Chapter 387 - 379 New Tooth_1

"Boss, calm down!"

"I can’t calm down aaaaah!"

John, who was rudely awakened from his dream by a bolt from the blue, messed up his neat hair and roared viciously with bloodshot eyes:

"Why, why are Chinese people suddenly flying to the Moon? Why didn’t we know anything in advance? Where are NACA’s hundreds of satellites? Where is the IAA? Such a huge space shuttle, why didn’t anyone discover it beforehand?!"

John’s barrage of whys left his staff sprayed by his fury, afraid to come any closer, themselves in a state of mental crash.

For a long time, they had a sense of superiority over the entire world, and it wasn’t without reason.

After all, in the ’60s they sent humans to the Moon, and completed no fewer than six moon landings, led the era with the Space Shuttle, and following the Union’s dissolution, they reached a global dominance unmatched in the history of mankind on all fronts.

In the ’90s, the entire world tied together couldn’t match their strength, prompting a joke that went:

The world’s number one air force is the American air force, the second is the American naval aviation, and the third is the National Guard’s air forces.

At that time, this joke was essentially the truth, and that kind of overwhelming superiority shaped the strong confidence of several generations.

Even when they began to lag in a few areas since the start of the new space race, they just thought they’d been a little lax, allowing the other side a loophole, and with a bit of seriousness, America would still be the unsurpassed number one.

As for moon landing, they considered it their sacred territory, subconsciously convinced that they would be the ones to return to the Moon in the new century, especially with the mantra, "Half a century ago, we landed on the Moon."

Moon landings, that’s something the old flag-wavers can brag about for a lifetime.

However, this myth of invincibility was suddenly shattered when seven astronauts embarked on the Storm, and everyone felt a chilling sense of being overtaken: mighty NACA had actually fallen behind!

These staff members were all political elites, never succumbing to panic, but at this moment, they had no clue what to do.

It was John who snapped out of it fastest, shaking Pio vigorously:

"Quick, get the hotline ready, we need to find out what they’re planning! And where is Claire? He doesn’t want to face a Senate hearing, does he? Go on, hurry!"

...

B-level Base, Laboratory 304, underground.

Liu Si had just completed his daily comprehensive checkup, and his assistant Zhang brought him his lunch for the day.

Liu Si glanced at it, three meats and two vegetables, all looking rather appealing, accompanied by an appropriate amount of fruit.

Passing the meal tray through the iron window, Zhang habitually passed on the exam results:

"It’s been 16 days since you took the Strengthening Injection, and so far, the indicators are very good. Just hang in there for another 14 days, get through the dangerous period, and you’ll be allowed outdoors. It’s much more comfortable than being in prison, aren’t you happy?"

Realizing he was one step closer to "freedom," Liu Si’s eyes teared up, and he nodded hurriedly.

God knows what he went through in the past days!

As a well-trained spy, he had passed the highest level of resistance to interrogation training—although he had no loyalty to the IAA, it at least proved his willpower was not weak.

But as soon as he entered the lab, he was given a show of force, experiencing methods even more terrifying than torture.

Back then, he mistakenly thought they were going to turn him into a gorilla and was very uncooperative, even trying to expel the injection from his body.

He hid an apple with incredible luck and all the tricks he could muster, planning to eat it once it spoiled to give himself diarrhea and avoid the fate of turning into a gorilla.

The guards soon discovered this, and in order to prevent him from further harming himself and to maintain intestinal health, Xie Miao issued an order for a week of twice-daily cleanings, which thoroughly subdued Liu Si’s temper, and he cooperated obediently.

During this process, he became convinced that he would not turn into a gorilla and his relationship with the researchers improved somewhat. However, he still felt somewhat uneasy about living next door to several apes, to the point where he began to resist eating bananas.

Moreover, why was that "old Sun" always presenting his butt to him? Damn it, it couldn’t possibly be that he was in heat!

As Liu Si’s thoughts were a jumbled mess, he chewed his food carefully, trying to ensure it was fully digested by his stomach.

Since the injection, he had not felt any side-effects, except at night he would dream of falling off a cliff, and indeed, he did feel more energetic than before, but he attributed this more to regular sleeping habits.

"Hiss..."

Suddenly, a sharp pain struck the right side of his cheek, perhaps because it had triggered a sensitive nerve in his tooth, and Liu Si couldn’t help but cry out in pain.

The guard, always vigilant of the situation in the cell, immediately called the researchers while asking what had happened.

A few minutes later, Xie Miao rushed down with seven or eight people.

"Toothache?"

Seeing Liu Si holding his mouth, Xie Miao was somewhat clueless, especially since none of the gorillas had displayed similar symptoms.

"Quick, take him upstairs to see if it’s the wisdom teeth. No, wait, you already had your wisdom teeth removed, didn’t you!"

The group took Liu Si to the examination room but found nothing conclusive, only confirming mild inflammation and that the locus of Liu Si’s pain seemed not to be the gums, but somewhere in the jawbone.

When the surgical examination was of no avail, Xie Miao had no choice but to take an x-ray of his mouth, and then his eyes widened in disbelief.

"Xie, uh, Director, what, uh, what’s going on here...?"

By this time Liu Si’s pain had spread from the right side to his entire mouth, making it difficult to speak clearly. Most people might have passed out from the pain by now, but he remained conscious.

"This..."

Xie Miao stared at the x-ray for a long time without speaking, and the surrounding people also craned their necks over curiously.

The researchers passed around the x-ray, which prompted a series of shocked gasps, before it was returned to Xie Miao.

"So, Liu Si, it looks like you might need to change your teeth," Xie Miao said, in a tone filled with uncertainty and disbelief, which made Liu Si forget about the pain for a moment.

"Change teeth? What the heck is going on?"

Pushing people aside, Xie Miao held the x-ray up to Liu Si’s face for comparison, her eyebrows furrowing into a horizontal "S". Then she poked the area above his jaw.

"Thunk, thunk, thunk!"

Feeling the sensation of something hard under her finger, Xie Miao finally nodded in confirmation:

"Yes, that’s it, you’re changing teeth. Twenty-eight of them, all growing pretty much at the same time. I estimate they’ll start pushing your current teeth in a couple of days. The pain is because they’re pressing on a nerve and there’s a slight inflammation."

"No freaking way!" Liu Si shook his head in panic: "How is that even possible, there’s no record of this in my health history."

As a professional in a specialized field, Liu Si knew for the task at hand he hadn’t grown a third set of teeth, having changed them in his youth as well.

Xie Miao also accepted this conclusion; then that meant... the Strengthening Injection was starting to take effect by growing teeth first?