After Being Parasitized by a Monster 92

Chapter 92: Are humans the villains?

The Wave-Born Floating Flower Algaefungus was the culprit of a disaster that had been created by humans according to their own wishful thinking.

When this brand new, highly intelligent marine creature was first discovered, it was like the discovery of the platypus hundreds of years ago. The body parts that were out of place in human eyes were combined into a strange species that did not conform to the known animal structure at all. At that time, scholars even suspected that it had been maliciously stitched together.

Physical stitching did not exist, but what about in a molecular sense?

In ’39, four years before the earth-shattering outbreak of ocean pollution, the danger had already been quietly lurking in the deep ocean. Many ships had gone and had never returned, and the samples they had brought back were extremely precious. Only a few top research institutions could access them—the research institutions under the Eternal Natural Science Foundation. After countless tests and identifications of the mermaid cells, it was finally confirmed that besides those that were homologous with humans and fish, there was also a part that originated from a gene fragment that had been transferred from an endosymbiotic bacterium.

The original, independent, living bacteria were determined to no longer exist, and mermaids were rare and hard to come by, and were also “vicious.” It was not cost-effective to exchange a large amount of resources for a small amount of gain.

And so, in order to crack the mystery of this new creature, in laboratory 40 of that year, which was equipped with the most advanced experimental instruments and the most outstanding talents, the research team had done a truly crazy thing—with the existing algaefungus as a template, and with the deciphered genes as the built-in sequence, they had artificially synthesized an archaea that mediated fusion.

What was restored was the Wave-Born Floating Flower Algaefungus.

It had later flowed into the sea, had caused the third stage of pollution, and had directly caused the conflict between the ocean and the land to be magnified countless times.

The specks of light converged into a stream at their feet. They passed through this historical image, and left behind a void of footprints.

A leader of a monster organization, leading another newborn monster, was going upstream to explore the source of this disaster that had reshaped the world.

“We are actually a very friendly race, but obviously, it was you—” Chu Lanying turned her body and saw the “hair” on Cheng Ming’s shoulder that was baring its fangs at her. She immediately remembered that she was not talking to a pure human, and she couldn’t help but smile and correct herself, “Oh no, sorry, it was them—who messed things up first.”

The word “friendly,” when spoken by this non-human creature who had been lurking in the Defense Center for who knew how many years and had guided who knew how many targeted events, sounded really sarcastic and absurd.

Adapting to the human perspective, Cheng Ming did not make a comment.

The 360-degree panoramic view brushed past her like a water ripple. She was draped in the intertwined waves of light and dark and was moving forward. The long corridor seemed to have no end, and the evolution of the species was far from the end.

Her spirit also drifted away.

An even more absurd fact was still ahead, and it was subverting her original cognition bit by bit.

Just as humans had used mechanical explosives to open up mountains and fill lakes to transform the land, the intelligent race in the depths of the ocean had also stabilized their habitable environment in their own way.

This planet had never been a peaceful and perfect paradise for life. Looking at the geological ages, every time a species had exploded, it was always accompanied by one mass extinction after another.

Life and death were the main theme here.

In the gaps of the ebb and flow, people had enjoyed a long period of peace. At least half of this accidental peace was due to the mermaids, the sister race of humans that was hidden in the deep sea.

The deep-sea hydrothermal vents were connected to the depths of the earth’s crust. The movement of the earth was accompanied by every tide, and the civilization that inhabited the deep ocean was the first to witness, experience, and correct it.

The ocean had not disturbed the land for a long time, because many disasters that might have become a reality had been suppressed by them one step ahead.

The rapid progress of technology was a major event in the recent ten thousand years, and it was the same for the mermaids.

The most important progress was that they had developed a pseudo-reproductive mode. By creating fish eggs that contained the neural buds of an adult, they had obtained various tools that were called “sub-parasites” by humans—that’s right, they had used themselves as a processing plant, and other living creatures as tools.

This was a technology tree that was completely different from humans, and it sounded extremely evil.

“We are no different,” knowing what Cheng Ming was thinking, Chu Lanying narrated gently. “You see humans digging the land to extract metal, why don’t you think the earth might be in pain? Humans have dropped nuclear bombs and have made one after another hole in her body, and they complain that those lands are therefore abandoned. Why haven’t they thought that perhaps she is injured and needs time to heal?”

The way this race looked at the world was completely different from the human education she had received.

In their eyes, the tide rising and falling and the atmospheric circulation were the earth’s breathing, and the changes in the landforms and the rise and fall of the mountains were the earth’s life trajectory. All living beings were monsters that were parasitizing the mother earth.

And they had determined that their race and the earth were in a mutually beneficial symbiosis.

She was like she had fallen into a deep well and had glimpsed another, unprecedented side of this world. Besides being confused, panicked, and chilled to the bone, she was also in a daze and was convinced that there was some truth to it.

It was like her relationship with Xiao Ming in the past.

In an era when they had no ability to explore each other, the Jiao had been used to cleaning up the mess that humans had made.

For example, the countless marine garbage.

For example, the nuclear radiation.

If the pollution had broken out a hundred years earlier, humans would have had no spare capacity to solve it.

Homo sapiens was actually a very young group. When the Jiao looked at humans, it was like when humans looked at octopuses. It was incredible that they had such high intelligence, but they could not develop enough rationality to correctly understand this world.

Because the lifespan of each individual human was too short, and they were always at war and were destroying their culture from the inside, which had led to a generational gap in knowledge, like the genetic lock of an octopus, which had fundamentally stifled their potential.

But the mermaids were different. The human brain was largely uncontrollable, but they had an extraordinary ability to control their nerves. While completely transmitting their genetic material, they could even transmit memories. They had inherited the past of their race from generation to generation, just as a beehive was an eternal whole. Even if a part was occasionally lost due to the loss of an individual, it did not harm the entire race.

They had studied humans, and humans had also studied them.

And so, in the eyes of the people who had observed this creature for a short period of time, they were immortal.

Immortal.

This was what humans, who had a limited lifespan, regardless of wealth, east or west, or cultural differences, had dreamed of since ancient times.

This was the basis of the initial conflict. From then on, conflicts had broken out, the disagreements had escalated, and the hostility had quietly accumulated and spread.

Until 2143.

The wastewater created by humans had continuously invaded their territory, and now they were even going after their compatriots. The Jiao, who had endured for too long, finally could not bear it anymore and had dumped the pollution back onto the continent, to let humans also taste this bitter fruit.

The disaster of modern thermal weapons, and the disaster of biotechnology, had finally evolved into a life-and-death war between the ocean and the land.

Although it was far from a war.

This was just a warning, a warning that had lasted for thirty years.

From the perspective of the earth, for the long-lived mermaids, it was just a moment they had taken out to call out to the land.

They hoped that their habitat would be stable, and that the ocean would be healthy.

It was just a pity that because their languages were not mutually intelligible, no one knew what the other was thinking. Because their nerves were not interconnected, no one knew if the other’s intentions were sinister.

And so the Defense Center was established, the quarantine line was drawn, and the buffer zone was demarcated.

In this place where the sea and the land met, the two neighbors, who had given their first formal greeting since they were born, were exploring the future in a bloody way.

Cheng Ming was like a woodcutter who had accidentally entered a rotten mountain. She was listening to a fantasy and was watching a game with the earth as a chessboard.

It turned out that the monsters that had constantly harassed the Defense Center, the monster organization that the Security Department was infinitely wary of, had come from this.

A large number of monsters that had subverted human reason and common sense were the biological weapons that they had carefully created using nuclear radiation.

Then, the biology department and the evolution department of the Defense Center were established one after another, and they had almost copied their model.

The chessboard was laid out, and the game between the two advanced species, one occupying the ocean and the other occupying the continent.

From the moment the nuclear disaster had broken out, the most powerful means of mankind had been held back. Since the prize of the competition was nature, then using a natural way was not a bad idea for a friendly exchange.

But—

“Is it natural to create an experimental subject that doesn’t exist?” Cheng Ming asked.

If the mermaids had come from a historical origin, it was not difficult to understand that Chu Lanying could propose to fuse humans and monsters to deal with radiation. But how could the Defense Center have passed such a crazy decision? Including Cheng Ran, she thought that these scientists were probably logically self-consistent madmen, extreme and unaware.

“They just accepted the reality,” Chu Lanying smiled. “After careful research, the gene chains that had been broken by the nuclear radiation had indeed undergone an incredible fusion in the ocean, this cradle of primitive life. Single-celled microorganisms that were beyond common sense had already appeared, and this was the most likely direction for future evolution. We just sped up the pace a little.”

As her last words fell, the light and shadow faded.

The long corridor had come to an end.

Click. She stopped. Cheng Ming was like she had passed through a time and space. Following the footsteps of this so-called “mother,” she had walked from the past to the present.

Thump. The image that showed history was extinguished, and only a faint fluorescent light was left. The darkness extended, an infinite and vast unknown, which was the future before them.

A fork in the road was at their feet, and evolution had not stopped. The ruts of history would not stop.

What kind of future did they want to achieve?

Fusion, or war?

…

“What on earth do they want? A war?”

The conference room of the intelligence center was once again packed with people.

Looking at the values that had been abnormally rising since the 78th sea defense incident, everyone’s expression was extremely ugly.

The sea level was still rising, and it had passed the originally set safe shoreline by fifty meters, which was a very dangerous sign.

Geological disasters were still frequent, and the ocean currents were also changing. According to the scattered data brought back by the detectors, the monitoring department believed that a strange, large-scale biological migration was occurring in the ocean.

“Has the audio analysis come out yet?”

“It has. We’ve contacted the other headquarters and have confirmed that all the places are the same. It’s the same segment—” The technician quickly flipped through the collected and organized information, preparing to give a detailed account from the beginning.

“Just give me the results,” the combat minister interrupted impatiently.

However, everyone would be more considerate of her mood than usual. She had just lost her daughter, and her sadness had accumulated into a boundless anger. She hated all the monsters that had been secretly planning.

The technician paused for a moment, and silence spread through this “castle in the air”.

After a moment, two words were uttered, as thin and fragile as glass, but everyone knew how sharp they were—

“A threat.”

…

In this story, are humans the villains?

They had returned to the beginning. The smooth, mirror-like screen wall had cracked open, and a door that could be passed through had opened. Only then did Cheng Ming realize that this corridor was originally a ring.

A faint blue light filled the road ahead, and the container that held the egg spores was in front.

“This, was it also in your calculations?” she asked.

“It was a little unexpected, but it’s reasonable,” Chu Lanying was forthcoming, with a kind of elegant and calm detachment. “Given the residual need for reproduction, indeed, a part of the same race will look for a mate and stimulate the development of the ovaries through same-sex sexual behavior. As for the other part, especially those who are in urgent need of reproduction and lack the necessary conditions, I think you’ve seen it with your own eyes—a concentrated hormone, which can stimulate egg laying in the shortest time.”

“Why did you add human genes?” Cheng Ming asked again.

If she had just wanted to create an experimental subject that could both control mycelia and control nerves for communication and planning, it would have been enough to fuse Jiao and fungus. And the other had only wanted Xiao Ming. Her humanity, no matter how you looked at it, was superfluous.

If she had not become Cheng Ran’s daughter, if she had not had too much emotional connection with her researcher from the very beginning, then she would definitely not be in so much pain now, right?

“From a practical point of view,” Chu Lanying looked at her with pity. “I think it’s because, without it, the reaction between a single cell and a living fungus would only form a tumor.”

The one who was good at scientific experiments was a human, and the executor of the project was Cheng Ran, not her.

The real answer was no longer known.

Without giving her more time to deal with her personal emotions, this conversation had come to an end.

“Now, it’s your turn to make a choice.”

She looked at her, her expression very gentle. A almost cruel gentleness—

“Do you still want to stay on land?”

“These things, if they flow into the water source, tonight, or tomorrow morning at the latest, you will be able to see the results—they can parasitize everyone, starting from the Defense Center, and turn this world into your toy. What do you think?”

She was referring to the countless egg spores.

“Are you crazy?” Cheng Ming suddenly looked up, in disbelief.

She knew what she was saying. If enough people were parasitized, and the neural network spread wide enough, her control could reach an unimaginable level.

“It’s a pity, you could have been our most powerful weapon,” Chu Lanying sighed.

“Are you underestimating humans too much?” Cheng Ming’s body had changed, and she was alert and tense, her face cold.

Once discovered, it would not take long for the Security Department to find her. If they were to be more ruthless, and a few nuclear bombs were to be dropped, they would rather kill the wrong person than let her go, and she would have no loophole to exploit.

“I can’t cooperate with you,” her speech was fast, and the situation had changed too suddenly. She didn’t know what Chu Lanying meant.

“I’m sorry you think so,” Chu Lanying said with emotion, and then asked, “Xiao Ming, do you think so too?”

“What she thinks is what I think. You don’t have to bother to divide us.”

“Her” tone was calm, and there was no room for maneuver, so much so that Chu Lanying looked at her and, for a moment, she couldn’t tell if this was “Cheng Ming” or “Xiao Ming” speaking.

Their gazes met, and they were in a silent confrontation for a moment.

She showed a smile again. This time, the smile was different from any other time before.

Chu Lanying said leisurely:

“Among us, if we were to distinguish factions like you humans, there are actually two. One’s philosophy is that eliminating humans is the best way to restore the world to its original state—what I just proposed is the solution they expect. And I am different from them. If they are named the destruction faction, then I think I should belong to the purification faction.

“I think that cooperating with humans is also a good solution. After all, your technology has your advantages. For example, the virus that I specially arranged for you was screened by our race’s ‘scientists,’ but we don’t have a good way to mass-produce it, so it was handed over to the research institute. Cooperation can solve the urgent problem more quickly.”

This time, Cheng Ming was completely stunned.

The hidden meaning revealed in this statement made her dazed. Not only had she suddenly learned the truth of her past viral infection, but also… she did not necessarily need Xiao Ming, and she was also willing for her to be human. Then, if it was not to make her have a mental breakdown, why did she still have to use Cheng Ran to stimulate her?

Why did she want her to kill her mother, and why did she want her to experience Cheng Ran’s death again?

Chu Lanying just smiled, “You were bound to know eventually.”

But Cheng Ming understood.

She understood the strangeness she had faintly felt before, she understood the contradictions that had been drowned in a large amount of information, and she understood that she had said that she and “Chu Lanying” were a friendship that crossed species.

What she had promised Xiao Ming, to let her and it leave the continent and be together forever, was indeed not a deception.

It was just that she had presupposed Cheng Ming’s resistance.

Without her last relative, she had little to be attached to in human society.

Unable to face the pain, and with no face to remain in this world, besides the sea, she had nowhere to go.

She tried her best to control her trembling breath, lowered her head, and looked at the pendant that she was holding in her hand.

A deep red mark had split her palm lines, as if the seashell had faded, and a part of it had been completely embedded in her flesh.

In a daze, she had discovered something that she had previously overlooked because she had been attracted by the fish scales.

Her fingertips gently wiped away the dust. The seashell was cracked, but the carved marks were still there, and two elegant characters could be vaguely distinguished on it: baby.

Baby.

This word was first used by Cheng Ran to call her biological daughter. Later, in order for her to have a real and perfect growth environment, she had inherited everything of that daughter, including this too-sweet nickname.

In the end, Cheng Ran still called her that.

The contractions that she had tried to suppress swept over her, and she was torn apart again. Half of her was numb from the huge amount of information, and her body and mind were shaken by the vast truth of the world. Half of her was still sobbing in pain from losing her mother, and she was curled up in a corner, not wanting to care about anything, and not wanting to hear anything.

Then, in her infinitely turbulent and blurry vision, and under the guidance of these two remaining words, the two halves of her gradually merged.

Had Cheng Ran foreseen everything, which was why she had to personally create a warm box of family affection, and firmly control her, and seal off the potential danger?

If the other were still here, then she could question, she could resent, and she could even choose to break off. But, Cheng Ran was no longer here. And so, she could only hold on to the void hope of a mother’s love, love what she loved, think what she thought, inherit her last wish, and fulfill her wish. That illusory umbilical cord, she could no longer cut it.

Cheng Ming lowered her head and stared for a long, long time, and a barely visible smile appeared.

Gentle, sad, and tragic.

She had already known the answer, even before she had seen the puzzle clearly.