Chapter 35: Could she possibly reproduce with it through parthenogenesis?
“Professor Jin Xia…”
Cheng Ming stood rooted to the spot.
In this position, she was directly facing the light coming in from the window. In the eyes of the person opposite her, her expression would be in full view.
“Mermaids?” After a short silence, she controlled her facial features, chose her words carefully, and showed a puzzled expression. “Those mythical creatures?”
“Hehe, yes,” Jin Xia said with a smile, fine lines gathering at the corner of her eyes. “It was a topic I used to research. Have a seat.”
She pointed to the chair opposite her, and Cheng Ming obediently went over and sat down.
“Do they really exist?” she was a little unsure of what the other was referring to.
“Who knows. Some people say that this creature exists and sent the scales they found to a research institute. After genetic testing, it was indeed found that they do not match any existing fish.”
“That can only mean that it’s a new species,” Cheng Ming said thoughtfully.
“Yes,” Professor Jin Xia smiled. “There is still no conclusion as to what mermaids in ancient books refer to. Some say dugongs, some say dolphins, some say manatees… In short, they are all considered to be a type of marine mammal.”
She didn’t know why she had been led here to talk about these things. Cheng Ming could only suppress her faint unease and listen with confusion.
“Your mother used to be in the history department and was very interested in these things. Her undergraduate thesis was on the origin of mermaids,” she changed the subject. “She asked me some questions, and I saw that she had a good foundation. I even asked her if she wanted to follow me, but unfortunately, she had already chosen a supervisor at that time.”
As she spoke, her tone was regretful.
Cheng Ming was very surprised.
She didn’t know about these old stories. She had thought that Cheng Ran had always been studying biology.
“The next time we met was during a summer vacation. We went out to sea to track the traces of mermaids, and she also signed up to participate. We spent a full two months, drifting on the sea for more than two thousand nautical miles…”
Tracking mermaids?
The topic seemed to have slipped into a completely unimaginable realm. Cheng Ming couldn’t help but ask, “Did you find anything?”
Jin Xia asked back, “Didn’t your mother mention these things to you?”
Seeing Cheng Ming shake her head, she sighed faintly, as if a little disappointed.
“We didn’t find anything. But…”
“What?” Cheng Ming was still waiting for the follow-up, but the other was keeping her in suspense. She looked up in a daze.
There it was again, that meaningful smile.
Her wrinkled eyelids were propped up, and Professor Jin Xia’s old pupils shone brightly. “Cheng Ming, are you interested in learning about her experiments back then?”
…
Hundreds of nautical miles away, the dark sea was vast and boundless.
There were no birds, no fish, and no land in sight.
As far as the eye could see, besides the rising and falling waves, the only moving objects were three warships.
Covered in thick protective armor and powered by nuclear fusion, the behemoths that were by the shore now seemed particularly small in the face of nature, as if a single wave could completely wipe them out.
The ships were sealed, isolating them from radiation.
In the combat room, the holographic screen displayed various real-time information such as the electronic sea chart and the target location. When it was manually switched, the intertwined light and shadow and the dark, cold colors made the interior full of a cyber-dazzling feeling.
“The activity of the ‘sub-parasite’ is currently declining rapidly. It is estimated that the window of opportunity after release is twenty minutes. Once the target is missed, it may escape permanently. Therefore, we must act quickly after entering the range…”
The “sub-parasite” was the young fish that had developed after the monster egg named “Jiao” had parasitized a land animal.
It had been confirmed that they were produced through a special parthenogenesis process, a certain degree of replication of the main body, containing a “neural bud” formed by the de-differentiation of mature neurons, and storing some of the adult’s memory information.
This was the reason why the larva had the high intelligence to choose a human body to hide itself, and could even perform specific tasks such as “destroying the incubation room.”
Although that unlucky fish egg had been quite thoroughly damaged by Cheng Ming, the living cells had been preserved in time by freezing. Now, after being modified, the Security Department was using its biochemical information to track the mother body in reverse.
The staff officers were explaining the principle in front, and a group of people were listening. Qu Ying was not interested in these things and lazily raised her arm. “Let me confirm, is the target to be captured, driven away, or eliminated?”
She went straight to the point.
“Capture alive.”
Under normal circumstances, these two words meant that the difficulty was increased, but in this mission, it was a little different—
“Their self-healing ability is very strong. It is not recommended to waste time trying to kill them.”
“So mysterious?” Someone in the team was clearly skeptical, and even a little eager to try. “Can they survive even if they’re shot in the head with a cannon?”
“You’re stupid, wouldn’t that destroy the specimen,” a teammate next to him seized the loophole and laughed. “You’re wasting such a beautiful thing.”
Instantly, some people agreed and some joined the debate, and the atmosphere in the combat room became lively.
“Everyone,” someone tapped their pen lightly as a reminder.
They were all well-trained combat personnel, and they fell silent upon hearing this.
“Allow me to remind you that you are about to face a legendary creature that has left a rich and colorful chapter in the history of the world, the mermaid.”
The researcher who spoke had two pigtails and, as always, a gentle smile on her face, making her look more like an intelligent being. Her language was full of poetry—
“In ancient times, they were called Jiao Ren.”
…
Cheng Ming walked out of the door, her hands casually in the pockets of her lab coat, as if she were taking a stroll after a meal. The gray layers of the ocean between the window frames were left far behind her.
She knew that the old professor’s eyes were still on her, but she couldn’t turn back until the door was closed again, blocking her line of sight.
They had to leave separately, at least in terms of time, to show that they were not completely overlapping.
As she passed the door plate, she looked up.
Room 10143, the last cubicle on this floor.
The Defense Center had many numbers related to 43. For example, the research institute building was said to have a total of 343 floors and a height of 1043 meters.
This was to commemorate the new era of ocean pollution—the year 2143.
“Write it down, and then destroy it. If you’re interested, you can come and find me again when you have enough authority.”
The hoarse and gentle voice still echoed in her ears. The fingers hidden in her pocket were silently rubbing a piece of paper.
She had just looked at it. It was thin, gray, and looked like a piece that had been casually cut from a study newspaper. No one would notice if it were thrown into the trash can.
But a string of numbers was recorded on it.
It had nothing to do with 2143.
Or maybe it did.
“Do you believe her?” the parasite asked in her mind.
“What do you mean?” Cheng Ming asked back.
“I don’t think she has good intentions,” Xiao Ming said bluntly, perhaps due to its biological talent.
Leading her here in such a secretive way to say some incomprehensible things, it was really hard not to be vigilant.
Cheng Ming was absent-minded, “Maybe…”
But the other had mentioned Cheng Ran.
This was like hanging the most delicious bait in front of a starving fish. Even if she was worried about a trap, she couldn’t help but want to test it.
She clenched the piece of paper in her palm, as if she were holding a Pandora’s box. She let out a quiet breath and suppressed the restlessness in her heart.
At least she didn’t have the ability to open it now. It was more realistic to take care of the matter at hand.
The message sent by “Song Manqing,” when she remembered to look at it again, had been replaced by a real meeting notice.
The time was 5 pm, and the location had also changed.
It was as if she had never been invited to room 10143, and had just had a dream during her lunch break.
If it weren’t for the gray piece of paper in her pocket.
But she didn’t mention it or ask, and continued to devote herself to her work as usual.
As if nothing had happened.
The separation and identification of the virus had been completed. The inactivated biological preparation obtained was named Algaefungus Toxin No. 1. The infection mechanism was mainly membrane fusion and cell wall destruction. The host range was basically limited to fungi, and at least it was not obviously harmful to common plants and animals. The preliminary safety test was passed.
The research had progressed to a new stage, and the first field trial was about to be launched. The members of the project group had all started to work overtime passively.
Ms. Song was also the same. Not surprisingly, she began to compete with her secretly again. Every day, she would not leave until Cheng Ming left.
However, she didn’t pick on her as much. Perhaps because the recent research tasks were heavy, the project group finally had a bit of a team look. Cheng Ming just treated her as someone who was simply passionate about her work.
The only uncomfortable thing was that she was being watched by Song Manqing during the day, and had to endure the harassment of the parasite at night.
Now, the bathroom was not a shield, but had become a point of excitement for the other.
After a busy day, she returned to her apartment. As soon as Cheng Ming had taken off her clothes, Xiao Ming popped out.
It asked, “Have you thought about it?”
Standing barefoot on the tiled floor, her neck was a little itchy. She looked down and saw the strands of mycelia that were rubbing against her and trying to slide down her shoulder. She almost fainted.
Freeing her hand, Cheng Ming grabbed a rubber band, tied them into a ball, and put them into a shower cap, both ashamed and angry, “No!”
“Then when will you think about it?”
“Can’t you have something else in your mind?”
But this was clearly too much to ask of a simple, pure, and unpretentious Fish-Fungus.
“The most important thing in the life of most creatures is reproduction. Only you humans are an exception…”
Cheng Ming turned on the hot water with a click, and her cheeks were steamed into a rosy apple. “Is this a matter of reproduction!”
Could she possibly reproduce with it through parthenogenesis?
Who said this monster was simple? It even knew how to change the concept.
“Alright, then you continue to think about it.” Seeing that the questioning was fruitless and that she was about to anger the host, Xiao Ming considerately took a step back. “I’ll ask again tomorrow.”
Cheng Ming: “…”
…
More than twenty kilometers outside the quarantine line, in a remote corner far from the main road, there was a small patch of clean and intact low-rise buildings, which was a rare sight in the barren land that had been eroded by pollution.
It looked like a holiday hotel, with a streamlined gray dolphin appearance, occasionally painted with pearl white, and it was magnificent. Compared to the Defense Center, which was often so minimalist that it looked a little poor, this place was obviously not reserved for ordinary people.
A few days after Cheng Ming had left room 10143, the old Professor Jin was invited away from the West Building of the research institute.
Right now, she was sitting in a room in this building, still in the same dark clothes that looked like they were specially supplied by a funeral parlor, which was out of place with the exquisitely carved environment around her.
She was looking up quietly. In front of her was a large screen—no, not a large screen.
It was a one-way mirror.
“Professor Jin, why bother?” A voice that could not be distinguished as male or female came from behind the glass, and the person said with no small regret, “You could have spent your old age in peace.”
“I was just recruiting talent and gave her my contact information,” Jin Xia said without any temper. “She’s pretty good.”
Gentleness was sometimes also an aura. To be calm and composed in any situation, and to be unfazed by honor or disgrace, required a strong heart.
“But she is the daughter of a traitor. The fact that she is still alive is already a sign of the bosses’ magnanimity and forgiveness.”
Every word sounded ridiculous, but Jin Xia did not smile.
She sighed, “You are too prejudiced when you look at people.”
“You have violated the rules, Professor Jin.”
Jin Xia shook her head, as if she were helpless, as if she were powerless.
Finally, she could only sigh again and guarantee with the prestige she had accumulated over the years, “All my students are unaware.”
“Of course, we trust you.”
The person on the other side of the one-way mirror said respectfully, with a sense of hypocrisy.
It had to be admitted that this was an ability.
The ability to easily anger the person they were talking to.
Two days later, at 12:14 AM, in the basement of the Security Department building.
The armed forces of the Logistics Security Department were also known as the “Logistics Army.” Their muzzles were usually aimed at monsters rather than humans, but even with a more harmless title, they were still a part of the regular army, and their discipline was strict.
Unlike the research institute, getting off work here meant getting off work. Except for the patrol team, no one was allowed to stay at night. Violating the rules would result in punishment.
However, at this moment, at the edge of the silent parking garage, behind the rows of uniform steel behemoths, a woman with a four-six split ear-length short hair was pacing back and forth.
“I refuse this mission. The inside of the research institute is not within our jurisdiction. This is deep-sea fishing, and it’s entrapment…” Her speech was getting faster, and the anger that was implicitly erupting from her clenched molars was palpable.
The voice on the other end of the communicator could not be distinguished as male or female. It clicked its tongue and said, “Don’t you need more credit to get a better genetic medicine for your sister?”
Yan Li’s abnormal pacing due to anxiety suddenly stopped.
“You investigated me?” The usually “honest, law-abiding” Team Leader Yan’s eyes immediately became fierce.
“What’s there to investigate. Don’t forget how the Binhai Defense Center was established,” the other sneered. “Think it through. It’s not like I’m asking you to do something illegal. If you succeed in reporting it, it will be a great contribution to the Defense Center.”
A contribution?
Was it really a contribution?
Her remaining conscience was churning and clamoring in her heart. She dared not think deeply and could only block her ears, close her eyes, and deceive herself.
Her sister’s pale and pitiful little face was still in front of her. She paused for a moment, stretched out her hand, and took the card from the lid of the trash can again.
She saw the ID photo with text on it. The young girl with a cold temperament due to her emotionless eyes was of a similar age to her sister, and her face was somewhat familiar.
The victim of a chance encounter during the last monster cleanup operation, the researcher she had personally rescued—
Employee ID 7086, Cheng Ming.
