169: DNA runaway

"He really is a difficult opponent... It seems this is destined to be a tug-of-war of endurance." Shen Mingyuan quickly adjusted his mindset.

Since he couldn't achieve a one-hit kill, he would maximize the efficiency of every attack, continuously exhausting its energy until its regeneration ability collapsed due to energy depletion.

His two sharp dives naturally fell into the eyes of the GUPA members and Lu Jianchuan below.

A brief moment of surprise followed by tactical confirmation came over the communication channel: "Is that... 'shadow'? He can fly?" a team member whispered.

"New form, flight-specialized. The attack pattern is high-kinetic energy diving slashes; the power is considerable, but the attack window is short."

The steady voice of Captain Mountain Leopard rang out, quickly making a judgment. "All Units attention, the aerial Unit 'shadow' has joined the battle, tactical code 'Falcon'. Ground fire teams, adjust your firing rhythm to avoid his dive path. After his attack, when the target is stiff or wounded, concentrate fire on the wounds to delay its regeneration!"

The orders were quickly executed. The team members swapped magazines, and the tongues of fire spitting from their muzzles became more precise and rhythmic. They no longer sought instantaneous explosive damage, but instead used a more troublesome type of ammunition.

"Equip 'Bone-Eroding Nails'! Fire!" Captain Mountain Leopard ordered.

A series of dull thuds, different from explosive rounds, rang out. After hitting the Dragon's body, the warheads did not immediately explode or burn; instead, they used a special armor-piercing structure to drill deep beneath the flesh.

The projectiles then deformed, extending countless tiny, barbed metal filaments like stubborn leeches or thorn seeds, firmly hooking into the surrounding muscles and fascia.

Immediately after, chemical agents hidden within the warheads began to react, releasing sustained high heat and triggering slow local tissue combustion!

This combustion was not violent, but it was like a maggot on a bone, extremely difficult to simply peel off or extinguish. Furthermore, its heat and chemical irritation would continuously interfere with and destroy the activity of regenerating cells.

This was precisely one of the special countermeasure munitions developed by GUPA for targets with high regeneration capabilities.

Facing an endless stream of evolved anomalies with various life-saving abilities, this global response agency had long ago accumulated a vast amount of combat data and technical reserves regarding how to effectively suppress or even break regeneration abilities, developing multiple targeted weapon Systems.

The "Bone-Eroding Nails" were one such weapon; they did not seek maximum instant lethality but instead pursued continuous pain, obstruction, and energy consumption, specifically designed to deal with such "unkillable" enemies.

The battle continued in a stalemate. Shen Mingyuan transformed into descending black lightning again and again to launch diving slashes.

GUPA's "Bone-Eroding Nails" and other suppressing fire followed closely, continuously creating pain and hindering regeneration.

The motorcycle's collisions firmly restricted the Dragon's movement.

However, unlike the expected script of "exhausting energy until regeneration stops," a more eerie change, more in line with its true nature, was occurring within this Dragon's body.

Its regeneration ability was indeed gradually weakening due to continuous energy consumption, and the speed of new tissue generation began to slow down by a visible margin.

But at the same time, another more terrifying change appeared—those evo factors and gene fragments from other creatures, which it had forcibly devoured but never truly integrated, began a frantic backlash and expression as the host's suppression weakened!

"Roar... ugh... krr-krr..."

The Dragon's roar began to turn strange, mixed with insect-like trills and the creaking sound of breaking plant fibers.

Its body, which was already constantly writhing and rejecting, now saw its "flow" become more violent and... diversified.

At the edges of the wounds cut by Shen Mingyuan's arm blades or continuously scorched by the "Bone-Eroding Nails," what regenerated was no longer relatively uniform muscle or scale tissue.

At some wound sites, pink granulation tissue woodified abruptly halfway through growth, its surface becoming rough, even sprouting tiny, unhealthy yellow-green buds and tendrils!

In other parts, the newborn skin no longer had a reptilian texture but was covered in a layer of slimy, reflective chitinous shell, with trembling, arthropod-like bristles poking out from the gaps in the shell.

When one of its eyes regenerated, the pupil split into several compound eye structures, flickering with an inorganic luster, but it was immediately smeared over by a mucus-like plant sap.

At the ends of limbs that had been severed and then regenerated, the shape of the claws became unstable, sometimes coiling like tree roots, sometimes hardening like an insect's sickle-shaped raptorial legs.

Plant and insect transformation!

The trees, weeds, and insects in the soil it had once devoured... those insignificant yet stubbornly existing life imprints now rose like sediment at this moment of the host's weakness and greatly reduced suppression, engaging in an extremely violent and chaotic conflict and struggle with its original snake gene blueprint!

This was no longer simple "rejection," but multiple life forms within its shell attempting to "express" themselves, causing its body to turn into a living, constantly collapsing and reorganizing ecological disaster site!

"Target is undergoing violent mutation! Multiple non-animal tissue proliferations are appearing!"

A GUPA member's voice carried unbelievable shock. "Energy readings are extremely unstable! Multiple low-concentration but qualitatively different evo factor signals are erupting within its body! They are conflicting with each other!" the monitor reported urgently.

Captain Mountain Leopard's face turned grim; the scene before him exceeded conventional tactical plans.

"Maintain suppression! But be careful to avoid... avoid those abnormal growth areas! Watch out for possible venom, spores, or acidic secretions!"

He realized that this monster might be heading toward an end that was more unpredictable and potentially more dangerous than mere "strength."

Shen Mingyuan hovered high in the sky, his dark purple eyepieces clearly capturing the nightmarish scene below.

He was personally witnessing and responding to a "collapsing rampage of life forms."

[Consciousness Space]

The bizarre and heart-palpitating battle outside was equally clearly reflected within the Consciousness Space.

Han Chengyu "watched" the Dragon on the monitor screen as it underwent a total gene-level rampage. The tension of observing a battle was gone from his face, replaced by a deep solemnity and complex emotions.

"System," he spoke, his voice sounding exceptionally clear in the silent Consciousness Space, "What exactly... is going on? Why did it become like this? This Chaos has already exceeded simple 'injury' or 'evolutionary failure,' hasn't it?"

[Analyzing...]

[Retrieving Unit combat records, combining with previous scanning data of the organism's characteristics to perform reverse reconstruction and logical deduction.]

[Deduction complete. Conclusions are as follows:]

The System's electronic voice sounded steadily, devoid of emotion yet stating the cruel facts:

[The original prototype of this organism was an ordinary snake. At least 27 types of non-native and conflicting gene sequence fragments, as well as a corresponding number of weak, alien evo factor residues, have been detected within its body.]

[Its 'Devour' ability is not a product of natural evolution but was forcibly 'written' into its life instincts by an external force (determined to be the 'Prometheus' organization) through extreme gene editing and viral induction.]

[There is a fundamental flaw in the design of this ability: it can only crudely plunder the tissues, energy, gene blueprints, and attached evo factors of target organisms, yet it lacks subsequent 'digestion,' 'integration,' and 'transformation' mechanisms.]

[All devoured alien genes and evo factors were not effectively absorbed or utilized. Instead, they piled up in its life System like undigested lumps and invading viruses, forcibly suppressed and imprisoned by its own relatively strong native vitality and evo factors (concentration 0.05%).]

[This is a continuous state of 'rejection' and 'imprisonment' at the gene level from within the life form.]

[Currently, due to the rapid consumption of energy reserves from high-intensity combat, its native vitality and suppression power have significantly declined.]

[The cage has loosened, and all the forcibly imprisoned alien life information within its body has begun to spiral out of control, fighting for the right of expression. This manifests as what you observed: multi-species characteristics (animal, plant, insect) appearing randomly, chaotically, and in conflict with each other on its body.]

[Its life System has fallen into an irreversible process of genetic disintegration.]

Han Chengyu listened in silence. In the monitoring screen before him, more indescribably strange features were blooming on the Dragon's body.

He could "hear" that painful howl mixed with the wails of countless lives. Even through the double filtering of the System and the armor, that sense of desperate Chaos was still clear.

"How pitiful..."

Han Chengyu sighed softly. This sigh was for the Dragon, but it seemed to contain more.

"First being artificially transformed into this shape, enduring unimaginable rejection and conflict from within the body every single second, and now having to meet the end through this... this 'DNA rampage.' This pain... is simply unimaginable."

[Based on its vital sign readings and genetic disintegration speed model calculations,]

The System continued to state with icy precision, [the remaining lifespan of this organism is estimated to be no more than 300 seconds.]

[Its final form will not be any known creature, but a briefly existing 'Chaos flesh mass' of disordered, stacked life characteristics, which will then completely lose life activity due to total System collapse.]

[Probability distribution is as follows:]

[67.3% probability of complete disintegration into non-living organic matter; 28.1% probability of triggering a small-scale evo factor disordered energy release at the moment of disintegration; 4.6% probability that its chaotic genetic information will unexpectedly stabilize into some extremely unstable, short-lived aberrant symbiote under extreme conditions.]

"...Is there any way for us... to save it?" Han Chengyu watched that increasingly unnamable "thing" in the screen, and a thought surfaced.

[Question confirmation: Does the host wish to attempt intervention in the organism's termination process, with the goal of increasing its survival probability or optimizing its final form?]

"Yes. At least for now, it's just a pathetic experimental subject. If possible, I want to try. But what can we do? Can we prepare an 'antidote' in advance?" Han Chengyu knew time was tight; his ideas had to be concrete.

[Logically, there is room for operation.] The System's response was swift and pragmatic.

[Based on the acquired complete gene sequence map and evo factor distribution model, this Unit can immediately initiate highest-priority calculations. Combined with your design preferences, host, I can attempt to derive one or more possible 'Gene Stabilization Blueprints.']

[This blueprint is essentially a complex set of instructions designed to forcibly strip away the most conflicting alien factors and guide its native and some compatible alien factors into an orderly reorganization to achieve a relatively stable life state.]

[However,]

The System's electronic voice revealed clear limitations, [the blueprint is only the basic plan. Execution requires meeting two conditions:]

[1. The blueprint design must be completed;]

[2. The Aptitude Holder must get extremely close to the target. This Unit will use the Aptitude Holder's armor Unit as a relay to forcibly inject the blueprint instructions into the disordered evo factor flow within the target's body, guiding it to perform one last reorganization according to the blueprint. This process is similar to the forced writing of an external programming signal.]

[Warning: This plan is extremely high-risk. The blueprint is derived from a Chaos model; the success rate is only 31.7%.]

[Even if successful, the target's final stable form is unpredictable. It may return to a basic snake template, form a previously unseen stable Chimera, or even undergo significant degradation due to excessive intervention.]

[Its survival rate is estimated to increase to 58.9%. Failure may result in premature disintegration of the target or trigger an unpredictable energy backlash.]

[Decision window: Blueprint design requires approximately 120 seconds; the remaining execution window is less than 120 seconds. Should the collaborative design of the 'Gene Stabilization Blueprint' begin immediately? If the design is completed, the host will decide whether to issue the 'approach and execute injection' command to the Aptitude Holder based on the battlefield situation.]

The System's explanation clearly divided the process into two steps: design the blueprint immediately, then wait for the opportunity to inject. This was no longer an improvisation but a planned, high-risk technical rescue attempt.

Han Chengyu watched the seconds tick away on the monitoring screen and saw the life form heading toward its end in endless pain. He took a deep breath.

"Start the design, System. Let's... strive to give it an end that isn't so painful and chaotic." He paused, "As for whether to use it in the end... we'll wait for the blueprint to come out and see the situation on Shen Mingyuan's side."

[Command confirmed. Initiating highest-priority calculations. Allocating all idle computing power.]

[Beginning construction of the 'Forced Gene Stabilization' blueprint model... Please provide basic preference parameters, host: prioritize morphological uniformity, maximization of survival capability, or minimization of pain?]

The System entered a high-efficiency collaborative state.

"Minimize the pain as much as possible... and give it a chance to live." Han Chengyu said in a low voice, his eyes fixed on the main screen where gene sequence data and simulated evolution images began to scroll rapidly.