DNA Sequencing

The atmosphere at the party was lively, with many people actively participating in the performances. Younier and Rupert's singing voices were quite good, surprising many people.

Su Ming encouraged Zijin to go up and sing a song as well.

"No, I can only sing hymns," Zijin refused, a faint blush rising on the girl's fair cheeks after drinking some fruit wine. "That's too embarrassing!"

"But I hear you sing folk songs, they're really beautiful."

No matter how much you try to fool me, I won't go on stage!

But the scholar was visibly in a good mood, and at everyone's enthusiastic invitation, she went on stage to participate in an interactive game. In the "Pictionary" game, she won by perfectly matching the literal meaning of the words, beating out the unicorn.

The grand finale of the gala was a stage play rehearsed by the students of the First Construction Regiment.

The story revolves around an aspiring necromancer who, in order to Apprentice his magic, borrows money from loan sharks and then works three jobs a day, taking on all sorts of quests that others would avoid in order to pay off his debts.

After ten years of diligent work, the young necromancer finally mastered his skills, met a beautiful young woman, and started a happy family.

However, the plot takes a sharp turn for the worse— the Temple of Light suddenly issues an arrest warrant for all necromancers, the protagonist's friends and family are killed one after another, and he himself becomes a prisoner.

The emotional students began hurling hard-boiled eggs at Benedict, who was playing the villain, forcing him to erect a magical shield so he could finish the last scene.

Su Ming was surprised to see Zijin sitting next to him wipe the corner of her eye with her finger.

Noticing that Su Ming was watching, Zijin clenched her fist and lightly punched him.

Because there was still a lot of work scheduled for the next day, Su Ming announced the end of the party at 11 o'clock, even though everyone was still reluctant to leave.

Together with Princess Dafulin and Newman, he brought prepared food boxes to visit the staff who were unable to attend the party due to their shifts at the tunnel construction site.

"Old New York, where did you spend the night last night?" Su Ming asked mischievously.

"We're just having an academic discussion!" Newman scoffed. "What do you think a skeleton can do?"

"Yes, that's why I'm curious too!"

"..."

****

Zijin hummed a song softly as she walked lightly back to her room. She had worked up a lot of sweat in her painting contest with Qiluo, and the unicorn's hooves were getting harder and harder to bend. She wanted to take a hot bath.

The girl took a comfortable set of pajamas from the closet and began to take off her clothes.

As she took off the last layer, she felt something snag on a thread of her clothes.

Zijin reached out in surprise and touched it, discovering a small patch of unusual roughness below her collarbone. She immediately went to the dressing mirror to examine it closely, and on the skin in the center of her chest, geometric patterns with a metallic sheen were faintly visible.

"Scales?!"

Zijin's expression changed drastically. She leaned closer to the mirror and confirmed that four small, keratinous scales had grown there.

The girl's left eye glowed blue. After examining it from head to toe with Omniscience Vision, no similar abnormality was found elsewhere.

Why are there scales here? Zijin felt very uneasy.

Shouldn't Ailisha's form be purely human?

****

After the visit, Su Ming dealt with several equipment malfunctions at the construction sites. When he returned to the living quarters covered in the smell of engine oil, he was surprised to find Zijin still sitting by the window in the aisle.

Moonlight streamed through the car window, illuminating the scholar in a light grass-colored loungewear set, the soft fabric gleaming warmly under the lamplight. An old-fashioned book lay open on her lap, her slender fingers casually turning the pages, while her other hand rested on her chin, her gaze thoughtfully fixed on the night outside the window.

"It's so late, why aren't you resting yet?" Su Ming asked in surprise.

Zijin closed her book, looked up, and said, "I've been waiting for you. There's something I want to discuss."

Su Ming glanced at the book title; it was a philosophical story set in another world, titled "The Ship of Theseus."

He glanced at his dirty coat and decided to go back to his room first, saying, "Let me change my clothes."

"No need, just a few words." Zijin stood up, holding a book to her chest with one hand. "When we fought the Plundering Clock last time, we collected their biological samples—I want to perform genetic sequencing analysis on them."

"It's indeed not a complicated matter." Su Ming nodded. "Sure, we don't have much to do these days, so we can get started."

The equipment needed for biological experiments requires the use of special materials for construction. But that doesn't matter; it can be disassembled after gene sequencing is completed, and it won't affect subsequent combat plans.

"But why did you suddenly think of this?" Su Ming asked, puzzled.

Gene sequencing was already on the work plan. If the Plundering Clock's genes have significant specificity, it can indeed lead to some important conclusions; but if the similarity is high, it is difficult to obtain valuable information.

Therefore, Su Ming lowered the priority of this task.

"There are some conjectures I want to verify immediately," Zijin replied.

Su Ming paced back and forth a couple of times, pondering for a moment. "Synthesizing only the sample from the Plundering Clock isn't enough," he added. "We also need to collect DNA from other humans in this world for comparative studies—I think First Construction Regiment would be very suitable."

"Alright." Zijin nodded. "I'll arrange the sample collection."

After finishing their discussion, the girl prepared to return to her room.

"Um," Su Ming called out to Zijin, "Something that could be explained in a few words could have been done with a message." He said, puzzled, "There's no need to wait here to say it."

Zijin's lowered eyelashes obscured her eyes. "I'm a little excited tonight, can't sleep." Her voice was so soft it almost blended into the night outside the window. "I was just waiting for you."

"I see." Su Ming nodded.

Although he felt something was off, he didn't press the matter further.

"Good night!"

"Good night."

****

The next day, inside the experimental vehicle, Su Ming activated the teleportation system. Scattered materials were assembled on the table, and more than a dozen biological experimental devices appeared as requested.

Although there are many varieties, none of them are very large.

A filter fan installed on the top of the carriage is working at full capacity to reduce the concentration of suspended particles in the laboratory air.

Zijin put on gloves, took out eight small, cryopreserved sample vials, and neatly arranged them on the shelf. These were biological samples of enemy human members collected after the battle of the Him Cavern.

She took out two items numbered 1 and 2, which were labeled with the names of Saint Rank Abigai and Earth Grand Magus Mentor Ruogejin, respectively.

Su Ming opened the video tutorial on the tablet and started playing the gene sequencing operation process.

"DNA sample pretreatment." Zijin took a clump of minced meat from sample number 1. "I'm pretreatment of Abigai's."

Su Ming then picked up the sample labeled with Ruogejin's name. Following the instructions, he carefully used sterile tweezers to pick out a small piece of tissue, placed it in a pre-cooled mortar, and carefully ground it into a fine powder.

The powder was then poured into a centrifuge tube, buffer solution and proteinase K were added, and the tube was placed in a 56°C water bath to wait for lysis.

He put down the test tube and stretched his shoulders, surprised to find that the female scholar beside him had already processed five samples and was now picking up sample number 7 and beginning to grind it.

"Why are you so fast at operating these things?" Su Ming asked, puzzled. "You only started learning these things today!"

"Who said this is my first time doing this?" Zijin didn't even look up, continuing to focus on her hands. "I often do similar experiments; many things are interconnected."

Su Ming understood that she was referring to alchemical experiments. Realizing that these experiments did indeed involve a large number of reagents, he finally understood.

****

According to the tutorial, isothermal lysis of gene samples takes one to two hours, Su Ming started scrolling through the video to see the next steps.

Zijin quickly finished processing the eighth sample. Finding the video tutorial too slow, she directly opened the document instructions and began studying them. Su Ming glanced at her and noticed that the scholar's reading speed was astonishing.

"You can understand all these technical terms?" Su Ming tried to read them himself, but it was like reading a book written in a foreign language.

"No problem," Zijin replied. "The principle of DNA sequencing is very similar to the underlying logic of some of my spells."

Su Ming pondered for a moment, "For example, the fetal malformation detection technique you invented?"

"That's not typical," Zijin shook her head. "A better example is the 'bloodline analysis' I used on Little Tuanzi, which analyzes whether his DNA homozygosity is too high to determine if he is Katharine and Xialike's child—but magic can't do what your technology can, analyzing the entire genetic chain into data."

Su Ming couldn't help but feel ashamed; he had no idea what Zijin meant by "purity".

"You didn't read through all the biological genetics materials I gave you before, did you?"

"Yes!" Zijin picked up a device from the equipment box, a device not much bigger than a USB flash drive. "I was so excited back then! This tiny nanopore sequencer can complete a sequence in 10 minutes, with a single-shot accuracy of 97%, and boasts megabase read lengths and terabase throughput—it's amazing!"

"... You learned so fast!?" Su Ming was utterly shocked.

He understood every single word Zijin spoke, but he couldn't recognize them all together—was he from Earth, or was Zijin from Earth?

"I'm a biology scholar!" Zijin looked completely bewildered. "When it comes to things in my own field, of course I have to study them with all my might—didn't you already know that?"

"Wait, let me sort this out." Su Ming made a pause gesture.

This scholar's famous research began with biological genetics in mice, and she pioneered the field of fetal malformation.

During his journey, Su Ming frequently saw the papers she had written, such as "Observation, Research and Experimental Methods of Liches in Burning Transformation", "A Preliminary Study on the Invasion and Countermeasures of Otherworldly Viruses", "On the Role and Mutation of the Cradle of the Sea in Low-Autonomy Biological Combat", "A Study on the Destructive Development of Zombie-like Creatures", and "A Study on the Wave Principle of Necromancers"...

They're all biology-related!

"So after all this commotion, today is the only time I've encountered something that's actually relevant to my major?" Su Ming's feelings were hard to describe.

They've been unstoppable, killing everything in their path. Now you tell them the card they drew was a research card, and a part-time one at that!

The prestige of the Titled Scholar" is terrifyingly high!

"I didn't really think so," Zijin replied. "Sea monsters and zombies are part of my job. Besides, in our world, specializations aren't as detailed and complex as on Earth; scholars are usually jacks-of-all-trades."

"... Then why are you so unfamiliar with healing techniques?" Su Ming asked, puzzled.

"Because I've never used it before," Zijin said matter-of-factly. "That was the first time I'd ever tried casting the Fear of Illness spell—if I hadn't had some theoretical knowledge, you would have been dead by now!"

Su Ming had always thought Zijin was an inexperienced doctor, but she was actually a biology professor, studying medical textbooks on the spot!

"But you clearly said at the time that you failed your elective therapy course?"

"I only said that to comfort you," Zijin smiled slyly. "I can't receive light-based healing myself, so I never touched any of these things when I was at the Temple of Light Academy!"

"..."

****

After Zijin finished browsing the text tutorial and skipped through some of the instructional videos, Su Ming didn't need to do anything else with her.

She violated regulations by simultaneously holding five test tubes with one hand, deftly injecting the magnetic bead solution, then vortexing to mix, centrifuging at low speed, and finally placing them on a magnetic rack to elute with ethanol.

After several rounds of operations, Zijin used a pipette to load the sample onto the nanopore wafer and started the sequencing equipment.

During this time, Younier delivered hair samples collected from the students of the First Construction Regiment Academy, which were packaged into more than a hundred small bags.

The Zijin straightened them out and arranged them neatly on the sample rack, then began processing them according to their numbers.

Watching the young female scholar quickly familiarize herself with the equipment and its operation, Su Ming realized that he was superfluous.

"I have to take care of other work," he said to Zijin. "If you have any questions, you can ask Miao Xin."

"Wait a minute." Zijin called out to him, then quickly reached into Su Ming's hair cap and plucked a small tuft of hair.

Su Ming winced in pain and took a step back. "What are you doing?"

"Let me test your sequence while I'm at it," Zijin replied casually, while washing the hair she had removed.

"My genes don't need to be tested at all," Su Ming said, rubbing his scalp. "The genetic sequences of humans on Earth have already been analyzed very clearly; we can just compare them directly to the database."

"Just consider it satisfying a scholar's curiosity," said Zijin.

Su Ming shook his head and left the laboratory through a double-isolation door.

Behind her, Zijin pinched Su Ming's hair and cut the hair follicle into a centrifuge tube. Then she injected lysis buffer and began water bath lysis.

As she operated the machine, her expression gradually faded. She watched the flashing DNA sequencer, Abigai and others' genes were being rapidly sequenced.

Suddenly, Zijin reached out and pulled out a dozen or so strands of her hair. Under the laboratory lights, the light brown hair shimmered with a soft sheen.

The girl gripped her hair with slightly more force. After a long while, she made up her mind and began processing her sample.

"Am I... even human?" she murmured to herself.