As Tang Ren rushed into the cordon carrying a grilled squid, the entire bay glowed with an eerie emerald glow. Su Chen's new artificial eye automatically switched to biospectral mode, and a scarlet warning flickered on his retina: "Abnormal CRISPR-Cas12 activity detected—"
"This, this is gene-edited algae!" Qin Feng grabbed Tang Ren who almost stepped into the slime layer. Under the moonlight, the slimy algae blanket was multiplying at a speed visible to the naked eye, swallowing up the crab carcasses on the beach and then spitting out white skeletons. The propeller of the Coast Guard drone was entangled and corroded by the algae filaments just as it approached to take samples.
"Let the professionals do it!" Tang Ren picked up the squid skewer and poked it at the algae carpet. The bamboo skewer was instantly charred. He suddenly found that the charred mark on the skewer head spelled out the oracle bone "Q", and the algae liquid on the sole of his shoe was etching the CRIMASTER ranking on the sand.
Su Chen used folding tweezers to pick up the algae filaments. The microscopic mode of the artificial eye showed that there were artificially inserted bacteriophage genes on the DNA chain: "Q organization transformed algae into 깊biological hard drives... These mucus are recording the genomic information of tourists."
The tide suddenly reversed, revealing the densely packed bronze pipes in the reef area. Qin Feng picked up half of a valve cover engraved with the Liangzhu divine emblem, and suddenly the sound of the tide 500 million years ago rang in his ears.
---
As the searchlight on the diving suit helmet swept across the seabed, Tang Ren's screams made the communicator explode. Hundreds of clams opened their huge mouths, and biological display screens embedded in the shell meat scrolled and played the genetic sequences of those swallowed by the algae carpet.
"This is a clam... It's a living gene bank!" Qin Feng scanned the clam column with a laser pen and found carbon nanotubes woven into the muscle fibers. Su Chen was suddenly enveloped by the ink sprayed by the clam, and his artificial eye captured a quantum entanglement signal in the darkness - a certain undersea base station was uploading the human genome to the cloud through the clam.
Tang Ren used a fire axe to split the shell of the clam, and a bronze capsule with the CRIMASTER logo rolled in the mucus. After the capsule burst, the frozen prehistoric mosquito flapped its wings and flew up, its mouthparts flashing the cold light of a nano-syringe.
"Get out of the way!" Qin Feng knocked Tang Ren against the reef. Where the mosquitoes flew by, the corals instantly shrank, and the fish swarms turned into three-headed monsters with long fins. Su Chen believed that this was the "stone virus" eliminated in the Cambrian experiment, and the Q organization actually combined it with gene editing technology.
---
In the rusted cargo ship at the abandoned dock, Qin Feng found rows of culture pods soaked with humanoids. Tang Ren's squid grill accidentally knocked over a liquid nitrogen tank, and the cold air revealed the horrifying truth - each pod contained a genetic chimera of the same race: an African woman with gills, a Nordic man with skin covered in scales...
"They are creating new humans..." Su Chen touched the capsule's fingerprint lock, and the system suddenly activated the holographic log. In the video, Saotome Suzu's robotic hand was inserting a trilobite gene fragment into a human embryo: "The potential for progress in the Cambrian era will be reborn in humans."
The freighter shook violently, and the clones all blinked. Tang Ren picked up the fire extinguisher and smashed it at the control console. In the dry powder smoke, Qin Feng caught a glimpse of the cabin numbering pattern - each number corresponds to the astrological code of the Liangzhu jade cong.
"Go to the power module!" Su Chen cut the bio-cable. When the three fell into the lower warehouse, tons of bronze gears were being reassembled to form an enlarged version of the Cambrian Gene Tower. The jade disk rotating on the top of the tower was the lost national treasure of the Liangzhu ruins.
---
In the mangrove swamp, aerial roots entangled to form a Klein bottle structure. Tang Ren's rubber shoes were stuck by the resin, and when he pulled them apart, he found a large piece of bark - the inner rings were full of binary "Compendium of Materia Medica".
"This is a tree... It's a biological circuit board!" Qin Feng scraped the bark with a dagger, and quantum bacteriophages swam in the fluorescent sap. Su Chen suddenly had a splitting headache, and his artificial eye showed that the entire mangrove forest was a huge living antenna, emitting genetic radio waves that modified telomere length.
Tang Ren lit up the windproof lighter, but the flame was a strange blue-green color. "Leave the fire to burn the evil!" He threw the flame towards the tree roots, and the burning resin released a hallucinogenic smoke. Twelve phantoms of Qin Feng's mothers emerged in the mist, each operating a genetic instrument at the same timeline.
"Mom... which one is you?" Qin Feng's hand penetrated the shadow. Su Chen suddenly stabbed the dagger into the trunk, and the bronze conduit system was revealed where the juice splashed - it was the extension of the Cambrian submarine gene tower.
---
The moment the goggles misted up, Qin Feng saw the coral reefs proliferating wildly. The branches of the staghorn corals formed Fibonacci spirals, and the grooves of the brain corals were etched with chaotic mathematical formulas. Tang Ren's oxygen tube was entangled by coral polyps, and the bubbles that emerged after being cut off actually formed a new CRIMASTER protocol.
"They... are calculating the countdown to human extinction!" Su Chen used his voice to scan the reef and found biological crystals built into the coral skeleton. Qin Feng was suddenly knocked away by the mantis shrimp, and the fragments of the jade inlaid on the shrimp cut his palm - the blood dripped into the sea water, and the corals within a radius of ten meters turned white in an instant.
Tang Ren took the opportunity to stuff the jade fragments into the reef cave, and the corals suddenly resonated. Quantum's "Heavenly Creations" holographic projection appeared, and Ming craftsmen were installing bronze joints on the corals. Saotome Suzu's phantom walked out of the projection: "Welcome to experience Cambrian 2.0..."
---
When the submarine searchlight illuminated the seafloor rift, the three of them gasped at the same time. Thousands of bronze tripods were arranged around the hot springs, and the boiling water inside the tripods was sulfur and archaea mixed with human stem cells. Tang Ren's diving suit mask reflected a distorted mirror image - each tripod was breeding a chimera of a strange shrimp and a human.
"This is a recursive experiment..." Su Chen detected that the jade bell hanging from the tripod's ears emitted gene-regulating sound waves. Qin Feng discovered that the inscriptions on the body of the tripod recorded the extinction date of the Tongming, and the latest line was the winter solstice in 2024.
Tang Ren used a fish knife to pierce the belly of the cauldron, and a half-finished monster crawled out of the gushing mucus: a human torso connected to a trilobite carapace, and its compound eyes flashed with Sinuo's origami patterns. Su Chen activated the submarine's electromagnetic pulse, and the monster twitched and revealed a more terrifying truth - their nerve cords were connected to 5G base stations around the world.
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In the deep sea trench, the rusted church spire pierces the sedimentary layer. The saints on the stained glass have gills, and the organ keys are bronze-cast DNA double helix. When Qin Feng pushed open the rotten wooden door, the organ automatically played Quantum꿨's "Requiem".
"Lost lambs..." The mechanical priest turned around, and his octopus tentacles extended from his black robe. The confessional was filled with frozen embryos of gene-edited babies, and the names of global politicians were signed on the confessions. Tang Ren overturned the holy water font, and the pages of the Bible that were soaked revealed the Cambrian gene map.
Su Chen was suddenly nailed to a cross, and his artificial eye forced to play the global live broadcast of the Q organization: Sino's phantom was baptizing the chimera, and behind him was a doomsday clock made of Liangzhu jade cong. Qin Feng stabbed the jade cong fragments into the organ, and the hymn suddenly changed its tone to the ancient tide sound, and the whole church began to quantum collapse.
---
As the morning light dyed the sea red, Tang Ren sat paralyzed on the mutant algae blanket, gnawing on a charred squid. Qin Feng threw the last piece of jade cong into the rift valley, and the roar of bronze disintegration came from the depths of the trench. Su Chen's artificial eye showed that the global genetic pollution index dropped sharply, but the CRIMASTER watermark still remained on the edge of the retina.
As the news helicopter flew by, Tang Ren suddenly jumped up: "Take a picture of me! The guardian of the South China Sea is here!" His worn-out rubber shoes sank into the algae carpet, but the shoe prints formed a topological model that blocked gene transmission.
A dull vibration came from the seabed, and the remains of Saotome Suzu's machine were pushed ashore by the tide. Qin Feng found a microfilm roll from her tightly clenched hands, and after developing it, it turned out to be a photo of his father in the Cambrian Laboratory - the jade cong matrix in the background perfectly overlapped with the star map of the Liangzhu ruins.
Su stared silently at the distant sea, and his new artificial eye suddenly gave a warning: "Abnormal biological signals detected in the Mariana Trench—" Where the waves broke, a giant squid with a human face floated to the surface of the water, and a familiar quantum blue light flashed deep in its pupils.
(The case of "Gene Reef" has been temporarily closed, but the shadow of the Cambrian period is still surging in the depths of the ocean. The ultimate mystery of the jade cong matrix will be revealed in the "Bright Puzzle" that transcends time and space)