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Chapter 63: Dissection

After about ten seconds, Bai Mo stopped and began to scan himself with his divine sense, checking his injuries.

Only then did he discover that while the nuclear bomb's shockwave hadn't directly inflicted severe injuries, it had caused numerous extremely tiny cracks to appear on his skin, and his internal organs had also sustained minor damage.

"Perhaps I've overcome this calamity?" He felt the sense of impending crisis that had been weighing on his heart gradually dissipate.

"It's a pity I'm still too far from being able to withstand a nuclear bomb head-on. Even a full thousand meters from the epicenter, I'm still injured to this extent. I need to keep working harder."

The center of the nuclear bomb attack was precisely the alley he had visited last night. Although Bai Mo was unable to venture deep into the nuclear blast zone due to the extreme radiation, a scan of the surrounding ruins with his divine sense confirmed this fact.

He had intended to pull out his phone and go online, to check the news and see what had happened, to understand why a nuclear bomb would fly over his head in a perfectly peaceful era.

But the city had been largely demolished; where could there be any signal? Moreover, the intense electromagnetic radiation had also damaged some of the internal structures, turning his phone into a complete brick.

"The massive high-energy radiation from the nuclear bomb reacts with the Spirit Qi, meaning the Spirit Qi levels in the surrounding area should be much higher than elsewhere for a while. For someone like me, who survived this great catastrophe, it's a piece of good news amidst the misfortune."

This unannounced attack had impacted the entire world. The coasts of the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans had all been ravaged by tsunamis, while most of the world's renowned cities had been wiped clean by nuclear bombs.

Coastal regions were universally the core areas of each nation, and under the dual baptism of nuclear bombs and tsunamis, they were almost utterly annihilated.

The political centers of most countries had been affected, with some even having their entire Central Governments blown sky-high.

Lacking leadership from the highest echelons, some regions began to operate independently. Forget investigating the cause of the attack; merely maintaining stability and providing disaster relief proved quite beyond their capabilities.

"Is this... a survivor?" Bai Mo discovered what appeared to be a living person amidst the distant rubble. He casually swept aside the layers of debris pressing down on the individual, then moved him to the ground.

Fortunately, the rescued man's injuries weren't severe; he had simply been pinned down by a large amount of debris, with mostly scrapes and abrasions on his body. Of course, the severity of any further radiation sickness was beyond what the naked eye could determine.

"Thank you!" The rescued man thanked Bai Mo in Italian.

"You are likely a lucky man," he replied in rather unpolished Italian.

After thanking Bai Mo, the man turned and left, intending to find a medical team. Dazed by the explosion, he still didn't realize that the entire world had fallen into chaos, believing it was merely a terrorist attack confined to the vicinity of Rome.

"No aid will reach here anytime soon," Bai Mo remarked casually, watching the man who seemed to be looking for a medical team. "Tsunamis have swept across all of Italy."

Upon hearing Bai Mo's words, the man's eyes filled with despair, for his entire family resided in Arimiren on the Italian coast, while he alone had come to Rome for work.

However, his expression of disappointment didn't last long. After a moment, his face suddenly began to twist, like a figure from an Impressionist painting, completely losing any semblance of a normal human.

Simultaneously, the man's body underwent rapid transformation, becoming even more robust. His original wounds were severely distended by the swelling muscles, and the constant sound of tearing skin echoed through the air.

The man, now frenzied and grotesque, was filled with destructive urges. In his eyes, there remained only the thought—or perhaps, no longer a thought, but merely the madness of lost reason—of killing and devouring every living creature around him. Unfortunately, his first chosen target was Bai Mo.

The outcome was without suspense. Having observed the man's entire mutation process with his divine sense, Bai Mo directly used his telekinetic power to forcefully immobilize the mutated man in mid-air.

"Even zombies have appeared. Just how far will this world go, catalyzed by Spirit Qi?" Bai Mo mused.

In the time that followed, Bai Mo began to meticulously observe every part of the 'zombie' with his divine sense.

Combining this with the neuroscience knowledge he had recently crammed to advance the Spirit Energy conversion of his brain, he tentatively concluded that the cause of the zombies was that humans, having initially undergone Spirit Qi modification, were unable to withstand excessively high-intensity nuclear radiation. This led to the collapse of their brain's self-preservation system, turning them into 'zombies' with greatly enhanced bodies but completely lost reason, leaving only the instinctive desire to devour.

"I wonder if those fellows from the Dao Academy managed to escape, and in which direction they retreated." Wanting to further explore the mechanism of zombie formation, Bai Mo simply took out a scalpel from his luggage on the spot.

Bai Mo, scalpel in hand, walked towards the 'zombie' he had restrained with his telekinetic power. Since gaining his abilities, he hadn't truly killed anyone yet; this would be his first time.

However, for Bai Mo, whose entire perception of the visual world had been altered, killing this fellow was no different from crushing an ant. His heart remained utterly undisturbed; in fact, there was even a strange sense of comfort.

He used his telekinetic power to crush the 'zombie''s heart. Yet, the zombie, whose life force had become extraordinarily tenacious after its mutation, continued to twitch and writhe for nearly two minutes after losing its heart. Its tenacity was completely unexpected.

"Though surprising, such vitality only serves to prolong its suffering."

Bai Mo moved the zombie's corpse aside and began to wield the scalpel step by step, following the instructions in a dissection textbook. As he dissected the zombie's body, which had been significantly enhanced before its death, he found the scalpel quite unwieldy in his hand.

To cut through the greatly strengthened muscles, he had to grip the knife with more force, but often, with a slight carelessness, he would simply bend the entire scalpel.

So Bai Mo simply decided to use the scalpel, which he had been struggling with, as an auxiliary tool, and directly manipulated his own telekinetic power as a blade.

First, he would use the scalpel to lightly score a small incision on the rock-hard muscle as a marker, then apply his telekinetic power to the incision to achieve the cutting effect.

After several struggles, he finally completed the dissection. Looking at the corpse he had meticulously cut to pieces, Bai Mo felt a profound sense of accomplishment.

His divine sense had accustomed him to observing various human anatomical structures all day long. Now, looking at the excised tissues, he felt no oddity or revulsion whatsoever; it was the same feeling as when he used to follow his mentor, examining one mineral specimen after another.

"So, the brain's self-protective nerves are this section..." Bai Mo used his telekinetic power to levitate a piece of tissue, heavily eroded and pitted.

"After this part was damaged by excessive radiation, the body, now without a control valve, began unrestrainedly absorbing Spirit Qi and radiation. Then, its physical form rapidly strengthened at a visible rate, until the brain's control system collapsed due to its inability to adapt, triggering an avalanche effect that caused the brain to lose most of its functions. All that remained was a walking dead husk, driven solely by the instincts of devouring and destruction."

"Because it's a life form hurriedly strengthened in a nuclear radiation environment, its internal structure also leans towards high-temperature and high-energy resistance..."