CHAPTER 444: CHAPTER 412 GENE

As the flesh and blood at his fingertips dissolved, the Insect Master’s body actively deciphered the vast gene pool, and an enormous amount of information surged into his mind.

Li Cheng’s expression was solemn. He quickly retracted his bloody hand and took out a diesel generator, power strip, and several computers from the three-dimensional warehouse. After plugging them in, he directly connected cables to his head.

Buzz!

As soon as all the computers were connected, their fans started spinning rapidly, and several immediately blue-screened and crashed.

Deciphering the gene pool is equivalent to determining the nucleotide sequence and mapping the genome.

The data size of the diploid human genome is about 3GB, which doesn’t seem large, but it contains 3 billion base pairs of 25,000 genes.

However, some more primitive species can have genome data that is tens of times larger than humans, such as the 91GB of the South American lungfish or the 160GB of the New Caledonian fern.

As the Divine Calamity host, the Insect Master collected a vast array of biological genomes for any eventuality.

This also resulted in the initial decoding feeling like a DDoS attack, directly overloading a dozen high-end computers and Li Cheng’s brain with the Multi-threaded Brain Domain Method active.

"Damn, Lao Cheng, your head is smoking."

Gray Rain was shocked beyond belief at the sight of the smoke rising from Li Cheng’s head and casually took a raw egg from the warehouse, cracking it open with a smack and pouring it onto his forehead.

The egg white quickly solidified, and Li Cheng rolled his eyes. Gray Rain hurriedly brought several high-powered air conditioners with Sister Dong’s portrait from the warehouse, along with industrial refrigeration equipment,

inserting copper tubes into Li Cheng’s chest and temple, then removed the quickly cooked fried egg, wrapped it in cling film, and put it in the fridge.

"Phew..."

With the help of the air conditioner and industrial coolant, the brain’s overclocking temperature was finally reduced.

Li Cheng let out a long breath, tilted his neck, took a sip of the ice-cold cola Gray Rain handed him, and leisurely flipped through the genome map.

The textbooks describe earth’s biological evolution as "from lower to higher levels, from simple to complex, from low intelligence to high intelligence,"

but this statement pertains to the whole evolutionary history of Earth’s life. For a single species, evolution is full of random chaos.

The Cambrian Anomalocaris, Ordovician orthocones, Silurian eurypterids, Devonian Dunkleosteus, Cretaceous dinosaurs...

Earth’s dominant species changed one after another, one steps down and the other steps up,

but the ultimate survivors were once the shivering Purgatorius monkeys hiding in the treetops from the dinosaur overlords, and their primate descendants.

Precisely because of this randomness and unpredictability, the Insect Master, following the principle of "better too much than too little," devoured all the creatures it encountered, collecting their gene sequences.

Considering the existence of messy code examples like the lungfish and ferns, the Insect Master even annotated the genomes it could understand, just like programmers writing comments in code.

These annotations saved Li Cheng a lot of time.

The longevity genes surpassing those of the over 500-year-old Greenland shark;

cancer-resistant genes similar to those of naked mole-rats;

regenerative genes similar to those of geckos;

all these genes seamlessly merged with the infection effects of the Insect Lord Demon and could be directly invoked.

Li Cheng slightly frowned, extracting and absorbing a few segments from the vast sea of gene sequences.

The Qilin Blood Plasma still in effect acted like a catalyst, continuously providing vigorous medicinal power.

The severed end of his right shoulder began to grow tiny flesh buds at a visible speed, forming blood vessels, tendons, and even bones.

The tumors and lumps on his body caused by the Qilin Blood quickly shrank, dissipated, and peeled away—the principle similar to how genes like P53, BAX, and PUMA induce cell apoptosis.

Moreover, Li Cheng raised his remaining left hand, where a dozen new layers of red, green, and blue pigment cells had formed under the skin on the back of his hand.

With a thought, these cells expanded or contracted, mixing red, green, and blue to display a dazzling array of colors like neon lights.

Li Cheng pressed his hand against the wall, and the skin of his arm immediately changed color, blending seamlessly with the wall.

He withdrew his arm and, with a thought, generated a sketch image of the Insect Master on the surface of his arm. It was vivid and lifelike.

"Is this even possible?"

Gray Rain grabbed Li Cheng’s left arm and rubbed it vigorously, but the image didn’t come off.

After pondering for a moment, he suddenly asked worriedly, "Lao Cheng, with a tattoo on your arm, won’t it affect my civil service exam?"

"Civil service exam my ass, worry about grad school instead."

Li Cheng knocked Gray Rain’s forehead with his knuckle, producing a crisp clanging sound, and said irritably, "In theory, players can’t obtain a no-criminal-record certificate, and as a player’s immediate relative, you can’t take the exam."

In Europe and America, Transcendents rarely face restrictions when holding official positions—Specialist Smith, Specialist James, Specialist Hans, Specialist Pierre, Specialist Sato...

As long as they can kill their way through a sea of blood, they’ll naturally gain power, status, and wealth.

The higher the level of Transcendents, the stronger their bargaining power with old powers, to the point where they can strangle them, taking whatever they want.

For instance, the Supreme Mage Hornheim of the Bell Tower Guild is not needed by the UK; rather, the UK needs him,

with the civil servant government and the Financial City’s lords kneeling before him, pleading for him to spend a few days in London annually.

This stabilizes the UK’s shaky international status and financial advantages.

Meanwhile, in the Special Affairs Bureau, the situation is somewhat different.

Transcendents rarely hold the number-one position in public office units, and even if they do, an Ordinary person deputy must be arranged.

This makes sense—the higher the level of a Transcendent, the less they depend on human society. The less they depend, the fewer emotional connections they have.

It’s more accurate to say that high-level players integrate into society not because they genuinely do, but because a portion of high-level players pretend to be part of human society out of inertia from their past life.

If they don’t want to pretend, then they genuinely treat Ordinary people as tools or even Consumables.

’Uh... Now that you mention it, I haven’t been a part of humanity for a long time either.’

Li Cheng pulled back his aimlessly drifting thoughts, glancing down at his right shoulder.

The new arm had slowly grown out, tender and fair like a baby’s. It was estimated that in a few more hours, it would be as functional as the original arm.

"Let’s go. Over by the camp, they should be entering the pyramid already."

Li Cheng twisted his wrist, dismantling the remaining carcass of the Insect Master into several pieces and placing them in the freezer—the decryption of the gene pool was a colossal project, not urgent.

After securing the Insect Master, Li Cheng took a camera, photographed the chili tree mural on the wall,

then, along with Gray Rain, returned to the underground third level, packing up all the biological transformation instruments left by the Insect Master.

He left behind only the immovable Biological Electromagnetic Cannon and Jose’s head.

The latter ultimately couldn’t survive, dying from blood loss and oxygen deprivation. The good news was that he suffocated to death, not counting as a kill by Gray Rain.

Indirectly causing the loss of an excellent player on the killing field... probably.