The various investigation teams converged in Tokyo.
The core groups were the investigation team from the Homo Sapiens Company and the team from America.
Inside a hastily arranged conference room, Mangsen, the head of the Homo Sapiens Company’s investigation team, spoke the moment he sat down. "Everyone, the investigation can begin immediately."
"Isn’t this a bit rushed?" said Baker, the head of the British investigation team, his smile not quite reaching his eyes. "We should take some time to get over our jet lag. We’ll be in better shape to work then."
"You’ll have all the time in the world to rest after you’ve gone to meet your maker," Mangsen retorted with a sneer.
"Er..." Baker was speechless.
Bower, the head of the American investigation team, knew they couldn’t delay any longer. He had been the one pulling the strings behind Baker’s suggestion, but now he had to let it go. He stepped in to smooth things over.
"Since you’re so eager, Mangsen, let’s begin the investigation at once. Which area would you like to start with?"
Mangsen got straight to the point. "I’ve brought 500 people. We’ll split into 10 squads and launch a full-scale investigation, focusing on Tokyo’s major biological labs and pharmaceutical companies."
’This...’ Bower hesitated. The Homo Sapiens Company had dispatched far too many people; they would be difficult to monitor, and it would be a real mess if they started something in Tokyo. But looking at Mangsen’s resolute gaze, he knew it would be difficult to stop him. Obstructing the Homo Sapiens Company’s investigation now would be a dead giveaway, proving that Tokyo really did have a major problem.
"Alright. However, I suggest the other investigation teams coordinate with the Homo Sapiens Company’s efforts."
Baker was the first to speak up. "The British investigation team is willing to coordinate with the Homo Sapiens Company."
The head of the French investigation team followed suit.
Then came the Lucia investigation team, which had been observing coldly from the sidelines, and the impassive Far East investigation team. They, too, agreed to coordinate with the Homo Sapiens Company.
Tokyo had become a hotbed of conflict. The other investigation teams understood perfectly well that this was a covert struggle between the Homo Sapiens Company and America.
None of them wanted to get dragged into it. The best strategy was to tail either the American or the Homo Sapiens Company team and just be yes-men. Getting too involved would only mean getting burned.
The investigation began at once.
「Luzon Branch, Panay Island.」
Inside Li Qingye’s villa.
He was still poring over research papers when Sangjibada Laiyal placed a glass of orange juice on his desk. She then stood to one side, looking as if she wanted to say something but was hesitating.
Without looking up, Li Qingye sensed the fluctuation in Sangjibada Laiyal’s pheromones. He paused briefly, then went back to flipping through the research papers.
"Is there something you want to say?"
"Sir, why not erase the record? With just your order, no one would ever know the content of that meeting."
Li Qingye turned with a smile and looked into Sangjibada Laiyal’s clear, worried eyes.
"Jasmine, did you know? I’ve never been a good person. What’s there to hide?"
"But, Sir, in the future..." Sangjibada Laiyal trailed off, her voice filled with worry.
"Do you remember what I told you? Only by being capable of extreme evil do you earn the right to be compassionate. Otherwise, your kindness will only get you and others killed."
Li Qingye gazed at the sunset’s afterglow outside the window, his eyes seemingly piercing through time to witness all of history. And indeed, he could see it all, for he possessed ancestral memories.
"For a leader in my position, being too kind or indecisive gets everyone killed. I’m simply doing what my position requires. How others judge me is their own affair."
He gently stroked Sangjibada Laiyal’s hair and said softly,
"This world is a jungle where the strong devour the weak. The animals raised in the safety of a zoo dream of the crisp air of the primeval forest, of running free across the vast grasslands, of the boundless liberty of the ocean."
"What they don’t realize is that the primeval forest has predators and poisonous creatures, the grasslands have starvation and disease, and the ocean has fishing nets and plastic. Reality is just that cruel."
Tears welled up in Sangjibada Laiyal’s eyes, and she couldn’t help but recall her past life in the slums.
Li Qingye patted her on the head. "Go get some rest."
Then he returned to his papers and research materials.
Sangjibada Laiyal was right; he could have erased the record of that day’s meeting and ordered all related information to be suppressed.
But he hadn’t. It wasn’t necessary. He simply didn’t care.
The issue of genetic damage was already severe enough to threaten the continuation of human civilization.
It was a choice: compromise for the sake of present-day convenience, or take drastic measures to ensure the future of the species.
Li Qingye had chosen the latter.
The existence of cloning technology at the Homo Sapiens Company didn’t mean they could ignore the problem of genetic damage.
In reality, cloning technology required human cells to serve as a template.
Take Li Qingye’s own cells, for example. Why had he frozen his cells before they were modified? Because once a gene was altered, it was nearly impossible to change it back.
Repairing damage to human genes was next to impossible. The attempts either came with side effects so severe they weren’t worth it, led directly to the death of the test subject, or caused irreversible psychological damage (due to altered brain cells).
Therefore, healthy template cells were an indispensable raw material for cloning. Without high-quality raw materials, the quality of the clones would only deteriorate.
In a sense, a clone was always slightly inferior to the original. This was a fundamental problem with current cloning technology that not even Li Qingye could solve.
When cloning from a clone, lab mice began to show severe genetic damage and hereditary diseases after only five or six generations.
As mammals, humans were not immune to this cloning degradation.
Furthermore, current artificial insemination techniques were not a perfect solution. The sperm used in the process required long-term cryogenic storage, which itself caused irreversible genetic damage.
This was an inherent flaw in cryopreservation technology; genetic damage was unavoidable during the instantaneous freezing and thawing process, as well as over the course of long-term storage.
Offspring conceived via artificial insemination using such frozen sperm were born with congenital genetic defects.
Even the Homo Sapiens Company, with all its advanced technology, could not completely avoid the side effects of artificial insemination.
The only viable solution at present was to perform the implantation immediately after donation, which effectively bypassed the genetic damage caused by cryogenic storage.
A wide variety of factors were now having a detrimental effect on humanity’s ability to propagate.
In truth, this was unavoidable. Human civilization had progressed from the Agricultural Age to the Industrial Age and then to the Information Age in just over two hundred years.
While two hundred years is a long time for humanity, it is but a drop in the ocean for the planet’s ecosystem.
In that short span, humanity invented countless new things that had not yet been weathered by the passage of time, leaving both humans and nature without the corresponding ecological mechanisms to adapt.
When woody plants first appeared on Earth, there were no microorganisms capable of decomposing lignin. This led to massive deposits of lignin in the geological strata, which eventually formed the coal seams of today.
Plastic was no different, except that it was far more terrifying than lignin.
What the Homo Sapiens Company was doing now was, in essence, manually patching the entire ecosystem.