Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
“How can I extend life? How can I achieve immortality?” Lu Zhiyu said to himself. He was sitting in the yard, sunbathing. He felt that no matter how smart or how powerful he was, he could never dream of fighting against the flow of time. He would die sooner or later. Even though he could add inserts into his genes to strengthen himself and give himself different talents, he could not extend the maximum limits of his lifespan. Put aside the limitation of the genes that controls lifespan, he was unable to even prevent the failure of his organs over time – one of the primary reason why people died.
The first step to preventing death would be to prevent the organs from shutting down. And after that, the metabolism and cell renewal could come into the picture. However, those were only the initial steps. If he would like to achieve true immortality, there would be a long and difficult way to go.
Even though Lu Zhiyu had a sub-brain, it was only for calculating things he already knew. He had to give the sub-brain directions and plans, and the sub-brain could then help by providing speedy calculation and expansion. He was perplexed and had no idea which direction he should go in for immortality. Without his directions and orders, the sub-brain wouldn’t be of much help.
Lu Zhiyu had done his research. He knew that there was a part of the genetic code called FOXO3A that controlled human lifespan. If a mutation happened to that part of the code, human life could be extended, earning this gene the name “longevity gene.” However, the genetic code could only do so much. It could only allow the person to live a little over a hundred years old, but even then, it was still limited. This gene that governed lifespan existed inside the DNA of every living creature.
Other than that, Lu Zhiyu, through his observation of human genes, knew that there were a few dozens other parts of the genes that could affect human lifespan. All these genes took different paths to prolong life, but they all had their limits. There was still a cap on how long he could extend his own life. This kind of longevity would be something an average person would dream of, but Lu Zhiyu felt it was completely meaningless.
“Wait a moment. How did the insect queen live for so long?” he wondered out loud. He began to recollect how the insect queens extended their lives. Normally, those queens should only have been able to live a little over twenty years, but he knew that some of the dead queens he had seen had lived for more than seven hundred years. If it wasn’t for the war and them dying in battle, they might have lived even longer.
That was extending their lifespans tenfold, even hundredfold. That was not a normal case of longevity, nor were their lifespans within a normal boundary. They had changed themselves fundamentally. The insects had achieved true immortality. Lu Zhiyu felt a little scared thinking about the insects. Lu Zhiyu was shocked by how little he knew about genes compared to the insects.
“How did they do it. Recall it, recall it, Sub-brain. Find everything we have on the insects!”
“Here’s the outcome!”
“These are the gene structure of the insect queen. But there wasn’t anything specific in their genetic code that was related to the lifespan!”
The intelligent sub-brain instantly gathered Lu Zhiyu’s memories about the relevant insect queen. Lu Zhiyu immediately opened his eyes, “What was important was not to prolong the lifespan, but to maintain and repair, and to totally rewrite the genetic code itself.”
His memories were slowly returning. He looked over all the information he had back and forth. Finally, he found what he needed from the trove of information.
“That’s right, there is a limit to the lifespan set by the genes no matter how long one tries to extend it. The only way to prevent that is to constantly change and rewrite the genes, making sure that the genes are always active. I have to think of the body as a machine that needs constant maintenance. Otherwise, even if I could extend my lifespan, the organs in the body would gradually shut down which makes death inevitable. Only by continually repairing and maintaining the genes can one stay young eternally!”
This was the first step toward extending the lives of the insect queens. But these queens understood that immortality achieved that way was an illusion, a machine would eventually break down one day, no matter how well it was maintained. Their solution to that was to change the very composition of their genes.
If a body was a machine that was originally made of wood that could easily decompose, then the queens would swap out the wood and rebuild it with iron, steel, or other more durable materials. This fundamental change would ensure that the machine would always survive, no matter how much time has passed, or how harsh the living conditions were.
However, the insects were only at the early stages of their experimentations. Even though Lu Zhiyu had found traces of this in their genes, he knew that they had not took the critical step forward. But he also knew he was still far from achieving anything like what the queens had achieved. He was far behind compared to the insects.
What he knew right now was merely fixing and maintaining the current state of his genes, which could extend his life by thousands of years. At this moment, this was good enough. This was just Lu Zhiyu’s theories. It would probably take a long time to make these ideas a reality. But with a direction and a goal in mind, time, in Lu Zhiyu’s hands, was nothing but a toy!
—
Li Wei and Lu Zhiyu were in the honeymoon phase of their relationship and were completely infatuated with each other. They hardly wanted to be apart from one another. Lately, Li Wei had begun thinking about moving in with Lu Zhiyu. This was right up Lu Zhiyu’s alley. Since he had moved everything into the dimensional castle, he wasn’t worried about Li Wei finding anything.
Lu Zhiyu was constantly in a good mood and really wanted Li Wei to move in with him, but he knew that it wouldn’t happen anytime soon. Moving itself was difficult enough. Lu Zhiyu’s place was far from the hospital where Li Wei worked. Li Wei didn’t have a driving license, which meant Lu Zhiyu would have to drive her to work and back every day if she moved in.
This day, Lu Zhiyu was toiling away at the pet shop and playing with the cats and dogs. He bathed the dogs and groomed their hair. Lu Zhiyu quite liked these animals, or put it another way, he liked the vitality from them. The energetic creatures were the proof that life was a miracle. After working with genes for a while, he now appreciated life so much more than before.
The only bad thing was that Xia Fan had been visiting his shop a lot lately. Whenever she came, chaos followed. She would play with the animals despite Lu Zhiyu’s warnings, and she flirted with him right in front of Xiao Le. Her flirting had made him feel uncomfortable, and he didn’t know how he should react to it. However, he did not feel frustrated, nor did he push her away. Instead, he felt quite flattered. This made him feel as though he was born to be a scumbag!
At noon that day, a car stopped in front of the shop. A bespectacled man in a suit walked into the shop. He looked around and found Lu Zhiyu, “Old Lu, Old Lu, come here quick. Get in the car!”
“Wang Yi? Why are you here today?” Wang Yi was his old friend from elementary school who worked at a research center. Lu Zhiyu had asked for his help previously when he was in the process of purchasing equipments.