When the alarm blared, Chen Hao was pressing his face against the observation window of the incubation room, as if trying to incubate the eggs with his body heat.

He didn't move, but his eyelids twitched twice. The sound wasn't new; the alarm had gone off seventeen times in the ecosystem. Six times, Nana misjudged it as a rat breaking in, and the other time it was because he forgot to close the freezer door.

"Again?" He didn't even turn his head. "How many times has this happened?"

"This is a top priority biological threat alert." Nana's voice came from above. "The mutant virus has breached the serum barrier, and the host cell lysis rate in culture dish number three has reached 91%."

He slowly straightened up, a series of cracking sounds coming from his back, like someone breaking matches. He had just been pulled out of the freezing cold yesterday, and today he had to race against the virus. This life was worse than the leftovers in the cafeteria.

"So... the original medicine is no longer effective?"

“Completely ineffective,” she said. “The mutant strain’s coat protein structure has been restructured, and the antigen recognition sites have disappeared.”

He clicked his tongue, turned, and walked towards the main control screen, supporting himself on the edge of the console. His steps were a little unsteady, as if someone had secretly removed parts from his knees. Halfway there, his hand slipped, and he almost dropped the recorder.

The robotic arm reached out in time, supporting his hand that was about to cramp and firmly pressing it onto the table.

"Thank you." He took a breath. "Next time, could you give me a heads-up? Like, 'Attention, a human is about to fall.'"

“We have detected your gait deviation exceeding the safety threshold for seven consecutive minutes,” she said. “We recommend using an assistive brace.”

“I’m not crippled.” He glared. “I just… was resurrected.”

He leaned on the counter to bring up the data stream, his eyes scanning the rows of fluctuating curves. The red peaks surged upwards, much like the heartbeat he felt while eating hotpot last week.

"What about the chicken embryos?" he asked. "Are they still usable?"

"Forty-seven pieces are in stock, and they are in good activity."

“Let’s get started.” He slapped the screen. “Let’s get some new antibodies. If the old serum won’t work, we’ll make them on the spot—incubate antibodies in eggs, that sounds pretty down-to-earth.”

“The procedure is extremely risky,” she cautioned. “The immune system of chicken embryos differs significantly from that of humans, and the success rate is less than 23 percent.”

"Twenty-three is better than zero," he grinned. "Besides, my pass rate was less than five percent, but I still managed to graduate from university, didn't I?"

He asked Nana to pull up the operating procedure, and while looking at it, he muttered to himself: "Low temperature induction, green liquid injection, dual-track parallel... It sounds like a breakfast shop frying eggs and making soy milk at the same time."

In the first round, fifteen embryos were selected, numbered 01 to 15. He put on gloves, and his fingers began to tremble as soon as they touched the syringe.

When the third needle was inserted, the eggshell cracked.

A clear liquid flowed out along the crack, like someone had spilled a small bowl of clear soup.

“It’s over.” He stared at the wet patch. “I’ve ruined my future lifeline.”

“The remaining embryos can only support two complete experiments,” Nana said. “If it fails, the maternal tissue fluid needs to be cultured again, which takes at least 72 hours.”

He paused for two seconds, then suddenly reached his hand into the bracket slot.

"Squeeze tighter," he said. "If you loosen it any more, I'll switch to selling tea eggs."

The robotic arm slowly tightened, securing his entire arm to the control panel. He now resembled an unfortunate sample strapped to a lab table, but at least his hand wasn't shaking anymore.

“Let’s begin.” He took a breath. “Let’s see if the virus is smarter, or if the fat kid is more ruthless.”

The injection was successfully completed. All fifteen embryos were placed in a temperature-controlled chamber, with the temperature set at 37.2 degrees Celsius and the humidity at 60 percent, and the lighting simulating the natural day-night cycle.

"So, all we do now is wait?" he asked.

"The first six hours are the most critical," she said. "If the viral load decreases, it means that antibody production has started."

He sat on a small stool by the observation window, staring at the rows of eggs lying quietly inside the chamber. No one spoke, only the low hum of the equipment running.

Three hours later, monitoring showed that the viral load had dropped by 70%.

He slapped his thigh suddenly: "Did it work?"

"Initial inhibition has been achieved," Nana confirmed, "but neutralizing antibodies have not yet been produced."

“Even being one step away is progress.” He leaned back against the wall. “It’s better than last time when I couldn’t even find a respawn point in a game.”

He wanted to take a nap, but as soon as he closed his eyes, the alarm went off again.

This is a yellow alert.

"Three embryos were found to have neural tube abnormalities." Nana pulled up the images. "The morphological aberration rate has risen to forty percent."

He rushed to the screen and saw that the internal structure of several eggs was twisted, as if they had been twisted by an invisible hand.

"What's going on?" he frowned. "Is it too hot?"

"The current cabin temperature is 37.4 degrees Celsius, which is 0.8 degrees Celsius higher than the standard."

“No wonder.” He pulled out a poultry development model from the database. “Chicken embryos are most afraid of heat; they can grow two heads if the temperature is even one degree higher. We need to bring it down quickly.”

He lowered the temperature and then had Nana add a trace amount of vitamin B12 solution, which was then evenly diffused through the atomizing nozzle.

"This thing is like giving an egg a brain booster," he muttered. "Hopefully, it won't hatch into a chicken that can write academic papers."

For the next twelve hours, he hardly left the incubation room.

When I'm hungry, I'll nibble on a compressed biscuit; when I'm thirsty, I'll drink a sip of room-temperature nutritional supplement. When my eyelids are drooping from sleep, I'll poke my thigh with a pen.

At 3:17 a.m., the first shell-pecking sound was heard.

Click, click, click.

Light, yet clear.

Then came the second tone, and then the third tone.

Inside the incubator, a fluffy little head hatched, its wet feathers slowly fluffing up. It stood crookedly, but it was definitely alive.

Then, the second one, the third one...

All the surviving embryos hatched one after another, resulting in twelve chicks. All of them were active and showed no deformities.

"Viral load?" he asked in a hoarse voice.

"It's dropped to 0.1 percent," she said. "It's now in the cleanup phase."

He let out a long breath, leaned back in his chair, and remained motionless.

"He's alive," he murmured. "He's really alive."

He reached out and touched the head of one of the chicks; it was soft and warm from being just born.

“You saved my life,” he said. “From now on, don’t eat bugs, just eat my leftovers.”

He smiled, then tilted his head and fell asleep.

He still held the record board in his hand, on which was written the last line: "B12 is effective, halve the dose next time."

Nana shuts down the high-voltage mode and switches to low-power inspection.

Her mechanical eyes scanned the vital signs of each newborn chick; the data were stable, the breathing rate was normal, and the body temperature was evenly distributed.

She extracted the first batch of antibody serum samples, placed them in a refrigerated tube, and the label was automatically printed:

[Codename: Egg Shield-a]

[Extraction time: 04:17]

[Applicable to: Variant retroviruses]

She prepared to separate the serum proteins for the next step, but paused for a moment.

Chen Hao was still asleep, with a few crumbs of biscuit on the corner of his mouth, clutching the record board tightly in his hand as if it were a lifeline.

She didn't wake him.

The lights are kept on constantly, and the temperature in the incubation room is maintained at 36.5 degrees Celsius, which is just right for humans to doze off.

She pulled up the background log and entered a line in the "Experiment Notes" field:

"The plan was successful. The person who carried it out did not change his sitting position throughout the entire process, ate only once, and said that it was 'more tiring than taking an exam'."

After completing the input, she retracted the robotic arm and stood silently beside the control panel.

Outside the window, the last chick finally broke free of its egg, stood up shakily, and shook its wings.

It has a faint brown marking on its left foot, which doesn't look like pigmentation but rather some kind of natural mark.

Chen Hao's fingers suddenly twitched, gripping the recorder even tighter.