Chapter 1 Biological Modification and the Four Candidates

Li Ang had personally witnessed the bizarre and grotesque mutated creatures created by the Biological Blueprint in the mission worlds.

Although ugly and unsightly, these mutated creatures were surprisingly powerful, capable of handling some of the more challenging tasks—and that was without the Biological Blueprint possessing individual consciousness or spontaneous creation abilities.

If he could systematically transform existing Earth creatures into biological weapons through guidance, mutagenesis, and mutation, Li Ang could single-handedly become an army.

Wearing a hazmat suit, Li Ang stood in the automated pet enclosure he had personally built, a forest of cages, and muttered to himself, "The key question is, which animal should I choose as the prototype for biological modification..."

After a moment of thought, he quickly narrowed down his choices to a few categories.

First, earthworms, belonging to the Oligochaeta class of the phylum Annelida.

Second, planarians, belonging to the Turbellaria class of the phylum Platyhelminthes.

Third, ribbon worms, belonging to the phylum Nemertea.

Fourth, various insects, belonging to the class Insecta of the phylum Arthropoda.

As a primitive annelid, the earthworm's body is roughly cylindrical and bilaterally symmetrical, like two spindle-shaped tubes nested together. The outer layer is the body wall, composed of interconnected segments, while the inner layer is the digestive tract. The space between the two tubes is filled with coelomic fluid.

When an earthworm is cut in half, the muscle tissue at the severed ends contracts inward, with some muscle self-dissolving to form cell clusters. These clusters, along with white blood cells, create plugs that quickly seal the wound.

At the same time, primordial cells in the coelom cooperate with the dissolved muscle cells to form a regeneration bud at the cut surface. Cells from the digestive tract, nervous system, and other internal systems undergo mitosis, growing toward the regeneration bud and eventually restoring the earthworm to its original state.

There are approximately 2,500 species of earthworms in the world, and not all of them possess regenerative abilities. The regenerative abilities vary greatly between different species—Li Ang chose earthworms because of the wide variety available on Taobao, saving him the trouble of finding them individually.

Unlike the earthworm's rope-ladder nervous system, the planarian's nervous system is ladder-shaped. This more primitive central nervous system gives planarians the ability to "retain their original memories after being split," making them suitable for rapid iteration of biological weapons.

Ribbon worms, on the other hand, are the animals with the most powerful regenerative abilities in the world. The bootlace worm, Lineus sanguineus, which lives in the northeastern Atlantic and off the coasts of North America, can be repeatedly cut and still regenerate into new individuals, even if chopped into two hundred thousandths of a fragment, not much different from the drop-of-blood rebirth in fantasy stories.

These three types of invertebrate worms each have their own advantages and disadvantages. Li Ang decided to modify them synchronously in groups, guiding their transformation to see which candidate could come out on top and become a qualified biological weapon first.

"Go for it, guys! It's a last-place-elimination system. If you don't evolve, you can just wait to be thrown into the forging furnace and burned as garbage by Li Ang."

As for the fourth category, insects, the range of options was vast: ants, bees, beetles, flies, fleas, butterflies... Each insect has its own distinct advantages.

Unfortunately, the internal time flow rate of the automated pet enclosure was the same as the outside world, and the Killing Game wouldn't give Li Ang much time to develop. Therefore, he focused his biological modification efforts on bees of the order Hymenoptera.

Among the 37 orders within the class Insecta, including Coleoptera, Diptera, Lepidoptera, Hemiptera, and Orthoptera, bees of the order Hymenoptera are far inferior to insects of other orders in terms of both body strength and development potential.

However, bees have three advantages.

First, they undergo complete metamorphosis, passing through four stages: egg, larva, pupa, and adult. During pupation, the vast majority of the somatic cells in the larva undergo programmed cell death, breaking down into a cellular soup. Then, the original imaginal discs rapidly proliferate, differentiating into the various parts of the adult within the cellular soup.

In other words, the larvae and adults of holometabolous insects are two different individuals... A bit scary when you think about it.

In any case, during pupation, Li Ang can use the Biological Blueprint to intervene, causing it to differentiate the parts he wants in advance, directly producing new insects—this can save a lot of sanity points.

Another advantage of bees is that they are already highly specialized social organisms with a clear division of labor.

The queen bee is heavily pregnant and relies on worker bees for feeding. She can produce hundreds of eggs a day, and even more if she's pushed to her limit, perfectly meeting Li Ang's need for a large number of experimental subjects.

The male drones and worker bees also shoulder different social responsibilities. The former is responsible for sacrificing their lives for the reproduction of the group, while the latter must shoulder the difficult responsibilities of collecting nectar, warming and incubating eggs, feeding larvae, secreting wax to build honeycombs, guarding the nest entrance, and so on. They are truly diligent and hardworking tools, the most suitable basic combat units and labor force for biological weapons.

Finally, bees can communicate through pheromones. As long as Li Ang differentiates a glandular organ for himself to specifically produce pheromones, he can communicate directly with the bees, making it easier for him to control them.

Having selected these four main candidates, Li Ang began to use the Biological Blueprint for modification and differentiation.

He first picked dozens of earthworms in good nutritional condition, cut them in half, and, taking advantage of their wriggling to recover, used the Blueprint to "inflate" their regeneration buds, making the newly grown halves of the earthworms larger than the original halves.

After these top-heavy earthworms adapted for a while, Li Ang cut off the original halves again, repeating the process to make the earthworms larger and larger.

Then, he performed various modifications on these hundreds of giant earthworms, either growing four soft legs connected to the rope-ladder nervous system, or specializing the head with a solid carapace, or enhancing their photoreceptor organs, or possessing all the advantages at once.

Li Ang divided the earthworms into dozens of groups of various types and threw them into various corners of the forest.

A major feature of the automated pet enclosure is that it treats the most advanced life forms inside as limited breeding targets.

After these earthworms underwent modification, their ecological niche rose sharply, making them the priority targets of the enclosure's care—the enclosure would subtly ensure the survival of the earthworms to the greatest extent by loosening the soil, blowing a breeze to accumulate humus in front of the earthworms, and so on.

Li Ang also used the same method on planarians and ribbon worms, creating dozens of groups of different specialized species and throwing them around the forest.

Finally, for the bees, Li Ang bought several boxes directly from Taobao, just like he bought the earthworms, and piled them all in the corner of the forest—it didn't matter if there was a lack of nectar, as he could feed them with white sugar mixed with pollen anyway.

Creating biological weapons is a long-term investment, and even if it fails, it's not a loss.

Li Ang took care of everything inside the automated pet enclosure, waited for the queen bees to start laying eggs, made subtle adjustments to the eggs, and then teleported out of the enclosure, returning to the real world.

Calculating the time, it should be about time for the next script mission.