Long Qi felt that he sounded rather like Ronan. Perhaps that made it easier to communicate with him. He saw Ronan nod slightly.
Encouraged, whether he was talking nonsense or making bold conjectures, Long Qi's mouth became harder and harder to stop:
"I think I'm starting to understand. In an ordinary environment, these 'fragments' exist on too high a level. It's like a sports car ending up in primitive society. With nowhere to refuel or recharge, it can only lie there dead—meaning they lack the ability to 'modulate.'
"In that case, parasitism becomes a common phenomenon. They need to use this method to guide their hosts into recreating the 'thumb' elements that played key roles in their evolutionary path. But in a weakened state, it isn't easy to completely alter a host's genetic sequence. Many go wrong halfway through and turn into all sorts of bizarre things..."
At this point, Long Qi's heart inexplicably sank. A thought suddenly brushed past his mind and heart like a drifting shadow in the deep sea.
He froze for a moment and failed to continue.
Ronan spoke then, almost as if supplementing his words. "And once these 'fragments' encounter this deliberately created High-Energy Environment, their activity will be greatly stimulated. They no longer need to live under another's roof. They can directly adjust their state of survival, take fewer detours, and attempt a faster recovery."
Flexing his fingers, Ronan began making a more practical deduction. "Hmm, following this line of thought, we could investigate environments where Ability Users have engaged in intense, prolonged conflict... preferably battlefields involving Extraordinary Species.
"Under their unique and efficient Interference Patterns and Extraordinary Domains, places like that are more likely to produce highly active populations of Aberrant Species. They might not be especially powerful, since there is no continuous