Discovery

Over the next three days, Xu Chen finally saw the power of the state firsthand.

The state had essentially brought together all the major biology and medical universities across the country. Each university had established a group like Xu Chen's to attempt treatment, while leading experts in relevant fields at each school conducted joint research and supported the groups. They held online meetings every day to exchange their findings.

In just three days, with funding provided regardless of cost and research by leading experts across the field, they had finally worked out the mutation mechanism of this mutated Aspergillus flavus.

"The spores are biologically toxic? They can penetrate the dermal barrier? That can't be right, can it?"

"That's not all. The university in the Xiayun area found that this fungus could even live as a parasite in the stratum corneum. I hear the botanical institute has made other discoveries too."

The senior students beside him held records in their hands and talked among themselves. Xu Chen sat beside the isolation chamber, clutching a copy of Fungal Biology and staring blankly at the patient. The reason was simple: he couldn't understand the book at all.

Xu Chen had originally wanted to make an effort rather than just freeload, but in the end he realized that specialized work was best left to specialists. A rookie like him, with his meager knowledge, couldn't even get a word in.

Although the patient looked a little frightening, reading in this laboratory was somehow less interesting than looking at him.

The patient's condition was far from promising. Over those three days, Xu Chen watched with his own eyes as the fungal mat gradually covered the relatively intact parts of the patient's body. Even after those areas were cleaned, they still slowly eroded. Now they were even trying to clean him with strong oxygen and chlorine disinfectants that weren't meant for medical use.

Fortunately, the patient had fallen into a deep coma and couldn't feel any pain.

The patient could be said to be terminally ill, beyond the help of any medicine, with nothing left but to be buried.

All the tissues in his body had already begun to liquefy, something that only happened to corpses.

"Xu Chen, are you still watching the patient?" Ouyang Xing brought over a chair and sat beside Xu Chen, his voice full of exhaustion. "We'll have the new targeted antifungal drug prepared in a bit. In the lab, it achieved a forty percent sterilization rate against the specimen. We'll see what effect it has on him. He might get better."

Xu Chen gave a bitter smile. "I heard about it, but didn't your animal injection tests fail? I heard it caused severe liver damage?"

"His liver has already failed, and he's entirely dependent on machines to stay alive. He'd be lucky just to survive, so why worry about liver damage?" Ouyang Xing said helplessly.

"Oh," Xu Chen replied.

Quite a few drugs placed an enormous burden on the liver and kidneys. Those two organs detoxified the body, and most drugs were toxic to some degree. They were willing to give this patient the drug entirely because he was already beyond saving. They would try whatever they could and see whether anything worked.

They were treating him as though they were trying to save a corpse.

"Speaking of which, why did Dean Yang put me in this medical group? It's been three days, and I still don't know what I'm here for."

Ouyang Xing was taken aback and looked at Xu Chen.

"Maybe he wanted you to observe and learn?"

"Surely not. Think about it: this is such a big deal that they even sent in chemical defense troops, and he just wanted me to observe and learn? Dean Yang's muddled when it comes to important matters."

Ouyang Xing frowned, his weary expression immediately growing a little more alert. He looked Xu Chen up and down and seemed about to say something, but after holding it in for a long moment, he shook his head. "He had his reasons for arranging it that way."

Then he turned to look at the patient inside.

A robotic arm had already connected the drug solution to the patient's indwelling needle, injecting it into his bloodstream.

Xu Chen looked around helplessly, then picked up the meeting documents Ouyang Xing had brought along. Each document was marked with a date, and the ones Ouyang Xing had brought were the latest.

He flipped through a couple of pages. They were full of unfamiliar terms and charts, but fortunately there was a concise conclusion at the end, so he wasn't left recognizing every word but understanding nothing.

The meeting document had been presented by a renowned Chinese mycologist. In the final summary, he concluded that the fungus displayed a level of activity that defied common sense and biological principles. It moved by growing rapidly and was highly likely to have been selectively cultivated through artificial intervention.

Xu Chen read it and didn't really agree.

Cultivating a fungus this devastating must have cost a great deal, requiring resources on at least a national scale. Even if someone released it, surely there had to be a purpose. Otherwise, was it just to wipe out a small fishing village?

Besides, this fungus was far too lethal, infecting all living things indiscriminately. If it were a biological weapon, that would be absurd. No one, and no country, would develop a biochemical weapon that couldn't be controlled.

Xu Chen had seen a movie in which a terrorist organization developed a biochemical weapon: a mutated strain of smallpox that spread through the air. Even the villains in the movie knew to develop a cure before spreading the virus and use the cure to extort the rich. But this fungus...

It really didn't make sense.

Even so, the words "cultivated through intervention" caught Xu Chen's attention, because the fungus did seem almost as though it targeted humans—or, more accurately, the entire biosphere.

If that doctor hadn't acted decisively, it was hard to say what the consequences would have been.

It could infect humans themselves, as well as other animals and plants. If it really spread, even if humanity had a specific medicine and could escape the disaster, the crops they grew and the animals they raised would still be inedible, and humanity would ultimately perish.

Xu Chen pondered as he flipped through the meeting document. Then he saw the data the mycologist had compiled on the fungus's activity in plants. His hand stopped turning the pages, and he looked again in surprise.

The paragraph said that although this strain of Aspergillus flavus was less toxic when living on plants than on animals, its dispersal of spores was unusually active.

A table of data below supported that conclusion.

Xu Chen looked at the other data as well. The expert hadn't taken any shortcuts, directly testing every class of organism in the biological world. Of them all, the fungus was least likely to spread on mammals, preferring instead to live as a parasite inside their bodies.

The mycologist had noted in the document that this was related to temperature, and that was the consensus. Xu Chen also recalled looking at the specimen earlier: when it was taken out of the refrigerated incubator, it had been inactive, but as soon as he warmed it with his hand, it had become active.

The same was true of plants. Their temperature was basically the same as that of their surroundings, or perhaps even lower. The fungus might seek a more suitable temperature for division, and therefore tended to disperse its spores from plants rather than leave them on the plant to reproduce.

But Xu Chen felt something was wrong and couldn't help reading it over several times.

He kept feeling that something in the documents wasn't right, but the feeling was vague, and he couldn't pin it down.

"We've already tried both triazoles and echinocandins. None of them worked... If the higher-ups hadn't reacted quickly enough, we really wouldn't have had any way to deal with this fungus."

"Look on the bright side. I heard fluorouracil drugs seem to have some effect. Let's wait for the experts' results. There's bound to be something we can do."

Xu Chen heard the senior students waiting for the results whispering beside him, and suddenly realized something.