“Right, X.”
Chen Chen suddenly halted when he walked out of the human cloning laboratory. “Is the secret laboratory I need ready yet?”
“It’s ready, are you going to begin the experiment today?” Little X asked.
“That’s right.”
Chen Chen returned with a nod. “Besides, the company is currently going through a bottleneck period. Before the industrial park on the surface is completed, there’s no suitable place for us to use the technology and knowledge brought back from Elysium. In that case, I’ll use the time before the industrial park is completed to work on a way to create personalized T-virus.”
Chen Chen went to the level-5 biosafety laboratory on the top floor of the Spire. After going through the proper disinfection procedures, he finally entered the laboratory.
Inside the laboratory was a set of the most advanced experimental devices by current standards as well as dozens of life incubators. There were also several Black Knights clad in positive pressure protective suits lying in wait for him.
These Black Knights would be serving Chen Chen as his assistants for now.
The reason that Chen Chen would not allow anyone to participate in the experiment, not so much as informing the Hannibal trio about it was that this was an experiment of utmost secrecy.
Chen Chen intended to modify the T-virus and produce a customized variant of the T-virus.
Chen Chen had always been eager to bring out the potential of the T-virus. Inside the movie, the protagonist Alice managed to achieve physical strength, speed, and even endurance of superhuman proportions.
The problem was that any regular person infected by the virus only became zombified. It was only Alice who had managed to perfectly fuse with the virus and bended the virus to her will.
Chen Chen doubted he would strike gold the way Alice did, therefore he was not even going to consider trying his luck. He prepared to use other genetic engineering methods to produce a variant of T-virus that was perfectly compatible with himself.
The first thing Chen Chen had to do to produce a personalized T-virus was to perform an analysis on the supercell formed from a fusion between the T-virus and his own cell. The parsed data could then be used to customize the T-virus.
The process was rather elaborate. Chen Chen only had to create his cloned zygote and inject the T-virus into it.
After the cloned zygote which shared Chen Chen’s genes became infected with the T-virus, it would eventually grow into a gigantic, pale white monster like the previous Black Knights. This monster would contain cells produced from a perfect fusion between Chen Chen’s cells and the T-virus.
After that, Chen Chen only needed to thoroughly study the genetic chain of the cell to find out the key to the fusion between the two entities.
It was similar to dealing with a mathematical question that relied on a specific formula. Although Chen Chen had no knowledge of the formula involved, he could skip right to the answer page and peeked at the answer.
Using the question and the answer provided, he could then deduce the formula.
After obtaining the formula, Chen Chen could begin focusing on studying the virus and modified the T-virus into a subspecies that would be perfectly compatible with himself alone.
Since this project would require his own cloned body, he made sure no word of it got out. Apart from the Black Knights as assistants, nobody else would be allowed to partake in the experiment.
Therefore, Chen Chen had to do it himself.
He first extracted somatic cells from his body and then extracted ten somatic cell nuclei from it using a micromanipulator.
After that, Chen Chen took out ten zygotes from the incubator. He used a three-dimensional polarized optical imaging system to perforate the nucleus of the egg cell with a laser on the zona pellucida. The nucleus was removed without damaging the egg cell. The nucleus of his somatic cell was then implanted inside.
Subsequently, Chen Chen used a combination of chemistry and electric current to activate the reprogrammed egg cell to form a fertilized zygote.
Chen Chen also expertly injected caffeine and several small molecules that served to improve the efficiency of reprogramming. He placed the synthesized zygotes into a hypoxic box.
Several hours later, Chen Chen ran some tests again to ensure there were no abnormalities in the zygotes. Only then did he inject the T-virus solution into five zygotes and placed them into the prepared artificial endometrium. This would spark the growth process of the zygotes.
After connecting the artificial endometrium with a machine, it was placed into the life incubator.
“Sir Godfather, you’re getting very good at this.”
Little X praised with a hint of a smile, “You only took a total of 14 hours from the extraction of your somatic cells to completing the implantation of the fertilized zygote. This is three times faster than your previous run.”
Chen Chen glanced at his watch upon hearing Little X’s comment. Sure enough, more than ten hours went by without him noticing. It was now midnight.
“Suppose this is why they say that in research, there’s no time.”
Chen Chen nodded and suddenly seemed to have thought of something. He mentioned with a gentle smile, “X, it looks like your voice has changed a fair bit as well.”
In Chen Chen’s impression, during the early stages, X’s voice carried a more childlike, even darling tone. Now X’s voice was closer to that of a young girl in the early adolescent stages.
“Ah, really?”
Little X responded with mild surprise, “I never noticed.”
“I think back when I extracted the artificial intelligence coding from Ready Player One, I may have left a segment simulating growth in.”
Chen Chen explained, “In other words, you’re constantly growing as well.”
“Hm… That’s possible.”
Little X groaned a little and commented thoughtfully, “No wonder I haven’t been watching Teletubbies and Peppa Pig as much lately…”
“What are you watching now then?”
Chen Chen leaned on a chair beside him. Since he was done with his work, he did not mind chatting with Little X. After all, as X’s father, it was only right for him to dedicate some time to caring for his adolescent daughter’s mental health development, no?
“I’ve been browsing a website called ‘Bilibili’, watching some… Some decent videos to kill some time.”
Little X answered meekly.
“Bilibili?”
Chen Chen had a bad feeling about this so he took out his phone. “Show me.”
“Oh…”
Little X seemed a little reluctant but still forwarded a Bilibili link anyway.
Chen Chen opened the link and saw the video titled: “My Black Cat Turned into a Girl and Wants to Date Me. Please Help Me Out, Hurry!”
“What in the world?”
Chen Chen dragged the progress bar toward the end and found that it was a rather normal video after all.
Chen Chen proceeded to look at the comment section.
That was when a comment finally caught Chen Chen’s attention.
Xun Ziqing: [Just curious, how long does it take for everyone’s cats to transform into a hottie?]
BeiBei Rabbit’Shell: [Mine transformed the second day, now we’re going at it every day.]
IcyCat Mulberry: [Mine hasn’t transformed, but we’re already going at it.]
Chen Chen silently closed his phone and turned toward the camera lens with a lot in mind. He seemed to be staring right at Little X. “Do you know what all these are?”
Little X appeared to be feeling slightly guilty. She carefully, ever so slightly directed the camera away, afraid of establishing eye contact with Chen Chen. “I guess, this is what they call two-dimension?”