A Mutation Caused by a Mosquito

After returning home, Li Heng took a shower and went back to his room, feeling refreshed, before lying down on the bed. The little dog still ignored him. Summer always made people drowsy, and dogs were no exception. It now spent more than half of every day sleeping. Li Heng planned to take it for a walk around the farming district outside the city in a few days to help it lose weight.

Leaning against a soft pillow, Li Heng sipped plain yogurt through a straw while scrolling through videos as part of his nightly routine. Since graduating and signing the agreement to come to the Southern Region, he had gradually drifted away from his former life. He had also slowly lost contact with his old friends.

Most of them had found jobs and were striving for their own lives. A few had married early and started families, shouldering the burden of earning money for baby formula and staying busy every day. Maintaining their work and social circles during the day already exhausted them, so Li Heng, who was not part of the same circle, naturally faded from their lives.

In the video before him, a tiny Black Cat was curled into a black ball on a bed. Li Heng gave it a like and swiped right to open the next video. He rarely commented online, partly because of the agreement and partly because of his personality. Though he had gradually drifted away from ordinary society, he liked watching snippets of strangers' daily lives from the sidelines.

He spat out the straw and tossed the empty yogurt carton toward the trash can beside him. Then, from the corner of his eye, Li Heng suddenly noticed a pure white mosquito resting on the back of his left hand. With his sharp senses, he had not felt it at all.

Without thinking, he slapped down with his right hand. When he lifted it, however, the mosquito's corpse was nowhere to be seen. Li Heng was slightly startled, but he soon put it out of his mind. After his late-night snack, he felt increasingly sleepy and had no interest in dwelling on it. He chalked it up to an illusion caused by his grogginess.

"One Two Three, turn off the lights. Time to sleep."

"Good night. Sweet dreams."

Li Heng took off his virtual glasses and tossed them onto the bedside table. One Two Three extinguished every light in the room, and Li Heng turned over and sank into a deep sleep.

In the darkness, where no one could see, that pure white mosquito remained quietly perched on Li Heng's hand. At some point, it suddenly flickered and blurred like television static after a signal cut out, then vanished. Li Heng frowned in his sleep.

The following morning, the sky beyond the window was gloomy, with lead-gray clouds pressing heavily against the horizon. A typhoon over the ocean had brought in vast amounts of moisture. Summers in the south always alternated between blazing sunshine and torrential rain.

Boom! Thunder exploded over the city as silvery-white lightning streaked across the sky. Then countless raindrops struck the window. Amid the pattering rain, the flashes of White Light in the thick clouds beyond, and the rolling thunder, Li Heng woke from his sleep.

Still bleary-eyed and half-awake, Li Heng sat blankly on the bed with his eyes open, staring fixedly at the white flashes filtering through a gap in the curtains.

He seemed to have dreamed all night. In his dream, he appeared to have remembered things from the past. High school, middle school, elementary school, kindergarten... countless scenes from the past swirled through his dreams. Memories that had grown increasingly blurry with age had all returned in a single night's sleep, making him feel as though he had relived more than twenty years of his life overnight.

As people grew and moved forward, the brain discarded countless seldom-used memories. Even after many years, only a handful of scenes remained deeply etched in one's mind.

Yet as Li Heng stared blankly at the white lightning before him, those memories continued flashing through his mind. He remembered the dim streetlamp and the pounding in his chest when he first kissed his girlfriend. His heartbeat then had been 123 beats per minute. He remembered being late on the first day of first grade. The female teacher in the classroom had worn a slightly translucent white short-sleeved shirt and looked at him with a gentle smile.

Boom! Another clap of thunder snapped Li Heng out of the endless memories in his mind. Gradually, light returned to his blank eyes.

"Lucy?" Having regained his ability to think, Li Heng immediately retrieved information about the film from the depths of his memories. After comparing them slightly, he shook his head. The character in the film had gained control over her body inside and out in an extremely short time, whereas Li Heng could not sense anything inside his own brain at all.

In fact, it was the exact opposite. Li Heng's brain now felt like the deepest black hole in an endless starry sky. He could not sense how he was thinking at all.

"Not only that, my body seems to be changing." As Li Heng became more alert, he effortlessly set the endless memories aside. Information from more than twenty years of his life no longer troubled him as it had in his dream.

"Electromagnetic waves. It's like wearing smart glasses." His nearsightedness had completely vanished, and he could even freely adjust his vision like a telescope or magnifying glass. More than that, he could no longer see only visible light. He could see electromagnetic waves of every frequency permeating the air, receive the information they contained, and turn his own will into radio signals to transmit outward.

At that moment, Li Heng was watching the remastered 3D version of Lucy, comparing the character in it with himself.

"There are similarities, but they're completely different." After sensing his body again for a moment, Li Heng reached several conclusions. The character in the film had been forced into evolution and gained control over her brain in an extremely short time. During the process, her cells showed signs of breaking free from control and developing autonomy. In the end, the protagonist could simultaneously sense the past, present, and future through every particle in the world, leaping from an ordinary human into an omnipotent God.

By comparison, Li Heng's mutation was much slower and manifested more in physical changes than in his brain. Or rather, he simply could not sense any internal structure of his brain at all.

Although he could clearly recall nearly all of his memories, just as in Lucy, his memories from infancy remained as hazy as before.

Yet that information was still available whenever he called for it, just as it had always been. Judging from its effects, it merely resembled an ordinary person's photographic memory, without countless trivial sensations assaulting his personality.

Though he could not understand the principles behind any of this, Li Heng could control his body as naturally as an inborn instinct, like a bird using its wings to fly or a fish using its gills to breathe. His control over his body had already exceeded human limits in the past, and now that control had only grown stronger.

"For example, like this." A flash of lightning outside illuminated the room for an instant. Li Heng threw a punch forward with his right hand as if he were in a virtual game. The airflow stirred up by the strike lifted his hair, then precisely blew the paper on the table into a trash can some distance away.

"Precisely controlling my strength to produce the intended action. Neural reaction time is under 0.01 seconds, punching speed exceeds 50 meters per second, one-arm strength exceeds one ton, and my physical durability has increased drastically. My bones are already stronger than ordinary steel."

A string of information flashed through Li Heng's mind in an instant. His physical abilities had already surpassed a third of what he had displayed in the game. Having lived in the virtual game world for so long, he had unconsciously guided his body toward this result during his sleep last night.

"The pure white mosquito, or something related to myself." Those were the two most likely causes. Li Heng himself had always possessed control abilities beyond those of ordinary humans, but his other physical traits had previously been no different from anyone else's. He had been nearsighted, would bleed if he fell and got hurt, and could only run one hundred meters in twelve seconds even when pushing himself to the limit.

The pure white mosquito was the more likely cause. After all, he had seen it last night, and abnormalities had appeared today. Unfortunately, after accessing the surveillance footage, Li Heng could not find it. He only saw himself being tormented in his sleep by the flood of memories, unable to rest properly.

"This is..." Li Heng's eyes remained connected to the network, and he was still continuously receiving the infinite knowledge and information of the virtual world. What he had known over the past twenty-plus years did not even amount to a drop in the ocean compared to all of Human Civilization. Judging by his current state, the more he knew, the stronger his abilities became.

"Mr. Li Heng, please report to the xxx Biological Gene Research Center at 1:00 p.m. today to cooperate with research."

It was a researcher from the center. Since the completion of the new auxiliary intelligence, they had not contacted Li Heng for several months.

"Usually nothing happens, but every major event gets crammed into just a few days. I really am like the protagonist of some story." Li Heng chuckled to himself. Whether he was the protagonist or not, he first had to face the difficulty before him.

"My body has undergone drastic changes, from my skin to my muscle structure. Those researchers won't fail to notice even that." Li Heng considered how he should respond. Though he had not turned from human into a God in nearly a single day like Lucy in the film, his thinking ability had indeed improved enormously compared to before. He had begun to think about problems using multiple threads.

And as he continued receiving more knowledge, this ability was still improving further. It allowed him to absorb knowledge faster than before. For example, in the few short minutes since waking up, he had already mastered the basic knowledge of a language, reaching the level of commonly used intelligent translation software. Everyday listening, speaking, reading, and writing posed no problem.

"I can't refuse to go. Although my physical abilities are strong now, close to an exoskeleton suit, my movements are already under close scrutiny because I'm involved with military secrets. If they discover I concealed something, I could even be brought before a court. Then I won't receive such good treatment anymore."

Li Heng seemed very free, but that freedom was limited to the largest city in the Southern Region. For instance, when he had gone to the farming district last time, he had needed to apply in advance. Only after receiving approval could he go, accompanied by personnel.

"As for running away, heh." Li Heng gave a soft laugh. He might seem powerful now, enough to fight a thousand men alone in ancient times, but in modern society, the drones in this city alone, along with their standard electromagnetic weapons, could blast him into nothing but scraps.

If they discovered that Li Heng, such a dangerous individual, was fleeing through a city packed with civilians, the Hong Alliance would not gamble on his moral character. They would rather kill by mistake than let him go. That would be far worse than simply being caught concealing the truth.

Those large drones could exceed 400 kilometers per hour. Their large-caliber rounds could pierce steel plates dozens of millimeters thick from a kilometer away. Combined with the signal monitoring and positioning systems spread throughout the city, those artificial intelligences could make autocannons shoot with the precision of sniper rifles. Even if his body were ten times stronger, he would not escape.

"What a pity. If only I had a brain on Lucy's level." Li Heng clicked his tongue. At present, he could only directly observe, receive, and transmit electromagnetic waves, along with possessing photographic memory. Put plainly, it was merely the ability to have a high-end pair of smart glasses built into his body.

Against behemoths like the Hong Alliance and the Free Business Alliance, he had no way to deal with those heavily encrypted electromagnetic signals. The online world was fundamentally still a contest of computing power. For now, he could only browse the knowledge and information on the surface web.

Once Li Heng dismissed the thought of fleeing, he actually felt relieved. Precisely because he was an involved party did he understand the terror of the Hong Alliance all the more clearly.

Though he had gained abilities beyond ordinary people overnight, Li Heng would not lose his head and shout that his fate was his own to decide, not Heaven's. It would be foolish to become so arrogant that he tried to break free of every rule, then use his own strength to confront the entire Hong Alliance while still weak.

Most of the weapons were merely outdated products the military had phased out decades ago. The latest equipment was not available at all. Wars between major powers had not erupted for a long time. The weapons familiar to people now were all those the Hong Alliance and the Commercial Alliance had retired and exported to smaller nations and warlords.