Liu Bai's Value

Gray Serpent lightly knocked on the laboratory door.

"Just let him in," Mobius's voice came from inside.

Gray Serpent made a welcoming gesture, and Liu Bai could only push the door open and enter.

Inside the laboratory, Mobius, dressed in a white lab coat, was observing something through a microscope. Even when she heard Liu Bai open the door, she did not look up. "You're early, little white mouse~ Find somewhere to sit. Wait ten minutes."

There were jars everywhere containing preserved Honkai Beast limbs...

Liu Bai looked around and could only say that this laboratory truly suited Mobius's character.

The only comforting thing was that there did not seem to be any human limbs—well, perhaps corpses barely counted?

Liu Bai even spotted the underwear he had provided inside one of the jars.

Hmm... the white scraps of underwear had been carefully preserved in purple liquid. The sight was strangely hilarious in its contrast.

"Alright, I didn't keep you waiting too long, did I, little white mouse?" Mobius seemed to have finished what she was doing.

"No, it hasn't even been five minutes." Bai said he did not mind. "So, Serpent Lord, what did you call me here for?"

"Just call me Doctor. That Serpent Lord business was something Gray Serpent came up with—come on, roll up your sleeve and hold out your arm."

"..."

Hold out his arm... wasn't that awfully suspicious?

Would he get stabbed with a needle the moment he held it out?

Despite grumbling internally, Liu Bai reluctantly extended his arm.

Then he saw Mobius take out an empty syringe.

Mobius skillfully held down Liu Bai's arm, found the vein, and sterilized the area.

So it was just a blood draw...

Liu Bai grimaced as he watched Mobius insert the needle into his vein and draw half a tube of blood.

"Hmm? Little white mouse, are you not good with injections?"

Mobius placed a cotton ball over the needle mark on Liu Bai's arm and gestured for him to hold it down.

Even though she had not seen Liu Bai's face clearly, Mobius had guessed what he was thinking.

"It would be more accurate to say I'm not good with 'long, thin, sharp things.'"

"That really is something all humans have in common." A faintly amused smile rested on Mobius's mature, alluring face.

To be honest, the mature version of Mobius still felt somewhat unreal to Liu Bai.

"You could have closed your eyes, you know—though I suppose I said that too late."

Mobius smiled as she injected the blood from the syringe into a test tube.

"Don't let appearances fool you. I'm actually a doctor by profession, and I'm very good at injections. Also, little white mouse, would you like to hear the results of my earlier research on your blood?"

When Liu Bai had first reached an agreement with Mobius, she had drawn a tube of his blood.

That had already been three days ago.

The past two days had been so eventful that Liu Bai had nearly forgotten about it.

"My research results... they aren't something terrible, are they?"

Liu Bai wore a strange expression.

Usually, an opening like that meant they had discovered something, right?

"For you, it might actually be quite terrible."

Mobius's smile was exceptionally gentle—and precisely because it was so gentle, Liu Bai felt increasingly uneasy.

"I'll be direct. This may be common sense to you since birth, but to us Earthlings, you... are far too contrary to common sense."

Contrary to common sense?

Liu Bai naturally knew he was contrary to common sense.

He was the only "player unit," with a whole pile of bizarre mods attached to him.

It would be strange if that counted as normal.

But Liu Bai also knew that the abnormality Mobius referred to definitely was not his identity.

"Liu Bai, let go of the cotton ball." Since agreeing to become a little white mouse, this was the first time Liu Bai had heard Mobius call him by name.

Let go? The cotton ball?

Liu Bai suddenly realized something.

"..."

The arm that had just been pricked by a needle was now smooth and flawless.

"As a doctor, after drawing blood, I usually recommend holding the cotton ball down for at least five minutes."

Mobius's smile became increasingly dangerous.

Though her eyes were not snake-like, Liu Bai felt, in that instant, as if an invisible python had already coiled around him.

"The wound from a blood draw is small and can heal in a few hours. But just in case, people are generally advised not to bathe that day. And for it to heal so completely that even the surface looks untouched..."

Breathing Regeneration Mod

It could heal all kinds of injuries simply through breathing, with no restriction outside combat. Even during high-intensity battles, this mod was extremely powerful.

But... this mod actually manifested in his body?

"Ahahaha! It seems you've realized where the problem lies, my dear little white mouse." Mobius laughed even more happily and manically.

"You haven't figured it out yet, have you? Or rather, it hasn't reached the application stage?"

Liu Bai's words immediately made Mobius's smile fade.

But the next moment, Mobius revealed an even more delighted expression. "As expected of my favored little white mouse. That's right. Even I cannot turn a brand-new discovery into something practical within a few days—no, not just a few days. It may be a goal that takes me my entire life to achieve."

"...You want to study me for the rest of my life?"

Liu Bai's expression turned strange.

"That sounds like some kind of unconventional proposal."

"..."

This time, Mobius's smile vanished completely.

Mobius Affection: 1636

World Serpent Affection: 1636

Ah... did teasing her raise affection too?

And by twenty points at once?

"A proposal... you really dare say that, boy." Mobius tilted her head.

If the change in affection had not been right there in front of him, Liu Bai would have assumed Mobius was angry.

"A mere little white mouse... though it isn't entirely out of the question."

"Sorry, I don't feel like considering that for now. So, let's get to the point. You surely didn't summon me here to slice me up, did you?"

Liu Bai did not mind beautiful girls or mature beauties lusting after his body, but biological lust was another matter entirely.

It was a little frightening.

"Clearly, it was you, little white mouse, who derailed the conversation, yet now you're lecturing me."

Mobius briefly showed displeasure.

"But I have indeed chatted too much today because I'm happy. Let's get straight to the point, little white mouse. Would you like to hear about the subject I've been researching all this time?"

The Stigmata Project?

"I'm all ears."

"It is called—human evolution!"

"..."

"..."

The room suddenly fell silent.

"You're not going to react at all?"

"Ah... how should I put it? For someone like you, Serpent Lord, that topic sounds a little too dangerous."

Liu Bai's expression became even stranger.

"It's like one of those villain bosses with grand ambitions who are destined to be defeated by the protagonist's speeches and iron fists. Do you understand?"

"Thank you for finding such an easy-to-understand description—I suddenly feel like dissecting you."

"..."

Liu Bai immediately shut up and made a gesture of surrender.

He could not afford to provoke her.

"Anyway... forget it. I won't start from the beginning. I doubt you'd understand it anyway, so let's start with what concerns you."

Mobius's expression became more serious.

"Based on the experiments so far, we can confirm one thing. Given sufficient energy, although your blood cells cannot resist Honkai corrosion, they can resist the damage caused by Honkai corrosion—or rather, the damage cannot outpace their recovery speed."

After saying that, Mobius sat on the edge of the operating bed.

"Of course, during this process, I controlled the concentration of Honkai energy and kept it roughly balanced against your blood cells."

"So what happened to those blood cells?" Bai did not care about Mobius's precise wording—he was not a professional, so understanding the general meaning was enough.

"Your blood cells were corroded, but they did not die. Let me ask first: as an alien, you studied biology, right? You understand cellular structure?"

"I do."

"Good, then this will be easier to explain. To put the results more plainly—all the blood cells in your blood had their cell membranes converted into silicon-based structures, but their functions remained completely intact. In fact, their lifespans were even extended."

Liu Bai dredged up some long-forgotten biology knowledge from high school.

"...Silicon-based cell membranes?"

"Hmm... silicon-based cell membranes, but the insides are still carbon-based. I'm not entirely sure how to explain it either." Mobius was somewhat surprised that Liu Bai had immediately grasped the key point, but then a rare look of difficulty appeared on her face. "Normally, neither Honkai Beasts nor corpses, nor even humans in the midst of mutation, should display this condition. After all, aside from a few species like Hilichurls, most Honkai creatures are silicon-based lifeforms, and what flows inside them is Honkai energy."

"Can you make that clearer?"

"To put it more clearly, Honkai's normal infection ability is ineffective on you. There are only two ways to turn you into a Honkai creature: first, kill you; second, place you in an extremely high-concentration Honkai field. Otherwise, at most, you'll become a 'half-Honkai creature.'"

Honkai simply could not alter his cells.

Liu Bai gained a vague understanding. The first was equivalent to killing someone outright, then using necromancy to raise them. The second was using massive environmental damage to kill him, then raising him with necromancy.

If it could not kill him, the debuff from Honkai corrosion would modify him instead.

Mobius looked at Liu Bai, forcibly suppressing the fervor in her eyes. "And the few species like Hilichurls have carbon-based internal structures as well—so they are the anomalies."

"..." Bai sensed danger.

"Phew..."

Mobius let out a long breath. "I truly want to lock you in a room with a powerful Honkai source. So try to understand this much, at least. You, boy, are now the future of Earthlings. Ah, but speaking of which, that girl named Guinaifen is not worth mentioning."

With a single sentence, Guinaifen, his companion, was skipped over entirely.

Mobius did not care about her at all.

"Will I be placed under house arrest?"

"There's no need for that. If you were to grow depressed and die because I entered through the left door first, I'd have a terrible headache, little white mouse."

Mobius brushed back her long hair.

"I finally managed to glimpse a little hope. Though it may sound arrogant, no one in the world is better than me at researching Honkai Disease. Yet even so, I have not been able to completely overcome it—I haven't saved a single patient."