At midnight in the forensic laboratory, Su Chen was writing a firewall program for the third nanorobot. Suddenly, a baby cried in the refrigerator. He opened the door of the third cabinet and found a middle-aged male corpse with a regular rise and fall of the chest - half of the mechanical umbilical cord extended from the gap between the ribs, and the end was connected to a palm-sized quantum incubator.
"Qin...Qin Feng!" Tang Ren's shrill voice came from the corridor, "The morgue is haunted!" He rushed in holding a peach wood sword, and the tip of the sword pointed at a blood-soaked birth certificate: Su Chen and the tutor's names were clearly written in the parent column.
The scalpel cut open the stomach of the corpse, and what gushed out was not digestive juice but light blue nutrients. Su Chen's system suddenly went black, and the retinal residual image showed: the inner wall of the incubator was engraved with the "Medicine Master Sutra", and each Sanskrit character was a different version of the CRISPR enzyme code.
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When the gene detection team raided the underground clinic, Qin Feng ran into the "doctor" who was injecting nano drugs into the elderly. The wrinkled face grew backwards under the effect of the drug, and finally froze in the appearance of Su Chen's mother when she was young.
"This... This is a telomere regeneration agent!" Su Chen picked up the empty medicine bottle with electromagnetic tweezers, "뇾...뇾 Antarctic virus recombined telomerase gene."
Tang Ren opened the surgical curtain, and all the clones of different ages were floating in the incubators on the wall. When he scanned with AR glasses, all the clones suddenly opened their eyes, and bronze codes flowed in their pupils: "The main body's gene chain is broken, and the backup plan is activated."
While tracing the clone supply chain, the three of them accidentally entered a holographic projection that mirrored Chinatown. Every passerby had a sullen face, and the owner of the dessert shop was using his genetic sample to prepare "Eternal Life Dew".
"Welcome... Welcome to version 2.0 of human civilization." The mentor's projection looked down from the top of the archway, "When... When everyone is you, sin will lose its carrier."
Tang Ren took out an electromagnetic jammer and fired randomly, shattering the projection and revealing the real street scene behind it - three citizens with altered memories were wandering around, and the phoenix tattoos on their necks flashed synchronously.
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In order to obtain the mentor's brainwave key, Su Chen ventured to connect to the quantum deep dive chamber. When his consciousness fell into the torrent of memories, he saw himself playing in the laboratory when he was five years old, and his mother had bronze stretch marks under her white coat.
"At that time... they were editing your embryonic genes." Qin Feng's voice came through the neural interface, "The corpse in the freezer is your failed clone brother."
In the real world, Tang Ren's peach wood sword stuck the cabin door, and the AR glasses showed that Su Chen's brain waves were being tampered with. When he played the children's song "Stars" to interfere with the signal, his mother in his memory suddenly turned around - holding the gene patent certificate of the Lin Group in her hand.
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When the bells of Christmas Eve rang, three clones of Su Shen woke up at the same time. His face was reflected in every glass in Chinatown, and the citizens who had undergone gene editing sang the song of life in unison. Qin Feng cut the cable of the central broadcasting tower with an electromagnetic dagger and found that each wire was wrapped with a mechanical umbilical cord.
"This... this is a mass séance!" Tang Ren lifted the manhole cover, and the sewer was filled with clone remains. "They... they used your genes as a sacrifice!"
Su Chen stabbed the scalpel into the heart of clone 001, and what gushed out was not blood but quantum communication fluid. When the liquid came into contact with the air, a zigzag gene helix emerged over the entire city, and each base pair was marked with the Lin Group's trademark.
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The steel cable of the cross-sea bridge suddenly broke, revealing the bronze gene chain wrapped inside. When Su Chen climbed up the bridge tower, the system prompted him that his mitochondrial DNA was resonating with the bridge. A holographic image of his mother before her death emerged, pointing to the coral reef in the bay - where her real urn was buried.
"The key...the key is at the bottom of the sea." Qin Feng scanned the quantum safe in the coral reef, "It needs...it needs your mitochondria to be activated."
Tang Ren drove a modified fishing boat into a reef and threw out a magnetic anchor before the hull disintegrated. Su Chen dived into the boiling sea water and opened the urn at the moment - billions of nanorobots gushed out and formed a mother's smile in the air.
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When the self-destruction program of the Lin Group headquarters was activated, Su Chen was standing at the top of the gene spiral. The mentor's clone laughed wildly behind the glass curtain wall: "New humans don't need old morals!" Suddenly, he was strangled by a mechanical umbilical cord - the breeding system he designed personally began to backfire.
Tang Ren's electromagnetic cannon blasted open the bulletproof glass, and Qin Feng took the opportunity to inject the virus code into the main server. When all the clones covered their hearts at the same time, Su Chen's white coat suddenly burned, revealing the phoenix tattoo on his back - that was the mother's nanorobot piercing the firewall.
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Three years later, on Qingming Festival, Su Chen planted a cherry tree in the ruins of the laboratory. After genetic editing, the petals showed bronze patterns, and every gust of wind dropped binary codes. Tang Ren opened a fortune-telling stall to promote "anti-nano amulets", but in fact he was selling Qin Feng's crime-solving notes.
Qin Feng was debugging a new electromagnetic dagger, and the blade reflected Su Chen's image - the phoenix tattoo on the back of his neck was slowly fading. When the last nanorobot was excreted with sweat, the owner of the sugar water shop sent a special Yangzhi nectar, and the unactivated quantum Buddhist beads were deposited at the bottom of the cup.
(Deep in the ashes, new sprouts always break through the ground)
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