Chapter 170: Dark Boundless Realm 25
Today is August 19th, Friday, the third day of the return.
Kui Xin pulled back the curtains and opened a crack in the window for ventilation, allowing the air carrying the scent of rain to enter the room. It is now nine in the morning, and the rain has mostly stopped, but there is quite a bit of water accumulated on the ground, making it damp.
This morning, Kui Xin didn’t go out for a run in the rain; instead, she did several sets of training indoors and made herself breakfast. She plans to visit the pet market in the city to buy some live specimens for experiments.
She has carefully stored the blood samples from the mutated beings in a sealed box. She is still uncertain about the level of contamination those blood samples might carry, so she intends to conduct an experiment herself.
When Kui Xin arrived at the flower and bird market, the pet shops and stalls had mostly opened. She headed straight to a small shop selling reptiles, as this store sells not only lizards and snakes but also little white mice used as feed for snakes.
Kui Xin bought ten live little white mice, since she wasn’t sure how many would be needed for her experiments. She also bought one male and one female mouse in hopes of breeding them herself, along with a breeding box.
If she were to do experiments on the little white mice, there’s a chance that they might become aggressive due to mutations, so normal cages wouldn’t suffice. After a long search, Kui Xin finally bought two sturdy large metal mouse traps. She wished she could find glass cages for easier observation, but after scouring the market and finding nothing suitable, she reluctantly abandoned the idea.
The conditions for the experiment were quite rudimentary, and Kui Xin lacked professional knowledge. If she had professional equipment for blood analysis, she could certainly obtain more useful information, but for now, it would suffice to confirm the blood’s level of contamination.
After bringing home a cage full of little white mice, Kui Xin sat in the bathroom, neatly arranging her experimental tools.
Mouse traps, gloves, syringes, blood samples…
Once she confirmed that everything was ready, Kui Xin put on her gloves and used a syringe to draw blood that had melted from the mutated being. Then, she grabbed one little white mouse, injected the blood into its body, and placed it in the mouse trap, starting her phone timer.
Once inside the mouse trap, the little white mouse went into a frenzy, wildly banging around and squeaking. It continued to ram against the cage, and three minutes later, the frenzied mouse became stiff and died instantly.
Its body didn’t dissolve; it lay there intact.
Kui Xin noted in her phone memo: “Little White Mouse No. 1 entered a frenzy state after blood injection, died three minutes later, body not dissolved.” She took out the dead mouse’s body for observation, noting, “No obvious deformities observed on the surface.”
After recording, she placed the mouse corpse into a glass sealed box and picked up another little white mouse, injecting it with the blood. This mouse reacted similarly to the first, squeaking and banging against the cage, and it also died within five minutes.
“Little White Mouse No. 2… died five minutes after blood injection…” The glass sealed box wasn’t enough, so she put the two deceased mice’s bodies together. Lacking professional equipment, she could only buy a sealed pickled vegetable box from a supermarket downstairs to use as a storage container.
Calmly, Kui Xin grabbed Little White Mouse No. 3 and followed the procedure to inject it with the blood.
Sure enough, Little White Mouse No. 3 started banging against the cage, but unusually, it didn’t die after ten minutes. It seemed the mouse realized there was no way to escape the cage, so it began running laps inside the trap, still full of vitality.
Frowning in confusion, Kui Xin recorded: “Little White Mouse No. 3 exhibited significant excitement after blood injection, not dead yet, no obvious deformities observed.” After pondering for a while, she took off her gloves and sanitized her hands, then went to the kitchen to cut a piece of radish and a piece of chicken, feeding the radish to the mouse.
The little white mouse sniffed the radish but didn’t eat it. Kui Xin threw the radish to the normal little white mice, which happily ate it. She tossed the chicken breast to Little White Mouse No. 3, and it quickly pounced to eat the meat.
“Dietary preferences… seem to have changed…” Kui Xin hesitantly noted in her memo, “More case analysis needed.”
She was down to seven normal little white mice!
These mice cost ten yuan each in the market, not expensive but not cheap either. The male and female breeding mice hadn’t produced offspring yet.
One experimental subject isn’t enough, so Kui Xin had to continue.
She changed her injection method, mixing the saline solution she bought from the pharmacy with the blood from the mutated being, diluting the blood according to a certain ratio, and then injected it into the mouse’s body.
5:5 dilution, the mouse died. 3:7 dilution, the mouse died. 1:9 dilution, the mouse survived for half an hour before dying.
Kui Xin kept reducing the amount of blood until it was only about 5%, at which point the little white mouse survived. She watched it for two hours, and it ran and ate in the cage, showing no signs of agitation, looking just like a normal little white mouse.
With her tense shoulders relaxing, she recorded: “Little White Mouse No. 7, behavior normal after injection, dietary intake normal…”
She then injected the same diluted solution (5% blood content) into the remaining three mice, resulting in all of them surviving; none died.
All ten little white mice had contributed honorably to the scientific experiment. Kui Xin now had four little white mice that survived after being injected with the diluted blood, plus one mouse that survived after being injected with high-concentration mutated blood.
The breeding mice couldn’t be used yet; she needed to raise them to breed offspring for emergencies. The shopkeeper specifically picked a pregnant female mouse for her, so she would soon give birth to little mice. Kui Xin planned to focus on observing the changes in these surviving little white mice over the next few days and whether they would further mutate.
This experiment was meaningful; Kui Xin confirmed two points.
First, the blood of mutated beings can still infect other organisms.
Second, if the blood of the mutated beings is diluted, its contamination level decreases significantly, making it less likely to induce mutations in organisms.
At last, the tension in Kui Xin’s nerves finally relaxed. She tidied up the bathroom and carefully stored the mouse traps.
She opened her phone and entered the forum to check on various developments.
Upon entering the forum, several posts with foreign language titles caught her eye; kind-hearted players had already translated these into Chinese for others to read. The general idea of these posts indicated that strange wild animal attack incidents had also occurred abroad, and after these incidents, players in entire regions received notifications for regional tasks.
The forum was in an uproar.
“It turns out that abnormalities aren’t just happening here; it’s a global phenomenon. A few days ago, no one abroad received notifications for regional tasks because they hadn’t been triggered yet, or perhaps because the mutation hadn’t started. Once mutations began, the tasks were naturally distributed.”
“I’m really curious, why does the game issue these tasks to us? Is it warning us? Reminding us to deal with these disasters?”
“Has there been any news about the mutations in Tonglin City? It’s been a day and a half since the regional task was triggered, and I’m sure many players have rushed there by now?”
“It seems so. Player 233 hasn’t posted any new updates yesterday or today; he’s also keeping an eye on the situation in Tonglin City. If anything abnormal happens, he’ll surely notify the players right away.”
This is an accepted fact among forum players. A player with the nickname “233” has frequently shared important information on the forum, guiding players, and has built a positively regarded image, gaining many supporters and followers.
Kui Xin clicked on her personal page’s message inbox and found it was overflowing. Most of the messages contained variations of the same question, with 90% inquiring about her knowledge of the mutations. She casually skimmed a few, then scrolled to the bottom of her inbox, where she saw a few recent messages from the player suspected of working for the Special Affairs Department.
“Hello, I’ve arrived in Tonglin City. Are you also in Tonglin City?”
Kui Xin stared at this message for a moment before typing back, “Last time you messaged me, you seemed to need help badly. Has your trouble been resolved?”
After about ten minutes, the player replied.
“Not yet, but I’ve found people who can help me; they will do their best to assist me in escaping my predicament. They are the most reliable people I can find, but even so, facing the disasters in the Second World, they still cannot give me much support. This is how players are; each of us has our own dilemmas, and while we’re stuck in our own situations, it’s hard to help others.”
Kui Xin voiced a long-held doubt: “You’ve shared the legend of the Seven Days of Blood on the forum. Although I understand this is your personal matter, I still want to ask, where did you get this information?”
“These messages weren’t received by me directly; they were obtained by someone else and passed on to me. I’m just responsible for sharing the information on the forum.”
Kui Xin’s eyebrows twitched slightly as she quickly realized that this player had someone behind them—a whole organization.
This player had come to her seeking help just last week before entering the Second World, but now they were already linked to an organization.
“You say you’ve come to Tonglin City,” Kui Xin followed up with a question.
“Yes, I’m here to investigate some matters. Sorry if my request seems a bit abrupt, but I’d like to ask if we could meet. Perhaps we can form a cooperative relationship. I believe we share the same goal: we both want to combat the other world and protect our own, don’t we?”
Within two seconds, the player sent another message: “Please don’t rush to reject me; think carefully; we have no conflict of interest. We’re naturally in the same camp.”
“I’ll consider it,” Kui Xin replied.
She left the private message interface, went to the forum homepage, clicked to post, and typed a title.
“The blood of mutated beings can contaminate normal organisms; contaminated organisms may die suddenly, but there’s also a chance they can survive. Surviving organisms may become highly aggressive. It’s currently uncertain whether contaminated organisms will exhibit deformities like xenomorphs.”
Once the post was published, comments quickly followed: “Damn, I’m so used to it; the big shot always stays ahead of everyone else.”
