Chapter 77: Diary
Translated by Addis of Exiled Rebels Scanlations
Editor: Karai
Lin Xu brought out two notebooks from Yan Yuan’s room, the covers of which felt like some kind of polyester that had faded over time, but were in good condition overall. In addition to the one he had opened, Lin Xu opened the remaining notebook and found that the handwriting inside was even more vividly preserved.
The handwriting showed subtle traces of staining around the edges, and was written in fountain pen, probably with carbon ink to avoid fading. The content of this notebook was very important to Yan Yuan.
But Lin Xu carefully cupped the yellowed and brittle paper and flipped through it, and Yan Yuan’s handwriting in this notebook was still indistinct, with many intricate hand-drawn patterns with markings.
It was probably a sketchbook that Yan Yuan used to think about designing something, and for him, it was enough that he could read the contents.
The sketches in this book looked like numerous hexagons with tentacles, which were connected by more tentacles, and Yan Yuan left many complex calculations in the corners, which he repeatedly scribbled and modified, but eventually came up with the answers.
“The patterns look like neurosynapses.” Heinrich said at Lin Xu’s side, “We can give it to Zhou Pingbo for analysis afterwards.”
Synapses? Was Yan Yuan studying the brain? Lin Xu only remembered that Yan Yuan, as the chief physician’s assistant, was knowledgeable in mutant genetic experiments. However, Lin Xu himself did not know much about biology, so he could only follow Heinrich’s advice and give his notebook to Zhou Pingbo for analysis after he went out.
He opened the other notebook he had read before and quickly flipped through it to confirm that each paragraph was dated and should be a diary. Lin Xu squinted at the year markings at the beginning of the diary, “2087…. . March 11.”
At the end, “2089, April 5.”
“This is the ancient Earth chronology?” Heinrich responded immediately.
“Yes.” Lin Xu said, “Around the middle of this century, Earth broke out into a global nuclear war, followed by an apocalypse caused by biological mutations, and I left Earth in June 2067, when the human survivors in the Eastern Region were still using the old base under the lake.”
Heinrich pursed his lips and took the portrait he found in the safe earlier out of his backpack and handed it to Lin Xu, “The owner of the notebook, he’s met you.”
“Mm, I know him too.”
Lin Xu took it, and the signature on the bottom right corner of the drawing paper was also Yan Yuan. But the contents of the drawing really surprised Lin Xu. He remembered that Yan Yuan seemed to know how to draw, which was mainly shown in his lifelike hand-drawn record of the mutated creatures. But why would Yan Yuan draw him?
The emphasis on details even overwhelmed the principle of combining reality and imagination in the creation of paintings, and the expressions and gestures were clearly visible.
In the drawings, Lin Xu wore the uniform of a civilian employee of the base, and his figure was thinner than after his transformation, which was closer to Lin Xu’s past appearance.
Yan Yuan was born and raised on the base, and spent his childhood and teenage years there. He may have met Lin Xu, the head of the base, from afar, but before the transformation began, the two had little face-to-face encounter.
But this was Lin Xu’s feeling when he shifted, and when he looked more closely, the man in the drawing was just wearing a civilian uniform, and his face was much younger than Lin Xu’s at that time, more like his genetically modified state. This was not a realistic drawing.
“His name was Yan Yuan and he was a doctor.” Lin Xu frowned out of confusion and scrutiny, “Used to be in charge of my genetic modification together with another doctor. I said I was human before because I was born human, but later received a deep-sea mutation genetic modification to grow a fish tail.
“The last thing Yan Yuan jotted down was: ‘Just… just the three of us left. Tomorrow morning … On not eating breakfast and leaving on an empty stomach.'”
Yan Yuan’s handwriting made it difficult for Lin Xu to decipher, having to struggle to guess his hyphenated and omitted strokes, and the translation was a bit jarring.
“Fasting…entering the incubator on an empty stomach?” Heinrich says, “They went in voluntarily.”
Lin Xu nodded solemnly, “I need to see those documents again.”
Heinrich handed Lin Xu the portion of the paper bag that belonged to Yan Yuan, the kraft paper bags were sealed at the openings with a box that read “Do not open” in black letters on a white background.
Lin Xu used a knife to cut through the top crease of the paper bag, without breaking the seal, and gently removed the paper from the bag.
The paper in the bag was a very thick stack, carefully bound, and the title on the cover stole Lin Xu’s attention for a moment, “Zombie Genetic Transformation Project”.
The old base had a similar program, and by looking at the name Lin Xu could deduce that the purpose of this project was to transfer the genes that maintain the immortality of the zombies into the human gene chain, or, by encoding a harmless zombie gene in the human gene chain, to make the zombies unable to recognize the human, thus avoiding the zombie’s active attack.
However, such experiments were never successful. The only referable case was Lin Xu, who was non-fully infected by the zombie virus in its natural state and acquired partial zombification characteristics.
He read the cover name to Heinrich, but once he started flipping through the contents, the complex diagrams and sheer volume of text inside gradually silenced Lin Xu, who became fully engaged in reading until he reached the last page of the document.
A faded light red seal was unceremoniously placed on the plan and experimental report that had been assembled by countless people.
“Failed.”
“Program terminated. Signed by: Yan Yuan, head of the New East Region base.” Lin Xu raised his eyebrows slightly, bubbling with a faint sense of emotion, “After all these years, he’s become in charge…”
But suddenly, the pale corpse in the base’s culture chamber came back to the surface. Lin Xu closed his eyes, put away his drifting thoughts, and continued to unwrap a document, “Deep sea gene transplantation program… Experiment leaked, suspending the plan, signed by: Yan Yuan, head of the New East Region base.”
Heinrich, “They were repeating the experiments that have been conducted on you?”
“I was the first experimental subject back then, the chief physician could not be sure if the gene transfer technology could be realized, but at that time my own mutation revealed the gene fusion characteristics, so we decided to take the risk and try it.”
“You succeeded.”
“Well, I succeeded. After that, the old base wanted to replicate this success, but the genes of normal adult subjects could not be modified later, and all attempts ended in failure. What is written in this document… The experimental subjects they chose were also normal volunteers, so I don’t know if they were successful. And the experiment leaked… Leaked to whom?”
“The people who blew up the old base?”
“Maybe.” Lin Xu couldn’t jump to conclusions, he continued to go through the rest of the files, all the plans and experiments that had failed to be sealed, and then he went through the paperwork he found in another room, a manuscript full of code that belonged to a person named “Ye Shanshan”, Lin Xu didn’t know her, so he prepared to give it to Ika for deciphering.
The last “Wang Feng” had only a notebook in his room, not a draft or a diary, but more like a work schedule in terms of format, and Lin Xu turned directly to the last page.
“April 5, 2089, work schedule.
- Protect the last remaining chiefs Yan and Ye. Completed
- Confirm that all the rest of the base personnel enter the connecting pod. Completed
- Close all non-essential energy valves, with an engineering drawing. Completed
April 6, 2089 Work schedule.
- Organize rooms, clean and sanitize, and clean up grooming. Completed
- Escort Chief Yan and Chief Ye into the connecting module.
- Enter the connecting module.”
Wang Feng left the room and never returned, and did not have the opportunity to mark the last two work arrangements as completed, while Yan Yuan’s diary directly failed to record what happened on April 6.
Lin Xu got stuck while translating the connection pod for Heinrich, unsure of how to phrase this Chinese word.
Connect… Connect what? Is it to connect something together for communication? Or is it just putting a human body into that weird green liquid and inserting four catheters? To ensure rigor and to keep his mind from going astray, he had to use the word “pod” alone with Heinrich.
Lin Xu was deep in thought when a regular rumbling sound came from outside the ice, and a beam of light broke through the darkness and penetrated the ice. It was a searchlight. Heinrich took a look at the ice facing outward and sent another location signal from the machine, “Help is here.”
Lin Xu began to gather up the papers and books on the floor, and finally stared at Heinrich’s tail. He bit his lower lip and quickly reached out and squeezed the base of the dragon’s tail, but when Heinrich looked over, he said, “Take it back.”
“Yeah.” Heinrich nodded, turned around and continued to put the various instruments scattered all over the floor into the bag. The tail of the dragon behind him wandered and secretly hooked Lin Xu’s palm, which was cold and itchy as the scales crossed his sensitive palm.
Lin Xu clenched his fingers, but his palm was empty, the tip of the tail had long since slipped back, and he looked back at Heinrich, whose silver-white tail and wings had all been put away.
Heinrich took off the scratched and torn one-piece isolation suit, sculpted perfect bones and muscle lines visible, a sense of power between every move. But his face was as calm as ever, his high brow bone casting a cold gray shadow of steel in the deep sockets of his eyes.
It was as if he was not the one whose tail had just wagged and who was now naked and whose golden eyes swept over Lin Xu’s body.
“Heinrich… Put on a shirt.”
—
The man who came to the rescue was surprisingly Zhou Pingbo, who once again pressed his hand against his thinning hair swept up by the strong winds of the craft and waved for Heinrich and Lin Xu to come up quickly, as their action of just breaking through the ice layer instantly increased the probability of an avalanche in ten minutes by hundreds of times.
Sure enough, after the Abyss Fleet military craft took off with the two survivors, the dark peaks once again thundered with rolling snow waves that buried any trace of human footing. Lin Xu looked back through the porthole at the dark mountains in the night.
Zhou Pingbo said to Heinrich, “The expedition’s research ship was attacked by large deep-sea creatures, and the Abyss Fleet and the Elam Fleet urgently dispatched their personnel to fight. He was transferred to command the battle against the deep sea creatures, and can not take time, so again I came to pick you up.”
Large deep-sea creatures? Lin Xu turned his attention back to reality.
The apocalypse era, the deep sea creatures swimming in radiation and pollution also had a large number of mutations. Because the deep sea still remained mysterious to humans, people had little information. They only knew that these mutated deep sea creatures that devoured each other’s heads were frighteningly large, with the power that was even more terrifying.
One of the reasons why Lin Xu received the deep sea genetic modification was that the base needed a powerful alien to kill the mutant deep sea creatures operating in the coastal shallows.
Zhou Pingbo did not know about the past, but sighed, “I never thought that the ancient Earth’s evil octopus gods were real, and the discovery of this creature will definitely make humans re-examine those ancient Earth stories that were treated as myths and fantasies.”
Lin Xu would not comment on this. But Zhou Pingbo’s inquiring, intelligent eyes focused on Lin Xu, “Dr. Lin, the expedition has made another discovery. We found mermaid bones on the sea floor. More than one.”
