Chapter 188: Transforming into Dust, Congealing into God
Bai Mo was also fortunate that, through his abilities, he had made such preparations, leaving behind substitutes for trial-and-error and consumption. Otherwise, if only a fist-sized mass of Primal Matter remained of him, he would have been utterly unable to show his true face, which would have brought a great deal of trouble.
During the breakthrough experiment, over half of the female body was incinerated by its vastly overloaded abilities. The remaining parts, combining and sublimating with the fractured Life Field, generated a completely new substance—Primal Matter.
This strange existence, which he named Primal Matter, had now become the vessel for his consciousness, truly becoming "him."
However, because his original male body had suddenly, without warning, experienced a complete genetic collapse—his life essence having already transformed into a mass of Primal Matter—Bai Mo, to salvage the vitality of this physical body, allowed the Primal Matter to enter it and replace the utterly severed DNA strands.
He also discovered that even when the Primal Matter was dispersed into the nuclei of various cells, it completely unaffected his thought processes.
Furthermore, Primal Matter could not only bear consciousness but also inherit all abilities derived from the Spirit Hubs within his original body. The strength of these abilities mostly showed a linear trend of variation, increasing or decreasing with the quantity of Primal Matter.
"The less Primal Matter there is, the lower the output of mental power. Now that it's divided to the size of DNA, its individual external influence is negligible. However, once it regathers, the total output is roughly three times the original."
"As for divine sense, it's unaffected whether dispersed or not, but abilities like creating avatars require it to reassemble into a single mass before they can be used normally..."
While Bai Mo was rapidly summarizing the various conditions of his new body, outside the experimental ground, chaos had erupted due to the sudden "attack."
However, the rapid response units arriving from outside could only maintain vigilance on the periphery, as they, too, had no way to pass through the raging wind wall and enter the cooled zone. Both sides maintained communication via electronic devices.
A full half an hour later, the surrounding air gradually quieted down. During this period, everyone, both inside and outside the wind circle, could only remain on high alert behind their shelters.
However, they were all ultimately disappointed; the imagined enemy had not appeared.
Of course, it was also possible they were secretly rejoicing, glad that they didn't have to face such a disaster-maker as mere ordinary people.
"Experimental accident." After the wind gradually dispersed, Bai Mo, having just initially sorted through all the information, transmitted this message via mental waves to everyone within his divine sense's perception.
Chen Xi, responsible for covering for him, began handling the aftermath with the various unit commanders upon receiving the notification.
But a map-level atmospheric attack, and one involving rapid cooling at that—once reported to other departments, some shrewd individuals immediately thought of more.
Ever since the precedent set by the fate of earlier pioneers, everyone understood that this man, who could remain unaligned between two factions, was absolutely not simple, and they uniformly maintained a respectful distance.
As for Ye Zi's faction, they themselves had risen rapidly by 'fishing in troubled waters,' and large-scale temperature reduction was her signature ability. Many believed she was particularly sensitive to the neutral faction's attitude, so secretly, most conjectured that a fierce clash was inevitable sooner or later.
Humanity never lacked imagination for such stories of struggle; with just this small amount of information, several versions of rumors had already sprung up in private.
Although both official channels and Bai Mo had unified their statements, claiming the incident was an experimental accident, and the deployed officers and soldiers received generous subsidies, some whispered rumors continued to proliferate in secret.
In the various experiments over the next few days, he discovered that Primal Matter would continuously assimilate everything it came into contact with, transforming them into new Primal Matter, albeit at an extremely slow rate.
Spectroscopic analysis yielded a completely chaotic, unidentifiable spectrum, while electron beams emitted by the electron microscope were utterly disrupted. It seemed that no instrumental method could properly observe or analyze such a substance.
As it was a core component of himself, Bai Mo naturally wouldn't conduct destructive experiments. Thus, he could only rely on divine sense—the sole method currently available for observing Primal Matter—to further explore and understand it.
"Primal Matter is continuously replacing every atom in the body; the power growth that had completely stagnated for several months has resumed."
In his experiments, Bai Mo discovered that its speed in assimilating his own body was over thirty times that of other substances in the external world. Moreover, as the quantity of Primal Matter continuously increased, the strength of his various abilities also slowly rose.
Initially, his conjecture was that Primal Matter had a special preference for consuming humans, but after multiple tests, he found that this effect only occurred when it assimilated existing flesh.
"Transformed into dust, congealed into god, Chemosynthesis." Bai Mo finally named the state he was in "Chemosynthesis."
"A pioneer, if not careful, truly becomes a martyr." On the margin of his experimental logbook, he wrote this sentence, a touch of self-mockery.
He didn't know if he was on the right path, but at least after this transformation, he had survived and grown stronger.
Bai Mo didn't even know how much he truly had in common with the humans around him, aside from still speaking the same language, especially now that his DNA was gone.
"Primal Matter is 'I,' but its form of existence seems vastly different from the Ghost King used as a reference back then. Besides its core, there's a pervasive layer of unknown substance surrounding it."
"That layer of substance can only exist briefly after leaving the body, and its quantity is far too terrifying to be Primal Matter. Further investigation is needed, but unfortunately, it was all killed by another 'me.'"
"What was the true cause of the genetic collapse?" Bai Mo had never heard of any case like his own. Large-scale DNA degradation typically only occurred after exposure to extremely strong radiation or accidental ingestion of certain highly toxic mushrooms containing DNA-degrading enzymes.
With his abilities, even a zero-distance detonation of a high-yield nuclear bomb, while highly likely to tear his body apart, would not generate enough radiation to penetrate multiple layers of resistance and cause such damage to his genes.
As for the idea of toxic mushrooms, it was never within his consideration from the start.
Moreover, Bai Mo "saw" in the super-strong divine sense he temporarily gained by burning his life force that his DNA had uniformly unzipped its double helix structure, and then all the linkages between the bases on the single strands separated, leaving not even a small fragment behind. It was as if a unified will had given the command.
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