Chapter 2: Triple-Helix Genes, Infinite Devouring

An indeterminable amount of time passed.

Jiang Zhe’s consciousness surfaced from the primordial chaos.

Hearing was the first of his senses to return.

The faint trickle of liquid flowing through distant pipes, the heavy drumming of his own heart beating like a war drum—thump, thump...

Every sound was magnified to absolute, terrifying clarity.

Next came his sight.

His vision was no longer blurred; the entire world was terrifyingly sharp!

Within the beam of the overhead searchlight, every mote of suspended dust drifted past his eyes in slow motion. He could even see the microscopic ridges and craters on their surfaces!

"I'm... not dead?"

Jiang Zhe looked down at his own chest.

A hideous hole had been torn through his heavy hazmat suit, the edges still bearing the melted scars of acidic corrosion.

Yet, the skin exposed beneath the tear was completely intact. It didn't bear so much as a single scar.

More than that, the flesh there had grown exceptionally resilient, gleaming with a faint, metallic luster beneath the glaring lights.

He experimentally clenched his fist.

Crack!

The air compressed instantly within his palm, emitting a sharp, concussive pop.

The sudden, intoxicating sensation that he could effortlessly crush solid steel surged through Jiang Zhe's mind.

He shifted his gaze to the corpse of the Royal Bug beneath him.

Inside its massive chest cavity, the once-slimy, pulsating mounds of flesh and tissue had shriveled and desiccated into massive, lifeless husks.

The grisly scene immediately jogged his memory of his loss of control.

Tearing off his helmet, the frenzied devouring...

The insatiable hunger stemming from the deepest depths of his genetic code, and the rushing torrents of warmth that had flooded his body as he consumed its flesh...

His stomach violently churned. He gagged once, but relied on sheer willpower to forcefully suppress the nausea.

He didn't have the time to be disgusted, nor the luxury to feel fear.

He had survived. That was all that mattered.

Besides, it seemed he had... fundamentally changed!

Jiang Zhe closed his eyes once more, carefully attuning himself to the internal changes within his body.

There was no quintessential "System" typical of a transmigrator, nor was there a holographic status panel floating before his eyes.

But he could "see" his own genes.

The standard double-helix structure that represented human DNA was now entwined with a third, pitch-black strand!

So that was it.

The biomass of the Royal Bug had been converted into pure energy by this black helix, repairing his heart and entirely reconstructing his physical vessel.

This was the true secret lying dormant within his genetics.

It wasn't an impurity. It certainly wasn't a genetic defect.

It was a talent... an innate gift that could only be awakened by consuming alien energy!

"Devour, absorb, evolve..."

"Which means, as long as I have sufficient biomass, I can grow infinitely stronger."

His heart hammered wildly against his ribs, yet his mind remained instantly, terrifyingly calm.

No. Now was not the time to celebrate.

He had no idea how long he had been in that fugue state, and Supervisor Sun could walk in to check on him at any moment.

He needed to clean up the scene immediately and walk out of here just like he did on any normal shift.

A secret, until one possessed the sheer power to protect it, had to remain strictly in the shadows.

Jiang Zhe swiftly scooped up the discarded rotary saw.

Vrrrrr—

The ear-piercing screech of machinery roared back to life.

Only this time, the bulky power tool felt as light as a chopstick in his grasp.

Aiming the blade at the remaining husk of the Royal Bug, Jiang Zhe began rapidly dismantling it.

The core brainstem, the energy crystal nucleus, the chitinous carapace...

His movements were several times faster and far more precise than ever before.

Before long, all the harvestable, high-value materials were securely packed into the designated alloy lockbox.

That done, Jiang Zhe stripped off the ruined hazmat suit, the blood-soaked undershirt beneath it, and the violently torn helmet, shoving the entire mess straight into the high-temperature incinerator used for biological waste disposal.

The evidence had to be erased.

Watching the roaring flames swallow the fabric, Jiang Zhe took a deep breath, gripped the handles of the towering alloy box, and wheeled it out of Cold Storage Unit 3.

Hiss...

The heavy metal doors slowly sealed shut behind him.

Out in the main workshop, Supervisor Sun was leaning back in his chair, feigning sleep. Catching the mechanical whir of the doors, he cracked an eye open to check the digital clock on the wall, a flicker of surprise crossing his gaze.

There was still over an hour until midnight.

The kid was actually still alive?

He had fully banked on Jiang Zhe dying in there, giving him the perfect excuse of a "fatal intern operating error" to buy an extra day for delivery.

It looked like that plan was shot.

"Not bad, kid. You actually managed to pull it off," Sun stood up, his tone betraying neither joy nor anger. "Everything in the box?"

Feigning exhaustion and a weak gait, Jiang Zhe shakily wheeled the alloy box forward.

Sun popped the latches, ran a handheld scanner over the contents, and nodded in satisfaction.

"Not bad at all. The bio-activity in the core brainstem is still remarkably high. The brass over in the military should be pleased with this."

Only then did his gaze leave the harvest. He looked up, his eyes landing on the bare-chested Jiang Zhe standing behind the cart, and his brow furrowed.

"Where’s your hazmat suit?"

Jiang Zhe forced his face to remain deathly pale, perfectly mimicking the lingering terror of a near-death experience.

"S-Supervisor Sun, the Royal Bug's neural spines were still active! When I was extracting the brainstem, it twitched!"

"It melted right through the suit on the spot! It scared the living hell out of me! I—I was terrified there was neurotoxin on it, so I just hurled the whole rig straight into the incinerator!"

It was a pre-rehearsed lie; nine parts truth, one part fiction.

Sun’s singular, piercing eye locked onto Jiang Zhe’s face.

An ordinary scavenger, hit by acid that burned through a hazmat suit, and still walked out alive?

Having clawed his way through the dregs of society for half his life, Sun understood a cardinal rule: touching a windfall that wasn't meant for you was a one-way ticket to the grave.

Digging too deep might uncover some dark military secret, which would do him absolutely no favors.

But... what if the kid had just stumbled into blind, dumb luck and found something valuable?

If he could control whatever secret the boy was hiding...

At that thought, the suspicion in Sun’s eye was swiftly eclipsed by a fleeting glint of avarice.

"Incinerated?" Sun drawled, dragging out the syllables. "That Class-A sealed hazmat suit cost three thousand Star Coins. Looks like you did all this work for nothing, kid."

"That thousand-credit bonus I promised you? Consider it compensation for company property."

Saying this, he struck a match and lit a cheap cigarette, keeping his gaze locked on Jiang Zhe, probing for a tell.

Jiang Zhe immediately forced a look of utter, indignant despair into his eyes.

"Supervisor Sun, please! No! I—I practically died for this job... that thousand was the only way I could afford a genetic inducer!"

Jiang Zhe lurched forward, as if to throw himself at the man’s feet and beg, but then froze, seemingly paralyzed by Sun’s authority. He stood there, helpless, lips trembling.

Seeing this pathetic, desperate display from a dirt-poor scavenger, the lingering doubts in Sun's mind faded.

Right. That was exactly how a bottom-feeding rat should react.

He waved a hand impatiently. "Enough! You should be counting your blessings you’re even alive, let alone begging for cash. Your base salary will be paid on time. Now get the hell out of my sight!"

Jiang Zhe nodded, looking utterly crushed. He slinked toward the exit, casting pathetic backward glances over his shoulder.

Watching the boy’s silhouette vanish through the outer doors, Sun stroked his chin, exhaled a thick plume of smoke, and turned on his heel, marching straight toward the recently sealed Cold Storage Unit 3.

...

Stepping out of the processing facility, the biting chill of the night wind whipped against his face. Yet, Jiang Zhe couldn't feel the cold.

He glanced back at the brilliantly lit workshop windows.

Thank you for your greed, Old Sun.

A thousand Star Coins?

Compared to a literal buffet that granted infinite strength, what did a thousand credits matter?

Jiang Zhe quickened his pace, his silhouette rapidly melting into the labyrinthine alleys of the Under-Hive.

A trek that usually took him an hour was devoured in less than twenty minutes.

He arrived at his "home" in Sector 16—a retrofitted, derelict shipping container barely ten square meters in size.

Locking the flimsy corrugated iron door behind him, Jiang Zhe strode directly toward the rusty, second-hand punch force tester sitting in the corner.

The original owner of this body had drained his life savings to buy the machine, hopelessly monitoring his pathetic strength in the vain hope of one day surpassing the limits of an ordinary human.

He took a deep breath, planted his feet, and threw a vicious right hook!

BANG!!!

A deafening, booming impact echoed through the small container.

The antique machine, rated for a maximum payload of five hundred kilograms of force, let out an agonizing, metallic screech.

The digital readout on the cracked screen spiked violently, ultimately freezing on a glaring, crimson number!

[824 KG]

A split second later, the machine showered the floor in sparks and completely short-circuited, dead beyond repair.

Staring at the frozen number, Jiang Zhe’s breath hitched in his throat.

In his past life, the punching force of an average adult male was 80 kilograms. A highly trained soldier could hit 200. Here, the absolute baseline threshold to be classified as a Tier 1 Awakened was 500 kilograms.

Jiang Zhe instantly lunged for the corner and booted up his archaic, sputtering holographic terminal. In the global search bar, he rapidly keyed in a single string of text:

"Federation Genetic Sequence Archives..."