His trip for the day didn't end with Researcher Ton. Though he now had maps of all 98 of the important universes within his home quadrant, that was only a piece of the information. He still had to use these maps to gather intelligence and fill in some blanks.
A single universe could have billions of habitable planets, but they were obviously not all occupied. Researcher Ton had marked the planets he believed were most likely inhabited, but in regards to this, probability wasn't a good thing to rely on. Dyon had to know for sure. And, he didn't want to rely on Little Yin and Yang to do all of the work.
For the solution to this, Dyon was relying on yet another set of researchers – Researcher Curie and Kline.
Both researchers focused on DNA, but their paths were slightly different. Researcher Curie focused on a path to create the greatest species to ever exist, but Kline's goal was the passing on of knowledge. Kline hoped that humans could gain the ability to pass on their knowledge just like beasts did. If they could do this, then he believed that human progress would accelerate.
When both researchers came together, especially with Bryzo's Absolute Deconstruction ability, the results should be magnificent.
Dyon needed the Shadows Faction to start making their presence known.
Thanks to the Sage Tower, Dyon had already been close to bringing a few rodent beasts to the transcendent grade. However, many of them had stalled at the Peak Heaven Grade.
5000 of them had been in the Earth Grade, with 1000 having progressed to the Heaven Grade. But, only 50 of them were of the Peak Heaven Grade on the verge of breaking through.
Dyon didn't feel comfortable feeding them the Fate Breaking Pill until they were at least of the transcendent grade, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't seem to get any of them to breakthrough.
The Fate Breaking Pill was simply too precious to waste. Dyon only had 119 left after giving one to his mother-in-law and he was saving some of them for the Dream Panthers who were still looking for worthy male big cat candidates.
It was only after Dyon met Curie and Kline that he realized that maybe the key to evolving was changing the very foundation of the rodents. All this time, he had been trying to elevate them above their limits when maybe the true secrets was to move their starting point forward.
This was where Curie, Kline and Bryzo came into play.
"Young master, you're here!" Kline excitedly ushered Dyon into their research building.
Dyon was brought into a room filled with bright fluorescent light. He could tell with a single glance that if these researchers had been mortal, the smell of this room could have knocked an elephant out. Luckily, they were mostly dao experts who had left behind mortal filth while Bryzo was a Heaven's Child.
Dyon's brows raised as he looked toward the numerous rodents. There was no doubt, they had undergone a stunning change.
Though they didn't have the pure white and black luster of Little Yang and Yin, they did have beautiful coats of their own.
Their coat was a silky space grey and their eyes twinkled with an emerald light. The truly shocking part was that there were over 100 of them.
"These…"
The researchers looked toward Dyon with expectant gazes as Kline quickly explained.
"We took your advice in guiding our research. We combined raising the innate potential of the rodents with raising their grade.
"Thanks to Miss Bryzo, we were able to map out the gene pool of the Celestial Hamster. Then, we used this." Kline brought out a needle. It looked exactly like what one would find in a mortal hospital.
Dyon raised an eyebrow. "CRISPR?"
"So young master is familiar with it." Kline blushed, a bit embarrassed. He was very used to dealing with funders who knew nothing about the science of his research, so he often spoke like he was speaking with a child when not faced with one of his fellow scientists.
Dyon nodded. "I'm aware of its existence. CRISPR was invented several thousand years ago in my homeland. Simply put, it has the ability to edit genome sequences. So you guys have been in contact with my mortal world's people?"
Curie nodded excitedly. "We had run into a bit of a dead end. We understood the DNA and what changes we had to make to it, but making those changes was difficult. Namely, matters aren't as simple as changing one's DNA sequence to a better one. There are certain changes and complexities that require great energy input, and some that are even barred by the Heavens."
Dyon nodded. He had expected this sort of roadblock. You couldn't just change any and everything you wanted. Different species had different chromosome counts for example. Humans had 23 pairs of chromosomes while rats had 21. Even among similar species, there were vast differences. For example, rats had 21 chromosomes while mice only had 20.
If you tried to implement a DNA sequence that originated from a chromosome a rodent didn't have, the results would be disastrous. This meant the researchers didn't have the ability to suddenly elevate the rodents to an entirely new level. The genes of Celestial Hamster and the rodents were too different. But, what they could do was adjust their sequences to give them a higher likelihood of surviving the Fate Breaking Pill…
"But, this CRISPR has been a massive help." Curie continued. "With proper planning, it can make much of the changes we want.
"Miss Bryzo used her deconstruction abilities on the blood essence of the Celestial Hamsters and a few of the weaker rodents who died during our experimentation. Thanks to her, much of the work was skipped over. We gained a perfect image of the genome sequences we were dealing with.
"After we had this, we knew which genes we could edit and which we couldn't. As of now, these rodents are as close to being Celestial Hamsters as they can be without drastic measures. By our calculations, they have a 30% chance of surviving the Fate Breaking Pill."
