From Hell

The Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation Automaton followed its preset 30-second cycle. Soon, the device delivered an electric shock to stimulate his heart, and the oxygen supply to the mask increased by 50%.

Bzzzt...

Smack...

Li Qingye was in shock. It felt as if his heart had taken a punch. His eyes flew open, and the will to survive and hatred in his heart made him unwilling to let his life end here.

Gasping hard, he snatched up the three syringes beside him and injected the adrenaline, Antibiotics, and Homemade Anesthetic into his body all at once.

His heart pounded violently.

Cold sweat soaked his clothes and the sheets.

He gazed blearily at the light on the ceiling.

More than ten hours passed in a daze. By the evening of the fourth day, Li Qingye finally felt his discomfort beginning to ease. His temperature had dropped to 37.3 degrees Celsius, and his blood sugar and heartbeat had returned to normal.

His blood pressure, however, remained elevated, holding at 150–165.

He knew the first side effect of Gene Modification had appeared. The mice and domestic pigs had developed high blood pressure, too.

The Jianmu Factor was still modifying his body. It would take another five days or so before things stabilized.

But Li Qingye had made it through the most dangerous stage.

The morning of the sixth day.

Li Qingye opened his eyes and felt better than ever. Suddenly, a flood of memory fragments surfaced in his mind.

Huh... What is this...

He closed his eyes and sifted through the fragments, only to find that they were memories from his parents. They included scenes from his childhood, moments with his older brother, and fragments about his grandparents and other events.

Another discovery that animal experiments couldn't have revealed.

The memories stopped the moment he was born. In other words, they had come from his parents' genes and been passed down to him.

No, they weren't just his parents' memories. More precisely, they were the memories of his ancestors.

These memories had one distinctive feature: the older they were, the more fragmented and indistinct they became. Even his parents' memories were limited to the most significant parts of their lives.

Having studied genetic evolution, Li Qingye understood that mutations, duplications, deletions, and rearrangements occurred in genetic sequences during replication, producing this result.

As these changes accumulated generation after generation, the older the genetic memories became, the more fragmented and indistinct they were.

For Li Qingye, it was as if he had gained access to a "historical record." The memories were vast in number, and even in fragments, they left his head swimming.

Fortunately, at noon on the seventh day, he discovered that two more Gene Abilities had been activated: Memory Palace and Eidetic Memory.

Memory Palace was a way to manage memories, allowing him to clear, sort, and label them in his brain.

As for Eidetic Memory, its function went without saying.

From his earlier experiments on animals, Li Qingye had only known that the Jianmu Factor made their brains highly active. It could even enable domestic pigs to understand written symbols and follow spoken commands.

That dramatic improvement was what had driven him to take the risk.

The eighth day.

Another side effect appeared: he had become red-green color-blind.

But the abilities hidden in his genes were also being further activated. A fourth Gene Ability emerged—Super Senses.

His hearing, taste, and smell had all improved to varying degrees, though he still couldn't examine them closely.

The ninth day.

Li Qingye felt as if his mind had suddenly opened. Some of the memories he had organized with Memory Palace were recombining at an unprecedented pace, forming new insights.

He named these abilities "Super Analysis" and "Super Deduction."

With the emergence of Super Analysis and Super Deduction, Li Qingye felt that his brain had reached its limit. His body could no longer support further development.

Just as he had suspected, nothing else unusual happened to him on the tenth or eleventh day.

His body gradually returned to normal.

He removed the IV line and monitoring equipment, drained the urine from the catheter, then gritted his teeth and pulled it out, enduring the burning pain.

"Ugh..." The sharp sting made Li Qingye suck in a breath.

But this was no time to take it easy. He forced himself to endure the pain and began a full physical examination, especially tests at the genetic level.

Three days later.

Li Qingye set down the examination report.

He had been prepared for this: his chromosome telomeres had shortened considerably, and his organs had aged to varying degrees.

Based on the results, he had perhaps twenty years left to live, and he was only twenty-four.

In other words, unless he found a way to address the aging of his organs, he might not even make it to fifty.

The other issues—high blood pressure, red-green color blindness, and inactive sperm—were minor by comparison.

He didn't regret it. Without taking this risk, he might not have had even two or three years, let alone twenty.

To him, trading decades of life for unprecedented intelligence was well worth it.

If he couldn't avenge himself, what meaning would a long life have?

After washing up, shaving off his stubble, and changing clothes, he looked at himself in the mirror. He seemed to have aged more than a decade overnight.

He checked the time. There were about seven days left before his appointment with his advisor.

"Time to take care of this place."

He erased all the data on the Jianmu Factor from the laboratory. The paper records and the previous experimental subjects were all thrown into the high-temperature incinerator.

He removed every hard drive, computer, laptop, and instrument data-storage unit. He didn't hesitate, even when the equipment was worth millions.

He dumped the storage devices into Aqua Regia, then sent the remains to the incinerator to be burned to ash.

After all, many of the laboratory's research instruments had been imported from abroad. Li Qingye didn't want to gamble on whether a backdoor had been left in any of them.

If someone investigated the laboratory while he was abroad, they might obtain the Jianmu Factor research data.

The Jianmu Factor stored in the laboratory and the Gene-Edited Turritopsis dohrnii were also sent to the incinerator and destroyed completely.

He had already recorded the techniques in his Memory Palace. Once he set up another laboratory, he could recreate the Gene-Edited Turritopsis dohrnii and the Jianmu Factor whenever he wanted.

As for money, he no longer needed to worry about it.

Through his Ancestral Memory, Li Qingye discovered that before he was born, his mother had opened an anonymous account at a Swiss Bank and deposited her earnings into it every year.

On one hand, she had intended the money to serve as a fallback for the Li Family.

On the other, she had two children, and one of them would inevitably be unable to inherit the company. The money could go to whichever child didn't inherit it.

Li Qingye estimated that the account held a substantial sum. His mother had once been the group's vice president, with an annual salary of around three million. The yearly dividends from her 1.5% stake in the company were substantial as well.

Xin Xin Group had been founded in 1991, and Li Qingye was born in 1993.

The money in that account had accumulated for a full twenty-six years. Even if it consisted only of her salary, it would still amount to tens of millions.

If that were all, Li Qingye still wouldn't have been certain. It had happened more than twenty years ago, and his mother might have changed her mind since then.

But after his brain had been enhanced, he recalled some things his mother had said when he gave up his place at Beiping University. That convinced him the account had never been abandoned.

Of course, Li Qingye wasn't betting everything on this secret account.

If the money wasn't there, he had other plans. They would just take two or three years to carry out, which wasn't good news for someone with so little time left.

Thanks for all your support! If you spot any typos, please let me know and I'll fix them as soon as I can. |ω｀)