Legend of the Cyber Heroes
Chapter 493 - 137 Xiang Shan gradually understood...

Chapter 493: Chapter 137 Xiang Shan gradually understood...

Xiang Shan’s lingering instincts were frantically warning him that this was not a good idea.

"Controlling cellular responses directly with electrical signals" was not a good idea.

This was terribly wrong.

It was as if the young scientist Xiang Shan, beyond the temporal barriers of two hundred years, was screaming at the Martial Gods walking in the Present World to not engage in such activities.

Xiang Shan didn’t know why he was saying this. He didn’t have an accurate understanding of the extent of his own knowledge. He just felt that this statement might pose a threat, so he naturally blurted it out.

He instinctively mentioned the most terrifying technology within his realm of understanding.

Only after speaking did Xiang Shan realize how terrifying it really was.

The electrical signals in nerve cells are generated by ion pumps on the neuronal membranes interfering with the flow of charged particles.

An external electric current could also influence the function of these ion pumps.

And these ion pumps might not be solely influenced by electric currents.

Ion pumps, fundamentally, are reversible ATPases driven by external energy. And this "external energy" isn’t limited to just electrical energy. Chemical gradient energy and light energy are equally possible.

Especially light energy.

At the beginning of the 21st century, humans embedded light-sensitive proteins from certain microbes into the cell membranes of nerve cells. When stimulated by light signals, these proteins would trigger neural signals.

Humans could control the modified mice like gods. With light signals, they could make mice mate, sleep, or eat at any time—and as long as the signals kept coming, these behaviors wouldn’t stop. Mice could run till they dropped dead, eat until they burst, sleep until their bodies failed.

As long as humans wanted it to happen.

A certain old friend of Xiang Shan believed that humans were just machines made of flesh. Proteins and nucleic acids were their system files and storage devices; the brain was their mechanical interface.

Therefore, those things could also be applied to humans.

No... not just like that...

One just had to think about it carefully.

All cells, including nerve cells, have an in-built "apoptosis" program. Each cell has a life and a death. Without the apoptosis of cells, the brain’s neural network couldn’t adjust its structure. Without cell apoptosis, every cell in the human body would be equivalent to a cancer cell.

Every single cell internally houses a complete "apoptosis toolkit."

Stimulus factors activate cellular receptors-G proteins-phosphatidylinositol system, causing extracellular calcium influx, internal calcium store, and mitochondrial calcium release, the increased Ca2+ then activates various proteases.

Ca2+, calcium ions, play the role of the "button" in the apoptosis program.

Ca2+ ions can massively enter the cell through ion channels and ion pumps.

In other words, if technological methods could indeed control ion channels, then humans could bypass the cellular receptors-G protein-phosphatidylinositol system, allowing a massive influx of cellular calcium to then induce the apoptosis program...

—No...

Xiang Shan unconsciously pressed his left hand against his temple.

Not only that, if ATP can be replaced by electric field energy, then why can’t Ca2+ be replaced by electrical signals?

Yawgmoth’s grand theory allowed humanity to accomplish such things.

This method... he had seen it before.

A long time ago.

And then, three years ago.

——Supervising Battle Officer...

The Eighth Martial God controlled those Rangers with Inner Strength, making the Rangers attack the officers. After that, those Rangers fell into an irreversible death.

He should have felt something was off then... right?

Was it because he had just obtained the life of the Eighth Martial God and encountered the death by Borshu that he wasn’t rational?

Or perhaps it was due to the loss of memory?

But Xiang Shan was completely certain that there was vivid blood behind this technology.

And the emotions in Xiang Shan’s heart were fully transferred into the deepest parts of Suzuki Swift’s heart.

Suzuki Swift felt suffocated.

She should have had collective memories of killing and arson spanning hundreds of years—these memories vivid and intense, engraved deep within her soul through technical means.

But even her most detached rationality was telling her that she was facing the Abyss.

It was the true Abyss. The "desire to dominate others" and the "instinct to obey" inherited from ancient ancestors were devouring everything on that side of history. The blood of countless people.

How many people had she killed... The bandit camp where she was based took joy in killing, but how many lives had they claimed?

Yet, how many lives, how many souls were these?

The "modernity" that had been accumulated and reformed generation after generation since ancient times had also shattered violently. The older Undead had annihilated the wandering modern Ghosts.

Suzuki Swift thought after she went insane, she wouldn’t be afraid anymore, not even of death.

But this emotion surpassed death.

It was like flames, like ice, like silence, like fury, like the night, like a Curse...

It was like all solemn things, but it also surpassed them.

Suzuki Swift screamed, "This is impossible! The electric signal cannot be transmitted precisely to specific nerve cells!"

Initiating apoptosis in the entire brain system was one matter, and finely controlling it was another.

Anyone can smash a computer with a club, but only a few can learn to change.

Stimulating nerve cells with electric signals is not high-end technology. Specifically, as early as 1791, before neuroscience and psychology were formally established, scientist Luigi Galvani had already stimulated the nerves of frogs with chemical batteries.

But after scientists learned to implant photosensitive proteins into biological nerve cells, they lost interest in such stimulation methods.

Electric signals spread in all directions, while light signals have strong directivity.

Humans just need to use genetic technology to embed the gene of the photosensitive protein into the genome associated with specific nerves, and then the photosensitive protein will automatically appear on the cell membranes of those nerves.

This technology, combining "light signals" and "genetics," has a straightforward name called "optogenetics."

But as implied by the name, humans must prepare before the birth of the mice.

Even if this terrifying Hero really mastered an electric signal that could control the reaction of nerve cells, he couldn’t apply it directly to a stranger.

Xiang Shan bent down and whispered into Suzuki Swift’s ear, "Silly child, think about it carefully. All of this was prepared before you were born."

"Even before your mother was born... and before your mother’s mother was born."

"The nerve cells in different regions of your brain all have different ion pumps on their surfaces. These ion pumps have subtle differences and are completely sensitive to different types of electric signals. Unless your ancestors were mostly ’volunteers’ or ’Ichigo,’ I don’t know how much the genes have mutated in these two hundred years. But you can’t resist all of this, just like you can’t resist the curse of ’Turing’ or ’Aqini.’"

Suzuki Swift became acutely aware that this was the truth.