The Omniscient

Chapter 38: Viral Fusion

With the warehouse cleaned up, Huang Ji planned to transform it into a makeshift laboratory to study and crack the virus.

The timing was fortuitous—having discovered it, he felt compelled to investigate further. It was also an opportunity to hone his practical skills, building experience for developing medicine for his grandfather in the future.

Huang Ji kept a close eye on Tang Yan while deep in thought. Suddenly, he noticed Tang Yan sneaking a glance at his phone, typing a text message.

“Smash his phone and give him 1,000 yuan,” Huang Ji instructed.

Zhang Junwei paused mid-bite, set down his food, and moved to grab Tang Yan’s phone.

“Wait, I’ll do it myself! I’ll smash it!” Tang Yan exclaimed in panic.

“Are we really giving him the money?” Zhang Junwei asked.

Huang Ji pulled out 1,000 yuan. Zhang Junwei intercepted it quickly, saying, “I’ll handle it!”

He tossed the money to Tang Yan, who, ever the miser, immediately smashed his own phone without hesitation.

Tang Yan looked up and asked, “So… are you guys just going to keep me here forever?”

Before Huang Ji could respond, he added, “Do I at least get paid for every day I’m stuck here? Boss, is this your idea of ‘getting rich’? How much are we talking—a few thousand a night?”

Tang Yan thought he had cracked the pattern and, despite being confined, was already scheming how to profit from it.

Huang Ji chuckled and said, “1,000 yuan for every 24 hours.”

“That’s a bit low,” Tang Yan grumbled. “But I trust you. So, how many days are we talking here?”

“Let’s start with twenty,” Huang Ji replied.

“What?!” Tang Yan shot to his feet, only to stumble and lean against the wall—his legs had gone numb from squatting.

“Don’t move!” Zhang Junwei barked.

Tang Yan plopped back down, exasperated. “Twenty days? That’s crazy! How about 3,000 a day?”

“Fine by me,” Huang Ji said indifferently.

Tang Yan licked his lips, realizing an opportunity. “But if I’m staying this long, you can’t expect me to sit on the floor the whole time, right? Can I at least get a bed?

“And, uh… I’m a little thirsty. You can’t just let me die of thirst, can you? That duck leg meal over there looks pretty good, too.”

Huang Ji grinned. “Bottled water: 500 yuan. Duck leg meal: 1,000 yuan.”

“W-what?!” Tang Yan stammered, dumbfounded.

Huang Ji added, “A bed is a one-time purchase of 10,000 yuan. Optional, of course.”

“This is ridiculous!” Tang Yan protested.

“It’s a fair exchange,” Huang Ji replied calmly. “Mutually beneficial. A win-win deal. Too bad it doesn’t count toward GDP.”

Tang Yan’s head spun. He quickly calculated his expenses: three meals and a bottle of water per day meant he’d end up losing money. He’d only make a profit by eating two meals a day—and even more by cutting it down to one.

Frustrated, he muttered, “Come on! I’m sorry, okay? Are you really trying to starve me? Why are you even keeping me here?”

Huang Ji walked up to him and said softly, “Do you remember six years ago, driving on Xi’an Road? It was raining heavily, thunder booming outside…”

Everyone has secrets, and Tang Yan’s face immediately turned pale. He began trembling, squatting even lower.

“I-I’m sorry… I didn’t mean it. The rain was pouring so hard I couldn’t see anyone on the road…”

“Then why didn’t you stop?” Huang Ji asked with a complicated expression.

Tang Yan’s voice broke. “I was broke! I couldn’t even afford my rent back then. And then I hit someone—I was terrified. I didn’t dare stop…”

“You should have checked,” Huang Ji said.

“I was scared… I really was…” Tang Yan covered his face, coughing violently as his emotions overwhelmed him.

Huang Ji leaned closer and said, “Have you ever wondered why, after six years, you’ve heard nothing about the person you hit? Why no one has ever found you?”

Tang Yan coughed again, his voice hoarse. “The rain was so heavy, and there weren’t any cameras on that road. After that night, I never dared drive on Xi’an Road again. I still don’t know what happened to that person.”

Tang Yan looked up, locking eyes with Huang Ji. “You… you know about this… Were you the one I hit?”

Huang Ji replied, “You guessed right. I have some experiments to conduct, and you’re going to be my test subject.”

Tang Yan nodded vigorously, closing his eyes in resignation. “I’ll do whatever you ask.”

Huang Ji drew a vial of blood from Tang Yan and carefully applied an acupuncture needle to a hidden point on his body to temporarily boost his immune system.

He then carried the blood sample into the adjacent warehouse, now set up as a lab.

Tang Yan, meanwhile, no longer had his usual miserly demeanor. He seemed despondent yet oddly relieved. He even splurged on a bed and ordered two duck leg meals.

“Hey, that’s already 12,000 yuan!” Zhang Junwei reminded him.

Tang Yan nodded and added, “Bring me two bottles of water as well.”

Zhang Junwei was baffled. “What did the boss say to him? He went from being a total cheapskate to throwing money around.”

Only Huang Ji understood. Six years ago, Tang Yan’s so-called hit-and-run had never harmed anyone.

On that stormy night, there had been no one on the road. The figure Tang Yan thought he had hit was a plastic mannequin discarded by someone from a nearby market.

Blinded by the rain, Tang Yan didn’t realize it until it was too late. He swerved but still clipped the mannequin, sending it flying.

Through his rain-streaked car window, Tang Yan believed he had struck a person. Too scared to check, he fled the scene. When he later found no blood on his car, he assumed he had merely hit the victim’s foot, sparing himself from visible evidence.

For six years, Tang Yan had lived in fear and guilt. He avoided driving in the rain and never returned to Xi’an Road. As his financial situation stabilized, his guilt drove him to save money, hoping to find and compensate the person he thought he had harmed.

Huang Ji’s words had pierced his long-held secret. Tang Yan, believing Huang Ji to be the victim, felt both relieved and determined to cooperate with any demand, seeing it as redemption.

Of course, Huang Ji wouldn’t correct him. He intended to let Tang Yan believe this, eventually “forgiving” him on behalf of the mannequin to help him find closure.

In the meantime, this arrangement ensured Tang Yan would stay obedient and assist with the experiments.

“Oh? The virus already has a name,” Huang Ji murmured as he examined the data.

Huang Ji placed a drop of blood onto a testing dish and began analyzing it with the naked eye.

The virus had recently been renamed from "swine flu" to H1N1. Furthermore, on the 24th of the month, its full genetic sequence had already been uploaded to the Global Influenza Database for researchers worldwide to study.

Under normal circumstances, developing a specialized treatment would take three to five years. Even in the best-case scenario, it would still take one to two years.

But now, the global effort included Huang Ji.

“Incubation period: one to nine days, depending on the individual’s constitution...”

“Tang Yan’s incubation period is seven days. Right now, he’s still in the incubation phase. When he went to the hospital earlier, it really was just a cold. He had already contracted mild influenza before being infected with H1N1, and the virus exacerbated his preexisting condition.”

Huang Ji was well aware of Tang Yan’s medical situation and knew that current hospital diagnostics wouldn’t be able to detect the H1N1 virus in his body.

If left untreated, Tang Yan would progress from incubation to fever, and then to respiratory failure within 20 days, leading to death.

Of course, that would only happen without intervention. With the methods at Huang Ji’s disposal—even the single acupuncture treatment he administered earlier—Tang Yan’s life was already no longer at risk.

In fact, the danger posed by this virus was somewhat limited because of its rapid onset.

Truly terrifying viruses have long incubation periods, allowing them to spread widely before symptoms emerge and start claiming lives.

With modern medical capabilities, as long as the illness is detected early and treated diligently, survival is achievable. Even without Huang Ji’s involvement, a standard hospital could stabilize most cases. The infected might not be cured, but their chances of death would be slim.

Nonetheless, Huang Ji was determined to develop a specialized treatment quickly. He gave himself a strict deadline of 20 days—a challenge to test his abilities.

Viruses and Evolution

Huang Ji reflected on a fundamental truth of biology: viruses are one of the four pillars of species evolution.

These pillars are:

1. Neutral mutation
2. Natural selection
3. Cancer-driven evolution
4. Viral fusion

For nearly a century, modern biology classified viruses as non-living entities, a categorization that had led to a major oversight in the study of evolution.

Only recently had scientists begun to recognize that viruses play a critical role in life’s evolutionary process.

For billions of years, viruses and cellular organisms had been engaged in an ongoing “war.” This conflict has been the key driver of life’s development and species evolution.

Viruses, with their unparalleled mutation speed, far surpass all other forms of life in adaptability. Through relentless replication, they evolve at a staggering rate, undergoing significant changes every year.

If this “war” were purely destructive, viruses could theoretically annihilate all animal life with their rapid mutations. But killing their hosts and destroying their environment is counterproductive to their survival.

Natural selection ensures that viruses tend to evolve towards lower lethality. On the other hand, organisms continually adapt to neutralize and survive against these viral threats. As a result, the majority of species ultimately overcome new viruses.

Historically, species wiped out by viruses are extraordinarily rare. Most survive and adapt, developing immunity against one wave of viruses, only to face the next, in a perpetual cycle of adaptation and evolution.

This ongoing battle shapes life. Humanity’s vast repertoire of antibodies, for example, is a historical archive of billions of years of "move-countermove" exchanges with viruses.

Life and viruses exist in a delicate balance of mutual influence:

• Without hosts, viruses cannot survive.
• Without viruses, species would not have evolved to their current diversity and complexity.

Like bacteria, viruses eventually aim to co-exist with their hosts. However, their methods differ:

• Bacteria: Strive for symbiosis, living alongside the host within the body.
• Viruses: Aim for fusion.

A virus is essentially genetic material encased in a protein shell. When it evolves beneficial traits for the host, it can insert fragments of its own genetic code into the host’s genome, integrating itself permanently into the host’s lineage.

This process allows the virus—now a refined genetic segment—to pass down through generations while providing the host organism with new evolutionary advantages.

Since viruses are highly transmissible, they can drive rapid, collective evolution in populations. A portion of the infected group may adapt and gain new abilities, while others remain unchanged.

Over time, the more advanced group may split into a new species or outcompete the less-evolved members in a natural disaster or other selection event. The survivors—those who incorporated the virus into their evolution—carry on.

This cycle, repeated over countless generations, leads to the flourishing diversity of life and the occasional sudden leaps in evolutionary progress that defy traditional theories of gradual change.

Thus, Huang Ji concluded:

“The optimal treatment isn’t to kill the virus, but to fuse with it.”

This approach—turning a threat into an evolutionary advantage—was not only scientifically sound but perfectly aligned with nature’s principles.

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