Humans always struggled to understand themselves.
Lu Yao previously believed he wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about growing stronger.
He didn’t like responding to every difficulty with violence.
Nor did he enjoy mindlessly using the crudest possible solution.
But he also never denied that violence was one valid method of solving problems.
A convenient one.
A fast one.
After thinking more carefully, he realized his own philosophy wasn’t simply “violence solves everything.”
There was still logic behind it.
Cultivating one’s mind allowed you to calmly speak with idiots.
Possessing overwhelming strength allowed idiots to calmly speak with you.
Confucius himself, wandering among the warring states of antiquity, probably understood that perfectly well.
Scholars of that era were expected to possess both literary and martial skills.
Archery was one of the Six Arts of the Gentleman, after all.
The Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods were times of chaos.
This world was similarly unstable.
Borrowing experience from the ancients wasn’t unreasonable.
The laws, order, and assumptions of Lu Yao’s original world couldn’t be transplanted here completely.
Police and heroes still existed to protect public safety.
But ultimately—
The only thing capable of guaranteeing his safety was possessing extraordinary power himself.
Public authority was weak.
The fact that this world maintained its current level of order was impressive in itself.
Perhaps because humanity had only one continent and one country.
Analyzing every aspect of this world’s society, politics, economy, and culture was certainly possible.
But it would consume too much time.
Lu Yao wasn’t completely uninterested.
He simply didn’t have enough leisure to pursue it yet.
People were inevitably influenced by their environment.
In a world where crime, monsters, and disasters occurred constantly—
Learning how to use one’s fists was probably the correct survival strategy.
Once he accepted that, there was no need to cling to outdated assumptions.
Lu Yao was currently inside the underground laboratory beneath Yumemi Okazaki’s residence.
After resolving the House of Evolution incident, he returned home and began seriously studying the data obtained from Dr. Genus.
However, the research wasn’t purely academic.
Its core involved development and utilization at the genetic level.
Lu Yao’s small apartment was nowhere near sufficient for experimentation.
Picking some random location wasn’t ideal either.
So he could only trouble Yumemi.
Yumemi didn’t permanently own all the required testing equipment.
In the end, the two designed what they needed together.
Lu Yao then used Dark Matter to manufacture it.
Since the equipment was already here, he simply stayed.
After all, when Lu Yao first arrived in this world, he had lived here for a while.
She had even kept his room.
If the designs they created were presented to modern engineers, they would probably be criticized as extravagant fantasies.
Many required performance that existing material science and theory couldn’t support.
If a design couldn’t physically be constructed, it remained science fiction.
But Lu Yao didn’t have that limitation.
Unless something directly violated the universe’s fundamental laws or was completely incompatible with this world—
Dark Matter could make it.
Dr. Genus’s proposed development route differed from Yumemi’s.
Yumemi emphasized Dark Matter’s nature as a universal material and recommended producing increasingly sophisticated tools.
Genus focused on its biological applications.
Universal medicine.
Self-modification.
The Gene Lock.
Previously, Lu Yao had passively allowed Dark Matter to modify his body.
The special substance originated from blood-producing marrow inside his bones.
It entered his bloodstream in the form of blood cells.
Through circulation, it traveled throughout his entire body.
Initially, the changes were tiny.
Later, they remained gradual.
So gradual that Lu Yao barely noticed.
His senses sharpened.
His body became stronger.
His thoughts became faster.
Because the process was progressive, he didn’t immediately recognize it.
Only after Yumemi performed comparative examinations and compared his data over time did they discover his body was continuously changing.
From then on, Lu Yao intentionally monitored those changes.
That was how he discovered tricks like using his skin for photosynthesis and respiratory assistance.
But even those were accomplished unconsciously.
Lu Yao didn’t know how to deliberately reproduce the developmental process.
Maybe bioelectric signals transmitted commands into Dark Matter.
According to Genus, Dark Matter should be capable of imitating neuronal functions as well.
If it could store and transmit biological signals like brain cells—
Then even destruction of his brain might no longer kill him.
No. If that logic held…
Unless my entire body is vaporized, killing me would become extremely difficult.
While reading research on a computer, Lu Yao suddenly wondered—
Do I still count as human?
Hmm…
Genetically speaking, obviously yes.
But biologically, ordinary mammals don’t survive destruction of the heart and brain.
Still, humanity as a category is also partly a social and emotional concept.
As long as I continue holding broadly human morality, empathy, and ethical values…
I probably haven’t been kicked out of the group chat yet.
A potentially troubling philosophical problem received a simple conclusion.
At this point, Lu Yao could also confirm two states of Dark Matter.
Internal.
External.
Repeated experiments produced a clear result.
Dark Matter inside living bodies was far more active and unstable than Dark Matter outside.
That difference also corresponded neatly with the specialties of Genus and Yumemi.
“Inside” doesn’t merely mean inside my own body.
Any organism counts.
So internal Dark Matter is less like a material…
And more like a microorganism?
Lu Yao laughed softly.
As expected of a supernatural ability.
Its existence itself barely respected conventional categories.
Against biological opponents—
Carbon-based life— this property could be terrifying.
Dark Matter could become a universal medicine capable of curing nearly any disease, infection, or injury.
But it could also become an almost unbeatable pathogen.
Virus.
Fungus.
Bacterium.
Biochemical weapon.
Parasite.
It was basically like playing Plague Inc.
Lu Yao had no desire to use it in such an anti-human manner.
Otherwise, exterminating humanity probably wouldn’t take very long.
Aside from abnormal existences like Saitama, ordinary biological life would have almost no method of resisting a super-pathogen with human-like cunning, capable of constantly changing species and evolving.
But precisely because of this property—
The project Dr. Genus called autonomous selective evolution—
The Gene Lock— was worth attempting.
An organism couldn’t ordinarily generate a complete blueprint of its own genome.
Cellular replication itself was an incredibly precise process.
A tiny error could produce unpredictable mutation.
Opening a lock required a key.
If the Gene Lock was truly a lock—
Then Lu Yao’s next task was forging the key to evolution.