Genetic Evolution

Lin Jia frowned. "You should still go back home. A gentleman does not stand beneath a crumbling wall."

This atmosphere of confrontation had spread through public opinion from Washington all the way to rural Tennessee.

The personal risks here were enormous, especially if you really achieved something remarkable.

From the perspective of high-tech industries alone, the domestic startup environment was also good. There were plenty of institutions back home willing to invest in top talent like you. At worst, I could provide some startup funding myself.

You just need to think carefully about the exact direction."

Chen Yuanguang teased, "I never expected you to consider that. Weren't you the one who had always wanted to come to America to study?

Why did you suddenly bring this up?"

Lin Jia raised an eyebrow. "For someone like me who studies finance, I'm basically a walking bag of gold coins to America, just waiting for them to farm me.

I'll definitely be fine coming here.

And I'm in New York. Safety in New York's Rich Neighborhood was still fairly guaranteed.

You were different. Right now, you were basically a white-name NPC. Your research results were all theoretical, so there was no risk for the time being.

But if you really produced some earth-shattering results that could be put into practice, you'd turn into a yellow-name NPC. The moment your intention or desire to return home was exposed, you'd instantly become a red-name NPC. By then, the danger level would shoot straight up.

If you had any recent inspiration or ideas, don't act on them yet. Wait until you get your doctoral degree from MIT, graduate, and return home.

As people online would put it, develop cautiously and don't get cocky."

Lin Jia sighed. "Yuanguang, I really never expected you to have such talent for scientific research. If I'd known you were this talented at it, I would rather have stayed in China for graduate school than come all the way to Columbia University.

Now, both of us should keep a low profile and just wait until graduation."

Chen Yuanguang nodded first, then shook his head. "Um, I still have a paper on viruses to publish. I'll keep a low profile after that paper comes out.

It's just that the paper will have an enormous impact. It may very well cause pharmaceutical companies to lose a great deal of money—not by making them suffer losses, but by preventing them from earning the money they otherwise would have made."

Lin Jia asked in confusion, "Won't the virus soon be controlled by the Broad-spectrum Vaccine? When I was in China, I saw domestic media give your work extremely high praise. The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg also gave your research results very positive reviews.

They believed that the pandemic could be fundamentally contained in a short time.

Including the Nasdaq Index, S&P 500, FTSE 100, DAX, and other indexes, all of them surged and broadly recovered on the second day after the news of your Science publication had fully fermented.

Why did you still have another paper to publish?"

Chen Yuanguang explained, "Because the only major powers capable of designing and producing Broad-spectrum Vaccines were Europe, America, and China. They could design and manufacture them based on my research results.

But for the vast number of countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, they lacked the ability to design and manufacture them themselves. Or even if they could, it would take a very long time. Their markets would be occupied by multinational pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer and AstraZeneca.

That would mean not everyone in those countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America could afford vaccination.

What I wanted was to use vaccines to guide the virus's evolution in a general direction, gradually weakening its toxicity. That way, even if only some people could get vaccinated, the strains circulating worldwide would also gradually become less toxic, until they were even milder than influenza.

If I achieved that result, pharmaceutical companies' interests would be severely harmed."

Chen Yuanguang felt that his previous achievements had only benefited some people, while he hoped more of his achievements could benefit everyone.

Lin Jia felt a tremor of having not misjudged him. Chen Yuanguang's concern for the world moved her deeply.

What he had already accomplished was enough, yet he still considered the many people who could not afford expensive Broad-spectrum Vaccines and hoped to do more.

Chen Yuanguang did not think of it as concern for the world. He simply felt that since he possessed the ability to travel to the future, greater ability came with greater responsibility. He should do what he could, rather than produce results that merely generated profits for those multinational pharmaceutical companies.

Lin Jia took a deep breath to calm herself, then said, "Even if you develop it, pharmaceutical companies won't design vaccines according to your plan.

They'll still make Broad-spectrum Vaccines. As for the vaccines you want that would direct the virus to mutate in a specific way, they'll claim they're researching them, while actually delaying development as much as possible, or even refusing to develop them outright.

If you want to work on this, you'll have to return home and cooperate with China, letting China's state-owned enterprises help carry it out.

For China, ending the pandemic and returning to an era where resources, people, and information flowed freely around the world would matter far more than the profits from vaccines."

Lin Jia continued, "Since you have such an idea, we can start preparing to return home. I'll arrange a chartered flight and contact China. We can begin after we get back.

It wouldn't be safe to produce results here now, either."

After speaking with Lin Jia, Chen Yuanguang realized that America was not safe. As he lay in bed that night, he silently recited, Go to the future.

In the blink of an eye, he arrived in Kuala Lumpur several centuries later, lying in a student dormitory at the University of Malaya. The texture of the blanket, the room's decor, the computer and virtual helmet on the desk, and the virtual imaging screen beside the bed all told him that this was already the future.

Chen Yuanguang glanced at the timestamp in the lower-right corner of the virtual imaging screen by the bed. It was 12:30.

"I was gone for three months, but only around twenty minutes passed here.

The difference in the flow of time was far too great."

He had come to the future midway through to consult materials and look for inspiration.

After finding a line of thought, Chen Yuanguang left the future and spent three months in the modern era.

"Chen Yonglin, Shi Huilan, Samad, the Chen family—who would know how humanity evolved itself?" Chen Yuanguang thought.

He had spent nearly half a year in the future, and Chen Yuanguang discovered that four hundred years later, the average human lifespan had already extended to 120 years. Why was there no news of genetic evolution or a leap in human genes?

Logically speaking, humanity had been conducting genetic research even in the modern era. Four hundred years later, with AI—and super AI like Alpha—supporting them, humanity should have made tremendous advances in genetics.

He had discovered that undercurrents were surging beneath the surface in America. Chen Yuanguang hoped to obtain some technology to use in the modern era, something that could strengthen him and at least give him basic means of self-defense.

Why had he not seen anything related to this in public news?

Chen Yuanguang thought for a moment, sat down at the desk, opened the computer, and entered Pangu's website, intending to ask the AI first.