CHAPTER 57: CHAPTER 54: TRANSFORMING LIFE

Time flies.

The entire underground sanctuary operates in an orderly manner.

They determined that the old Witch, Zhu Zhengwei, had an extraordinary background and had been missing for a long time, which would certainly arouse suspicion. However, with the boundless sea, if they sank their ship and hid underground, it might not be discovered that they were responsible.

At this time, the undercurrents of major forces surged.

The news was spread out.

The entire underground sanctuary knew about the "Immortal Herb."

"Eat the Immortal Herb and become as powerful as that person!"

"An Immortal."

Countless people went crazy for it.

However, the major authorities in the sanctuary, to prevent them from consuming the precious Immortal Herb, directly ordered that ordinary people were strictly forbidden from going ashore to the island.

As a result, you could see a scene across the island, where from time to time, a few young people, leading their gang members, would start crawling on the ground, munching on grass.

"Huh?"

"What are they doing?"

"An old cow eating young grass."

"Ridiculous! Who told me this was a beautiful scenic game? This is a silly game, okay? A bunch of guys crawling on the ground chewing on flowers!"

"Why are you laughing? If it were you, being told by the boss above to eat grass, would you be willing? Look at them with that deep grudge look."

"Hey, I’m right here, you can’t find me, you can’t eat me, just a seductive little rascal, come and play duck!"

"Is this hide and seek! This game is fun!"

...

This batch of trustworthy confidants only numbered in the hundreds, and being asked to munch all the grass on the island was indeed not easy.

Three months later, someone finally succeeded, consumed the Immortal Herb, and started the path of cultivation.

"Quick, sense if there are other Immortal Herbs!"

This newly initiated Witch, of course, dared not resist and started sensing the locations of the Immortal Herbs.

A large number of Immortal Herbs were discovered, so, in the year 405 of the New Calendar, over twenty years after the death of Shiguang Zhizheng Emperor, an ancient sanctuary in the coast awoke from the Old Days.

They were like giants of the Old Days, crawling out from the long wasteland with decayed, emaciated hands. This last batch of prehistoric humans, with some remnants of prehistoric technological civilization, cellular biology, officially stepped onto the path of cultivation in the new era.

Year 408 of the New Calendar.

The number of cultivators began to increase, but relying on a book to explore cultivation, without guidance from strong individuals, progress was slow.

Year 417 of the New Calendar.

The third-level Witches began to appear.

Year 421 of the New Calendar.

The first batch of cultivators began to age.

These authority figures, who mostly started cultivation in middle age, were now facing the problem of dying, having to confront the fear of death.

"We should also forge our own path!"

A large number of Qi researchers began to appear in the Foreigner’s Concession. In this period, Old Shanghai Beach still had cutting-edge foreign technology, and Shanghai during this period gathered countless elite talents.

A foreign medical expert discovered that Qi is indeed special, currently only able to be stored in the brain, hardly passing the neck, and naturally they couldn’t solve the weakness of the body.

"So, with the body aging, could the head transplantation be researched?"

A shocking theory was proposed.

Head transplantation has always been a significant topic in modern medicine.

The biggest difficulties are twofold.

1. The body’s rejection reaction after the head is changed.

2. And the implantation problem during the head transplantation, after all, the head is the most delicate and fragile organ in humans.

However, in the eyes of the Witches, the second issue does not exist.

The head is actually their most powerful organ; experiments showed that a Witch being decapitated could still use Qi to seal the blood vessels and survive for some time.

"The only difficulty is the research into rejection reactions."

A group of western doctors in the concession began their research.

"Damn it."

At this time, Du Jingsheng, already in his forties, was furious!

Although he was the youngest among them and wasn’t too worried about dying of old age, without research talent in this area, he would inevitably be crushed by the other side in the future.

Talent!

Lack of talent!

In terms of armed forces, they were not weaker than their counterparts, they even had a group of Republic-era traditional martial arts masters, brothers who dared to fight and kill, seizing a territory, but their technology was a weak point.

Year 423 of the New Calendar.

Du Jingsheng made a big push to recruit talents, and a genius named Zeng Ciwen appeared, astonishing everyone.

"Incredible!"

"Was this brand new theory pioneered by him?"

"Born with knowledge, to reach this level typically requires decades of academic accumulation and experimental research!"

"Could it be that a god descended to the mortal realm?"

Countless people were amazed.

After all, this was a true giant of modern twenty-first-century wisdom, standing on the shoulders of all modern human beings in biological genetic engineering.

You could say he alone represented all the achievements in this field gathered by modern humanity today.

Zhu Zhengwei secretly brought this one person in, which was tantamount to privately stealing the entire modern human gene engineering biological results, and wanted to take this achievement further, surpassing modern human society!

Zhu Zhengwei’s ambition was great, and the horror of it could be imagined!

"I want you to also research head transplantation." This was Du Jingsheng’s first sentence, always doing things resolutely and decisively, only caring about results.

Zeng Ciwen shook his head, scoffing at it.

Head transplantation, before he was reincarnated in 2016, had already been experimentally successful in monkeys.

Like cloning organisms, the most critical problem has been solved. If not for moral concerns, humans could officially attempt head transplants, as well as cloning humans similar to the way Dolly the sheep was cloned.

Although he was an expert in this field and had studied the world-renowned head transplant surgery back then, the equipment and materials here were inadequate. However, he had better research methods that could far surpass head transplantations, achieve true immortality in one step, and solve moral issues.

"I discovered that Qi is a soul substance, a pure energy that is the source of all life. By using it to nourish cells, human cells have a significant mutability and can be used to improve human cells."

"My plan is: transplanting plant cells from the Immortal Herb."

"There are three benefits."

"Firstly, as the cultivation source of the Immortal Herb, if we integrate its characteristic cells, becoming part of its source, our cultivation aptitude would increase significantly, reaching the ultimate cultivation potential of all living beings."

"Secondly, the repair rate and lifespan of plant cells far exceed those of humans and are easier to graft. Even a head transplant would not be a problem, equivalent to grafting fruit."

"Thirdly, photosynthesis... absorbing energy from light and Qi for sustenance. Of course, this requires the most in-depth modification, and this is just an ultimate conception. This is truly—Swallowing Wind and Eating Qi."

As for head transplantation?

At that time, it was merely a routine.

He made a horrifying analogy for a Shanghai Beach gang leader in the laboratory.

Back then, humans performing head transplants was as simple as grafting a fruit of a branch onto a new tree!

Because it was a tree, grafting was naturally easy and smooth.

"This world is too backward!"

"The theories of this world are too weak and primitive!"

He looked at the external historical nations, the Bronze Kingdom, Hundred-Stone City, You Kingdom, and couldn’t help but shake his head, feeling a sense of frustration.

"Their vision, outlook, and future prospects are too low-level. Their historical accumulation is too short. Clearly holding ’Qi,’ a divine object with divine power, yet they do not understand how to reach the sky in one step! They do not know what they want and instead, chase after trivialities! Astonishingly, they are still in the city-state barbarian era, living like primitive indigenous people!"

"And I, breaking free from their outdated mindset, aim to reach the ultimate ideal in one step."

"If successful, we could live for hundreds of years, with our cultivation speed and aptitude, being the pride of the entire world!"

"We, the people from the old days, will achieve immortality and with lightning speed, conquer the Hundred-Stone Country, Bronze Kingdom, and Seaside Ghost Kingdom outside."

Upon hearing Zeng Ciwen’s words, Du Jingsheng praised repeatedly, "First, I’ll get rid of those smelly foreigners in the concessions. They strut around because they run the concession hospitals. Don’t think just because their technology is advanced, they can trample us beneath their feet."

Despite the sentiment, considering the gravity of the matter, Du Jingsheng planned to return and study it further.

The next morning, Du Jingsheng came again and asked only one question: "I can fully sponsor your efforts to integrate the plant Immortal Herb cells. Our few martial brothers just want to know if, once you succeed, they can form a Woodman Alley? Can they fight and withstand attacks?"

"They can."

Zeng Ciwen answered.

He was too lazy to elaborate.

He knew that he was alone in this era, contemplating a great and unbelievable historic feat for humanity, while they asked him if the spaceship he was researching could run on diesel.

New Calendar Year 428.

The head transplantations in the Foreigner’s Concession fell into a bottleneck and were urgently halted due to various side effects, and they began to select "test-tube-induced cloned baby" technology as an alternative to tackle head transplantation.

New Calendar Year 435.

The Ancestral Witches developed a kind of brainwave witchcraft converted into telecommunication super-long-range sensory technology, used in conjunction with new phones, leading humanity into the technological steam age combined with Qi.

New Calendar Year 448.

In the laboratory, the first plant-cell dog appeared, with dark green skin, slightly stiff, mostly animal structure, but also with plant cell wall structure, and successfully survived.

Humans have taken the first step towards plant-type immortality species.

New Calendar Year 451.

As the high-ranking officials on both sides were about to die of old age, they stopped fighting.

The Western concession and Eastern gangs thoroughly united, bringing together all talents to join the laboratory.

New Calendar Year 455.

The plant cell transformation experiment on humans was urgently halted because of the risk of turning completely into plant people, and began reversing cellular engineering to examine the erroneous node in that segment of plant gene insertion.

New Calendar Year 467.

After more than ten years of error correction and repetitive experiments, the first plant test-tube baby was fully born.

Wah wah wah!

A dark green baby was born with a cry.

"Only sixty years!"

"Sixty years and we’ve accomplished a great task!"

"We have created the first modified lifeform beyond natural organisms."

The entire laboratory cheered.

Only Zeng Ciwen knew that because he was a Reincarnator from another world, these fifty years were actually built on the 21st-century human accumulation of that world. Otherwise, starting from zero, taking hundreds of years would be unsurprising.

"Start the full-body Qi infusion test," Zeng Ciwen said.

Soon, a Witch began to try infusing Qi into the baby’s brain, extending from the neck down.

The test results came out.

The Qi was blocked and could not pass beyond the neck, blocked a hundred times more than a human neck.

Theoretically, this species would never be able to circulate Qi throughout its body.

Zeng Ciwen frowned deeply, "I don’t know if this is good or bad. I have opened the gate to the Life Forbidden Area and conducted genetic modifications, creating an abnormally immortal species with a very high starting point... but the upper limit is too low, they will never be able to circulate Qi throughout their body, forming a perfect self-circulating physique."

"I said their head transplant was the wrong direction, but is my experiment ultimately another wrong direction?" He sighed.

This lineage of plant humans still had the head of a god, a fragile body, and all the strength concentrated in the brain... only, their bodies were less fragile compared to humans.

Meanwhile, the scientist nearby, wearing a white lab coat, was cheering excitedly, completely oblivious to Zeng Ciwen’s concerns.

Qi circulating throughout the body?

That is but a distant dream!

No present Witch can cultivate to such an extent, breaking the boundaries.

Even the legendary Shiguang Emperor, the great human Saint of the slave age dynasty, could not enter that realm, ultimately dying of old age.

And instead of envisioning an impossible future, the present was the best result, this plant immortal species with an extremely high starting point, an extremely long lifespan, this was already the most perfect creature in this world.

"This is simply... a child of God!"

Everyone on this island knew that their era would embark on a new Chapter.