Legend of the Cyber Heroes
Chapter 595 - 339 Creativity

Chapter 595: Chapter 339 Creativity

"I remember it was around ’four something’... the early ’40s, I guess? Around ’41?" Xiang Shan fell into deep thought.

There were missing details in this stretch of memory, but as "knowledge," he still had a general recollection and could somewhat infer the cause and effect.

Around ’40 or ’41, Yogmoth suddenly received a grant from the United Nations AIDS Program, the World Health Organization, and the Republic’s Ministry of Health for genetic research on HIV.

The Ministry of Health proclaimed this as one of the achievements of that year and promoted it for several days in newspapers and on web portals.

At the time, Xiang Shan felt somewhat puzzled and even a bit dissatisfied.

In his view, the main focus of Superman Enterprise should have been on the "human version of gene modification surgery." He himself had always been applying with the Ethical Committee and other institutions for permission to commence clinical trials.

Before that, the scientists at Superman Enterprise should have devoted more efforts to gene modification surgery in primates, accumulating as much data as possible to prove the safety of the procedure and lay a solid foundation for the next phase of research.

An earlier breakthrough in this technology would benefit many people.

Situations like this required the concentration of all efforts.

Moreover, it was just AIDS. This contagious disease couldn’t infect Benchmark Man. At that point in time, even if Yogmoth had come up with a cure, its significance would have been limited.

But still...

Xiang Shan remembered the story Tao Enhai once told about "how much the little fish cared."

— Alright, alright, advancing medical technology is never a mistake at any time. There may be some patients who really just miss it by a little and don’t live to see the gene modification surgery of Benchmark Man.

Xiang Shan could afford to disregard the technology for curing acquired immune deficiency because he was clear that this disease would soon become history and would no longer infect anyone. But for those already infected and racing against the Grim Reaper, it was a matter they couldn’t ignore.

So he didn’t immediately criticize Yogmoth but instead visited to ask why he had undertaken such a project.

Xiang Shan knew Yogmoth well. At least at the time, Yogmoth’s thoughts should be roughly the same as his own, believing "gene modification surgery in humans can overcome all infectious diseases." Xiang Shan couldn’t understand why he would suddenly take on such a project.

Yogmoth gave him a straightforward answer.

"It’s a trade, in exchange for the support of some bureaucrats," "I needed some funds," and "I became interested."

The first reason was quite realistic, but it wasn’t quite Yogmoth’s usual style. Xiang Shan was genuinely surprised that Yogmoth could have such awareness.

In his view, the third reason, "I became interested," might have played a slightly larger part.

However, Xiang Shan still admonished Yogmoth, telling him to "use the funds specifically for their designated purpose" and not to divert funds from one project to another in private; if he wanted to, it needed to be aboveboard.

Yogmoth nodded in agreement quite readily.

So Xiang Shan put the matter out of his mind.

Several months later, the projects under Yogmoth’s name smoothly released the first batch of papers. Xiang Shan read them too; they were standard research.

Some time passed, and during casual conversation, he discussed this matter with Niyaguti as well.

That evening, Xiang Shan received a call from Niyaguti. She speculated that Yogmoth might have ulterior motives for taking on those projects.

Yogmoth’s research projects hid the potential to "alter HIV, transforming it into a different function."

In addition, he had invested a considerable effort into "reducing its virulence."

Xiang Shan didn’t take it seriously. If Yogmoth could produce a new generation of vaccines, that would also be accounted for to the investors.

But Niyaguti mentioned another possibility.

Perhaps Yogmoth was planning to use HIV on himself.

Because in some laboratories of Superman Enterprise, there were plans to "destroy the immune system of primates with HIV." While such methods were uncommon, there had been sporadic cases in the past.

And "destroying the immune system" was the first step in the Benchmark Man’s gene modification surgery.

Xiang Shan was startled at the time. He just felt that this was absurd, given that AIDS was still a difficult-to-cure disease at this stage, and it carried a high risk.

But...

——As long as the surgery was completed...

Niyaguti then asked, "How long has it been since Yog last appeared in Beiping?"

This question shocked Xiang Shan.

Upon careful consideration, Xiang Shan hadn’t seen Yawgmoth offline since that conversation. There had been a few online chats, but they didn’t reveal any condition of his.

But... if...

Xiang Shan immediately woke Zhu Xinyu and asked her to help check Yawgmoth’s current location.

Then Zhu Xinyu was surprised to discover that Yawgmoth had used multiple proxies to disguise his location while communicating with company members.

Xiang Shan realized that something terrible was going on.

By the time they found Yawgmoth, he had already injected himself with the advanced HIV and had started the first phase of gene modification.

This process was now very difficult to reverse.

Due to his immune response, Yawgmoth’s condition wasn’t very good. Xiang Shan intended to send him to the hospital. However, Yawgmoth said he didn’t want any hospital, especially a private one, to share in the most significant achievement of his life. He would rather die.

Left with no choice, Xiang Shan spent lavishly to recruit an experienced nursing team from some of the world’s top hospitals.

He had already made contact with the team from Mayo Hospital and was preparing for future human clinical trials. But at that stage, they were only confirming intentions, with only a few at the "bargaining" phase.

After this incident, Xiang Shan didn’t negotiate the price any further and directly offered a "super double" rate to forcefully recruit a team.

But Yawgmoth’s condition continued to deteriorate. He fell into a coma amid continuous high fever.

The doctors used physical methods to cool Yawgmoth down, but it was ineffective.

The complexity of the human central nervous system outweighed that of all other primate species.

It was precisely because of this that the system was more fragile.

Subsequent experiments had confirmed that the most common cause of death in primate gene modification surgery was "the nervous system’s slow transformation."

And humans would almost certainly face this issue 100% of the time.

The nervous system had to start its transformation first.

But since it does not divide, its transformation speed was the slowest in the body.

Not to mention that viruses rarely enter the nervous system easily.

At this point, Comrade Chen Feng came up with an idea.

Use a virus that could rapidly infect the nervous system to carry those genetic fragments, accelerating the transformation of the nervous system so it could withstand the high temperature.

That is...

Rabies.