When Lu Yao opened his eyes—
Yumemi was leaning directly over him, staring into his face.
The instant she realized he had awakened, she adopted an extremely serious expression.
“You’re awake?”
“The surgery was successful.”
“You’re now a perfectly healthy girl.”
“…You’ve learned to joke?”
Lu Yao sat up.
“How boring.”
Yumemi pouted.
“At least give me an interesting reaction.”
“What kind?”
“Scream ‘Eek!’ and immediately grab my crotch?”
“That would qualify.”
Yumemi nodded.
“Come to think of it, once you gain sufficiently precise control over your body, changing sex should be ridiculously easy, right?”
“When you can do it, remember to show me.”
“I’m not doing something that pointless.”
The two chatted casually.
Lu Yao responded to Yumemi’s increasingly talkative nonsense while sensing the changes in his body.
“Anyway, let’s test it.”
Yumemi suggested.
Lu Yao agreed.
The two entered an enormous underground chamber beneath the residence.
Scientists and inventors in this world seemed to possess mole blood.
Everyone loved digging underground.
Yumemi had adapted to local customs and built this underground space for experiments and testing.
It was enormous.
Twenty meters tall.
An area roughly equal to four football fields.
“Don’t use Dark Matter directly.”
Yumemi spoke casually.
“Let’s see what your physical body can do.”
Several Gatling guns immediately aimed at Lu Yao.
“Hey.”
Lu Yao stared.
“Are you trying to kill me?”
“Dodge them if you want.”
“Deflect them if you want.”
“Just try facing them.”
Yumemi ignored his protest.
The steel storm began.
The Gatling guns were clearly custom-made by Yumemi.
All were vehicle-grade heavy weapons.
Their barrels spun.
Blue muzzle flashes erupted.
Each could fire roughly six thousand rounds per minute.
The bullets possessed spiraling force, and their muzzle velocity reached the supersonic range.
Dark Matter had probably been added to the gun barrels.
Otherwise such absurd performance and sustained fire would melt them.
But Lu Yao—
Could see everything clearly.
His neural reaction and information-processing speed had become absurd.
In his perception, a bullet might take ten full seconds to move a single meter.
It was almost like activating Time Zero.
This is accelerated computation.
Time was the subjective perception humans formed regarding changes and motion in reality.
Near a massive body such as a black hole, one observer might experience a day while enormous spans passed on Earth.
Time could be considered objective because motion itself was absolute.
To literally control time across the entire universe, one crude method would involve controlling all motion and every chain reaction produced by that motion.
That would be an unbelievably insane approach.
Naturally, controlling the entire universe wasn’t the only way to create “time manipulation.”
Human subjective time already varied.
If information processing, thought, calculation, and neural reaction speed increased by dozens or hundreds of times—
Then the world itself appeared slow.
Accelerated Thought.
Parallel Thought.
Those were techniques Lu Yao developed while researching the Gene Lock.
Previously, his biological computer merely assisted brain function.
After the upgrade, it directly cooperated with brain tissue.
If I eventually develop technology capable of two-dimensionally unfolding the Dark Matter inside each cell and etching circuits into it…
Would my body effectively contain more than sixty trillion supercomputers?
That mental image was horrifying.
Lu Yao easily moved between bullets that crawled through his perception like snails.
Normally, dodging would be trivial.
But this was a test.
So he deliberately pushed himself closer to the trajectories.
After surviving the entire burst, he disabled accelerated thought.
“How was it?”
“Incredible.”
Yumemi gave a thumbs-up.
“You dodged an entire minute of continuous fire from six heavy Gatling guns.”
“Not only that—you calculated bullet acceleration, rotation, and other properties in real time.”
“With those calculations, you could deflect bullets using an ordinary human amount of physical strength.”
“You know that awfully clearly.”
“I used high-speed motion-capture cameras.”
Yumemi showed him a tablet.
“But even slowed hundreds of times, your movements are still extremely fast.”
“Are we continuing?”
“Of course.”
Next came physical-function testing.
There were many categories.
First, static observation—
Conventional medical measurements.
Then dynamic tests demonstrating physical function directly.
The underground chamber was simple in design but absurdly durable.
Lu Yao still didn’t use Dark Matter externally.
Even so, his body caused destruction comparable to an out-of-control humanoid war machine rampaging through a city.
Ceiling.
Floor.
Walls.
Crater after crater appeared everywhere.
Yumemi didn’t care.
The underground chamber was constructed from memory alloy and automatically repaired itself.
If metal fatigue eventually became a problem, adding Dark Matter restored performance.
Besides—
The person causing all the damage was also a mobile human mine capable of producing more Dark Matter.
There was really nothing to worry about.
“Hm…”
Yumemi reviewed the data.
“You’re completely beyond human now.”
“Calling you a Transcendent, Evolver, or Next-Generation Primate would probably be more accurate.”
Complete bodily control allowed Lu Yao to perform many absurd things.
The total available “stat points” remained relatively fixed, but Lu Yao could redistribute physiological resources toward speed, strength, durability, or other functions depending on his needs.
In short—
He could specialize dynamically.
“This method exceeds the safe limits of normal resource allocation.”
Yumemi explained.
“You can even divert resources needed for basic life support.”
“Without powerful regeneration and endurance, using it would be suicidal.”
“Once Dark Matter fuses with cells, they gain pluripotent properties similar to stem cells.”
Lu Yao answered.
“Dark Matter acting like biological computation units can also store and transmit information.”
“So even after damage occurs, restoration is possible.”
He looked at the repaired crater nearby.
“Besides, at the atomic-structural level, my body is far stronger and tougher than a normal human’s.”
“Using this level of redistribution temporarily doesn’t cause serious problems.”
Normal human potential was vast.
But ordinary human bodies still possessed hard limits.
To truly break those limits—
You needed a structure that was simultaneously stable and flexible.
The Gene Lock had given Lu Yao exactly that.
“The self-modification structure is extremely successful.”
Yumemi smiled.
“Did you reach your objective?”
“Not completely.”
Lu Yao shook his head.
“The final objective of the Gene Lock is controllable autonomous selective evolution.”
“At present, I’ve only achieved direct control and adjustment of my existing body.”
He thought briefly.
“For now, I’ll divide the results into three activation stages.”
Yumemi tilted her head.
“Why make it so complicated?”
“I have my own reasons.”
Lu Yao answered.
“Fundamentally, I’m the only person who underwent this evolution.”
“If I don’t want to drift too far away from human society, I need to preserve enough of my original performance to continue understanding ordinary humans.”
Yumemi shrugged.
“Whatever you want.”
“As long as doing so doesn’t invalidate the achievement.”
She paused.
“Gene Lock…”
“If you can open and close it, then I suppose calling it a ‘lock’ really is appropriate.”
Then something occurred to her.
“By the way, didn’t you add Dark Matter into your cells to create a new cellular structure?”
“When I examined your cells under a microscope, they didn’t look different from ordinary animal cells.”
“You probably observed cells in their dormant state.”
Lu Yao explained.
“I encoded the Dark Matter-based structure—the Gene Lock system—into my genes.”
“Before activation, cells remain dormant and appear normal.”
“I see.”
Yumemi sighed in admiration.
“Your ability really is convenient.”
Then her expression became thoughtful.
“That means your current physiology is heritable, doesn’t it?”
“I’m interested.”
“If your descendants inherit this constitution and possess it innately, they might express even more unimaginable traits.”
Yumemi stared directly at him.
Then she offered an absolutely terrible suggestion.
“Want to have a child with me and find out?”