A Common Factor in Their Activity

"So, there's still no news at all about the fungi's abnormal activity?"

Ouyang Xing almost didn't want to bother with Xu Chen anymore. He merely shook his head helplessly.

Xu Chen looked at Ouyang Xing, thought it over, and decided to tell him after all. "Here's the thing. I've found a clue that might have something to do with your fungi's abnormal activity..."

Xu Chen trailed off because he could see Ouyang Xing looking at him suspiciously, clearly not trusting him much.

Embarrassed and annoyed, he said, "Senior Ouyang, what's with that attitude? At least hear me out."

"All right, all right, go on." Ouyang Xing readily agreed. He wanted to hear what his junior could come up with.

"Okay, remember that case I showed you before?"

"Yeah, I remember. You also asked me to see if there were any related drug trials. I checked, but there was no news."

"That was my roommate's dad. I went with him to see his dad back then."

Ouyang Xing looked at him. He didn't know what Xu Chen was getting at.

"I looked at the meeting materials the attending physician gave us."

Ouyang Xing suddenly became interested. "Oh? What meeting materials?"

"I don't know. Anyway, they were from a meeting he had with some big shot from Tianping Cancer Hospital, and they discussed my roommate's dad's illness."

"The patient's family must be rich. No, I mean, they're really determined to save him, if they could even get a doctor from Tianping Cancer Hospital to come..." Ouyang Xing leaned closer to Xu Chen. "And then?"

"The Brc-Abl tyrosine kinase was abnormally active!"

"???" Ouyang Xing looked bewildered. "Huh? That's it? You're done?"

Xu Chen scratched his head sheepishly. "I'm only a freshman, and I barely know what I'm doing. That's the only part I remember."

Disappointed that Xu Chen hadn't lived up to his expectations, Ouyang Xing patted him on the shoulder. "Stop using being a freshman as an excuse. When you quit the internship group, I couldn't really say anything, but that was such a good opportunity Teacher Yang gave you... I thought that after getting some experience, you'd go back and really study Mycology, and then all it would take was an application from you for me to get you back into my group.

"But after calling you over, I found out you don't seem to have studied at all."

Xu Chen felt a little guilty. He didn't know why; he just did.

"Do you know what you missed out on?" Ouyang Xing grabbed Xu Chen by the shoulders and shook him. "Once EXC08 is improved a little more and we start drug evaluation and preclinical research, our school and our team will both become famous."

Xu Chen still looked guilty.

Seeing that he hadn't gotten through to him, Ouyang Xing brought out the big guns. "You have no idea how promising this drug is. The whole world is watching. If development is completed, lots of pharmaceutical companies will pay to buy it, and people will come to hire you. Your salary afterward could be several hundred thousand, or even a million."

"Per year?" Xu Chen suddenly asked.

Ouyang Xing was stunned for a moment. Then he looked at Xu Chen expressionlessly. "Per month."

Xu Chen cried out, suddenly filled with regret. Once he understood what he had lost, he wished he could go back to before he had heard those words.

After a while of suffering, Ouyang Xing released Xu Chen's shoulders. "When you get back, read more books on the subject and study as hard as you can. I'll find a way to bring you in. Understand?"

"...I understand." Xu Chen hadn't expected things to take a turn for the better, and he happily agreed.

"Don't worry. I'll find a way to keep you from having to deal with too much theoretical knowledge. But you absolutely can't be like you are now, unable to answer anything you're asked."

Xu Chen nodded, unable to hide the smile on his face as he imagined life on a monthly salary of several hundred thousand.

Then he realized something was off. What had he been talking about in the first place?

"Wait, let's put the money aside for now. That active whatsit tyrosine kinase I mentioned before..."

Ouyang Xing looked at Xu Chen. "Yeah, I'm listening. Why bring that up? I can't see what it has to do with the fungi's activity at all. Fungi don't secrete that kind of biological enzyme."

"They're both abnormally active," Xu Chen said seriously.

Ouyang Xing was somewhat exasperated. "You might not realize this, but just because both are described as abnormally active doesn't mean they're connected at all. There are plenty of abnormally active things in the world. One is a fungus, and the other is an animal. They have nothing in common."

"They do! That big shot also said at the meeting that the Brc-Abl tyrosine kinase and the patient's hematopoietic stem cells were abnormally active for unknown reasons. It greatly accelerated the progression of what should have been a chronic disease, and there was severe drug resistance."

Ouyang Xing fell silent for a moment. He had considerable knowledge of biology and medicine, but he still couldn't figure out the connection between the abnormal activity of the fungus and the blood cancer. As he saw it, it would be normal for them to have no connection at all.

After a while, Ouyang Xing understood what he meant.

"You think there's some substance that caused the fungus to become active and also caused that patient's hematopoietic stem cells or Brc-Abl tyrosine kinase to become active?"

Xu Chen nodded firmly.

Ouyang Xing drew in a sharp breath as though he had a toothache. He was shocked by Xu Chen's wild idea, but when he thought of the hypothesis Xu Chen had proposed before, this seemed quite normal for him.

"You really do have the noblest quality a researcher can possess..."

"Hehe, you flatter me..."

"You sure dare to think big!"

Xu Chen shut up and looked at Ouyang Xing in confusion. Why was he mocking him?

"A substance that can make fungi and hematopoietic stem cells active..."

"And BA tyrosine kinase!"

"Right, a substance that also affects Brc-Abl tyrosine kinase..." Ouyang Xing scratched his head, constantly recalling the literature and papers he had read as he went through the substances he knew of one by one.

But all he could recall were drugs that made fungi inactive.

"Ah, your idea is a bit far-fetched. As far as I know, no one has managed to develop a substance that makes fungi active, right?"

Xu Chen reminded him, "Mutated Aspergillus flavus."

"Mutated Aspergillus flavus is impossible too. Take Aspergillus niger, for example. It has the same properties and has been spreading, infecting so much land. All the fungi in the Dead Zone are this highly active. If someone had really been spraying drugs to increase their activity, wouldn't they have been discovered long ago?

"If the fungus could secrete this substance itself, the infected person would have been killed by the fungus long ago. How would they have had so much time to live comfortably and go get cancer for fun?"

"That dark joke isn't funny," Xu Chen reminded him again.

Ouyang Xing rolled his eyes. "Who's telling you a dark joke? Anyway, if you want to convince me, this won't do it. At most, I can praise you a couple of times for daring to think big."

Xu Chen considered whether he could tell Ouyang Xing some of the truth, but after thinking it over, he abandoned the idea. After all, this senior had treated him so well that he couldn't bear to drag him into trouble.

"Forget it. Um, can you contact Academician Qi?"

"???"

Ouyang Xing was utterly baffled. You haven't even convinced me, and you want to show off that little bit of knowledge to Academician Qi? Ouyang Xing just wanted to ask him, Where's your self-awareness?

"What do you want? Academician Qi is extremely busy. It's very difficult to get in touch with him."

"I can't explain it to you. Help me contact him, then go do your own thing."

Veins bulged on Ouyang Xing's forehead.

"Come on, you... If you've got something to say, talk to me properly. I can still go along with you for a bit, but there's no telling whether Academician Qi will even pay you any attention."

"That's my business. Help me contact Academician Qi. Whether he takes the call or not, I still have other ways."

Helpless, Ouyang Xing looked at Xu Chen and sighed. He pulled out his phone and made a call.

"Hello, Academician Qi? Yes, we have indeed made some progress... No, there's someone here who wants to talk to you... It's Xu Chen... Okay."

He handed the phone to Xu Chen. He wanted to see how many sentences Xu Chen could get out before Academician Qi hung up on him.

He watched Xu Chen take the phone calmly and say, "I know of some common factors between the fungi's abnormal activity and a case."

Then Xu Chen began rattling on.

What was ridiculous was that Academician Qi actually didn't hang up.

Xu Chen was also a little surprised as he told Academician Qi about his conjecture. The academician was clearly much more receptive than Senior Ouyang Xing. He might be someone who knew part of the truth and was aware that this fungus was actually not ordinary.

But it was also possible that he was simply well-mannered enough to listen to Xu Chen's nonsense.