Chapter 133: Flesh and Blood Modification

Since ancient times, one question has plagued generation after generation of humanity.

That question is how exactly human beings came into being.

In antiquity, the Central Plains attributed humanity's birth to Nüwa creating mankind, but new doubts arose in turn.

Qu Yuan's "Tianwen" describes this very doubt: If Nüwa has a body, who fashioned her?

If humanity was made by Nüwa, then who made Nüwa?

Even in modern society, countless scientists have offered evidence showing that humans evolved step by step from apes, yet there remains a great many who refuse to believe it.

There are still fanatics idly speculating that humanity was manufactured by some creator, on the grounds that the human body is so utterly unique, unlike that of any other creature.

As for whether humans were made by gods, Fang Can had no wish to investigate—what nagged at him was why this body of his had so very many inconveniences.

If it was made by a deity, then humanity must be nothing more than that deity's undergraduate graduation project.

Because within this body of his, there were countless flaws and bugs, so many as to be unbearable.

First, because the retina is installed backwards, light entering the eye has to pass through countless capillaries, leaving countless shadows on the retina that the brain must process afterward with computational power like Photoshop.

Second, because the recurrent laryngeal nerve has to detour around the aorta, it is more than doubled in length, making the swallowing reflex arc excessively long.

Then there is the trachea and esophagus sharing a single opening, meaning every year countless people choke to death when vomit flows into their windpipe.

And problems like the wiring of the spine being routed wrong and stretching several times longer, the lack of a baculum making it impossible to be erect on demand and hard to sustain prolonged combat, and upright walking placing excessive pressure on the lumbar spine—these were too many to count.

One could say that if the human body truly was made by a deity, then either the deity didn't care about humanity, or that deity's knowledge of biology was substandard.

And now, facing blow after blow from Wang Peng that threatened his very life, and feeling the feebleness of his own strength, he resolved to begin a modification plan for his body.

First—strength!

When all the muscles of an adult are combined, they can exert at least 25 tons of pulling force.

But because one cannot mobilize the entire body's strength into a single point, and because of the limits of human materials, this sort of problem can only appear as a middle-school physics hypothetical.

Fang Can could not solve this for now, but by altering his cells to adjust the orientation of every one of his muscle fibers, he could do it.

Once he had sorted out the meridians within the body's 639 muscles, his strength could increase by at least fivefold.

Next was 【Hardness】.

Because of differences in internal structure, the hardness of carbon and diamond are worlds apart.

While sorting through each muscle, based on the scientific system he had learned so far, Fang Can could rearrange the structure of the bones and flesh within his body.

Although he could not reach the level of individual atoms, after altering the body's composition, increasing hardness by three or four times was no problem.

In the next modification, 【Speed】, he could alter the structure of his leg bones, forcibly fracturing them to achieve a maximum exertion of force.

At this moment, within Fang Can's brain, countless memories from the past were being called up, and the countless bits of knowledge his teachers had imparted during his school days now became nourishment for battle.

For the sake of victory in combat, he directly split his attention three ways.

While constructing the optimal matching scheme in his mind, he simultaneously altered the precision of his flesh and blood, and finally diverted a portion of his focus to keep himself from being beaten to death by Wang Peng.

It was precisely because he was constantly poised between life and death that his talent grew wildly.

Under normal circumstances, completing this set of modifications would have required at least a year or two of groping and research.

But now, his talent, pushed to the extreme, let him get straight to modifying.

Extraordinary luck also let him arrive at the optimal arrangement directly, with no need for exhaustive trial.

And the growth of his healing ability at this life-or-death juncture also let him endure, during modification, injuries that would normally be lethal to an ordinary person.

At this moment, the entire world was propelling Fang Can's body through metamorphosis and evolution.

"Something's wrong, something's wrong, this isn't right!"

The more Wang Peng fought, the more his composure began to crumble.

The fellow before him was like an unkillable cockroach—showing no sign of flagging, but rather growing more spirited with every exchange.

Have you ever seen someone use their skull as a mallet, their heart as a war drum, their eyes as hidden weapons, and their skin as a cassock?

As for how the body was supported after the bones were pulled out, Wang Peng watched with his own eyes as Fang Can stuffed a section of his small intestine into the hollow left by the extracted arm.

"Damn it—Mad Dragon Parting the Sea Palm!" Wang Peng roared, and intense gang qi coalesced into solid form, transforming into an invisible palm-print that struck at Fang Can from afar.

If an ordinary martial artist were hit by this palm, their five viscera would explode on the spot.

But unfortunately, the one facing it was Fang Can—before the palm-print even reached him, his body flew apart of its own accord, letting the qi force sweep past his body and pierce the giant rock behind him.

The next instant, the separated parts of his body each fought on their own; linked by the small intestine, Fang Can's right arm, gripping a leg bone, thrust toward Wang Peng's heart.

Wang Peng still refused to dodge or evade, but an unprecedented wave of pain swept over him.

"The body modification is finally showing results," Fang Can said with satisfaction—he had finally modified roughly 3% of his body into its ideal form.

With a light pull, Fang Can's arm returned to its place, and a smear of fresh blood gushed from Wang Peng's chest—the strike had truly wounded the heart meridian.

Clutching the fresh blood pouring from his chest, unmistakable panic flashed in Wang Peng's eyes; if he hadn't reacted in time just now, his heart would likely have been pierced through.

At this moment, in his gaze, Fang Can's figure overlapped with that sword-wielding woman from several years ago.

In the distance, the sounds of a great battle came rolling in—the rescue force the Princess's escort guard had gone to Cangren City to fetch.

Looking at the inhuman Fang Can before him, terror in his eyes, Wang Peng wanted to flee without the slightest hesitation, but his ankle had already been wrapped by the small intestine a step ahead.

"Come and go as you please."

Fang Can's body, spiderwebbed with cracks, gave a hard yank and said, "It's not that easy."

Squelch!

In an instant, Fang Can switched from defense to offense and became entangled in combat with Wang Peng.

Although he was still at a disadvantage, the situation was gradually improving.

"Protect the Princess! Slay the assassin!"

A great host of militia guards gathered toward this spot—at least several thousand martial artists converging here.

And Fang Can and Wang Peng thus fell into encirclement.

"Boom!"

The two bodies collided; Fang Can's bones once again displayed fine, cracking patterns as he channeled the vast majority of the force into the earth.

With the terrifying impact, the soil overturned, forming a pit three to four meters wide, while massive amounts of dirt flew up.

These upturned clods of earth and stones acted like blades of death, piercing the bodies of several first to second level martial artists behind him and beating them into sieves.

Thus, a massacre began...

(End of this chapter)