but the shared curiosity of all ordinary male employees.

Just like that, as he read deeper into the research reports, the number of related basic theoretical papers Little Wei Yuan opened simultaneously also increased. At this moment, sixteen floating light screens were open before him, each with different content scrolling across it.

Little Wei Yuan felt he could watch even more, but his eyes couldn't take it; switching at high speed between different screens didn't tax his brain, but it taxed his eyes.

Little Wei Yuan looked through the reports one by one and discovered that all the tested micro-flesh grains came from the super-powered individual discovered initially. Little Wei Yuan also found the footage left behind during the final capture; this should have been highly classified, but Little Wei Yuan did not expect that he could open it with his current authorization.

The scene of chasing that super-powered individual was quite bloody and explosive. That person was like a god or demon, able to tear through steel plates with bare hands, jump dozens of meters in a single leap to easily reach the roof of an eight or nine-story building, and withstand direct hits from artillery explosions and large-caliber bullets. In short, this was simply not a performance a carbon-based organism should have.

The Umbrella Corporation dispatched thousands of soldiers to capture him, but suffered heavy casualties; countless soldiers were torn apart directly by the target, and even bulletproof vests couldn't stop his claws. He even knocked down two low-flying fighter jets with stones.

After losing hundreds of elite special forces soldiers, the security department activated individual liquid nitrogen missiles specifically designed for bizarre life forms, firing over a hundred in succession, freezing everything within a square kilometer, only then managing to kill him.

After this super-powered individual died, the corpse actually showed bizarre vitality; the limbs and flesh blown off by the explosion seemed to have their own consciousness, growing legs and even wings, trying to escape.

The Umbrella security forces sprayed large amounts of quick-freeze agent, icing all the tissue and blood, and then shoveled up the entire patch of ground to haul away. The entire operation cost ten billion, only then thoroughly capturing the super-powered individual's corpse.

After finishing these materials, Little Wei Yuan realized that this world was not as peaceful as it appeared on the surface; in the shadows, there were actually such terrifying non-human existences. But on the other hand, Little Wei Yuan was very calm, as if he had seen scenes even more terrifying than this, and this was simply nothing.

At this moment, he opened another research report, which recorded the behavior of the primitive flesh cells under an electron microscope.

The footage showed that individual cells possessed strong aggression, capable of actively devouring surrounding other cells, viruses, and even all proteins, similar to an enhanced version of human immune cells.

When several similar cells met, they automatically aggregated and had a simple division of labor; some were responsible for movement, some for devouring, and some for energy storage.

And when hundreds of cells gathered, they had cells specifically responsible for perception and thinking, and demonstrated primitive intelligence and basic memory capabilities, capable of passing the most basic electronic maze tests.

Finally, an inconspicuous paper caught Little Wei Yuan's attention.

This was an essay written by a research supervisor, summarizing the previous capture operation and a series of experiments, and proposing his own conjecture. It was just that this conjecture had no basis, so this essay was not given a higher security rating, only the same security level as the entire project. Little Wei Yuan opened the essay, scanned it quickly, suddenly paused, then flipped to the beginning and began to read it carefully, bit by bit.

"... I have a very strong intuition that the body of that devil, and all the flesh that followed, was not the hotbed for that gene, but rather more like the chains that bound it. Its original power, perhaps not even one percent, no, one ten-thousandth, has been unleashed."

Deep within that gene fragment lies the primordial devil. We originally thought genes were the carriers of life information, but now, they might also be a cage.

I even suspect that organic matter is a cage designed by the universe to divide it and bind it.

If it doesn't need matter, then where does its original energy come from?"

Seeing this passage, Little Wei Yuan didn't know why, but he felt a bit hair-raising.

At this time, a soft ringtone sounded beside him; this was the time reminder Little Wei Yuan had set himself.

As the ringtone sounded, Little Wei Yuan hurriedly opened the genetic engineering design tool, set up a new project, and began to work on the design of a new virus. At the same time, Little Wei Yuan estimated the time the entire project might take, so he clicked on the application for a temporary dormitory for the night. He didn't want to waste time on commuting and prepared to stay in the laboratory at night.

Every important location of the company had similar temporary dormitories, and the environmental conditions were at least much better than where Little Wei Yuan lived now, specifically for the use of personnel working overtime on important projects.

Little Wei Yuan had just pressed confirm when the application was approved, and it was granted for three days at once.

This was the norm for the company; the pressure was immense, but the salary and supporting benefits were absolutely in place, always providing all necessary conditions for those willing to risk their lives, while those unwilling to risk their lives could be swept out the door at any time.

In the company, there were countless young people like Little Wei Yuan, fighting for every opportunity. Being able to move up a level was the entire meaning of life, while standing still would only lead to falling into the abyss.

After starting the new virus design process, Little Wei Yuan began to work. This was also wisdom derived from his years of workplace survival; when you have been looking at data for a long time, it is best to do something related to work first, even if it is just writing a few pages of empty reports. Otherwise, it is easy to be judged by the system as slacking off, and even more terrifying, to be secretly judged by your superior as slacking off without knowing it.

Once he started, Little Wei Yuan immersed himself in work.

His current authorization allowed him to access all papers on mature genetic engineering, so he learned while designing, starting from the most basic protein molecule concepts, all the way to advanced human gene editing.

It was just that the sixteen screens before him were really unable to satisfy Little Wei Yuan's needs; he always felt there seemed to be some way to see all the information on the screens without moving his eyeballs. That method seemed to be within reach, but he couldn't remember it no matter what.

Little Wei Yuan's heart stirred, and he suddenly thought of the formidable instincts of the gene sample cells, so he stopped thinking about the specific principles and, relying on intuition, opened another screen. The new screen appeared, and the content on it naturally appeared in Little Wei Yuan's consciousness, as if a pair of invisible eyes were watching it.

And at this moment, Little Wei Yuan still felt he had energy to spare, so he opened several more screens, which he also didn't need to look at, yet he could grasp all the content within them just the same.

Little Wei Yuan suddenly felt as if some invisible barrier had been shattered; his consciousness began to expand, and in the blink of an eye, it covered the entire research building, and everything in the more than three hundred research cubicles on the upper and lower floors of the building was taken in at a glance.

However, he instinctively felt that continuing to expand might lead to discovering very bad things, so he hurriedly pulled his consciousness back and focused on the work at hand.

Little Wei Yuan knew that such an important research base must have countless surveillance systems around it, and any unusual movement could cause alarm. Although Little Wei Yuan was excited, he didn't dare to act rashly, just wanting to wait until he got home to properly test the ability he had just acquired. But now he absolutely could not expose himself; the last person who exposed their ability was now living in the gene map in Little Wei Yuan's report.

Little Wei Yuan had originally opened 32 screens, but felt it was a bit too much, so he lowered it again and again, down to 8. This was the equilibrium point he felt between safety and completing the virus design. Any fewer and he wouldn't be able to finish the work.

Just as Little Wei Yuan was immersed in his work, the screen in an office at the base suddenly lit up with a glaring red light. A military officer sitting in his seat, with a flat-top haircut and a face full of muscle, let out an "eh," checked the source of the alarm, and saw Little Wei Yuan with eight screens open.

Eight screens were a bit much, but there were countless geniuses in the company who were smart to the point of not being human; there weren't many who could do this, but there weren't few either. Under normal circumstances, opening eight processes simultaneously wouldn't trigger a system alarm.

The flat-top officer was a bit puzzled and couldn't figure out what was going on. But his professional training told him that for anything he couldn't figure out, he just needed to report it, and then he wouldn't have to think about it anymore. He chose to report: suspected discovery of a genius, or... a monster.

In less than three minutes, an approval from the CEO of the Security Department arrived before him: Genius.

The flat-top officer breathed a sigh of relief and was just about to do something else when the screen displayed a message from the CEO: Where is that person? Keep him steady, I'll be there immediately.

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 776 =====