The scene in the Cargo Hold was enough to make people's hair stand on end without any electromagnetic field.
"This is too much! Way too much!"
Long Qi rubbed his arms. To ease his nerves, his mouth ran even faster. "Professor Ronan, can you make these things settle down? And can we be a little more rigorous with our experiments? When you defined the experimental target just now, you clearly said 'one fragment.' One!"
Amid the clamor, Ronan explained good-naturedly, "It is indeed one, but to ensure the experiment works, I need to confirm its activity first."
Long Qi knew he ought to shut up, but the tension had seized him, wrapped in unbearable curiosity, and forced its way up his throat.
"Still, although I still don't understand what this 'Rotten Fragment' is, let's make an analogy. Let's say it's a gene fragment from some alien organism... Why are you laughing? Is that a bad comparison?"
"No, it's quite apt." Ronan nodded. "If you take it one step further and understand it as an inferior imitation of a Gene Fragment, I'll applaud you. At least on the level of observable phenomena, you'd be correct."
Long Qi's eye twitched. Without meaning to, he thought that quite a few attentive viewers in the Live Stream Room would probably be pulling all-nighters because of Ronan's proclamation-like definition...
His mind wandered, but habit was a powerful force, and Long Qi naturally continued.
"Then shouldn't you choose randomly at a time like this? You found a complete Undifferentiated Cell and a broken Gene Fragment. Cultivating them would be two completely different things, wouldn't it?"
"Incompleteness and imperfection are what lead to aberration..." Ronan explained halfway, realized there was no point, then shook his head with a faint smile. "So?"
Long Qi gave up entirely. "So,