Chapter 65: The Merman
The stability value of the criminal’s brain region fluctuated violently.
The entire Institute rang with a blaring siren that made their eardrums hurt and made people dizzy.
The director hurried to the monitoring hall wearing pyjamas, and yelled at the researcher angrily: “Turn off the alarm!”
The researcher hurriedly groped and turned off the alarm, and the hall returned to silence again.
But the fluctuating lines on the screen did not return to normal when the alarm sound was quietened.
The director asked with a heavy expression: “What happened?”
The researcher on the side was pale: “We don’t know… we just know that all the data was skyrocketing just now, and the criminal’s brain fluctuations exceeded in an instant by thousands of times the range of normal human brain waves… Now the technician is trying to retrieve the specific data of Pandora, but…”
“But what?”
The director stared sternly at the researcher in front of him.
The researcher swallowed his saliva timidly and said, “But… Pandora’s index also seems to have been affected by the fluctuations of the criminal’s brain, and almost no one can obtain the internal data in this case…”
He looked down at the data report in front of him, after reviewing it he turned his head to look at the director and asked for instructions:
“Should we forcibly disconnect the criminal’s brain from Pandora?”
The director’s face didn’t look good.
He shook his head slowly: “No, it’s too dangerous for now—the brain of the criminal and Pandora have achieved a certain sense of synchronization in the two previous virtual worlds. Although I don’t know on what principles, but if this link is forcibly cut off under these circumstances, we will not be able to bear the consequences in case of an accident.”
“Then…?” the researcher felt panicked.
The director said with a heavy expression: “Mobilize all the staff to monitor the criminals’ brain activity. Once it leaves the danger zone, even if it doesn’t reach the normal level, they have to immediately severe the link. We can’t afford a second loss.”
“Yes.” The researcher nodded vigorously, turned around and ran into the distance.
The director gritted his teeth in frustration, lowered his head and turned around twice, seeming uneasy.
In the corner, a small metal robot hid in the darkness. The protective colour of the outer shell made it perfectly hidden in the surrounding environment. Almost no one noticec its existence. There were two small green lights on the top of its head, twinkling like an eye.
The director clicked a few times on his optical brain, and on the metal wall beside him, a door that had never been opened slowly opened.
He walked quickly towards the door.
The little metal robot followed and disappeared behind the closed door with him.
·
Ge Xiu was lost in chaos and his consciousness was blurred.
He didn’t know who he was, let alone where he was.
The only sensation he could feel was heat.
It was too hot.
It was as if all the flesh on his body was being scorched by a thousand-degrees burning hot flame, all moisture evaporated from his the charred skin, and tissue fluid and blood flowed from the cracks in his dry muscles, but they were immediately scorched before flowing onto the skin.
This hot feeling seems to be burning from within the body.
All the internal organs were thrown into the boiling magma and boiled, and the spinal cord and bones crackled at the high temperature, causing unbearable itching and pain.
So hot.
Ge Xiu was in pain.
Manic and violent emotions were fuelled by high fever, and the astonishing desire to destroy broke through the cage created by reason. Every inch of his body was clamouring for murder and violence, for destroying every existence that stood in front of him, to tear apart every culprit that caused this unbearable pain.
His body and spirit seemed to be divided into two completely different beings.
Ge Xiu floated in the air, dazedly listening to his body asking mechanically:
“Where are you taking me?”
This sentence… felt so familiar.
As if he had heard it a long time ago—heard it —or said it from his own throat—what was the difference?
But when he heard this sentence, the huge emotions pouring out from the depths of his body could not be faked.
These emotions were too complicated and too unfamiliar.
Ge Xiu could hardly discern the specific meaning behind any of them.
All he knew was that this feeling made him feel unbearable pain.
This kind of pain was worse than the torment and pain similar to being skilled alive of the previous world. It made Ge Xiu feel a dull pain in the depths of his head, as if something was trying to break through a barrier and return to his body.
in the pool.
The merman, who had been calm just now, suddenly became irritable, her brows furrowed as if furious, his blood-stained lips pursed into a tight straight line, and his blue-purple bright eyes shrank, as if he was experiencing a torture in silence.
But he gritted his teeth and made no sound.
Sharp nails scratched deep claw marks on the edge of the pool, and huge tail fins splashed wildly in the water.
The water from blood-stained pool splashed all around, flowing freely on the ground around the pool.
Rowett stood a few steps away.
The other guards had been dispatched to their respective missions, and now he was alone with the merman in the glass house once again.
Looking at Ge Xiu’s expression, Rowett’s heart felt painful as if a knife was twisted in it.
Power, wealth, status, none of them could be used at this moment, and there was no way to ease the pain and torture his merman suffered. He had never been so powerless.
He wished he could replace him in feeling that pain.
But nothing could be done.
At this moment, several mermaid experts in nightgowns stumbled in carrying stacks of documents and equipment, all of them panting—they already learned the cause and effect on the communicator, and by now.
Rowett’s eyes lit up, he walked towards them quickly, and couldn’t wait to ask:
“Do you have a solution?”
The leading expert was quite old. His bald head was covered in sweat and even the the white hair on his temples was wet with sweat, and was clinging to his head.
He wiped his sweat with a handkerchief tremblingly, and then said:
“This, the potion that induces the merman to estrus is actually a sex hormone. It is not difficult to reverse it, but…”
Rowett narrowed his eyes and repeated: “But…?”
There was a hint of danger in his voice.
The expert shivered and spoke faster: “But Mr. Ge Xiu is probably not fully a mermaid!”
He flipped through the documents in the hands of the person behind him and found a thick folder. His fingers trembled as old rotten wood, he turned the paper with a rustling sound, then handed one of the pages to Rowett and showed him:
“During this time, we decoded Mr. Ge Xiu’s genes and found that only a part of his genes sequence is the same as of a mermaid, and the remaining 80% of genes was completely unknown…” Even now, his voice was still full of confusion and bewilderment: “We screened and compared the unknown genes in his body with all the known animal genes in nature so far, but no matching sequences have been found so far…”
The expert turned back the data and explained as he turned:
“So we tried to trace the source of his known genetic information, and conduct a comparative study based on the relevant water quality and aquatic product survey reports in the sea area where he lived…”
Rowett frowned: “What do you want to say?”
The expert slowly swallowed a mouthful of saliva, and then said tremblingly: “According to the information displayed by the genes, it was inferred that Mr. Ge Xiu’s father and mother were completely pure-bred mermaids, and even… during the time he himself lived in those waters, he was definitely a mermaid.”
He finally found the page of information he wanted to show Rowett.
The graph recording the genetic changes, after a long, very long period with almost no fluctuations, it rose abruptly near the end, forming an almost straight line, and all the bright-coloured lines suddenly become active, fluctuating up and down violently.
Rowett frowned slowly.
He stared at the changing lines: “This…”
The expert seemed to know what he wanted to ask, and replied quickly:
“Yes, it was a month ago.”
“A month ago, his genes changed dramatically. Only a small part of the mermaid gene remained, and the rest is completely unknown.”
He raised his hand and wiped his sweaty forehead, speaking at an uncontrollable speed: “The time line for research is still too short, if you can give more If we spend a little time, we may be able to find a more accurate time point, and combined with the location and environment at that time and the amount of radiation around, we may be able to find out what caused such a large-scale genetic mutation—”
At that moment, there was a loud sound from water in the pool.
The merman swam frantically in the pool, his strong tail fins waving in the water, and the rocks and even other structures underwater were directly smashed into pieces by the tail.
He was attacking everything around him— dead or alive—aimlessly.
The blood-stained pool water was stirred with waves, and you could see the merman’s swiftly swimming figure and his increasingly violent hostile behaviour.
“Why did the estrus have this effect on him?”
Rowett asked solemnly.
The expert wiped the sweat from his head again, and then replied somewhat uncertainly: “This situation is likely to be related to the mutated gene, but… According to the information you provided to us earlier and the surveillance video of him when he was drunk, maybe it’s a psychological factor…”
“Psychological factor?” Rowett frowned.
“Yes. When he was drunk, he also clearly showed extreme aggressive behaviour. In fact, for mermaids, alcohol and estrus agents work on the same principle. The alcohol interferes with the nervous system and causes behavioural disorders. The estrus agent acts on the area of the brain that controls the gonads, resulting in the loss of the control of the mechanism behind the desire for sex, making the mermaid occupied by a strong desire to procreate and reproduce, and making them entering the estrus period.”
The expert said so much in one breath, and took a deep breath. He slowed down, and finally concluded:
“So, maybe, he subconsciously rejects this state of being controlled, so alcohol and estrus would cause him to show the same aggressive behaviour— this indiscriminate attacking and killing in animal psychology is a state of overprotection after extreme stimuli.”
Overprotection…
Rowett was in a trance for a few seconds, and a certain question he had thought about before flashed in his mind subconsciously.
If a merman curls up subconsciously when falling asleep… Does it mean the same extreme lack of security as when humans do?
He stared deeply at the figure of the merman below the surface of the water, his eyes dark as night.
—What have you experienced?
“But in a sense, it’s also good news for us,” the expert continued.
He swallowed, then added:
“If this abnormal aggression is due to psychological factors, then it means that even though his genetic sequence is only 20% identical to the mermaid, the effect of the estrus agent on him and a mermaid is the same, which means that the reverse drug is likely to be as effective.”
Rowett moved his eyes away from the pool with some difficulty, and his voice became dry and hoarse at some point:
“How long does it take?”
“Half an hour.” Sweat dripped from the expert’s forehead again: “If we’re lucky, twen-twenty minutes.”
“Good.”
Rowett glanced at the group of silent experts behind him: “Don’t waste a second, understand?”
“Yes.”
After the experts’ footsteps were gone, silence returned to the glass room.
Rowett fixedly stared at the shimmering water under the moonlight, and then slowly stepped forward as if bewitched.
A picture flashed in his mind subconsciously.
Or a fleeting thought.
To be precise, a word.
A word Ge Xiu had whispered— that in all of his education and the culture he grew up in—never seemed to appear in, but for some reason, Rowett just felt it sounded familiar.
He hesitated for two seconds, and finally, purely rational logical thinking was overcome by a strange call in his heart.
His upper and lower lips touched, the tip of the tongue lightly touched the upper jaw, and a word with a strange pronunciation came out from the depths of the throat, whirled and vibrated in the mouth, and then blurted out as if his vocal cords were out of control.
After the syllable exited and was re-transmitted to his brain through the cochlea, Rowett found himself saying something in hindsight.
He was saying:
“Pandora.”
————————————————————————————
Bamboo has something to say:
I guess… Ge Xiu is a cooked fish now! HAHAHHAcoughcoughcough, I’ll invite myself out
Also people who say Ge Xiu is too OP, you clearly haven’t seen an OP protagonist novel, tsk tsk. He is indeed strong but his weakness is also as obvious!
PS: not talking about comments, you guys are very sweet!
