The Last Gentleman
Chapter 560: Gene Bank

Even as his physical form was stripped away by the rules of the Abyss during his fall, leaving behind only a mask for his consciousness to cling to, it was nearly impossible to regenerate via conventional means.

But this was no ordinary mask,

even the Sick Servants of the Gland Area had misjudged it, mistaking the mask as an artifact created by the Abyss.

In truth, the smallest unit making up the mask, the "Abyss Virus," had already been tamed and completed. It was essentially William’s property.

The mask’s structure had transcended the original setup of the Abyss, that even the Tenth Abyss felt puzzled upon first seeing the mask.

The silk-thread structure that wove the mask contained William’s personal gene bank and enlarged both the diseased genes and superior genes. The mask could be considered a part of William, and a very excellent part at that.

The moment the mask came into contact with the silver liquid,

Buzz! A psychic sensing spread out, locking onto the positions of all the tadpoles around.

There was no time to allow these little things to escape,

Swish~ The inside of the mask split into needle-like filaments which started hunting the silver tadpoles,

A single filament could pierce through dozens or hundreds of silver tadpoles, rapidly sucking up the nutrients within.

Nutrients from the center of the world, the most primitive and pure, were acquired by the mask,

The instant it received nourishment it began to reconstruct the body, prioritizing the head. Even the complex Madness Brain, thanks to the presence of the gene bank, needed only minutes to be restructured.

But "nutrition" was just the most basic element.

What was truly important were the ’gene fragments’ stored within the tadpole-like entities.

It was the "Ancient Genes" which expressed perfect illness, and the intake and integration of these fragments were directly related to the subsequent advancements.

However, making use of these gene fragments was extremely difficult, and that was the main task of "Silver Turbidity."

Intaking the gene fragments was only the first step,

The second step required finding fragments in the millions or billions of Ancient Gene sequences that matched one’s own illness,

The third step was a precise snipping and grafting of one’s own genes, perfectly integrating the Ancient Genes into oneself and achieving normal expression,

While those who arrived at the Gland Area had largely achieved Open Source advancement,

the quality of individual advancements varied significantly. That’s why even the strongest chosen to be Honored Tumor Knights were still killed by stronger beings like Art.

Apart from the advantages and disadvantages of one’s own illness, it was directly related to the completion of Silver Turbidity,

Some Patients, immersed in silver liquid, simply couldn’t find the "Ancient Genes" that matched their own, and the subsequent grafting success rate did not reach 100%.

Even though they completed the advancement according to the process, only some diseases were supplemented by the Ancient Genes, the individual was not complete, and it was virtually impossible to further improve in the future.

Only by finding all the gene fragments that matched an individual and performing a precise and error-free perfect graft and gene expression, would it truly count as "Silver Turbidity," and only then would one have the qualifications to continue on the path of the Patient, and the qualifications to eventually reach the center of the Sick Focus.

For William, as a carrier of multiple diseases, the difficulty of "Completion" was higher than that of typical Patients, needing to find Ancient Gene fragments in the silver liquid that matched all his diseases.

But he was not in a hurry at all, as a Pioneer of the unknown path, he didn’t need to worry about time,

Moreover, William himself enjoyed the search process, and the newly-attached Madness Brain on the mask even considered this process as Seeking Knowledge, already trembling with excitement.

Even gene fragments that didn’t match his own were actively collected and recorded by the Madness Brain.

"Memory Hall - Library"

William’s consciousness did not linger in the imaginary virtual Gland Area but returned to the Library within the Madness Brain.

Wearing a coffee-striped Waistcoat with a white Shirt, he sat at the desk as if going back to his student days, and William’s Profession was indeed that of a "Lecturer."

As the reality-based body absorbed each drop of the silver liquid, the acquired gene fragments would appear right before him,

William would then immediately perform a perfect excerpt of the gene fragments, transcribing them into his "notebook," prepared for massive transcriptions and categorizations.

Once there are about enough copies, he would then proceed with sub-classification,

he even planned to reproduce an Ancient Gene Bank, then use multiple comparative methods to select the gene fragments that best suited him,

Despite the enormity of the task, William seemed tireless, getting more engrossed the more he transcribed.

Days passed,

in reality, William had already completed the reconstruction of his physical form,

lying naked and masked in the silver liquid, he neither ate nor excreted, with all organ functions reduced to the bare minimum, motionless as if he were a corpse.

Those unaware might think he had died in there.

[Gland Area Control Room]

The white Sick Servant responsible for receiving William had been staring at the monitor for five whole days and nights, initially believing William was adapting to his newly formed physical body and would soon begin to search for and graft genes.

But as time went on, the Sick Servant increasingly sensed that something was off.

Any other Patient who had come here before would start grafting genes after 1 to 2 days; the longest anyone took was 3 days.

Now William had been there for a full five days.

A milker who was idle at the moment came over and said, "What’s up with this guy? Just because he has special privileges, he keeps soaking in there? I never thought someone who skimps like him could pioneer unknown paths."

But the Sick Servant shook his dendritic structure in negation.

"No... something is wrong! If he were merely resting, there would be no need to reduce bodily functions to the minimum. Where’s the technical staff? Zoom in on the screen and observe the ’silver liquid’ attached to this person’s skin."

As the image enlarged, a microscopic view was presented.

The silver liquid particles attached to William’s skin surface were actually slightly penetrated by spike-like down, sequentially reading the gene fragments within, each taking about 3 to 5 seconds.

Once a reading was completed, that layer of particles would flow away, replaced by the one underneath.

"This is the ability of the Skin! It’s just like the industrial assembly line in the Skin Factory, does he intend to collect all gene fragments in the silver liquid... impossible, let’s wait and see."

However, the five days the Sick Servant waited for were just the beginning.

William spent a total of one month and seven days to finish reading all fragments in the silver liquid, including some repeated sequences.

And from the seventh day on, copious amounts of cerebral tissue fluid began to flow from William’s nostrils, representing the brain cells that had died during the transcribing period, and Madness Brain working at full capacity, with visible white smoke emerging from the top of his head.

After completing the transcription, William continued to spend half a month on more detailed sub-classification, and the library desk was piled with three meters high of transcripts.

"Phew~ transcription complete! Thankfully, I have the privilege of infinite time, otherwise even my Teaching Trait combined with Madness Brain couldn’t have completed such a massive project.

Next is matching!"

With the help of the Abyss Mask, he had already extracted his illness genes separately, now he just needed to compare them in the gene bank... This process of comparison and selection took another full two days.

Having done all this, William felt quite tired and needed to rest.

His consciousness returned from the Library to his body, ready to rest by the pool for a few minutes before he started the official promotion.

Unexpectedly, the room he was in was already filled with a group of Sick Servants and several milkers with their hands in soft-ball shapes.

"What’s happening?"

The Sick Servant in charge of William said, "You... you’ve been soaking in the pool for two whole months, far beyond the normal duration of silver turbulence, what exactly have you been doing?"

"Transcribing genes, establishing an Ancient Gene Bank, you see~ towards the end, the repetition rate reached 99.1%, so it should qualify as a complete gene bank."

"What! A gene bank! You’ve collected and recorded all gene fragments?!"

"That’s right, is there a problem?"

This response completely stupefied the staff on site, given that when they first built the Gland Area, they also created a gene bank, and it took them a hundred days of collaborative work to finally complete it.