This Game Is Too Real
Chapter 680: He and His Kids

Chapter 680: Chapter 680: He and His Kids

As the Alliance Biological Research Institute first speculated, the forests of Baiyue Province are the "children" born of Gaia and Earth.

These forests are not just about the trees within.

They include flowers and grasses, insects and birds, flying creatures and beasts, and even the humans who once lived here.

The Lair that landed on this land opened its own Gene Sequence bank and granted all creatures on this land the ability to exchange hereditary material with one another.

Of course, this exchange is not a random migration without rules.

Under the frame of the natural selection unique to Earth, the most excellent Gene Sequence fragments and the combinations of fragments stand out from evolution, and in the ultimate survival of the fittest and continuous trial and error, they flourish.

In just two centuries, they have completed the journey that Earth’s ecosystem would have needed two million years, or even twenty million years to traverse—some paths, indeed, Earth could never have reached.

The rustling of leaves and the chirping of insects buzzed in the ears.

Hearing this shocking conclusion, Fang Chang was stunned for a long time, his Adam’s apple moved slightly as he swallowed his saliva.

"...Is this Integration?"

Chen Yutong nodded.

Standing beside, Old White couldn’t help asking.

"What about the people here? Did they also undergo that integration... merging with foreign DNA?"

Chen Yutong nodded again.

"Unless there’s an exception, sure, the survivors in this area are fewer than in Qingquan City, but there must be people who stayed."

Old White stared at her blankly.

"But... the survivors in the Southern sea area are still doing fine, right? We haven’t felt that they are any different from us."

As if anticipating his question, Chen Yutong patiently explained.

"The evolution of the individual and the evolution of the species are two different matters. Faced with the extreme deterioration of the natural environment, some chose to leave, while others chose to stay. The survivors from the Southern sea area were just those who left, and afterward, they no longer participated in the evolution happening in this rainforest."

Old White frowned and asked.

"What about those who stayed?"

"They ’disappeared’ in evolution, or rather, they were integrated, transformed into other forms of existence..."

As she spoke, Chen Yutong crouched down, gently plucked a leaf from a bamboo grass by the roadside, stood up, and handed it to him.

Taking the grass leaf, Old White looked at her, puzzled.

"What’s this?"

"A piece of royal bamboo grass," Chen Yutong continued, looking at the leaf in his hand, "We found a fragment of human mitochondrial DNA in the mitochondria of a cell slice from a sample of royal bamboo grass."

Human mitochondria?!

Old White and Fang Chang both showed expressions of astonishment.

How the hell is that possible?!

"...We still can’t trace how this piece of DNA, originally belonging to humans, migrated to the royal bamboo grass. It could have moved through the food chain, perhaps through some intermediary microorganism, or both. In subsequent investigations, we quickly found similar conditions on mutant spiders, lizards, and even snails... They contain elements of humans as well as other Species."

Looking at the two stunned people, Chen Yutong said softly.

"This is Gaia."

"She handed Earth a key, unlocking the lock in our evolutionary journey."

"The lock of all things evolution."

Fang Chang stared with his mouth agape, feeling completely confused, yet somehow he seemed to understand a little.

It reminded him of a game called Stars he had once played.

Inside there was an ascension talent he rarely chose called "Cross-Species Compatibility," which was the final step of "Gene Ascension."

It wasn’t that this path wasn’t strong—in fact, it was the most bug-like ascension path in the entire game.

Once cross-species compatibility unlocked, it meant players could perform a series of war criminal operations, such as repeatedly forcing two creatures with different traits on the same planet to interbreed. The resulting hybrids would pick a positive trait from their parents to inherit, and they were not limited by the caps of genetic improvements, allowing for unlimited stacking.

Players only needed to perform this tedious operation a few times, and they could eventually create a super species compatible with all positive traits in the game!

It was as if their whole body was made of buffs!

However, there was a flip side; the side effects turned the player’s species interface into a chaotic palette.

Different interbreedings of miscellaneous species would procreate again, and the images and names would become increasingly bizarre.

Whether the computer’s CPU would fry was unknown, but the human brain’s CPU certainly would.

What’s the point?

Even without stacking buffs to heaven, the few underdeveloped AIs in the game were no match for the players.

Thus, most players would stop at a certain point, holding back from selecting the final step of "Gene Ascension" to maintain the purity of the species and their sense of immersion.

There were a few who, after achieving their ultimate goal—acquiring that super organism with the myriad buffs—would gather the other hybrid intermediates on one planet, fully charge it with a vassal’s declaration of war giant statue, and eliminate them all in one fell swoop.

The situation displayed by the Gaia Planet resembles a civilization that had selected "Cross-Species Compatibility."

For some reason, they had not only achieved cross-species integration but also fused all the organic beings on the planet into one through unrestricted genetic exchange.

To outsiders, they appeared as a unified Consciousness Entity.

Yet, upon profound unravelling, it wasn’t the common bee hive that people understood, but a unity of myriad hives!

It was both the entirety and the entirety was it.

That civilization, which had dissolved into invisibility, was likely more advanced than humans could imagine.

As for why their footprint had not traversed the myriad stars or why they had lost their original appearances, it was just a matter of differing pursuits.

The stars in heaven were never just one color, not all civilizations were keen on expanding their territories.

Perhaps some civilizations were born to build a wonder or write a poem.

And their poem had been completed in the past—the entity known to the human colonizers as Gaia.

The colonizers sent the lair carrying that poem back to Earth, and the lairs scattered across Baiyue Province were just a passage from that poem.

Fang Chang had a vague feeling that he was nearing the truth of the three-year war—the main storyline buried since the launch of Wasteland OL.

Looking at Chen Yutong, Old White still wore a face of incomprehension.

"But... how was this achieved?"

The prevailing view in the biological community is that horizontal gene transfer is unique to microorganisms and rarely occurs between eukaryotes.

This is also why, after passing through the early microbial phase, the life evolution on Earth had been mostly branching out like the branches of a tree.

A river separates a population of rats; one side is a mountain range and the other is a forest. A million years later, when the river dries up, the two groups of rats meet again, and reproductive isolation occurs—they can be considered to have evolved into different species. One could even say that "isolation" is the necessary condition for the generation of new species.

Most biology textbooks and popular science readers mention this simple model when they discuss the concepts of geographical isolation and reproductive isolation.

However, she told him that the isolation between species had been broken?!

Although he didn’t understand biology, he had at least completed nine years of compulsory education.

Besides, this didn’t need nine years of compulsory education.

He believed that horses and donkeys could mate, but ants and trees, spiders and cockroaches... how on Earth could these bizarre combinations come together?!

Looking at his bewildered expression, Chen Yutong raised her index finger to her forehead, and said somewhat helplessly,

"... I can probably guess what you’re thinking about, reproductive isolation between species, right?"

Old White nodded.

"Yes."

Chen Yutong continued patiently.

"Generally speaking, it is like that, but gene transfer isn’t limited to just the reproductive route... to illustrate with an example from Earth, the haddock and the salmon are two unrelated cold-water fish, yet the antifreeze protein gene of the salmon appears in the former’s gene sequence, a situation we call horizontal gene transfer."

"According to the literature from the Prosperity Epoch, not only in fish, similar situations also exist in reptiles, birds, and mammals. Thus, up to the time before the war, the general consensus in the academic community was that evolution isn’t a classic tree structure, and there have always been thin threads of connection between some branches."

"What Gaia did, was to turn these threads, which originally played only a minor role in the evolution of life forms, into bridges between species, transforming the tree-like evolutionary diagram of life on Earth into a ’web’ similar to that on Gaia."

This time, it was Old White who pressed his forehead with a headache.

"So... have we now also joined this glorious evolution?"

Chen Yutong nodded and looked towards the dense rainforest in the distance.

"Yes, the genes we carry will also enter this forest in some form. The ubiquitous microorganisms will break down our feces, hair, or even bodies, and these are some of the pathways of entry. Although this is integration at the macro level, at the micro level, as long as we’re not eaten by the local variants and turned into feces, we won’t disappear in this rainforest."

After a long period of thought, Fang Chang suddenly asked.

"What if we leave this forest?"

Chen Yutong looked at him and said.

"Nothing will happen, just like the survivors who fled the rainforest for the islands. The genes they took with them no longer participate in evolution within the rainforest."

"In fact, for the past two centuries, variants have been leaving this forest, while new ones have joined. Some groups have thrived in the rainforest, while others have disappeared after contributing their DNA."

"In the abstract, this forest is like a ’Gaia’ that has overlaid Earth’s natural laws and developed to an early stage. Every organism in the entire rainforest is a sub-entity, and the sum total constitutes an abstract ’Lair’... As for the most primitive and specific Lair, we’re still searching for it."

"... How on Earth was this accomplished?" Old White continued to scratch his head in frustration, turning over and over an issue that he simply couldn’t fathom.

Seeing him getting bogged down, Chen Yutong was somewhat helpless, but she still patiently said,

"That’s also what we’re studying, including why this forest is confined to this province and hasn’t spread elsewhere... Don’t get too anxious."

After pausing, she looked at Fang Chang, who was deep in thought.

"Also, regarding the ’self-healing nature’ you guys observed earlier, it actually exists based on the principles I mentioned before."

"Genes circulate freely between species, and natural selection continuously sifts out stronger species. The organisms here, whether plants or animals, whether they are producers or consumers in the food chain, all have an extremely robust vitality and the ability to accumulate nutrients... Because if not, they would quickly become Cannon Fodder that disappears after contributing a few sets of code."

"In this highly ’competitive’ environment, once a physical vacuum area appears, it is quickly occupied by other species."

Fang Chang, still with a headache, asked.

"Is there a solution?"

Chen Yutong: "Actually, it’s quite easy to resolve, just maintain possession of the area, like the land under your feet. Since people often pass by, tall grass can’t grow, and laying cement on it can last a long time. However, the relative maintenance cost may be higher than in other places."

Fang Chang immediately followed up with another question.

"What if it’s an area that’s not often active?"

"Then... there’s no helping it," Chen Yutong made a helpless gesture, "not to mention your settlement, even the previous Shilong City couldn’t withstand the erosion of this extraordinary natural force. The biology here doesn’t tolerate the slightest waste, so it’s better for you to find a way to make use of the developed land."

Fang Chang said with a wry smile.

"And then bear the high maintenance costs, right?"

The foundational infrastructure expenses of Potato Harbor were entirely paid for by Baiyue Strait Development Co., Ltd., the Alliance’s finances would never cover the costs of road construction for Potato Harbor, he had to carefully consider the balance of income and expenditure.

And it wasn’t just about the money.

From a macro perspective, money is just a tool for balancing logistics profits and losses and market supply and demand relationships. The damage caused by a negative asset is not only a deficit in the financial statements but also results in a significant waste of manpower and resources on meaningless activities.

Chen Yutong looked at him helplessly and said,

"Maintaining the original ecological landscape might be a good idea, and there’s no need to make all settlements look the same. Why not consider exploring a development model suitable for Baiyue Province? That’s the only suggestion I can give."

At this point, she suddenly remembered something.

"Ah, right, haven’t you been researching how to apply slime molds in the field of architecture? You might try those self-healing biological materials; they could be well-suited for the unique conditions here. As for land with lower utilization rates, why not maintain the original ecology of the forests—"

Just then, Old White, who had been brooding over the problem, suddenly spoke up.

"There is a way."

Both turned to him at the same time, with Fang Chang asking immediately,

"What way?"

"For the areas that can’t be developed for now, how about we plant some tropical crops to occupy the land? Like rubber, cotton, and such... I remember a long time ago, high-yield cotton seeds came out of the shelters, right?"

Old White glanced at the Moon people in the eastern camp and continued,

"Just like we did in Qingquan City, we cultivate the land and then contract it to them to farm. As long as there’s something growing on it, there shouldn’t be a problem, right?"

The maintenance cost of cotton fields is much lower than that of concrete, and the economic crops produced can earn a profit.

Moreover, this land has a "Growth Speed +n%" buff, and the soil fertility seems outrageously high, possibly yielding three or four harvests a year.

He had given up trying to understand the game’s settings from a scientific perspective. It made more sense to understand reality using the game’s settings, and this approach opened up his way of thinking.

Chen Yutong’s eyes lit up, and she said excitedly,

"Right... that’s a great idea, and it’s pretty much what I was thinking, just replacing those flowers and plants with economic crops."

Fang Chang slightly furrowed his brow.

"But won’t doing this introduce genes into the area, making the situation here even more complicated—"

Seeing his concerned expression, Old White shrugged helplessly.

"...We’ve been here so long; do you think it matters if we add one or two more chromosomes?"

Fang Chang was taken aback and then realized he had asked a rather foolish question, overlooking the quantitative difference between variables and the totality.

Forget about metabolites, the bodies they’d left in this forest alone were not just one or two, so what was a few cotton seeds?

Besides, this rainforest didn’t become like this today; what new things hadn’t it seen?

Right Hand touched his forehead and said with a mix of laughter and tears,

"You have a point..."

——

(Thanks to "Sarayago" for the generous tip!!!)

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