The reason why Chen Chen extracted the black goo was ultimately for the technology of longevity.
Why was Chen Chen so obsessed with longevity? Or rather, why did humans pursue longevity?
Because this was an inevitable phenomenon.
As technology became more and more developed, humans would inevitably be unwilling to live only a short hundred years. Compared to the long river of time that was easily calculated in hundreds of millions of years, a hundred years was like a snap of the fingers, almost meaningless.
Moreover, as technology became more and more developed, the accumulation of knowledge became more and more difficult. In ancient times, people could inherit the wealth of knowledge accumulated by civilization after ten years of hard work at most.
However, in modern times, nine years of compulsory education could only learn a foundation. Human knowledge was divided into hundreds of branches. A person could only achieve achievements in a few branch fields in his lifetime.
The accumulation of this kind of civilization knowledge would only become more and more abundant. Could it be that in the future, a person would have to go through decades of compulsory education?
When a person painstakingly learned the knowledge of a domain, but was already old and decrepit, and then directly cremated and buried a few years later?
Obviously, no one wanted this. If human civilization wanted to continue to move forward, the need for longevity would become more and more urgent. This was a general trend that would not be changed by anyone's will.
As far as Chen Chen knew, there were probably three paths for humans to choose from on the path to immortality.
First: Retain the original body, genetic evolution.
Indeed, the conventional way of human evolution was through reproduction as a means to synchronize the evolution of the group, but this did not mean that humans could not choose a more efficient way of evolution, such as genes.
Using genetic technology to strengthen oneself, so that humans could separate from the group, produce the phenomenon of evolution in advance, and prolong life.
This was the most ideal path.
Why so? Because humans themselves were a sophisticated and complex machine, but this machine was composed of organic matter instead of steel.
Perhaps this body was extremely fragile, so fragile that a bullet or a sharp knife could take away a person's life, but humans had the ability to reproduce and evolve. They had thoughts, consciousness, creativity, and subjective initiative.
All of this was brought about by this fragile body.
The human body was a pearl born in the evolution of millions of years of life, the most magnificent miracle of nature.
As long as humans still had a complete body, there were infinite possibilities.
Second: Flesh and blood are weak, machinery ascends.
Although the potential of this path was not as good as the first one, it was an easier path to longevity, even close to eternal life.
For example, Chen Chen was vigorously developing bionic technology. By replacing old organs like a machine replacing spare parts, this method allowed life to live longer.
One could even choose to keep the brain and replace the entire body with machinery. This way, the lifespan of a human would be equivalent to the lifespan of the brain.
The lifespan of the brain alone was 150 years. If some special technology was used, the lifespan of the brain could be multiplied several times.
However, although this method was easier to achieve longevity and it was easier to ensure the safety of life, it lacked a part of the potential that should exist in life. Therefore, unless civilization came to an end, Chen Chen would not take this path as the main path.
As for the third and final path, it was the path of soul refinement.
The general idea of this path was to abandon the physical body and exist in the world in the form of a soul, allowing humans to develop into a ubiquitous civilization without a physical body.
It was just that modern science had yet to prove the existence of the soul, so this path could only be thought of.
Chen Chen still remembered what Professor Wang Xi said back then: "We humans still know nothing about the vast sea of truth. Perhaps even the unattainable dream of eternal life is only the first step in the pursuit of truth..."
It was this sentence that ignited Chen Chen's desire for longevity.
When he came back to his senses, at this time, Chen Chen was staring at a humanoid monster covered in black armor in the isolation room with a head like a winter melon.
A day ago, this monster was still an ordinary human.
His name was Barton and he was once a murderer sentenced to life imprisonment. Later, he was purchased by Chen Chen and kept in the Delta-level experimental dormitory in the Spire Experimental Base.
However, after this Delta experimental subject was injected with five milliliters of black goo yesterday, his path of mutation began.
The experimental subject first showed pathological signs of flushing and fever, then bleeding all over the body, confusion, and finally fell into a state of shock.
The internal manifestation of the human body was that the protein of the experimental subject was rapidly converted into the prion protein of the black goo. At the same time, these prion proteins also began to break down the DNA in the experimental subject and combined with the DNA fragments to form a retrovirus that only worked on the experimental subject itself.
Then, due to the principle of the retrovirus, the experimental subject began to undergo violent physical mutation. During the process of mutation, the experimental subject developed a strong sense of hunger and swallowed any organic matter and protein as food.
Until this morning, in the process of continuous sleep and awakening, the experimental subject finally completely lost consciousness and became an ugly monster with low intelligence and no humanity.
"The black goo can promote strong and rapid division of biological somatic cells, greatly increasing the mutation rate, producing all kinds of strange cells, and eventually growing into new creatures..."
Chen Chen described the role of the black goo while looking at the monster in the isolation room and sighed. "However, because the genes of the creature itself are changed in an instant, the combination of individual proteins and enzymes, as well as the DNA itself, will lead to thousands of unpredictable results, so it's not surprising to see what the experimental subject will become. It's just that... This appearance is really ugly...
"But after being infected by the black goo, the experimental subject has an extremely high energy metabolism efficiency and an extremely fast cell division rate that the human body doesn't have."
Little X added. "Before the injection of the black goo, the weight of the experimental subject was 55 kilograms. After the injection of the black goo, the experimental subject spent five hours swallowing food equal to its own weight. Only half of this food was converted into useless urine and feces and excreted from the body. The rest was all converted into the weight of the experimental subject itself."
Chen Chen looked at the report in his hand. Sure enough, the weight of the mutated experimental subject had now reached 80 kilograms, 25 kilograms more than before.
"This is probably the reason for the rapid growth of the aliens."
Looking at the experimental subject that had become taller, Chen Chen thought. "In the movies, the aliens often grow from a tiny dot to a beast weighing hundreds of kilograms in a few hours. Although the movies rarely show aliens eating, it seems now that aliens still need to eat and their appetite is larger than that of humans."
At this point, Chen Chen suddenly took two steps forward, walked to the window of the isolation room, and took a closer look at the experimental subject.
As Chen Chen approached, the experimental subject in the isolation room suddenly let out a shrill scream, and then pounced in front of Chen Chen!
"Thump!"
There was a dull thud as the experimental subject hit the glass of the isolation room. A large amount of pale yellow blood splattered on the glass.
"Very low intelligence."
Little X said regretfully, "Also, the blood isn't corrosive. Except for a head that's somewhat similar to the alien, the experimental in front of us can only be regarded as a different kind of zombie at most."
"It's normal. In the movies, in the process of the alien's birth, the Engineer race must be involved."
Chen Chen explained, "The alien's exoskeleton has a mechanical style, which is obviously derived from the exoskeleton structure worn by the Engineer race. Later, in Alien: Covenant, there's a spore plant infected by the black goo. After this spore infects the human body, it gives birth to a white alien without a mechanical style exoskeleton. This is very telling.
"Therefore, the alien's acidic blood may also come from the Engineer race."
With this in mind, Chen Chen snapped his fingers. "Alright, dissect this monster. I'll need the structure of its organs and gene map..."
"Understood."
...
After spending a few more hours, when Chen Chen walked out of the laboratory, he breathed a slight sigh of relief.
To Chen Chen's disappointment, even after thoroughly dissecting and slicing the experimental subject, Chen Chen did not find anything unusual. The experimental subject had indeed undergone genetic recombination, but what was formed after the recombination was only a ferocious and violent beast without intelligence.
Even its brain structure had become much smaller, and its plasticity was not as good as that of humans at all.
However, Chen Chen knew that this was actually a normal phenomenon. In any case, human beings were regarded as the supreme product of the earth, the only advanced life form. It was impossible for a random mutation of the black goo to mutate humans to become better than before.
The only thing that surprised Chen Chen was that when dissecting the original male experimental subject, he found immature reproductive organs in the body of the experimental subject.
It was a cyst structure that existed in the lower abdomen. After opening it, he found a dense pile of tadpole-like larvae inside.
These tadpole-like larvae were transparent and their biological structure was simple, but they were indeed living beings. They were usually incubated in the cyst and would be released at critical times.
Looking at the structure of this cyst, Little X could roughly determine that when these tadpole-like larvae matured, they could be ejected through the navel of the experimental subject, thereby drilling into the body of the target and parasitizing the target.
This was the reproduction method of this new species. Parasitic reproduction was similar to that of aliens. It was simple but frightening.
At present, it seemed that there was no need to think about using the black goo to strengthen the human body for the time being. Drinking it would result in certain death. Its lethality was comparable to paraquat. However, if it was used to develop a biochemical weapon, it should be relatively easy.
Next, one of Chen Chen's research directions was to combine the black goo with spore plants to form the spores that could parasitize the human body as depicted in the movie Alien: Covenant.
It was unknown how David in the movie came up with this. After the spores parasitized the human body, they would not mutate the human body, but instead form an embryo in the human body.
Following that, the embryo would grow silently until it could separate from the human body. It would break out from the back or chest and grow into a white-skinned monster like an alien.
It had to be said that Chen Chen still had a long way to go in the research of the black goo.
However, at present, it seemed that the reproduction method of the monsters created by the black goo seemed to be parasitic reproduction. Even the final perfect creature — the alien was the same. This method of reproduction reminded Chen Chen of a virus.
A virus called Golgotha, or G-virus for short.
This virus was almost the same as the black goo. It could also mutate the genes of creatures, resurrect the dead, and even give birth to a new species on the basis of infecting a life form.
It even had a title because of this: "Abominable Substance" that violated the domain of God.
The most important thing was that the G-virus was modified from the T-virus.
"I can try to combine the black goo with the T-virus. Maybe I can make a new discovery..."
Chen Chen had a flash of inspiration and silently pondered.
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