Island Life

Three months later.

The September South China Sea remained hot and humid. As the sea breeze blew through Li Heng's significantly longer, messy hair, he had gradually grown accustomed to the scent of the salty, damp air.

At this moment, he was squatting on a protruding coral reef, wearing beach shorts and flip-flops, holding an oval-shaped metal lunchbox while shoveling egg-fried rice into his mouth.

Suddenly, he reached out his left hand to pick up a small pebble from the ground. With a flick of his wrist, he flung it out. A faint sound of air being pierced rang out, and the pebble struck a grouper, which had its fin slightly poking above the water, like a bullet from over ten meters away.

The pebble pierced through its fin, and the grouper, missing a portion of its body, struggled and rolled on the surface. Li Heng picked up his fishing rod from beside him and cast it; the hook at the end precisely pierced into its body.

Retrieving the line, Li Heng placed the grouper into a bucket nearby, where a few other fish were still flopping about. This was the harvest from his mealtime; he provided for himself, and these would be his dinner.

After finishing the egg-fried rice in a few bites, Li Heng stood up, picked up his fishing rod and bucket, and strolled slowly toward the base. If not for the automatic machine guns nearby, an uninformed observer might have thought he was here on vacation.

Passing through the winding corridors to return to his quarters, no one spoke to him along the way. However, the personnel inside the base no longer treated him with extreme vigilance or kept their distance; he was now free to wander the island.

Li Heng's cooperative behavior was one aspect, but the main reason was that the bacterial mutation problem, which had been the primary concern, had not occurred. On the contrary, the bacteria inside Li Heng's body were becoming fewer and fewer; they were being continuously wiped out.

Bacteria account for 90% of all living cells in the human body. In every person's body, there are roughly 500 to 1,000 different species of bacteria, which can multiply into about 100 trillion individual cells in an adult—approximately 10 times the total number of human somatic cells.

Bacteria have a significant impact on human activity. On one hand, bacteria are pathogens for many diseases, including tuberculosis, gonorrhea, anthrax, syphilis, plague, and trachoma.

On the other hand, the bacterial community, composed of microbial cells and the genes they contain, not only does not harm human health but is actually beneficial, helping the body with digestion, growth, and defense.

After 200,000 years of evolution, the bacterial community and immune cells within the human body have reached a state of peaceful coexistence. The human body is not a self-sufficient, isolated island.

It is more like a complex ecosystem, a vast society.

The mutation of Li Heng's body caused the internal environment to become vastly different from the past, yet these tiny organisms did not display their usual tenacious vitality.

Inside his body, the variety of bacteria had dropped to fewer than one hundred species. Aside from common bacteria like Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron, many small organisms had vanished from his system. Today, bacteria account for less than half of all the cells in his body.

This result shocked the researchers. It meant that Li Heng might form a sterile environment within his body in the near future, and his immune system would kill any foreign organisms that did not belong to this body. His body was transitioning from a symbiotic ecosystem to a truly self-sufficient, individual life form.

Back in his room, Li Heng connected to the internet as usual, casually browsing headlines and checking netizen comments.

On this island, he could only receive unencrypted external signals within this room; all other areas were shielded.

He could now crack some simple signal encryptions and even transmit small amounts of data externally. However, he remained helpless against military-grade encrypted signals.

A strand of hair in front of his forehead twisted into various shapes, from simple rings to complex towers, dancing and transforming as if it were a living tentacle.

In three months, Li Heng's memory capacity had expanded dozens of times, which further enhanced his control.

Human hair is less than 100 microns in diameter, and for ordinary people, it consists of keratinized epithelial cells—dead cells. Li Heng's hair, however, consisted of living cells; they were now like slender, dancing fiber-optic cables capable of transmitting and receiving signals.

Li Heng could now achieve precise control at this scale. According to his calculations, his memory capacity increased by about 4% daily. As long as there was a sufficient source of ordered information, his memory would expand over a thousand times every six months.

At the current pace, in less than half a year, he would be able to achieve control at the cellular level. At that point, he would be able to directly manipulate specific cells, and conventional human weapons would no longer pose a threat to him.

The human body is a precise whole; a change in one place causes changes elsewhere. Li Heng's body could undergo reasonable evolution as he consumed information without suffering genetic collapse.

However, he had previously only been able to control his macroscopic physical manifestations. He could not grasp the microscopic level—the ten-micron cells or the nano-scale genes—which meant even he did not know why his body was undergoing these changes.

It was like the countless animals in nature or humans in ancient times. They did not know their bodies were composed of countless cells, nor did they understand the principles of the nervous system, yet they were naturally able to control their bodies freely.

The biological brain receives countless complex signals from all over the body and then converts this information, which exceeds the processing power of supercomputers, into simple information that the surface consciousness can understand, such as pain or hunger.

Even though Li Heng's memory capacity now exceeded that of an ordinary person by a millennium, he still could not delve into the cellular level to master those complex signals. The smaller the matter and the more numerous the quantity, the more chaotic and complex the information it transmits.

A small mosquito flew past his eyes. A strand of hair on Li Heng's forehead swept across it rapidly, and a tiny electric current scorched it. The hair flicked, tossing the mosquito's carcass into the trash can on the floor.

Afterward, these two strands of hair began to spar with each other, sometimes forming rock-paper-scissors, sometimes sparking with tiny electric arcs, as if they possessed life and self-awareness.

Li Heng's multi-threaded thinking had matured; such tasks of multitasking in a dozen ways had become effortless. A few days ago, he began to delve into body control below 100 microns, and now he was using this hair-sparring method to get used to the sensation.

When the day came that he could easily control the 100,000 strands of hair on his head to perform different actions, perhaps he would be able to enter the cellular realm.

Besides his hair, certain parts of his skin across his body were also trembling slightly; that was the internal current passing through those areas, stimulating the skin to vibrate.

Since delving further into the microscopic realm, tiny mites invisible to the naked eye of ordinary humans had become clearly perceptible. Feeling the dense swarm of bugs on his body, Li Heng directly increased the current on his skin surface, scorching and killing all those little things.

Unfortunately, they were like weeds on a prairie—impossible to kill off completely. Thus, Li Heng maintained a certain intensity of current in specific areas at all times.

Fortunately, since his mutation, his brain had never felt fatigue. Although he could still choose to sleep, his multi-threaded thinking allowed him to maintain his assault on those tiny bugs even while most of his thoughts ceased to function.

In the quiet room, only the two sparring hairs on Li Heng's forehead made faint clicking sounds like a lighter. Suddenly, the voice of One Two Three rang out: "Notification: Proceed to the laboratory in one hour to assist with research. Please prepare in advance."

The two strands of hair went limp as if they had lost their vitality, sticking to Li Heng's forehead. He went to the second floor, opened a small door on the left wall, and pulled out a special black wire.

The tip of the wire was a sharp, needle-like metal head; this was something Li Heng had asked the base personnel to make for him.

He lay on his side on the bed and inserted the wire directly into his left waist, connecting it straight to his kidney. His extreme control over his skin and muscles allowed him to endure this injury with ease; his blood vessels constricted, and his rapidly regenerating cells left not even a trace of blood at the wound.

Li Heng's body was undoubtedly still subject to the conservation of energy. His strength, dozens of times that of an ordinary person, meant his energy consumption also increased exponentially. Fortunately, his brain consumed absolutely no energy; otherwise, at his speed of thought, his brain would consume more energy than his body.

If he remained in a calm state without strenuous exercise, Li Heng's actual consumption was not high—only about three times that of an ordinary person. The energy stored in his body was enough to last him a month without needing to eat.

However, if he engaged in heavy exercise or repaired his body from severe injury, the energy required would increase exponentially. An average adult consumes about 8 megajoules of heat per day, while Li Heng's 24-hour energy consumption peaked at nearly 300 megajoules, or about 80 kilowatt-hours—more than thirty times that of a normal person.

This much energy was enough to power an ordinary electric vehicle for hundreds of kilometers. If he relied solely on eating rice to replenish his energy, Li Heng would have to consume over fifty kilograms of rice. Even with his excellent digestive system, going to the bathroom would be too much of a hassle.

Therefore, he had the staff help him connect this wire so he could charge up every night when he returned to sleep.

Over the past three months, every experiment required Li Heng to consume a massive amount of energy, and a large amount of his body tissue was removed; it was normal to lose several kilograms in a single experiment.

At the beginning, the researchers were hesitant, as he was the only immortal individual.

Later, they discovered that the speed at which Li Heng's body repaired itself was terrifying. As long as there were sufficient nutrients and energy, the removed body tissue would regenerate in a very short time.

For instance, regarding the blood that was extracted the most, Li Heng had to have several hundred milliliters drawn every day after arriving on the island, yet this had no effect on his body whatsoever.

One hour later, inside the laboratory.

The needle at the tip of the mechanical arm withdrew blood from inside Li Heng's body and deposited it into a blood bag for storage. This blood was one of the most important research materials; every sample was sent to laboratories across the Hong Alliance for analysis and study, which was why even though Li Heng's cells could reproduce infinitely, blood still had to be constantly drawn from him.

His body was covered in many small white particles of dry ice, which emitted wisps of white smoke across the surface of his skin.

Low temperatures could suppress the autonomous division rate of Li Heng's body cells while simultaneously reducing the sensation of pain.

Conventional chemical anesthetics were almost useless on Li Heng's body; they would be identified as harmful substances by his immune system and subsequently have their molecular structures destroyed. Researchers could only influence his body's repair process through external physical methods.

With his chest cavity opened, several mechanical arms removed some visceral tissue from inside Li Heng, the low temperature making them appear somewhat sluggish in their reactions.

Li Heng, meanwhile, controlled his internal organs, slowing their movements and suppressing blood flow, while simultaneously obliterating the pain signals being transmitted to his brain.

Pain was an automatic warning when the body was injured; these electrical signals surged from the injured area to the brain, something Li Heng did not yet have the ability to actively control.

As the volume of information in his brain increased, Li Heng's perception of every part of his body became much clearer than that of an ordinary person, which meant his sensitivity to pain was also several times sharper than a normal human's.

However, his brain's high-speed thinking and information obliteration allowed him to crush those sensations the moment they arrived; the result was that Li Heng, who should have been in more pain than an ordinary person, was instead able to feel no pain at all.

This was also why Li Heng was willing to let the experimental staff manipulate him; he wouldn't feel pain anyway, and the missing organs could be replenished in the time it took to eat a meal.

No one discovered the abnormality of Li Heng's brain; it looked just as ordinary yet mysterious as any other human brain.

Nearly an hour later, all the mechanical arms retracted, and the cells suppressed by the low temperature began to repair his body.

The energy stored within his body was utilized, and the nutrients flowing into his blood from the IV drip were converted at high speed. Cells at the wound site divided rapidly, and the blood surging from his internal organs turned into solidified, fine threads that bonded them together; it would not take long for his body to return to its original, undamaged state.