Dimensional Codex System: I'm really not a cultist!
Chapter 760 - 759: The Mysterious Virus X

Chapter 760: Chapter 759: The Mysterious Virus X

"This damn place really does look eerie,"

As he looked at the streets bathed in sunlight, Fang Zheng shook his head and muttered to himself.

Just as Kei Shidou had said, after the sun rose, the zombies that were originally wandering around had completely vanished. The whole street was emptily echoing, not even an animal was in sight. Honestly, this scene felt pretty unsettling.

If this were a city long abandoned, it might have been somewhat better. Streets overgrown with weeds might look chaotic, but at least they signaled that nature was still thriving. Now, however, the city still maintained the look of what a city should be like, but not a single person could be seen, giving off the feeling that this city was merely a set piece, somewhat like a "scene map" from The Truman Show. It was somewhat unsettling and even fearful, as if you are the only one abandoned here... like some kind of prop. Seeing too much of this, one might even begin to doubt whether the world itself was just a giant toy box, and now, the owner of the box seemed to have given up on this toy.

Although the desolate street seemed to allow Fang Zheng to do as he pleased playing top-notch racing games, in reality, the dangers here were not low.

One might even say... very high.

"Whoosh——!"

Just as Fang Zheng was passing a street corner, suddenly, a slim shadow leapt up from the eaves nearby, stretched its arms out, and pounced toward Fang Zheng. Its speed was incredibly fast, almost comparable to a hunting cheetah. In the blink of an eye, the shadow was before Fang Zheng——then it was pierced by an arrow that shot out, screaming as it flew back and nailed into the wall beside him, struggling a few times before gradually hanging its head and falling silent.

"It’s indeed a HUNTER."

Fang Zheng walked up to the wall, narrowing his eyes to closely inspect the creature in front of him. It looked like a zombie too, but unlike those that operated at night, this zombie’s skin was covered with healed scars, it was somewhat short, with disproportionately long arms and very short legs. It somewhat resembled a gibbons in shape.

However, what Fang Zheng cared more about were the scars on its body.

"Indeed, this one is an evolved form too?"

Fang Zheng took out his personal terminal, scanned the creature before him, and then compared the data.

"How’s it looking, big brother?"

At this moment, Little Hei also came up beside Fang Zheng, examined the creature carefully, and curiously glanced at the personal terminal in Fang Zheng’s hands.

"It seems my guess was correct, so far, all the mutant species we’ve encountered are evolved forms of zombies... Look, this zombie also has signs of skin ulceration due to direct sunlight exposure, but its wounds have healed, which is indeed very telling,"

Saying this, Fang Zheng raised his head, looking up at the sun in the sky emanating intense heat.

He and Little Hei had been searching around the station for the whole morning, and during that time, Fang Zheng and Little Hei had encountered several powerful mutants. However, contrary to what Fang Zheng had guessed, after coming into contact with these mutants, Fang Zheng was surprised to find that these mutants weren’t social creatures as he had imagined; instead, all these mutants acted independently and seemed to have some sort of territorial awareness, attacking any creature that entered their territory.

Not only that, but through dissecting and scanning these mutants, Fang Zheng also found another pattern. That is, all these mutants originally evolved from common zombies, and as for their source of evolution... although Fang Zheng was reluctant to admit it, as it stood, there was only one answer.

It was the sun.

So far, Fang Zheng had encountered four mutants; their bodies, without exception, showed signs of skin ulceration from sun exposure, followed by healing. This meant these mutants had all undergone a secondary mutation due to sunlight exposure after turning into common zombies, evolving into what they were now.

Now, Fang Zheng was just unsure whether this evolution was intentional or merely accidental, as the evolutionary directions he had observed in several mutants were quite different, and importantly...

"Collecting samples, these should pretty much suffice,"

While saying that, Fang Zheng extended his hand and cut off a small sample from this body before him, then placed it into a glass box.

"Let’s head back, Little Hei."

"Okay, big brother,"

Hearing Fang Zheng speak, Little Hei casually tossed a piece of chocolate into her mouth and then nodded.

When Fang Zheng and Little Hei returned to the station that served as their base, it had been completely transformed. One had to admit that Midori and Kei Shidou had put in a lot of effort, at least when Fang Zheng walked through the door and saw the bright, clean hall and the neat furniture, his mood improved considerably.

"You’re back, Brother Zheng, Sister Little Hei..."

Seeing Fang Zheng and Little Hei return, Midori quickly came up to them, smiling as she looked at the two.

"I’m back, Midori."

Looking at the cat-eared girl in front of him, Fang Zheng smiled and reached out to pat Midori’s head, simultaneously gently rubbing her soft, fluffy cat ears.

"How’s the situation? Any response?"

"There’s been no response from Natsuse’s side, Miss Kei Shidou is helping..."

"I understand."

Hearing this, Fang Zheng was not surprised. The city had turned into something resembling Hell. Fang Zheng believed that even if a survivor from a Resident Evil scenario were brought here, whether they could survive a day in this hellish place was questionable. Of course, Alice might be an exception... Maybe not an exception, who knows?

"I need to do some research next, you and Little Hei should rest first."

As he spoke, Fang Zheng walked over to a closed compartment — originally a storage room for train maintenance tools, but now repurposed as his laboratory by Fang Zheng.

After locking the door, Fang Zheng casually took out five glass boxes from his pocket and placed them on the table. Then he turned on his personal terminal and began to carefully scan and study the viruses inside.

Fang Zheng was not a biologist. In fact, his understanding of biology was very basic during his university days. However, this did not mean he had wasted all those years. Especially after acquiring the talents of the Time Dragon, Fang Zheng discovered that many things that used to seem like a Heavenly Book to him were suddenly understandable... Thanks to this talent, Fang Zheng tasted the joy of being a top student for the first time in his life.

And now, he could finally "apply what he had learned."

Among the five samples at hand, two were extracted from Common Zombies, while the remaining three came from three different Mutants. Now, Fang Zheng wanted to see how this thoroughly mixed "Bio-World" would "self-justify" its conditions.

However, the results of the tests somewhat surprised Fang Zheng.

After comparing the "base virus" collected from the Common Zombies with the "mutant virus" samples from the Mutants, Fang Zheng was astonished to find that their structures had undergone completely different changes and could even be said to be totally different things!

If the "base virus" were compared to soil, then the "mutant virus" was like turning soil into bricks, making clay sculptures, and even producing ceramics. Even though the "material" was the same, the "end products" were vastly different.

Furthermore, these "mutant viruses" were not in complete states either. Through analysis and research, Fang Zheng discovered that these viruses were still undergoing further "evolution upgrades," but because their hosts had been killed, this evolutionary process had been interrupted.

Eventually, Fang Zheng finally figured out what was going on with the virus in the Bio-World.

From the current observations, the initial "base virus" would spread through water, air, and blood, infecting other people. It would quickly mutate and erode the host’s body. The human immune system would react violently to this, and a battle would begin. At the beginning, the immune system might gain the upper hand, but eventually, the "base virus" would destroy the immune system, kill the host, and transform them into Zombies.

In this phase, Zombies, driven by the virus’s activity, would have a voracious appetite and attack other living beings. Additionally, they would fear sunlight and try to avoid it.

However, if the Zombies were unfortunately exposed to sunlight, the "base virus" inside them would begin to mutate wildly to resist the damage caused by the sunlight. From what has been observed, their mutations seem to be random. Taking the few Mutants Fang Zheng had encountered before as examples, although they all had the ability to resist sunlight exposure, their methods of movement, hunting means, and body sizes varied greatly.

Moreover, Fang Zheng found that during the process of secondary mutation, the evolution of these viruses was completely random.

It was as if the result was 9, whether you chose 4+5 or 1+8 or even 3X3, as long as you achieved the result of "9," the process in between had no uniformity!

From one perspective, this virus was somewhat similar to the Zerg, but the difference was that the Zerg’s evolution was through "amalgamating the best of hundreds." The virus’s evolutionary process, however, was more like "rolling the dice a hundred times, and if once it comes up doubles, then I win"...

In some ways, this virus is even more troublesome than the T-virus...

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