Chapter 89: 89, Product of genetic editing

Liu Bu and Luo Xinyu exchanged startled glances toward the commotion. When they were brought here, the Qingshi Consortium's combat unit seemed to still be handling that "subject," so what was the current disturbance? Had the combat unit brought the subject back?

To be honest, both of them were curious about what the subject actually was.

But the next moment, they froze. A multi-layered reinforced steel cage was being carried over, and inside lay a gray figure—a person!

The gray was not this person's original skin tone, but a color formed by dust and mud clinging to their skin.

Liu Bu scrutinized the figure in the cage with uncertainty. The person had been shot several times, yet there was no significant blood flow from the wounds. It seemed that as the bullets exploded into their body, they had controlled their skin and muscles to close their own wounds.

This was beyond ordinary imagination, for no one could fully master their own body.

And on the arms and legs of this gray figure, iron chains were locked!

The chains had originally been used to imprison this person somewhere, but they had broken free. So the chain sounds Liu Bu and the others heard that night had come from this person?

At this moment, Liu Bu thought of Xu Xia's mangled corpse, the human bite marks on the body. He immediately vomited. Previously, Xu Xianchu and the others had said that the one who tore at Xu Xia's corpse was human, and he hadn't believed it. Now, he couldn't help but believe.

That immense fear and disgust seemed to grip his stomach like a giant hand, squeezing out everything inside.

There was little food in his stomach, so what came up was only a mixture of pale green gastric juice and bile.

Qing Zhen looked at Liu Bu with interest: "It seems you know something about it. Have you seen its corpse being torn apart?"

Luo Xinyu's reaction was stronger than Liu Bu's. She seemed to force herself to calm down and asked, "What exactly is this...?"

"Since it's called a subject, of course it's something used for experiments," Qing Zhen said. "Don't misunderstand, this thing has nothing to do with our Qingshi Consortium. They were products from before the catastrophe, and we only recently learned of their existence."

"Before the catastrophe?" Luo Xinyu seemed shocked. "How long has it been since the catastrophe? Can they live that long? Wait, you said 'them'..."

At this moment, Luo Xinyu suddenly realized—this thing might not be just one!

Qing Zhen carefully examined the figure in the cage and said, "They seem to have only recently broken free from the lab's restraints. I'm curious too—how have they survived until now? This is a living specimen."

Liu Bu shivered. Qing Zhen had actually regarded a living person as a specimen, even though that person was no longer human or ghost.

Suddenly, Luo Xinyu realized why the Qingshi Consortium had come to Jingshan—they had even mobilized a large number of engineering machines, sparing no effort, just to find the lab that once imprisoned these creatures!

When they realized there was more than one subject, they also understood why the combat unit had immediately called for support upon encountering the subject.

It was because they feared there might be more of them nearby!

"How many subjects did you encounter just now, and how many casualties were there when capturing it?" Qing Zhen asked.

Someone nearby replied, "Only this one. We used five combat squads, three dead and thirteen injured."

Qing Zhen shook his head. "Capturing one subject is enough. If we encounter more later, we can kill them without hesitation, to avoid unnecessary casualties."

"Understood," a military officer from the consortium's combat unit answered.

The subject in the cage was clearly not dead, as Luo Xinyu and the others could still see the rise and fall of its chest as it breathed.

However, she was a bit puzzled: "The catastrophe was hundreds of years ago. Why are they still alive?"

This was the hardest thing to understand. A normal human lifespan is only a few decades, maybe a hundred years at most. If these subjects were from before the catastrophe, how could they have survived in the underground lab until now? That defied common sense!

Even if lifespan could be extended, what did these subjects eat in the underground lab?

Qing Zhen stood in front of the cage and smiled: "Isn't that exactly why I wanted to capture them? For example, humans as multicellular organisms grow and reproduce based on cell division. Logically, cell division should be infinite—since you can divide once, you can divide a second time and more. But strangely, all human cells stop dividing after about fifty times, then head toward irreversible decay."

This is the origin of human aging and death—after about fifty cell divisions, cells stop dividing, and organs begin to fail until death.

Qing Zhen continued, looking at the figure in the cage: "I suspect this lab might have mastered a method for infinite cell division to increase the body's metabolic cycle and lifespan. But they didn't realize the cost of doing so."

Qing Zhen referred to the creature in the cage as a human-ghost, neither human nor ghost. In his view, these human-ghosts had completely lost their human rationality, their intelligence regressed to the point of being no different from beasts.

But compared to intelligence, these human-ghosts had physical strength and agility far beyond normal humans, even surpassing beasts.

Moreover, beasts follow order, as Ren Xiaosu said, species still have their own order.

But these subjects were different—they had no order.

At this moment, the subject, wounded in four or five places, awakened again. It suddenly arched its body and slammed into the steel cage, as if trying to smash it open with brute force!

The result was that the cage, specially made by the Qingshi Consortium, remained only slightly deformed no matter how hard it was hit, never breaking.

The subject gradually stopped trying and instead glared viciously at Qing Zhen. At this point, Luo Xinyu and the others noticed that no matter how violently the subject struggled, Qing Zhen remained as calm as a statue, never stepping back in fear.

Qing Zhen took out a gun and threw the bullets into the cage. The subject actually bit the gun barrel and crushed the steel-made weapon with its teeth!

Qing Zhen and the subject locked eyes. He suddenly said, "Record: teeth evolved, pupils narrowed, habit of crawling, no longer belongs to human category, suspected to be a product of genetic editing. This lab is suspected to be a secret experimental base of the Fireseed Company before the catastrophe."

Someone immediately took out paper and pen and recorded Qing Zhen's words verbatim. In contrast to Liu Bu and Luo Xinyu's shock, the others seemed accustomed to Qing Zhen's composure.