(This chapter involves theoretical and experimental details. Although the author has simplified it, it may still be a bit mind-bending. If you find it difficult, you can skip to the conclusion at the end of this chapter.)

In Todd's view, there is no other microorganism in the world with such a bizarre form as "Tyrant".

After the sample was magnified tens of thousands of times, it looked somewhat like a native bacteriophage virus. Its head was a huge sac containing DNA fragments, its body was a thick, straight viral stem, and its tail consisted of hundreds or thousands of extra-long, flexible tubes resembling octopus tentacles.

To test the physiological characteristics of the 'Tyrant' virus, Todd designed a live experiment.

The twelve white mice were divided into four groups of three:

The first group of experimental subjects were treated without any intervention; they were just ordinary white mice.

The second group was injected with mutant bacteria.

The third group was injected with both Sutherland archaea and mutant bacteria, but the ratio of the two was controlled within a certain range to ensure that no mutations would occur.

The fourth group was injected with Sutherland archaea and mutant bacteria, but the number of mutant bacteria exceeded the capacity of the archaea, intentionally causing mutations in the experimental subjects.

The four groups of experimental subjects correspond to four categories of people: ordinary people, ordinary mutants, normal inheritors, and mutated inheritors, respectively.

The "Tyrant" virus was injected into four groups of white mice, and after a period of time, all the subjects showed changes.

The first group, representing ordinary experimental subjects, experienced high fever, vomiting, convulsions, and fainting within thirty minutes of receiving the virus injection, and all of them eventually died.

The second group, representing ordinary mutant test subjects, met the same fate as the first group—all of them died.

The third group of experimental subjects, representing the normal heirs, ultimately could not escape their fate of death after struggling for ten hours.

The last group of test subjects, representing the inheritors of the mutation, gradually stopped their physical mutations after being injected with the Tyrant. Their bodies and organs returned to normal, and they retained their basic ability to cope with external stress.

What's going on?

Todd selected one mouse from each of the four groups of test subjects and began to dissect and test them.

When Todd opened the skull of the first white mouse, he was shocked by what he saw inside. Although the brain had stopped functioning, the cortical cells of the brain were completely covered by a contracting and shrinking black reticular membrane.

It looked as if someone had tightly covered the entire nervous system of the test subject with a layer of black plastic wrap.

Todd placed slices of the rat's brain under a microscope and, after some observation, finally obtained physiological data about the 'tyrant'.

The working principle of "Tyrant" is somewhat similar to that of bacteriophages. They use protein tentacles to "land" on the cell surface, then insert the tentacles into the cell nucleus to extract high-quality DNA fragments (the optimal strategy is currently unknown), and then absorb these DNA fragments into the viral capsule for preservation.

Once it has finished engulfing a group of cells, it will select the next group of targets to continue the process.

When the DNA fragments in the capsule reach a certain quantity, the "tyrant" virus will stop engulfing and instead, like a larva spinning a cocoon, use the surrounding free proteins and other nutrients to create a large spherical "virus nest".

The process of how this sphere was created was the most incredible part that Todd found to be.

Tens of thousands of 'tyrant' viruses gathered together, stretching their protein tentacles to their limits. Each pair of viruses connected by the ends of their tentacles, forming a hollow tubular channel that served as a 'bridge'. Through these interconnected tentacle channels, so many viruses collectively constructed a three-dimensional, grid-like spherical 'virus nest'.

What happened next was the most exciting part.

The 'Tyrant' virus transmits DNA fragments from its head to its tentacles via its viral stem, and then through the channels formed by the tentacles, it transmits them to the heads of other viruses, much like a high-speed, three-dimensional pipeline network, where viruses constantly exchange and filter DNA.

In this process, the "tyrant" activates and replicates all the non-coding genes in the dormant DNA. Then, these "tyrant" viruses act like sorters on an assembly line, comparing and checking the fully activated DNA fragments, discarding the inferior and useless fragments, keeping the high-quality ones, and finally reassembling these fragments in the "virus nest" to form a brand new, evolved biological gene.

However, for some unknown reason, most of the genes in existing organisms were classified as inferior and useless by the 'Tyrant' virus, which resulted in the death of all the first three groups of experimental subjects.

Now that we've figured out how the 'Tyrant' virus works, the next step is to understand its love-hate relationship with the Sutherland archaea.

The Sutherland archaea is a very special type of bacteria. When it is in its normal state, it is not much different from other bacteria and cannot resist the invasion of the 'Tyrant' virus in terms of defense mechanisms.

However, after mutation, the bacteria undergo drastic physiological changes, producing a highly specialized catalytic enzyme on their surface. This enzyme, primarily composed of proteins, significantly enhances cellular activity, propelling the archaea's mutation process and providing energy for the entire mutation. But this enzyme also exhibits an interesting side effect—when invaded by the "tyrant" virus, it uses its own enzyme proteins to temporarily protect the organism's major tissues from damage.

My dear reader, there's more to this chapter! Please click the next page to continue reading—even more exciting content awaits!