"Ahem! That's more or less the idea. As expected of the boss-you hit the nail on the head!" Elder Yu casually slipped in a compliment.
Wasn't this the legendary transformation water?
Nie Yun rubbed his chin, wondering whether he should evolve a pig into a Zhu Bajie to broaden his horizons.
But Eight Stripes had soaked in plenty of Water of Life too. Aside from getting a little smarter, he hadn't exactly turned into an octopus girl, had he?
Could it have something to do with becoming a Mechanical Insect?
Catherine, on the other hand... But what she drank was a "leave-it-to-chance cocktail" spiked by the Mechanical Insects. It still couldn't be replicated, so its research value was limited.
At that moment, Zhou Dong picked up the thread and continued explaining to everyone present.
"According to basic biology, there's no such thing as an 'absolutely useful' gene or an 'absolutely superior' gene.
"For marine creatures, for instance, gills are useful organs, but for land creatures, they're useless.
"A gene might be excellent under one set of circumstances, but inferior under another. It's very difficult for us to define precisely whether a gene is good or bad.
"If even we can't say for sure, where does the Water of Life get its criteria for 'superior genes'?
"So our bold hypothesis is that the Water of Life gives us the illusion of 'genetic optimization' not because it can determine which types of genes are superior, but because it may already know... what a 'perfect human' should look like!"
A perfect human?!
"You mean... the Water of Life might contain a complete 'perfect human genome map'?" Nie Yun asked in surprise.
"Exactly!" Elder Yu and the others all nodded.
"It's like having the answer key already. The Water of Life doesn't need to