"What is it that you don't know?" Guan Feng asked impatiently.
Cillin knew that the robot would report everything to Guan Feng. Why else would the robot tell him everything it knew so easily? That was because Teacher Guan was watching.
"What's the situation right now?" Silin asked. The robot was only monitoring the nobles from the eleventh star region, so it didn't know a lot of the core information.
"It's not looking good." Guan Feng sighed. "I really don't know if I should say that you're unlucky or that I'm just too unlucky. You've only just taken over, and now you're running into something like this."
Silin listened to Guan Feng quietly without interrupting. It was exactly because of Silin's behavior that Guan Feng felt helpless. He knew Silin very well. Silin was a man of few words, but he was incredibly stubborn. If he wanted to turn his head somewhere, no one would be able to stop him no matter how hard they tried.
The RAS had been suppressing the news for a long time, and the empire's higher-ups were doing their best to keep it a secret as well. Unfortunately, they wouldn't be able to keep it up for too long. If the situation got out of control by then, and they still hadn't produced an antibody or an effective countermeasure, the consequences would be dire.
Guan Feng wasn't a member of the Institute of Virology, but he was still part of the management of the Imperial Academy. The management had held several meetings since the outbreak, and it was obvious that the situation wasn't looking good from Guan Feng's tired expression.
"Don't interfere, Silin. Leave the virus to the professionals from the RAS and Black Viper. We have enough manpower, so there's no need for you to get involved. Even if you want to get involved, don't stand at the frontlines," Guan Feng said. His voice was heavy and calm.
Silin didn't answer him directly. Instead, he asked, "What is that substance?"
Guan Feng wiped his face. "You're quite stubborn, aren't you?"
Both sides fell silent for a while before Guan Feng said, "Think about it again. The virus hasn't spread beyond the eleventh star region yet, so it's too early for you to get involved. You might as well focus on your own things."
"Alright."
Guan Feng stared at Silin in astonishment. He didn't expect Silin to agree so quickly. Silin didn't look like he was lying either. Guan Feng ended the call after a brief exchange. He still had a meeting to attend, and the RAS Council of Scientific Society was useless except for a bunch of executives. They were all talk and no action, and even now, they were still pretending to be busy. Wasn't this just torture?
Even the good-tempered Guan Feng couldn't keep up the act any longer. He wasn't a professional in this field, but there were some things he was aware of. The threat posed by this virus was too great, and the meeting yesterday was a joint meeting between the Mist Bodhisattva Emperor's special department and the RAS's management. In the end, they came to a decision that if the virus spread beyond the eleventh star region, the Empire would wipe the infected planets off the star map. This would be a permanent wipe, unlike Black Viper's area, which was temporarily dug up by humans.
If they did that, it wouldn't just be a single planet that was wiped out. At least a hundred heavily infected planets in the eleventh star region would be wiped out, including some with ancient civilizations and cultural heritages. Wiping them out would be a huge loss to the empire, and the emperor wouldn't approve such a decision unless it was absolutely necessary.
After ending the call with Guan Feng, Silin stood quietly outside the wedding hall for a while. The wedding hall was very lively. The middle and upper nobles were doing their best to make themselves known and attract attention. However, if even one of them was infected with the Zebra Virus, no one would be spared.
Currently, being infected with the Zebra Virus meant death. Even if a lot of medicine and technology were used, it would only delay the inevitable.
It was extremely easy to be infected, the mortality rate was high, and the coefficient of variation was high.
There was no need to mention the people from the RAS. Black Viper had a lot of one-track minds, and Neo was the kind of person who wouldn't come out until he got a result. Their infection rate was probably much higher than the RAS's.
After thinking for a moment, Silin turned on his communicator and contacted Silin. At the time, Neo had told Silin all of his numbers, and there was no way he would let this opportunity slip through his fingers if he wanted to research the Zebra Virus.
"Go watch the wedding, Silin! The bride almost tripped over her long skirt just now! "Wheeze ran over on its tiptoes to share the hilarious scene it saw just now with Cillin.
Who was Huimao? A cyborg cat! This guy was like an automatic camera. Everything he saw could be replayed in the form of a projection.
Silin pinched Huimao's ear when he saw the bride's sorry state. "What did you do this time?"
The gray cat looked away and shook its whiskers with a guilty look on its face. "It's nothing."
"Cut the crap. I'm noticing that you're getting worse and worse."
"Of course not! You're framing me! "
"It's slander. Oh right, since you're here, can you do me a favor? I want to contact Neo, but Black Viper will probably cause trouble for me. I need you to clean up the signal."
Huimao glared at him. "Didn't you promise Guan Feng to stay out of this and focus on your own business? Why are you contacting Neo?! "
Although Huimao was causing a little trouble for the bride and groom at the wedding, he had been paying attention to Silin's movements all this time. It was exactly because Cillin had promised Guan Feng that Wheeze would do more of its own things that it was so happy that it raised the automatic platform beneath the bride's feet a little. However, it quickly lowered it back down, and the bride tripped and nearly fell to the ground during this short period of time.
"I did say that I'm going to focus on my own business, but I didn't say that I'm not going to participate in this."
"You're lying! Liars will turn into shit in their next life! "
Silin pinched Huimao's fur on his round face. "What nonsense are you looking at now? Never mind, I have my ways even if you don't want to help me. "
Huimao might be angry, but he still helped Silin contact Neo. Huimao was going to save him some time.
Silin looked around and found a secluded place to contact Neo.
When he finally got in touch with Neo, Silin's heart sank when he saw Neo's face on the screen. Neo was wearing a protective suit, but it couldn't hide his striped face through the transparent mask.
Right now, Neo was busy in the lab that Black Viper had carved out of the quarantine zone.
"Silin, hurry up and tell me what you need. I still have things to do. This' zebra 'is killing me!"
Neo didn't sound depressed at all because of the virus. On the contrary, he looked full of fighting spirit.
"When did you get infected with the Zebra virus?" Silin asked.
"About ten days or so, but I made a medicine that can alleviate the symptoms."
It could only alleviate the symptoms and not cure the root of the problem. Neo would die for sure if he couldn't produce a medicine that could counter the virus.
"How do you feel now?" Silin had read some reports about the complications of the virus, so he knew that it definitely wasn't a good feeling.
When the subject was brought up, Neo cried out like he had experienced it deeply, "Oh my god! I'm telling you, Silin, this is a really bad feeling. Do you see these stripes? " Neo pointed at his face behind the transparent mask. There were green and gray stripes on his face. It was another variant of the Zebra virus.
"They are still very faint now, but I can already clearly feel that a part of the muscle cells in my body has begun to be torn apart by the cunning 'horse', while the other part is like a man and a woman in love who are about to fuse together!"
Silin: "..."
He really couldn't understand what was going on in Neo's head. How could he speak in such a tone even though he was infected with the Zebra virus? He was as pure and stubborn as an idiot.
Neo thought of this as a different kind of battlefield, a battlefield between him and the virus. He definitely knew that he would die if he lost, but death wasn't his priority right now. His priority right now was to analyze the virus and conduct in-depth research on it. Only a person like Neo could maintain such high morale and spirit in a situation like this. If he went to the RAS, he believed that only a small number of people would be able to do the same. Those who were truly dedicated to academia would be able to do so.
Silin asked Neo to tell him everything he knew so far, and Neo didn't hide anything from Silin. Instead, he told Silin everything he knew about the virus and discussed his theories with Silin. His starting point was the same as most Zebra virus researchers, and that was to start with the original virus.
"I'm afraid the original virus won't be easy to find," Silin said after listening to Neo's analysis.
"Of course I know that! I did some calculations, and given the mutation rate of this' horse ', the probability of finding the original virus is less than one in a billion. Also, I'm guessing that the original virus probably doesn't exist anymore. Even the primary mutants won't exist for long. Ten days later, more than half of the primary mutants will mutate a second time, and it will be even more difficult to find primary mutants by then. "
"So?"
"So I'm going to start from another angle!" Neo's face was covered in stripes, and his eyes were shining. He said proudly, "I've already constructed the virus' original model, and I've calculated a tenth of it based on the experiment results. This tenth isn't enough to prove whether the model is right or wrong, but I'll be able to confirm it when it reaches three tenths!"
Constructing the virus' original model required a lot of calculations. Even the most powerful computers in the world couldn't help with this. They could only help calculate the results, but every piece of data had to be calculated by humans. Some parameters had to be obtained through experiments, and then calculated by computers.
"How long will it take to calculate three tenths?" Silin asked.
"Based on the current progress of the experiment, it'll take more than 332.16 days."
Silin: "..." You'll be dead by then.
"Didn't Black Viper arrange an assistant for you? You can ask for help from other virus researchers. There should be a lot of people in Black Viper. "
"That won't do. I don't trust anyone else, and their way of thinking is different from mine. Yesterday, I saw someone who proposed the hypothesis that bonds can be restored across atoms, and I finally saw what it means to be kicked in the head by a donkey …"
Silin: "..."
Silin felt like crying as he listened to Neo's rambling. People like Black Viper were really hard to deal with. They were geniuses on one side, but they were also stubborn to the point where it was impossible to instill other people's opinions into them. If a slap could work, Silin would've slapped them without hesitation.
After talking to Neo, Neo went back to work on his experiment. According to the experiment plan and schedule he had laid out, his experiment would take a very, very long time.
After ending the call, Silin felt like there was a lump in his chest that he couldn't exhale no matter how hard he tried.
"Silin?" Huimao poked Silin with his paw and said, "Come back, Wheeze."
Silin looked down at Huimao who was poking his ankle and said, "Wheeze, help me one more time."
Huimao's ears drooped as he scratched Silin's pants and said, "Can you leave this alone?" Huimao couldn't help but worry when he saw Neo's brilliant face.
… …
Far away in Black Viper's hinterland, Xi Kai was busy working in his workshop. Suddenly, the data on the main screen started jumping faster and faster. The system immediately sounded an alarm. Xi Kai and the robot next to him turned to look at the screen in surprise.
"Someone is stealing data," the robot next to him said.
If Silin was here, he would've noticed that this robot was different from the other robots he had seen in his life. It was more intelligent and human, more like Sigma. It was obvious from the way it was frowning in thought.
"It's someone from Black Viper. There's no way he could've gotten into this system otherwise. Moreover, everything he stole is related to the Zebra Virus. "Xi Kai entered some commands on the screen, but they quickly lost their effect. He couldn't stop the intrusion for now unless he turned off all his machines.
A minute later, the data started jumping again.
"He left. I'm sure he knew someone was here, and I'm sure we would've seen such a forceful intrusion. Does this mean that the intruder intended to steal data openly for everyone to see? " The robot next to him tilted its head and thought for a moment. Then, it also opened a screen. It didn't need to use its fingers, but the data on the screen started jumping automatically when its eyes flashed.
A while later, the robot stopped and said in a puzzled tone, "This person is very powerful. No, maybe he's not human."
"You mean, a robot?" Xi Kai asked.
"I can't say for sure. It's a very strange feeling."
Xi Kai's communicator rang before he could figure out the reason. It was Guan Feng.
"What is it, Chief Wind?"
"Watch your side. I'm afraid that the stubborn Silin will try to force himself on us. If you can't do it, just turn off all your machines." Guan Feng sounded very helpless. He really didn't want Silin to get involved in this mess.
"If you're talking about the Zebra Virus, then I think you're a step too late. He got the data he wanted just now. That guy just openly stole all the data and information right in front of us. "
Guan Feng: "..."
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