Chapter 39

“Anger…is it?” Hong Qi Hua faintly muttered under her breath.

“I just woke up, so I’m not familiar with the things inside the base. Why don’t you update me on the general situation here?” Bai Yi did not hear Hong Qi Hua’s muttering.

“En.” Hong Qi Hua nodded.

“There’s roughly three groups in the base: 1. Our group 2. Yu Han’s group 3. The people who were originally here. Yu Han’s relationship with others in the base was not bad before, but there probably aren’t many who would trust him now.” Hong Qi Hua slowly said as she held the name list.

“Over these days, I more or less understood how the majority of the people here think. Although everybody knows about the activated cells, not many are willing to take the risks. After all, just on our journey here quite a few of us died. In the eyes of these people, this base is considered an extremely safe place. “

“People like Qin Kai Rui and Dai Yu Yao already have intentions of staying here. If in the past they were still willing to follow Yu Han, now unless they are really dumb, they would definitely not go with him. Also, because of the conflicts they had with us in the past, they probably wouldn’t follow us as well. Hence, staying in the base is their inevitable choice.”

“As for Yu Han…”

“Make him leave!” Bai Yi said coldly.

“We will also leave this base very soon, but before we leave we must make Yu Han leave as well. Otherwise, I’m afraid the bunch of them would be tricked by him. They wouldn’t even know how they became cannon fodder for him.” Bai Yi slowly explained under Hong Qi Hua’s shocked gaze. In truth, Hong Qi Hua didn’t think that Bai Yi’s attitude would be this firm. Sure enough, Bai Yi’s mentality seemed to be starting to change after what had happened before.

“If your attitude is too tough, people will probably say that you are cold-blooded and emotionless again.”

“It’s ok. Anyway, we are going to split up soon. Just consider it like I’m helping them one last time.” Bai Yi waved his hand.

“Understood.” Hong Qi Hua nodded. Although they were all schoolmates and friends from Waikato University, they couldn’t endlessly accommodate them. Even before, they’d almost lost their lives for their sake. Helping them this last time, if they could understand, then that was good. If they couldn’t, then forget about it. Doing things to this extent for them, they’d already done enough on account of their past friendship.

“I’ll handle this. With Yu Han’s intelligence, he will probably leave by himself after I talk to him…” Hong Qi Hua said.

“Sorry to trouble you!”

“Nope, it’s nothing! Actually, Uncle Bai, there’s something else I want to discuss with you.” Hong Qi Hua said as she took out another name list.

Bai Yi received the name list and scanned it over, his gaze becoming slightly more serious. This was also a name list, but the species of genes fused were added beside the names. To talk about it, activated cells was the serious matter that affected the entire country. Scuffles within the team weren’t even worth mentioning in front of it. After all, if they couldn’t handle this properly, then everyone was finished.

There were only five people who hadn’t fused with any genes

After Bai Yi saw this information, he let out a deep breath. Apparently, after the dangerous battles over the past few days, Hong Qi Hua minded this matter even more – active fusion of certain genes. It was obvious from the document that many people came into contact with some animal genes going about their daily lives and fused with them.

“There’s 15 people who fused with genes, if you count Sharpei and Pupu then that’s 17. From this information, gene fusion is very easy but also has its limitations. For example, the genes that evolved lifeforms fused with cannot be fused again to other lifeforms.”

“Remember how Woolf was pierced through by the Giant Crab Alligator? However, he only fused with the genes of the alligator and not the crab or beetle. That means that the genes fused with the evolved lifeforms apparently cannot be fused again with other lifeforms. If I were to guess, then it’s probably that after the first fusion, although there’s features of the organism appearing on the evolved lifeform, they aren’t complete.”

Bai Yi nodded his head.

“If this is so, then gene fusion is extremely easy. We can see that most of us fused with genes from animals we come into contact with in our daily lives. Honestly speaking, animals like rabbits, cows and pet pigs…” Hong Qi Hua slowly said.

Of course, Bai Yi understood that from their discussion before, these animals weren’t good choices to fuse with. It was a complete waste of a gene fusion slot.

“Other than that, there’s one more thing!” Hong Qi Hua suddenly said while Bai Yi was deep in thought.

“En?” Bai Yi looked at Hong Qi Hua.

“After Uncle Bai ignited the gas container, I encountered a monster while I was looking for you.” Hong Qi Hua paused for a moment. Bai Yi’s expression immediately turned serious, as nobody else had said that they’d encountered a fourth monster.

“It was more than three meters tall, the top half was human with a sickle for its right arm and snake-like tail for its bottom half. It also had a pair of wings that weren’t too big, if I had to use a word to describe it then it would be the Naga we see in video games. I didn’t even know how it appeared behind me, but it didn’t kill me. It seemed to say something, but I didn’t manage to hear it clearly.” Hong Qi Hua added on.

“It had the base body of a human and retained its intelligence and memories…” Of course, it wasn’t possible for the Naga inside the games to appear in the real world. If so, there was only one possibility left.

“It should be!” Hong Qi Hua nodded.

“It’s no big deal, didn’t we guess this long ago? Actually, this is something good, if we will lose our minds and memories after gene fusion, then no amount of preparation would be enough, there’s too many unpredictable variables in that scenario. Now that we saw a precedent, we can be a lot more at ease.”

“Compared to this, I’m actually more concerned about something else.” Bai Yi observed himself and then said.

“What is it?”

“It’s easy to see from Woolf and Yu Han that the genes they fused with are the genes they came into contact to. However, why is it that for me and Momo only butterfly genes can be seen on us?” Bai Yi said, puzzled.

“I asked Martin this question too, I’m afraid the answer isn’t too good.” Hong Qi Hua hesitated and then said.

“Oh?”

“Uncle Bai, you came into contact with a lot of butterflies that day, right?”

“Oh…so it’s like that? The gene fusion slots for me and Momo were all filled by butterfly genes, so even when we came into contact with genes from other lifeforms we were unable to fuse with them anymore?” Bai Yi’s mind was very agile, very quickly he thought of the meaning behind Hong Qi Hua’s words.

“I’m afraid it’s like that!” Hong Qi Hua nodded, her tone slightly heavy.

Based on their discussion on active fusion of genes a few days ago, butterflies really aren’t too good of a choice. However, Bai Yi and Momo just happened that all their gene fusion slots were filled with butterfly genes. That is why many different colourful patterns of butterflies appeared on Bai Yi’s body. However, in this way Bai Yi would have no fate with other abilities like powerful physical strength, precise senses, or echolation.

“However, I asked Martin about various things relating to gene fusion for the past two days.”

She continued. “Martin said that gene fusion wasn’t something so simple. Our conjectures before were at the right place but not completely right. Fusing with the genes we previously thought of could give us a certain amount of strength, but they definitely wouldn’t be able to give us the most strength. Among the gene-fused monsters, the most powerful are still those mutated monsters. Hence, based on the experiments inside the research facility, he suggested for us to choose just two to three genes to fuse with. After that, leaving what genes we fuse with up to fate…may just be more suitable for this world.” Hong Qi Hua said again.

“Leaving things up to fate…huh.” Bai Yi smiled faintly.

121 research facilities that created so many gene-fused monsters, they were definitely looking for the rules behind gene fusion. However, there shouldn’t be any rules in gene fusion, and even if there were some, Martin definitely did not know of any. After braving those dangers with Martin a few days ago, Bai Yi was confident that Martin wouldn’t try to hide this information.

“There doesn’t seem to be human genes on this list!” Bai Yi suddenly realised something.

“I asked Martin about this too. Activated cells originated from the Progenitor, and the progenitor is a human. So actually, all evolved lifeforms have already fused with human genes. However, it seems like there isn’t any manifestation of the Progenitor’s genes. As for genes from other humans, there isn’t any human genes that can surpass the Progenitor’s activated cells so there’s no need to worry about that.”

“So if it’s like this, then I have one last question!”

“This information, I only intend to disclose to those among our group! Is there any single person you want to tell?” Bai Yi raised his head and looked at Hong Qi Hua seriously.

“Khina Bailey…me and her are real friends!” Hong Qi Hua did not feel surprised at Bai Yi’s decision. After so much, if he still tried to be that kind of a good guy, then people would only think that he was an idiot. However, for those true and real friends, Hong Qi Hua still wanted to give them a hand.

“Ok, then that’s settled!” Bai Yi nodded.

“Thank you, Uncle Bai!”

“What are you talking about, these were things you thought of! How you handle it is your freedom.” Bai Yi smiled while shaking his head.