Chapter 253: Ball, Ball
Rong Yuan knew that even if people started the research immediately, it would take . Pea, who was beside him, contacted Noah every once in a while. In addition to understanding the progress, he would also update the number of people who died from UCOC. Every time, the number would increase, ranging from a dozen to nearly a hundred. Although this number was not much compared to the human population of 7 billion, if we consider that the time interval between each statistics by Pea was only 0.5 seconds in human time, then this increase was very terrifying.
It is impossible to expect the experts on Earth who have not even figured out the pathogen of this disease to develop a targeted vaccine. By the time they can make some progress, perhaps all humans and most other creatures on Earth will have died. Rong Yuan only hopes that they can make the whole world - at least all the power classes on Earth - realize the seriousness of the problem and work together to help each other under the huge threat. When Rong Yuan comes up with a plan to fight this pathogen, the world can carry out prevention, treatment and rescue efficiently and quickly.
In the microscopic world, he had much more time than in the normal form, but this time was not infinite. Therefore, Rong Yuan was unwilling to waste a single minute, and after giving Noah the order, he immediately began study the purple sphere in his hand.
With a flash of cold light, a small knife slightly longer than a finger appeared in Rong Yuan's hand. The blade was like a mirror and gleamed with cold light. Even if it couldn't cut iron like mud, it was almost possible.
Pea used a gelatinous liquid to fix the sphere's body and shone a strong light at the same time. The outer skin of the sphere was originally thin and almost translucent, and under the light beam, even the internal organs of the body were faintly visible. The little guy, like a purple gem, was slightly heaving, as if he was sleeping soundly, and had no idea that he was about to be cruelly dissected alive by these two guys.
The scalpel turned twice between Rong Yuan's fingers, drawing a bright white arc. He held the knife and gestured at the sphere. Pea trembled involuntarily, and the light trembled slightly, causing the organs inside the sphere to appear double. Rong Yuan glanced at Pea and asked, "Are you scared?"
Wandou shook his head, hesitated for a moment, and nodded again. He did not mention his feelings, but said, "Rongyuan, you know that this will deduct merit points, right?"
Although the ball was unconscious, it was still alive. In this case, being dissected alive was no different from being tortured and killed. Regardless of whether it was good or evil, or whether it deserved to die, Rong Yuan, who performed the operation, would have his merits deducted.
"I know." Rong Yuan sneered and said, "So what?" When he decided to do this, he did not consider how much merit saving the earth could bring him, nor did he care how much merit would be deducted in the process.
So Pea stopped talking, holding the light steadily, with a silence in his dark eyes.
——Heaven or hell, I will follow you.
Rong Yuan carefully observed the position and size of the organs in the sphere, and based on his understanding of intelligent creatures, including humans and many aliens, he guessed the functions of various organs. After a moment of silence, he determined the position of the knife. In many previous studies, Rong Yuan had never done a dissection himself. This was his first time doing so, but his hand holding the knife was as steady as if it had been tempered a thousand times, without the slightest tremor.
There is no anesthetic on Earth that can be used on this microorganism. Even if it is useful, it is unknown whether it will cause any mutations. There may be some in the Merit Mall, but using it is equivalent to killing it. So Rong Yuan no longer considered the issue of anesthesia. No matter what means he used, he needed to find a method that could be used on a large scale on Earth to kill or at least limit the spread of this organism.
The tip of the knife landed on the skin that was thinner than paper. Wandou closed her eyes involuntarily, waiting for a sharp scream. But after a while, she still didn't hear the expected sound, but heard Rong Yuan's slightly surprised "Huh".
Pea opened one eye and looked carefully. There was no blood in front of him. Rong Yuan had even put away his knife and was staring at something. Pea curiously followed his line of sight and found that Rong Yuan was staring at an oval organ in the sphere, like its stomach. The light there was slightly rippling, as if it was filled with liquid.
Pea didn't know what surprised Rong Yuan so much that he gave up the dissection, so he stared at it for a while. Just when he thought there seemed to be nothing unusual, he suddenly saw the "belly" twisting freely like a living plasticine. It moved a few times, pushing the other organs in the sphere to the left and right, and squeezed them from their original position near the lower center to a place close to the "belly" of the sphere, and then paused for a while, as if it was resting.
"This is..." Wandou looked at Rongyuan and saw that he was frowning, and seemed a little puzzled, and his expression seemed to become more solemn. He did not hear Wandou's words, but was concentrating on the changes in the liquid organ.
Pea looked away and continued to observe. After a long while, there was no change, but it seemed different, and it always felt that there was something strange. After staring at it carefully for a long time, Pea suddenly found that the belly of the ball... seemed to have become a little thicker?
Then it realized that it was not an illusion. It seemed that a layer of transparent mucus was attached to the belly of the ball, causing a slight change in the refractive index of light. And the mucus became more and more, and thicker. Pea watched for a long time, and suddenly realized that it was the liquid that was seeping out of the belly of the ball little by little!
Rong Yuan touched it with a knife and found that the liquid was like a ball of water, which was easily squeezed and deformed, but did not stick to the knife. He took the knife away and it immediately returned to its original shape. It felt like several minutes had passed before the liquid finally seeped out nearly half of its body from the belly of the ball. The next process was much faster. Almost in the blink of an eye, it pulled out the remaining half and fell to the ground with a plop, like a puddle of mud.
When it left, the "belly" of the ball completely returned to its original state. If you hadn't witnessed the whole process with your own eyes, no one would have thought that a liquid ball almost one-third the size of its body had just emerged from its belly.
"Is it... excreting?" Pea said, looking at the sticky liquid that looked like some kind of excrement.
"I hope so." Rong Yuan said softly. He threw the ball aside completely and shifted all his attention to the "excrement".
The ball of liquid lay on the ground for a while, and the outer skin seemed to solidify a little. It looked like jelly at this time, but because it landed too casually, the overall appearance was still terrible. It seemed to have regained some strength, and those things that could not be told whether they were tentacles or palms suddenly bounced and pointed in the direction of Rong Yuan's left front. This "jelly" trembled slightly for a while, and suddenly ejected, not very fast, and landed on a lymphocyte the size of a locomotive like a fluttering feather, tightly attached to it.
Rong Yuan walked over quickly. The lymphocyte was now taller than him. He put his hand on it, then suddenly pulled it back after a moment, squinting his eyes and looking at the "jelly" with an extremely dangerous look.
Then Pea saw that the lymphocytes were shrinking at a speed visible to the naked eye, like a balloon being punctured, or a jellyfish being drained of water. Within a few breaths, the huge lymphocytes turned into a pile of torn sacks at Rong Yuan's feet, dry, cracked and shrunken, making it impossible to imagine what they originally looked like.
Correspondingly, the soft and oddly shaped "jelly" swelled up like it was inflated and turned into a transparent, colorless small ball. The tiny organs inside the body were like crystal sculptures, reflecting dreamy colors under the light, which was extremely beautiful.
Not satisfied after absorbing a lymphocyte, this colorless sphere sometimes floated into the air, sometimes dived into the lake, and gradually absorbed several nearby cells. The outlines of its organs became clearer, and its body turned amber, with silver-blue lines on its back that looked like flower branches. Except for its slightly smaller size, it looked no different from the other spheres on the ground.
Rong Yuan flicked his finger and an invisible wave spread out. The small ball that was happily jumping in the air suddenly froze, fell to the ground with a thud, and rolled for several rounds before it came to a stop.
"This is reproduction." Rong Yuan picked up the bright purple ball that he had forgotten before, stared at it for a moment, and then pointed to one of the places and said, "And these are its eggs."
Pea looked over and saw that what he pointed at were the tiny organs in the sphere that were less than one nanometer in diameter. These tiny spheres were densely packed together like fish eggs, and it was difficult to tell how many there were. After the last amber sphere was born, one of the eggs was obviously much larger than the others. If Rong Yuan hadn't stunned the mother so that she couldn't continue to take in nutrients, perhaps this little guy would have been born now.
While Wandou was observing the eggs, Rongyuan lifted up the amber ball and found that the same eggs appeared in the body of the guy who had just been born not long ago, but they were much smaller and obviously not yet mature. Among the many balls on the ground, those that emitted faint light were in the reproductive period. During their observation, many small balls had been born and were now spreading freely in all directions.
They have strong adaptability. Those born in the air will quickly form something like bubbles in their bodies, allowing them to float in the air without being affected by gravity. Those born in water will have new changes in their organs and tissues, some can dive to the bottom of the water, while others can always float on the surface of the water. Those born on land will also undergo different changes to adapt to different environments... or in order to devour different cells. These small balls may look the same on the outside, but in fact their internal organs belong to completely different categories, and they are almost completely different organisms.
But their offspring obviously did not inherit the living habits of their mothers, and still retained that strong ability to mutate and adapt. The offspring of the balls in the water can also fly in the air; the offspring of the balls in the air can also burrow under the surface to survive.
These balls seemed to move slowly and with difficulty, but when they matured, they would occasionally show speeds beyond imagination. Rong Yuan caught one and observed it carefully for a long time, and then he found that they seemed to be able to change the intensity of their own bioelectricity and use the electromagnetic force to travel through the air at a very fast speed. Otherwise, they would not be able to spread from one corner of the earth to the whole world in such a short time.
——How to deal with such creatures? Will they evolve a new ability to adapt to it as soon as we find a way to restrain them?
Pea was full of worries. In addition to worrying about how to completely resolve this crisis, there was another thing that always hung in its mind. It stared at Rong Yuan again and again, and finally couldn't help asking: "Rong Yuan, do they have merit points?"
The Heavenly Eye is a unique item, and Pea does not have it, so naturally he cannot see the merit values of living things. Usually he can only judge based on the deduction or increase of Rongyuan's merits. Only Rongyuan can see the specific values.
"Yes." Rong Yuan said straightforwardly. But he did not say whether the merits were positive or negative or their approximate range.
Pea's short eyebrows were wrinkled into a ball. Just as it was about to say something, Rong Yuan suddenly raised his hand to stop it.
The sound of "rustling" suddenly came from all directions.
