Virus Fusion

Virus Fusion

Once the warehouse had been cleaned up, Huang Ji planned to use it as a laboratory to study the virus himself and figure out how to crack it.

For one thing, it was a fortunate coincidence. Since he had discovered it, he had to study it.

It would also be good practice, honing his practical skills and building experience for making medicine for Grandpa later.

Huang Ji observed Tang Yan as he pondered.

Suddenly, he saw Tang Yan making a small move in the corner, secretly sending a text message on his phone.

"Smash his phone. Give him a thousand yuan," Huang Ji said.

Zhang Junwei froze for a moment, then hurriedly set down the food and went to smash the phone.

Seeing this, Tang Yan hurriedly said, "I'll smash it myself! I'll do it myself!"

"Are you really giving him money?" Zhang Junwei asked.

Huang Ji pulled out a thousand yuan, and Zhang Junwei quickly said, "I'll give it to him!"

He took the money and tossed it to Tang Yan. That money-grubber immediately smashed his own phone.

"You... are you really going to keep me locked up like this?"

Before Huang Ji could speak, Tang Yan continued, "If you lock me up for a day, do I get paid too? Boss, is this what you meant by making a fortune? Tens of thousands for one night?"

He had merely figured out the pattern. Even while being held captive, he was still thinking about money.

Huang Ji smiled. "One thousand for twenty-four hours."

Tang Yan muttered, "That's a little low."

"But you really do keep your word. I believe you. How much are you planning to pay to keep me locked up?"

Huang Ji tilted his head. "Stay here for twenty days first."

"What?" Tang Yan shot to his feet in shock.

Then, bracing himself against the wall, he realized his legs had gone numb...

"Don't move!" Zhang Junwei roared.

Tang Yan dropped onto the floor and said, "Locked up for twenty days? That's too cruel. Three thousand a day?"

"Sure," Huang Ji said indifferently.

Tang Yan licked his lips. "Also, if I'm locked up this many days, you can't expect me to sit on the floor the whole time, right? Aren't you getting me a bed?"

"And I'm a little thirsty. You can't just let me die of thirst... That duck-leg rice looks pretty good too."

Huang Ji smiled. "Bottled water is five hundred. Duck-leg rice is one thousand."

"Ah... what? What did you say?" Tang Yan looked as if he had been struck by lightning, on the verge of collapse.

Huang Ji continued, "A bed costs ten thousand outright. You don't have to buy one."

"No, no... who does business like that?" Tang Yan cried agitatedly.

Huang Ji said, "Same to you. We exchange what we have, both sides profit. It's fair, isn't it? Too bad it doesn't count toward GDP."

Tang Yan was dumbfounded. Beside him, Zhang Junwei burst out laughing. "Hahaha! Boss, you're selling it too cheap!"

"It's not cheap. Don't raise prices randomly. Leave him a little room to profit," Huang Ji said.

Tang Yan calculated the numbers. With three meals and a bottle of water a day, not only would he fail to make money, he would actually have to pay out of pocket.

Only two meals a day would leave him with some profit. One meal a day would earn him even more.

Tang Yan said bitterly, "Don't do this! I was wrong. Do you really want to starve me to death? Why exactly are you keeping me here?"

Huang Ji stepped forward and said softly, "Do you remember six years ago, when you were driving on Xi'an Road? There was thunder and lightning outside, and it was pouring rain..."

Who didn't have secrets in their heart?

Tang Yan's face instantly turned pale. Squatting there, even his feet began to tremble.

"I'm sorry... I didn't mean to. It was raining so hard, I really couldn't see anyone on the road..."

Huang Ji said, "Then why did you run?"

Tang Yan said with a mournful expression, "At the time, I couldn't even afford the rent. Then I hit someone. I didn't dare stop at all..."

"You should have gotten out and checked," Huang Ji said, his tone complicated.

"I was scared... I really was... Cough, cough, cough..." Tang Yan covered his face, overwhelmed with emotion. Already sick, he began coughing repeatedly.

Huang Ji said, "Have you ever wondered why, after six years, there has been no news of that person at all, and no one ever found you?"

Tang Yan coughed as he said, "The rain was so heavy, and there were no cameras on that road. Ever since then, I've never dared drive down that road again. I don't even know what happened to the person I hit that year."

At that, he raised his head and stared at Huang Ji. "You know about this... Could it be that the person I hit... was you?"

Huang Ji said, "It's good that you know. I have some experiments to conduct. You'll be my Guinea Pig."

Tang Yan closed his eyes and nodded heavily. "I'll listen to you. I'll do whatever you ask."

Huang Ji first drew some blood with a syringe, then pricked Tang Yan's Hidden Acupoint with another needle.

That needle could temporarily strengthen his immunity.

Carrying a tube of blood, Huang Ji entered the laboratory in the warehouse opposite.

Tang Yan, meanwhile, no longer looked like the money-grubber he had been before. He seemed utterly dejected, yet faintly relieved.

He immediately bought a bed outright and ordered two duck-leg rice meals.

Zhang Junwei reminded him, "Hey, that's already twelve thousand!"

Tang Yan nodded. "Add two bottles of water."

Zhang Junwei was confused. He had no idea what Huang Ji had said to him. A moment ago, the man had looked like an old miser, but now he was rushing to hand over money?

Only Huang Ji smiled faintly when he heard that.

Only he knew that Tang Yan's supposed hit-and-run six years ago had not actually hit anyone at all.

With rain pouring down that heavily, how could there have been someone on the road? Standing right in the middle of it?

There had been a market beside that road. What stood on the road at the time had been a plastic human-shaped mannequin, dumped there by some bastard.

In the downpour, Tang Yan had not seen clearly. By the time he got close, he realized it was too late. He hurriedly turned the steering wheel, but one corner of his headlight still scraped it, sending that "person" flying.

Looking through the car window, he had thought he had hit someone. Too afraid to get out and check, he drove off in a hurry. Later, there was no blood on the headlight, but he assumed he had only hit the person's foot and that the blood simply had not splashed onto the car. With the torrential rain, that was why there were no traces.

Six years had passed since then. Throughout those six years, Tang Yan had lived in fear and guilt. He no longer dared drive when it rained, nor did he dare pass down that road again.

Later, he kept driving taxis, and his life stabilized. With his money-grubbing nature, he lived frugally and saved up money, wanting to find the person he had hit. But he could never find them again.

For six whole years, he had remained on edge, desperately saving money, never forgiving himself.

When Huang Ji suddenly exposed it today, Tang Yan had actually felt relieved instead.

He believed Huang Ji was the person he had sent flying back then. Seeing that Huang Ji was not missing any arms or legs, he felt liberated. He had no intention whatsoever of refusing Huang Ji's demands.

Huang Ji would not reveal the truth. He would even deliberately accept the blame, then eventually forgive Tang Yan "on behalf of that mannequin," so Tang Yan could forgive himself.

And while he was at it, he could make Tang Yan behave himself over the next few days and cooperate honestly with the experiments.

"Oh? In the blink of an eye, this virus already has a name..."

Huang Ji dripped the blood into a testing vessel, then examined it with his naked eye.

The virus now had a brand-new name. It had originally been called swine flu, but it had now been renamed "H1N1."

Not only that, on the twenty-fourth, the virus's complete genetic sequence had been uploaded to the International Influenza Database for scientists around the world to study.

Under normal circumstances, a Special Medicine would take at least three to five years to develop. Even with good luck, it would still take one or two years.

But now, there was one more person researching it: Huang Ji.

"The incubation period is one to nine days, depending on physical condition..."

"Tang Yan's incubation period is seven days. He is still within it... His visit to the hospital today really was only for a cold. Before being infected with H1N1, he had already caught a mild flu. The H1N1 virus will worsen any illnesses already present."

Huang Ji knew Tang Yan's condition like the back of his hand, so he also knew that hospitals at present could not detect Tang Yan's situation at all.

From the incubation period to fever and onset, then respiratory failure, it would take only twenty days for him to die.

Of course, that was if he endured it without treatment. With even a few methods from Huang Ji, Tang Yan would not die, such as that injection.

Overall, this virus was not particularly dangerous because it developed too quickly.

The truly terrifying viruses were those with extremely long incubation periods. By the time they had spread almost everywhere, they would suddenly erupt and start killing people.

However, with modern medicine, as long as the illness could be detected and treated properly, even without Huang Ji, an ordinary hospital's medical resources would be enough to keep an infected person alive. Even if they could not be cured, they would basically not die.

Even so, Huang Ji still wanted to create a Special Medicine as soon as possible.

He even gave himself a maximum of only twenty days, as a test of his own abilities.

It was worth mentioning that viruses were the fourth factor in species evolution.

Neutral mutation, natural selection, cancerous evolution, and viral fusion. None of the four could be absent.

For nearly a century of modern biology, viruses had been classified as nonliving things, and that classification had created a misconception.

It caused most scientists to overlook viruses in evolutionary research.

But in recent years, scientists had finally begun to realize that viruses were important participants in the evolution of life.

Viruses and cellular organisms had been at war for billions of years. That war was a crucial cornerstone driving the transformation of life and the evolution of species.

In terms of mutation speed alone, viruses crushed all other life. Through constant self-replication, they renewed themselves at an astonishing pace, undergoing major changes every year.

If it truly came down to a fight to the death, viruses could use their terrifying mutation speed to wipe out every animal. But without question, killing their hosts and destroying the environment they relied on were the worst possible actions for their own continuation.

Thus, under natural selection, viruses did their best to reduce their lethality.

One side reduced its lethality, while the other worked hard to adapt and eliminate its opponent. Naturally, the overwhelming majority of species could eventually overcome newly emerged viruses.

Throughout history, species truly driven extinct by viruses had been exceedingly rare.

The vast majority adapted successfully. Every year brought all kinds of new viruses; organisms became immune to one batch, then another appeared. Through this constant cycle, they continued evolving.

That was how species continued to evolve.

The countless antibodies possessed by humanity were the historical record of this billions-of-years-long war of adapting move for move.

All living things adapted to viruses, and viruses adapted to all living things. They killed each other, yet also gave rise to each other.

Without hosts, viruses could not continue. Without viruses, species would not have achieved their current prosperity.

Like bacteria, the ultimate goal of viruses was to completely adapt to the human body, discard all their lethality, and instead evolve functions beneficial to their hosts. In the end, they would merge with their hosts and be accepted as part of the body.

But unlike bacteria, whose highest goal was symbiosis, merely living within the human body.

Viruses were different. They fused.

They themselves were merely a strand of genetic material wrapped in a protein shell. Once they evolved functions beneficial to organisms, they inserted their own genetic fragments into the organisms' genes, passing them down through generations.

In this way, the virus—that thoroughly tempered genetic fragment—continued onward. The organism also gained a new evolution, making it better suited for survival.

Because viruses were contagious, one infection could affect a whole group. Thus, it was possible for some members to evolve collectively while others had yet to evolve.

The group that evolved first effectively had more evolution points than its own kind. It was better suited for survival than its original peers. Therefore, under natural selection, two populations with different evolution points would either begin diverging into two species, or, during a disaster, the less advanced group would go extinct while the group that had evolved by absorbing the virus would continue.

Accumulated generation after generation, species flourished in countless forms. And there were constantly explosive population divergences that pure evolutionary theory could not explain.

"So the optimal treatment is not to kill the virus, but to fuse with it."

P.S. Sorry.