Rasputin's Inspiring Journey (Revised)

After sleeping for a while, Liu Chang'an woke up and found that he had received many messages.

"Bai Hui looks especially beautiful today, and she's wearing 10cm heels, so she's only a little shorter than me."

"That Tao Peiyuan really does have double eyelids; Miao Yingying is prettier than her."

"What are you doing? Why aren't you replying to my texts? I've noticed Bai Hui checking her phone every now and then. I wonder who she's texting and waiting for a reply?"

Tao Peiyuan is actually a very nice person.

Actually, Tao Peiyuan is more attractive than Miao Yingying.

These are messages from An Nuan... Liu Chang'an didn't see how attractive Tao Peiyuan, but he could tell that Tao Peiyuan was very smart. Bai Hui clearly wouldn't have any good feelings towards her, so she won over An Nuan's favor.

Women!

Bai Hui only sent Liu Chang'an one photo, which was of An Nuan today. An Nuan faced the camera confidently, and it wasn't even a candid shot.

An Nuan looks stunning in the photo. Bai Hui also did some editing, adding filters and adjusting the colors, making An Nuan, who is already very photogenic, exude a dreamy and beautiful girl vibe.

But... from this angle... how come An Nuan looks so wealthy? She owns an airport at such a young age.

Women...

After eating snake at noon, Liu Chang'an didn't head to Xiangtan University until the afternoon. He didn't go to find Gao Dewei and the others, but went directly to Su Nanxiu's base.

Su Nanxiu always seemed to have two outfits: a long coat and a skirt for class, and a white work uniform and glasses for the underground base, making her seem like a simple, genius girl obsessed with natural science.

Su Nanxiu and Shangguan Dandan are about the same height and have some similarities, but in Liu Chang'an's eyes, they are more different. Compared to Shangguan Dandan is a girl with a simple life, but she is obsessed with thermos flasks, electric heating tables, and televisions.

Su Nanxiu is examining the results of the GST sedimentation experiment, an in vitro method for examining protein-protein interactions, which has both obvious advantages and disadvantages.

"What's going on?" Liu Chang'an didn't look at the experimental report in Su Nanxiu's hand... In cases like this, it usually requires one experiment after another. The experimental data and conclusions cannot be drawn by one person just by flipping through them. Thanks to the advancement of modern storage technology, unlike before, the data from a large-scale comprehensive experiment can no longer fill an entire room.

"I'm sure Li Hongfang has already told you about her understanding of Rasputin, and how our lab exchanged Rasputin's remains for the museum." Su Nanxiu stretched, looking a little tired, but her eyes still shone brightly.

"Hmm, one..." Liu Chang'an nodded.

"Have you been...?"

"No."

Su Nanxiu smiled gently, "See, we're quite in sync. I hadn't even finished speaking before you knew what I was thinking."

"Because I felt you really wanted to cut me off. That's not called tacit understanding, that's called a crisis warning." Liu Chang'an smiled as well.

"It seems like a fairly normal thought, at least you could come up with it, so it's not anything surprising." Su Nanxiu pressed her long, slender, fair fingers to her temples and gently rubbed them, seemingly unable to recall anything for the moment. She then consulted the knowledgeable Liu Chang'an, "Was there any shrew in history who was castrated because her husband was a womanizer and neglected his wife at home?"

"I don't know," Liu Chang'an said, cupping his hands in a respectful gesture.

"There definitely is."

"Yes, there definitely are, but... if you want to copy it exactly, do you have a knife that sharp enough?"

"Give it a try?"

"That's not necessary."

Su Nanxiu withdrew her casually appraising gaze. It was just a joke; really, who would want to castrate him?

"At the time, based on samples taken by myself and Mrs. Karnstein as control specimens, we did not find the same marker in Rasputin's cell tissue... We named it the RNA fragment ZR75-1." Su Nanxiu stopped joking.

"In other words, Rasputin and I have no biological lineage." Liu Chang'an was happy to accept this result. Considering the reasons for the mutations of Su Nanxiu, Mrs. Karnstein, Shangguan Dandan, Qin Yanan, and others, or rather, the mutation induction process, it would be a bit awkward if Rasputin also had the same RNA fragment marker.

"Yes."

"But isn't ZR75-1 a type of breast cancer cell?" Liu Chang'an was puzzled by Su Nanxiu's naming method.

"When we got the results, we were conducting a radioactive gel migration experiment, which used these breast cancer cells."

"That's a truly scientific way of naming things."

"This means that Rasputin followed a parallel evolutionary path to you. Based on our research over the years, we have simulated his original form and evolutionary trajectory."

As Su Nanxiu spoke, she walked out of the laboratory and into a conference room next door, where a 300-inch laser theater system was set up. In addition to displaying video data, it was also excellent for watching TV. She thought that Shangguan Dandan would probably want to take it for herself if she saw it.

Su Nanxiu played a diagram illustrating Rasputin's evolutionary stages.

"We discovered that Rasputin's earliest form was a bear, which can be corroborated by the presence of a virus, GRN78, in his RNA. This virus only exists in ancient Siberian brown bears... I have a team that specializes in studying biological remains in permafrost, and they have confirmed this. This virus is not found in any other species except for Siberian brown bears from a specific period," Su Nanxiu explained, pointing to Rasputin's first stage.

"In ancient times... roughly which era?" Liu Chang'an asked with concern.

"Generally, 'ancient times' refers to before the 21st century BC, which is between 3 million and 4,000 years ago—a very large span." Su Nanxiu was a little puzzled. Wasn't this common knowledge?

"Oh, I thought the ancient times were 2 billion years ago. I don't think there were any Siberian brown bears back then." Liu Chang'an nodded to show he understood.

"For a considerable period thereafter, this bear lived in North Asia and the Arctic Circle... The GGTC mutation in its oligonucleotide A changed to GTAC, indicating that it successfully transformed from a Siberian brown bear into a polar bear during this period."

"Does its limited range of activity also indicate that its individual abilities are not particularly outstanding? Although it has the ability to transform its biological characteristics in the face of external environments, it does not have sufficient self-protection capabilities in the face of certain extinction-level natural disasters, such as mega-earthquakes, global volcanic eruptions, asteroid impacts, etc.? Therefore, it is accustomed to living in limited, familiar geographical environments."

Liu Chang'an's memory is just like that of ordinary humans. Even though some things have become blurry because they are too distant and it is difficult to make out the details, there are always some scenes that are particularly clear.

The violent tectonic plate movements, the rising mountains, the ripped trenches, and the volcanic eruptions that symbolized the power of the Earth—which once wiped out 99 percent of life on Earth—were the most desperate loneliness Liu Chang'an had ever experienced.

The species system and ecosystems that followed were completely different, as if a new world had been born.

"In the kind of disaster you described, no creature could protect itself. However, its behavior does show that at this moment, it only possesses an exceptionally long lifespan and a strong physique, but is ultimately just an animal following its instincts, lacking the powerful inner strength to match... Afterwards, it continued to live as a top predator in Earth's food chain until it became a human and began to live among humans, until modern times." Su Nanxiu looked at Liu Chang'an, hesitating to speak.

"What do you want to say?" Liu Chang'an turned around and noticed Su Nanxiu's hesitation.

"We have no way to reconstruct the process of it transforming from a bear into a human... and... after it became human, it might have had the ability to reproduce, unlike you." Su Nanxiu unconsciously touched her lower abdomen, her eyes filled with a hint of resentment. "What I mean is, it can reproduce with ordinary human females... but you can only reproduce with women who have undergone mutations. In this respect, it proves that you are ahead of it in the evolutionary sequence. After all, the more advanced the organism, the rarer and more demanding the conditions for reproduction."

"That's impressive." Liu Chang'an wasn't particularly envious; he simply found it very inspiring that a bear could transform into a human and rise from an ordinary creature to a king.