Li Ang had personally witnessed in the mission worlds those bizarre and malformed creatures created by the Origin of Life. Although those malformed beings were ugly and repulsive, their combat abilities were quite considerable, well-suited for various siege tasks. This was all assuming the Origin of Life lacked individual consciousness and created spontaneously. If he could guide, induce mutations, and transform Earth's existing creatures into an organized force of biological weapons, then Li Ang could very well become an army of one.
Dressed in a hazmat suit, Li Ang stood in a woodland of Automated Pet Boxes he had built himself, muttering, "The key issue is which type of animal to select as the prototype for biological modification."
After a moment of contemplation, he quickly identified several categories of animals.
First, earthworms from the class Oligochaeta of the phylum Annelida.
Second, Planarian Worms from the class Turbellaria of the phylum Platyhelminthes.
Third, Nemertean Worms from the phylum Nemertea.
Fourth, various insects from the class Insecta of the phylum Arthropoda.
As a lower annelid, the earthworm's body is roughly cylindrical and bilaterally symmetrical, akin to two shuttle-shaped tubes fitted together. The outer layer is a body wall of connected segments, and inside is a digestive tract. Coelomic fluid fills the space between these two "tubes."
When an earthworm is bisected, the muscle tissue at the cut surface contracts inward. Part of the muscle self-dissolves to form a cell cluster, while white blood cells create an embolism that quickly seals the wound. Simultaneously, totipotent cells in the coelom cooperate with the dissolving muscle cells to form regenerative buds at the cut surface. Cells of the internal digestive tract and nervous system then grow toward the regenerative bud via mitosis, ultimately restoring the earthworm to its original state.
There are approximately 2,500 species of earthworms in the world. Not all possess regenerative abilities, and these abilities vary greatly between species. Li Ang chose earthworms because a wide variety was available for sale on an online marketplace, sparing him the effort of searching for them individually.
Unlike the rope-like nervous system of earthworms, the nervous system of Planarian Worms is ladder-shaped. This more primitive central nervous system grants planarians the characteristic of "maintaining original memory after division," which can be used for the rapid iteration of biological weapons.
Nemertean Worms are animals with the most powerful regenerative capabilities known. The ribbon worm Lineus sanguineus, inhabiting the northeastern Atlantic and both coasts of North America, can be repeatedly segmented. Even a fragment as small as one two-hundred-thousandth of its original size can regenerate into a new individual, not much different from the "blood regeneration" often described in fantasy novels.
Li Ang decided to simultaneously modify these three categories of invertebrate worms in separate groups, guiding their transformation to see which candidate would emerge as a qualified biological weapon.
Go for it, lads, this is an elimination race; evolve or be ready to be tossed into the Forging Furnace by Li Ang and burned as trash.
As for the fourth category, insects, the range of choices was quite broad: ants, bees, beetles, flies, fleas, butterflies... Each type of insect possessed distinct advantages.
Unfortunately, the flow of time inside the Automated Pet Boxes was consistent with the outside world, and the "killing field game" wouldn't grant Li Ang more development time. Therefore, he set his primary target for biological modification on bees from the order Hymenoptera.
The class Insecta contains 37 orders, including Coleoptera, Diptera, Lepidoptera, Hemiptera, and Orthoptera. Among these, bees from the order Hymenoptera were far inferior to insects from other orders in terms of both body strength and developmental potential.
But bees have three advantages.
Firstly, they undergo complete metamorphosis, passing through four stages: egg, larva, pupa, and adult. During pupation, most of the larva's somatic cells undergo programmed cell death, disintegrating into a cellular soup. Then, the original imaginal discs rapidly develop and differentiate into the adult insect's various parts within this soup.
In other words, the larva and adult of holometabolous insects are essentially different individuals, with the larva being directly "melted away" in the pupa. Quite horrifying, upon closer thought.
In any case, during pupation, Li Ang could intervene using the Origin of Life, causing it to differentiate the desired parts prematurely and directly produce a new insect type. This could save a great deal of Sanity Value.
Another advantage of bees is that they are a species with an extremely specialized social division of labor.
The Queen Bee, large-abdomened, relies on Worker Bees for nourishment and can lay up to 800 eggs a day. At full capacity, she can lay even more, perfectly meeting Li Ang's need for numerous experimental subjects.
Male bees (drones) and Worker Bees also shoulder different social duties. Drones dedicate their lives to the proliferation of the colony, while Worker Bees undertake challenging tasks such as collecting nectar, warming and incubating eggs, raising larvae, secreting wax and building combs, and defending the nest entrance. They are the epitome of diligent, uncomplaining workers, making them the most suitable basic combat units and labor force for biological weapons.
Lastly, bees communicate through pheromones. If Li Ang could differentiate a glandular organ for himself to produce these pheromones, he could communicate directly with the bees, facilitating their control.
Having selected these four main candidates, Li Ang began using the Origin of Life to modify and differentiate them.
He first selected a few dozen earthworms in good nutritional condition and cut them in two. While they were writhing and recovering, he used the Origin of Life to "inflate" their regenerative buds, causing the newly grown halves of the earthworms to become larger than the original halves. Once these top-heavy earthworms had adjusted for a while, Li Ang chopped off their original halves and repeated the process, causing the earthworms to grow increasingly larger.
After that, he performed various modifications on these hundreds of giant earthworm sections. Some were made to grow four soft legs connected to their rope-like nervous system; others had their heads specialized with tough carapaces, their light-sensitive organs enhanced, or were equipped with all these advantages at once.
Li Ang divided these modified earthworms into dozens of groups and dispersed them into various corners of the woodland.
A key feature of the Automated Pet Box is that it treats the highest-level lifeform inside as its primary subject for care and resource allocation. After these earthworms underwent modifications, their ecological standing skyrocketed, making them a priority for the Automated Pet Box's care. The box would subtly ensure the earthworms' survival to the greatest extent by, for example, providing soft soil or blowing breezes to accumulate humus in front of them.
Li Ang also treated the Planarian Worms and Nemertean Worms in the same way, creating dozens of different specialized strains and scattering them throughout the woodland.
Finally, for the bees, Li Ang purchased several hives directly from an online marketplace, just as he had with the earthworms, and stacked them in a corner of the woodland. A lack of natural nectar sources wasn't an issue, as he could feed them a mixture of sugar and pollen.
Creating biological weapons was a long-term investment; it wouldn't be a loss even if it failed.
After Li Ang had arranged everything within the Automated Pet Box, and once the Queen Bee began laying eggs, he made minor adjustments to the eggs before transporting himself out of the box and back to the real world.
By his calculations, it was almost time for the next "script task" to arrive.