Global Evolution

by Steffen Schmidt

  Jing put up a straight face.

  “What a fitting comparison!” While Chang and Jing were talking, a familiar figure entered the room. “Humans perceive the surroundings as darkness when they’re desperate. And the light of hope often leaves the most profound effect in one’s memory.”

  “Mr. Li, what brings you here?”

  Seeing Qing Shui coming, Chang attempted to welcome him with a warm smile, but after pursing his lips for a few time, he still felt inadequate in making the expression. Thus, he returned to his still face, but his words were said with ardor. “I haven’t seen you for almost a month during my recovery, how are you? You must be busy.”

  “Not too bad, but I do have documents stacked up on my desk,” Qing Shui answered with a nod. “I heard that you are removing the bandage today, and felt obligated to see you. After all, you two are my only family now.”

  “Thank you.”

  Perhaps because they hadn’t talked for a while, Chang felt like there was a distance between him and the person who he had went through death with.

  “Leave those polite words behind, please. No matter what I will turn into, you two are the purest spots in my heart.”

  Qing Shui’s hand squeezed Chang’s shoulder, and he stepped forward to mess with Jing’s hair, but the latter avoided it.

  “Jing, we are not as close as we used to be.” His hand stopped in the air awkwardly, Qing Shui was only able to force a laugh through his thin lips. “You’re a grown-up now.”

  “What have you come for?”

  Jing stepped back, her eyes showing distrust.

  “I thought I told you why I’m here. First, it’s to visit the brand new Chang, and the second reason...” Qing Shui’s face returned to a calm state, his eyes remaining on Jing. “I have a question for you.”

  “What question?” Jing asked in reply.

  “A question about your perception.” Qing Shui stepped forward and hunkered down. “A month ago, on the day we went to the Yellow River, did you sense anything strange in your perception range?”

  “Anything strange?” Jing was confused.

  “Yes, something strange.” Qing Shui tilted his head backward, looking at the ceiling and recalling. “When I was on the peak, I felt quite disturbed to be honest. But I can’t be sure what caused it.”

  “Disturbed?” Chang, too, was puzzled. “It shouldn’t be, I thought you were well-prepared.”

  Perhaps people other than Chang wouldn’t understand how capable Qing Shui was now, but he knew that fact very well. “How could you possibly be disturbed? By any chance, were you just nervous?”

  “I don’t think so, my emotions were under control.” Qing Shui was as calm as still water. “As you said, I was well prepared. I was certain about my plan, and that shouldn’t have arised any uneasiness. From what I understand, my disturbance came from when I collect the information from the surroundings. To explain it better, a good example is a person in a place which harbours malicious intentions. The person probabaly doesn’t know what is going on but he can sense it, and that’s the source of the disturbance.

  “The feeling didn’t come from nowhere; it was rather my instincts. The information collected from the environment may not have turned into something that I was aware of, but it could have come from a glance, or an expression. All together they produced that werid experience.

  “Myself, I’m much more sensitive in terms of collecting these hardly visible emotions, and I tend to analyse them more often than non-EMs. Therefore, my agitation must came from somewhere,” Qing Shui explained, frowning. “However, even thought I’ve sorted out my memories numerous times, I still failed to find that source.

  “My conclusion is: the source of disturbance is unknown,” Qing Shui said, looking at Jing’s eyes. “Or, that it is something uncontrollable. I’ve been thinking, could it be an invisible organism that watched me as a bystander?”

  “Invisible?”

  Jing rolled her eyes while recalling bits and pieces from that day.

  Both Chang and Qing Shui stopped talking, to leave a moment of silence for Jing.

  “There is something unusual.” Jing was drawn back from reminiscence after four minutes. “On that day, a hole or a zone that was shielded from my perception appeared for a second.”

  “What zone?” Qing Shui was intrigued.

  “Let me explain. In my perception, if there is absolutely no life in a range, it is pure darkness, but I’m still monitoring everything.” Jing struggled to explain how she usually perceived danger. “It is just like how we walk at night. Although it is dark, the darkness is something that exists for real, and so we can move through it.

  “But on that day, I found that there was a hole in my perception range, that I had completely lost grasp of it.”

  Chapter 109: Almighty Human

  Translator: Letty Editor: - -

  “It was just like a blind spot expanded from out of nowhere; I could sense nothing from it,” Jing said. “However, that blind spot only existed for less than a second, so I thought it was just my imagination. If you hadn’t asked me today, I would have forgotten about it altogether.”

  “I see.” Qing Shui nodded to himself, as if having found the source of the disturbance. “Can you tell me more about the blind spot? Was it the same feeling as when you met the Willow?”

  “No, it’s different. On the day we met the Willow, my perception to danger was intact. It’s just that I simply couldn’t sense the Willow even when we were in front of it. Everything else worked just fine, I could sense all the other organism around us.” Other than fear, the impression that the Willow had left to Jing was more of confusion and puzzlement. “It was a weird feeling of it being there, in front of my eyes, but not giving out any hint of its existence, as if it was lifeless.”

  “Perhaps its life has turned into another form that we’re yet to understand.” Qing Shui raised his head upon mulling over the mystery. “I feel much better now, and it’s time for me to leave. You guys need some serious rest, and I’m actually quite busy these days. Take care of yourselves, alright?

  “Just feel free to ask me for anything, as long as I’m capable of it.” Qing Shui’s hand gently patted Chang’s back again, reassuring. “And… I’m also searching for your parents and relatives, I’ve even sent troops to contact Kaifeng, so take your time resting here.”

  “No worries, thank you.” Chang waved his hand in goodbye, when he recalled something suddenly. “Wait, don’t leave yet, I’ve had something in mind that I needed to ask you about.”

  While speaking, Chang’s hand reached into the inner pocket of his shirt, taking out a small syringe. “What is this that you gave me before I went to scrutinize Zhuo’s field?”

  “It’s pretty similar to what Zhuo has done, but I’ve taken it to another level.” Qing Shui laughed. “It can activate the gene information that is hidden in our genome. It’s my greatest work so far, make good use of it. I was going to tell you about it later, but since you’ve asked, I’ll explain it now.

  “The solution in this syringe promotes generation of mRNA that I designed for you, and eventually, the modification process will change your body pattern.”

  “What does that mean?” Chang wanted to contract the muscles of his forehead to frown, but realizing that he had no control over his facial muscles. “Can you tell me what it does in simple words? The easier, the better.”

  “Alright, basically what it does is that it will change your morphology, depending on what I wanted to bring about. It will give you a second chance at growing limbs, skins, horns… you name it. Anything that you desire to have on you,” Qing Shui explained in the simplest way he could make it. “From the bottom of the evolution tree, lives started as unicellular organism, then changed to multicellular organisms. Later, we had fish, amphibians... and at last, humans evolved from primates. If we were to go way back in time, we all share the same ancestor - the unicellular organism.”

  “I understand this.�
�

  Chang nodded.

  “That also means that our gene shares a certain degree of similarity to fishes, amphibians, even animals under Cnidarian phylum,” Qing Shui said.. “You probably didn’t know about this fact, but when you think about it,, the key difference between us and them is that at a certain point in time, our evolution went in different directions.”

  “And then?”

  Chang was eager to know more.

  “Then, even nowadays, we as humans often label ourselves as the most intelligent species on this planet, sometimes even arrogantly calling ourselves the rulers of the evolution tree. Indeed, our hands and brains are far more advanced than of other species, but we also need to admit the fact that on the journey of evolution, we sacrificed some functions in exchange for our flexible hands and brains that generate thoughts and ideas. That is to say, we lost the ability to swim as fast as a fish; we lost the ability to adapt to the nature as skillfully as amphibians; we also lost the ability to repair injuries as well as Cnidarians.”

  “Because evolution is simply a choice, perfection is unachievable. A giraffe cannot burrow under a bush because of its height—this is the end result of natural selection and the law of use and disuse. There won’t be lives in nature that are perfect because of evolution.”

  As Qing Shui was speaking, he chuckled. “Therefore, during this process, the coding DNA that humans have is less than 10%, and this number varies depending on how scientists measure it. In other words, we have more than 90% of junk DNA that isn’t functioning, and we can make use of it.

  “What we have displayed, such as our appearance, our limbs, our language abilities, we call it Original Patterns. What we are going to add on, such as the ability to breathe underwater, heat and cold resistance, even cloning, we call them Modified Patterns.

  “The syringe I gave you could modify your non-coding genes, especially by adding Hox genes, which could change the morphology of a species. With this, we can attain more features and abilities that we dream to have.” Qing Shui laughed again. “Therefore, I called it Modifier, it does what it sounds like.”

  “Marvelous!” Chang exclaimed. Qing Shui’s introduction changed the whole basis of what a human should be. “So with the Modifier, we may be able to fly, stride under the water, gain strength effortlessly, and even… and even become bulletproof?”

  Animals other than human had countless features, and yet humans ruled the world with only one type of gene sequencing. Chang couldn’t imagine what humanity would look like in the future when genes were modified to gain certain morphologies.

  The most important thing was that, it wasn’t a crude alternation as how Zhuo had done it. Qing Shui’s method was to rearrange the existing genes and make use of that. Rather than alternation, such method was more efficient.

  “Any side effects of the Modifier?”

  Chang shook the syringe.

  “There shouldn’t be any in theory, but I haven’t tried it yet.” Qing Shui took the syringe back. “The formula is extremely delicate to proportions, it took me over a month to make this. Especially with Zhuo monitoring me. It drained my sleeping time since then the surveillance was the weakest.

  “Keep it, this syringe contains my best efforts. I’m still making improvements on the formula and testing it out. Until I confirm its safety, don’t use it yet as Zhuo is no longer a threat.”

  Chang took the syringe back, placing it back in his pocket, and pressed on the cloth to assure himself of its presence.

  “I have other meetings scheduled for now. I’ll send someone to inform you when the Modifier is ready.”

  “You should go now, don’t worry about me.”

  Chang nodded to Qing Shui’s back. He wouldn’t waste any second of this man.

  Qing Shui turned his head, blinking and said goodbye to Chang and Jing.

  This time, he once again left for a long time.

  During this period, Chang and Jing weren’t assigned to any specific mission and were allowed to own their free time. Most of the time Chang spent his day in the gym while Jing was always beside him.

  They were treated as special guests in the institute, nearly all the officers regardless of their ranking approving all their requests in a snap. They were also allowed accessing to almost anywhere they wanted to, and of course, they enjoyed the best meals and residence.

  There was only one place they were forbidden to approach.

  It was Qing Shui’s lab, whose previous owner was Group Alpha.

  Qing Shui didn’t give a particular reason why they were forbidden to enter his lab, but Chang learned of the arrangement once when looking for his friend.

  Nobody in the institute dared to displease Chang, but the attitude of the entrance guards implied Qing Shui’s command. Although Chang was perplexed, he freed his mind from suspecting his friend’s motivation.

  After all, Qing Shui was at a different place and position now, not to mention the lab was a place only for researchers. Chang was merely a civilian, so the need to access the lab seemed unreasonable as he didn’t have a purpose of conducting any sort of research. Thus, after he was refused the second time, he tactfully avoided the lab.

  The whole institute was somewhat separated from the chaos, and Chang had a peaceful time under Qing Shui’s wings.

  The peaceful days ended with a visit from a soldier.

  “Mr. Chang Liu?”

  The soldier who approached him was a low ranked officer that seemed to be in his twenties. When he decided to ask Chang, the latter was training in the gym. The soldier also bowed with respect.

  “Who are you?”

  Placing down the dumbbells, Chang turned his head to the voice; the soldier’s face reminded him of no one.

  “I am a platoon leader in the military, I belong to the department that is in charge of chief’s meal.”

  The young soldier smiled.

  “I see, what brings you here?” Chang noticed his hesitation in speech and carefully looked at the soldier’s face, then asked, “Have we met before?”

  “We did, we passed each other in the hallway a few days ago.”

  The young soldier nodded to Chang.

  “Alright. So, what brings you here today?” Chang sat down on the bench, patting on the padding. “Have a seat, tell me what happened.”

  “Ah… I don’t think...” The young soldier looked around. “I don’t think this is a good place to talk.”

  “What is it?” Chang gradually became impatient to the soldier’s furtive attitude. He didn’t want to leave the gym because of this, either.

  Even though the institute was comparably less chaotic, there still were power struggles within it. Chang didn’t loosen his guard even if he was living in peace, since he knew that Qing Shui was both his wings and his encumbrance. He was free from trouble thanks to Qing Shui, but at the same time, once the trouble came up to him, it wouldn’t be something that easy to deal with.

  Chapter 110: She is Alive

  Translator: Letty Editor: - -

  “Just tell me here, there is nothing that you need to hide.”

  Chang straightened his back but didn’t stand up.

  The soldier gave up on his persuasions, keeping in mind Chang’s position. He could only lower his voice before saying, “Alright, but please don’t tell others that I’ve talked to you about this.”

  “No problem.”

  Chang nodded.

  “Do you know about Officer He?”

  The platoon leader made his voice almost inaudible, worrying that what he said next would be heard by people in the gym other than Chang.

  “You mean, Zhizhi? What happened?”

  Chang was surprised that the platoon leader would mention someone that had died in that battle.

  “She was my childhood friend, we grew up in the same neighbourhood.” The soldier kept his voice low. “She was one of my best friends.”

  “Alright. Then?” Chang struggled to tighten his rigid brow muscles to make an exp
ression. “What do you want to tell me?”

  “I was trying to… trying to let you know that she is not dead.”

  “Are you sure?” The soldier’s words shocked Chang, and the finger bone pendant on his chest shook. “It’s impossible, Qing Shui told me that she died in the explosion.”

  “She is still alive!” the platoon leader whispered in Chang’s ear. “I saw her with my own eyes! She is in Chief Li’s lab, immersed in some kind of chemical.”

  “Immersed?” Chang recalled that when he requested to see Zhizhi’s corpse, he was informed that corpses from the battlefield were being well handled. “How are you sure about her condition?”

  “She twitched. I wasn’t from electroshock but a voluntary twitch, she must not have died!” The soldier looked around to make sure no one was paying attention to their conversation. “Please, don’t tell others that I’ve talked to you about Zhizhi, otherwise I won’t be able to see tomorrow’s sunrise.”

  “How can Qing Shui be so cruel...” Chang pressed his face into his palms. “Then what is the difference between him and Zhuo?”

  “I don’t think he is the second Zhuo. I was just saying the worst possible consequence. Chief Li has a gentle disposition and we all know that. He must have his own reasons to keep the truth away from you.” The platoon leader lowered his head. “Now that I’ve told you Chief Li’s secret, my life is in your hands if the secret slips out. So please don’t tell anyone about this.”

  Chang promised to keep the secret, then asked, “How did you know I was close to Officer He?”

  “I’ve been prying to seek people she was on good terms with.” The soldier smiled. “Although my ranking isn’t as high as Officer He’s, I know her better than almost anyone else. And quite a lot of people who participated in that battle saw you and Zhizhi standing close to each other, so it wasn’t hard to tell the relationship between you and her.

  “I saw her alive on the battlefield, but as a platoon leader myself, I really couldn’t do anything… The only person who can save her in this institute is Chief Li, and I think you might be the only person who can change his mind.” The platoon leader’s voice was both begging and requesting. “So please save her!”