Legend of the Cyber Heroes
Chapter 594 - 338

Chapter 594: 338

Even by today’s standards, the research on "Project C" was quite remarkable.

And the success of Project C also spurred another project to maturity—the Small Rejuvenation Pill project.

From two hundred years ago to today, the Restoring Enzyme’s structure has been constantly fine-tuned, but its activation process and synthetic route have basically followed the original results.

As simple and reliable as the Restoring Enzyme is, so too is Project C safe and economical.

Up to today, Heroes and Protectors still use the Restoring Enzyme to reshape their brain neural networks and enhance their Internal Strength Cultivation.

Simply put, Yawgmoth did not just use "signal factors", he chose to insert a new protein.

This protein can be recognized by specific cell membrane receptors and enter the cell.

If you look at it from a computing perspective, the "cell nucleus" is the "hard drive" of this chemical machine, with DNA recording the "programs". The process of "transcription" is akin to "reading".

And its operating system consists of the chemical reactions—the Enzyme System—that run incessantly at the base level of life.

Countless signal molecules and enzymes participate in complex reactions, forming a dynamic equilibrium that can be regulated.

Yawgmoth’s ultimate solution was to "temporarily punch a line of code into this Enzyme System".

Once the Restoring Enzyme enters the neuron, it becomes a new catalytic node in a series of chemical reactions, "lighting up" one after another previously unlinked new reaction pathways. A string of signal factors are accurately and orderly produced, feeding the neuron a series of Commands, calling upon a past state.

And once the cells revert to a certain degree, those Restoring Enzymes are depleted, ending the reversion process.

The Restoring Enzyme cannot actively permeate the cell membrane; it needs to be actively accepted by the cell membrane and enter via endocytosis. At any given time, the amount of Restoring Enzyme that can enter a single cell is limited. Furthermore, humans themselves cannot synthesize Restoring Enzymes, and neurons contain pathways that can gradually eliminate the Restoring Enzyme.

The earlier in the neuron’s terminal differentiation, the more active this elimination pathway is, the easier it is to neutralize the Restoring Enzyme’s reaction. Since neurons cannot autonomously generate more Restoring Enzymes, the signal factors that "invoke the state of adolescence" cease to be produced, and the reaction stops there.

The absorption of the Restoring Enzyme by neurons is actually quite low, which allows the drug enough time to diffuse. This ensures that a region’s cells won’t reverse directly into neural stem cells or even pluripotent stem cells due to overly high drug concentration.

The life-span reversal drug for the immune system, the 18:3 Potion, shares the same characteristics.

Xiang Shan and Zhu Xinyu, among others from the Superman Enterprise executive level who completed their transformations later, all used this protocol. After all, everyone is busy, and Project C’s lenient requirements on hospitalization time still carry a significant advantage.

Apart from "drug cost" and "waiting time", Project C also has a less prominent but indeed existing benefit—the immune system can be reactivated and developed to directly adapt to the state of the Benchmark Man.

Although humanity’s next step is to use mechanical bodies, that step is not achieved overnight. In Xiang Shan’s original vision, humans would transition to "universal prosthetic transformation" over a time span of one or two hundred years. During this phase, humans would still need some degree of immune capability.

—The 18:3 Potion, ah... I believe I was the one who named it, wasn’t I? It should be, right?

Yog had never really been afraid of anything when it came to naming things (except for Inga)—whether they were Benchmark Men or any other products. Yawgmoth had intended to come up with just any casual name. "Benchmark Man," the binomial nomenclature, was personally researched by Xiang Shan with a Latin dictionary in hand.

Unlike the Restoring Enzyme, which targets only neurons, the 18:3 Potion is a "cocktail" composed of a variety of drugs in proportion.

The name of the 18:3 Potion comes from "Matthew 18:3" of the Bible, "Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven."

But obviously, there were a small number of people who were not suited for this "path to Heaven."

In a sense, the 18:3 enzyme, which has the function of an "immune memory cleanser," poses a slightly higher risk than HIV.

Although it can return the function of immune system cells to the embryonic stage, other parts of the human body are far from being in the embryonic stage.

Human bodies are constantly producing cancer cells. The immune system is also continuously eradicating occasional cancer cells within the organism, maintaining the body’s health. As long as cancer cells do not acquire immune escape capabilities, they are nearly impossible to experience terrifying exponential growth under the immune system’s siege.

Therefore, it often takes many years of "cultivation" accumulation from the "emergence of cancer cells" to "manifesting detectable early symptoms."

The incidence of cancer increases with age because for a cell to become a cancer cell, it must first possess "uncontrolled proto-oncogenes" and "malfunctioning tumor suppressor genes," and then subsequently acquire a series of skill trees like "telomerase," "angiogenesis," "immune escape," "infiltrative metastasis"—this is a complete Combo, and lacking any part of the sequence is unlikely to be fatal.

During the embryonic stage of humans, all cells in the body have just begun dividing, and "mistakes" aren’t yet accumulated with division.

In adults, however, it is entirely possible that a tiny number of cancer cells already exist, but most of the time their immune system can eradicate them in a timely fashion, maintaining a frightening dynamic equilibrium at an extremely low level.

Late-stage AIDS exhibits malignant tumors because these tumor cells have lost the suppression of the immune system.

And when the immune system reverts to the "Nascent Soul" stage, these scattered cancer cells may spiral out of control. From the immune system reverting to the embryonic stage until humans transform into Benchmark Men, cancer cells can easily run rampant.

Therefore, those with a family history of cancer, especially lymphoma and leukemia, those with latent carcinogenic viruses, and those who have had cancer but have been cured... these categories of people are not well suited for Yawgmoth’s Plan C.

A small portion of them will choose Plan B, which carries the highest risk and cost—Plan B is essentially a combination of chemotherapy and radiotherapy, which has a significant restraining effect on cancer cells.

The remaining people will opt for Plan A. Although the modified HIV in Plan A can also lead to immune collapse and loss of suppression of cancer cells in the later stages, the surgery will be completed before the disease progresses to that point.

Moreover, Plan A does not require the manipulation of proto-oncogenes.

Xiang Shan indeed felt it was quite a pity. If Yawgmoth’s research on "accelerating the course of chronic diseases" could continue, Plan A would indeed be a perfect solution.

But humans will inevitably do everything possible to forge their tools of production from "ploughs" into "swords." "Turning swords into ploughshares" may just be a beautiful illusion in certain historical contexts.

Xiang Shan himself was one to transform all scientific and technological achievements into "martial techniques."

"Those were the happy times," Xiang Shan looked up, silently lamenting, "Speaking of Plan A... HIV, yeah. I remember..."