Mutation

Five days later, Zit signed the discharge papers.

Liu Baichuan was busy with the collection of information and couldn't find time to visit, but he still cared about his beloved student. He made a special call to the attending physician and asked him to pay close attention to Qi Te's condition.

The doctors were very dedicated, but Zite was well aware of his physical condition; his ribs had fully healed, and his brain damage had recovered by about 70-80%.

Of course, the most important reason he insisted on being discharged was that he had an urgent matter to attend to.

In the depths of winter, the temperature in Haicheng has already dropped to minus eight degrees Celsius. The weather forecast indicates that it will fall below minus ten degrees Celsius the day after tomorrow.

Old Mo is still soaking at the bottom of the lake. After he rests for half a month, it will probably take a drilling machine to break through the ice to get the body out.

Winter is the longest season of the year, and the old campus land will soon be auctioned off. It won't be so convenient to move the body back in then.

The situation was urgent, and Zit had no better time to deal with it. He could only fill his hoodie with stones and tie it to Old Mo's body to prevent the corpse from floating to the surface when the giant appeared.

The clothes were covered in his blood, and even though they had been soaked in water for a long time, it wouldn't be difficult to extract his DNA with the Federation's current testing technology.

In short, whether for our own sake or to prevent Yue Wanwan's supernatural abilities from being exposed, we must get rid of Lao Mo as soon as possible.

"Tezi, are you serious?"

Ji Chenyu looked at the frozen lake and immediately put on the mask of pain.

"If I remember correctly, I am your godfather now."

Joking aside, Qi Te had no intention of dragging his good friend into the water.

Seeing him roll up his sleeves and trouser legs on his own, Ji Chenyu got angry.

"Damn, you just got out of the hospital, are you out of your mind! Forget it, I'll go down."

"You can't swim, are you going to go down and drown with Old Mo?"

After saying that, Qi Te put on his swimming goggles, took a deep breath, turned around and jumped into the lake.

The thin ice surface shattered instantly.

The icy lake water cut through Zit's skin like a knife.

He quickly dived to the bottom of the pavilion in the middle of the lake and found Old Mo's body...

Zite's eyes widened suddenly as he stared in disbelief at the completely skeletal head.

He parted the water plants, quickly unbuttoned his hoodie, and what he had imagined to be a rotting, decaying corpse was now just a skeleton.

"What happened?"

When the incident occurred at the academy, the temperature was already close to zero degrees Celsius. Although the lake water contained a large number of microorganisms, the body could not have decomposed so quickly.

It only took about a month, which is obviously unreasonable.

With lightning speed, Qi Te tied the rope around the skeleton's waist, then searched for broken bones in the seaweed and wrapped them one by one inside his hoodie.

A sharp pain shot through his fingertips, and Qi Te instinctively pulled his hand back, only to see a faint trace of blood seeping from his left hand.

Upon closer inspection, there was a serrated wound on the pads of both fingers.

He then realized that the aquatic plants were unusually lush, even more so than in the summer.

After a few seconds of careful recollection, Qi Te was certain that when Shen Laomo was alive, the aquatic plants were not nearly as tall or as lush as they are now.

It's understandable that the decomposition of a corpse produces a lot of nutrients, but for it to multiply several times in a short period of time is outrageous.

Qi Te held his breath, gently grasped a swaying water plant, and upon closer inspection, was astonished to find that the edges of the water plant were serrated.

I don't know if it was just my imagination, but when the seaweed was grasped, it seemed to pull back slightly.

After changing three different aquatic plants, it was confirmed that it was not an illusion; each plant was indeed twitching back, but the force was not strong.

Almost unable to hold his breath any longer, Qi Te tugged at the rope, then forcefully pulled off a piece of seaweed, preparing to take it back to the laboratory for analysis.

Ji Chenyu, who was waiting at the pavilion in the middle of the lake, quickly pulled the other end of the rope to lift the remains upwards.

Just as Qi Te was rising, he suddenly felt something wrap around his ankle. He looked down and his pupils dilated in shock.

A piece of seaweed was wrapped around his ankle and was rapidly climbing up his calf. At the same time, several more seaweeds, like octopus tentacles, reached out towards him.

Qi Te quickly lifted his right foot, drew a dagger from his waist, and cut the waterweed.

Struggling to rise, he barely touched the edge of the pavilion before letting out a low growl before shouting, "Give me a hand!"

Ji Chenyu, who had just pulled up a skeleton, didn't have time to be confused. He quickly leaned over the railing and reached out his hand.

As soon as Qi Te climbed over the railing and jumped into the pavilion, the water behind him began to churn rapidly, as if it had been boiling.

As he watched the water plants constantly emerging from the water, Ji Chenyu's eyes widened in disbelief, and his jaw nearly dropped to the ground.

Qi Te took a couple of breaths, took off his soaked cotton T-shirt, rolled up the waterweed in his hand, and stuffed it inside.

The water churned for about five seconds before returning to calm.

Ji Chenyu finally came to his senses and exclaimed, "Holy crap! A monster!"

...........................

The most troublesome problem is solved.

Moving a skeleton is obviously much simpler than moving a highly decomposed corpse.

After moving to the new campus, Qi Te used his spare time and the convenience of accessing the laboratory to prepare a sufficient amount of fluoroantimony sulfonic acid.

This stuff is incredibly corrosive, arguably the most corrosive substance on Earth, and unlike ordinary strong acids, it doesn't easily produce harmful gases.

It would only take ten minutes at most to physically evaporate Old Mo.

However, Zite temporarily dismissed the idea, his major instinctively making him realize that the skeleton might have research value.

The two quickly left the old campus and hailed a driverless car.

"Aren't we going to District Nine?"

Ji Chenyu looked at Qi Te with a puzzled expression. They had already planned to fish out Lao Mo and then head straight to the landfill between District 9 and the isolation fence to dissolve the body without anyone noticing.

The landfill is far from the city; it takes more than half an hour to walk there to District 9. Most importantly, there is no surveillance there, and very few people are there. Even those who are there are mostly homeless people with mental disorders and marginalized people living on the other side of the fence.

Marginalized people, simply put, are unregistered individuals without citizenship or household registration. Some cities, due to population decline and labor shortages, allow marginalized people to enter the city's outermost areas to engage in heavy manual labor.

Haicheng has a highly developed intelligent industrial sector and a relatively large population. Therefore, people living on the fringes of Haicheng are absolutely not allowed to enter the city limits. Not even in the Ninth District.

Therefore, even if marginalized individuals witness their act of destroying evidence, there is no concern about being reported.

However, the car's navigation system indicated that the destination was not District 9, but the college.

Qi Te shook his head and gave Ji Chenyu a wink, indicating that there was a platform listening system inside the car.

A dozen minutes later, the car arrived at the college gate, and Ji Chenyu's heart was pounding.

In light of the college hostage situation, the university purchased scanners and installed them at all the main gates of the new campus. All vehicles and individuals must pass through this checkpoint first.

The scanner can detect dangerous items such as controlled knives and guns, but whether it can detect corpses is unknown.

Ji Chenyu quickly received the answer.

As soon as the guard approached the car, Zite pulled out his lab ID and said that the trunk contained research materials that his supervisor had asked him to pick up from the hospital.

Medical schools naturally need cadavers, although they are not common. The guards had heard of them and let us through after checking our work IDs and student cards.

Upon arriving at the experimental building, Qi Te headed straight for the large laboratory on the first floor, while Ji Chenyu followed closely behind, carrying a suitcase containing the skeleton.

"Holy crap, they actually managed to sneak in!"

After hearing the door close, Ji Chenyu collapsed onto the adjustable stool, sighed, and then suddenly realized what had happened.

"Wait, Tezi, why did you bring this thing to the academy?"

Qi Te remained silent, found a handheld radiation detector in the instrument cabinet, and scanned Ji Chenyu from head to toe.

Then, it was done to myself.

The data showed that everything was normal, and neither of them had excessive radiation levels.

"What's going on? You don't think that mercenary is a cyborg, do you?!"

Although the federal government has never officially acknowledged it, it is no secret that several large companies are researching humanoid projects.

Six months ago, an anti-federal armed group deployed cyborgs. The federal government, of course, wouldn't broadcast such information, but the terrorists insisted on claiming responsibility for the attack.

The global network is synchronized, and although the responsible statement issued by the organization's leader was quickly taken down, there are plenty of people who live on the internet and surf 10G all day long.

The scissors displayed their unique skills, and the highlight reel of that small team of 11 bio-engineered humans successfully destroying a base of the world's richest company, Airon Technology, amidst a hail of bullets is still circulating in various chat groups.

"Beep"

An electronic sound rang out, and the laboratory doors slid open to both sides.

When Ji Chenyu saw Liu Baichuan arrive, he immediately panicked and hurriedly got up to try to block the suitcase.

As a result, Professor Liu reached out and pushed him aside, his eyes shining, and asked, "Where's the stuff?"

Qi Te pointed to the box, then untied the plastic bag, took out the wet cotton T-shirt, and pulled out the seaweed.

As he walked out of the old campus, he had already considered that, with his current level of expertise, he could not guarantee the accuracy of the data obtained from independent experiments.

So, he naturally thought of this federal chief biologist who had devoted himself to scientific research and dedicated most of his life to it.

Sure enough, as soon as Old Liu saw the obviously mutated waterweed and the skeleton version of Old Mo, he couldn't move.

They showed no curiosity whatsoever about where they got these things; their eyes were only filled with a fervent passion for scientific research...