131: The warship became a god, but the man collapsed? His genetic chain broke, and he collapsed at the victory celebration banquet!

“This is what you call an upgrade!

No, this is changing into a Star Destroyer!”

Inside the command cabin, the atmosphere was unusually relaxed and pleasant.

Old Chen hummed a tuneless little ditty as he comfortably watched the rapidly shortening estimated travel time on the sea chart.

Meanwhile, he couldn't help but reach out again to touch the brand-new alloy edge of the console.

That touch was no longer the cold, rough old metal of before.

Instead, it was a delicate texture, slightly warm, as if it had the rhythm of life.

“Boss, at this speed, what used to take a week, we can reach the K-19 Sea Area in two days.”

Old Chen turned his head, his face glowing with the kind of radiance only seen on the face of a nouveau riche.

“And this time, we can stand tall.

If we run into that bullshit ‘Deep Sea United Fleet’ patrol again, we won't have to hide in the trenches like last time.

We’ll just show them the ‘Fission Roar’ and scare them to death!”

Although Su Qingyu didn't get carried away like Old Chen.

But as she organized the data now, her brow had relaxed a lot.

The evolution of the black iron this time was perfect.

With a comprehensive three-in-one upgrade in defense, power, and firepower, they finally had a foothold in this crisis-ridden deep sea.

Everything looked so beautiful.

“Since the journey has been shortened...”

Jiang Ran, who had been sitting silently in the Commander's chair, finally spoke slowly.

His voice sounded a bit strange.

It carried an imperceptible hoarseness and weakness, as if his vocal cords were covered in a thick layer of sandpaper.

“Then notify the Engineering Section to maintain... maintain full speed...”

Before he could finish, Jiang Ran's brow suddenly furrowed tightly without warning.

A violent cramp, as if it were going to crush all his internal organs, instantly erupted from deep within his chest, shooting up his spine to the crown of his head.

That feeling was like the ion beam that had just pierced the seabed was now blasting backward inside his body.

“Pugh—”

Jiang Ran instinctively tried to raise his hand to cover his mouth, but it was too late.

A surge of warm, fishy-smelling liquid violently broke through the barrier of his throat.

Under everyone's horrified gaze.

A large amount of dark red blood, almost black, poured frantically through Jiang Ran's fingers.

It instantly stained the front of his clothes red.

Then it dripped onto the spotless black metal floor that had just been laid under his feet.

“Bo...ss?”

The smile on Old Chen's face instantly froze, and the teacup he had just lifted to his lips slipped again.

At this moment, the originally celebratory atmosphere of victory in the command cabin.

Was like having a bucket of ice water poured over it, instantly turning into deathly terror and cold.

“Thud—”

A dull sound of falling to the ground struck heavily in everyone's hearts.

Jiang Ran's tall body seemed to have all its bones sucked out in an instant, without even a hint of a struggle.

He fell straight down from the Commander's chair, crashing heavily into that pool of startlingly dark red blood.

“Boss!!!”

Old Chen let out a distorted roar and scrambled over.

The moment he touched Jiang Ran's body, his hand jerked back as if burned.

“Hot! So hot! It's like touching a piece of red-hot coal!”

“Warning! Warning! Commander’s vital signs are dropping rapidly!”

zero's electronic voice, which was usually calm and objective, actually switched to the most piercing and urgent red high-risk frequency:

“Arrhythmia... blood pressure readings cannot be established... brain waves are falling into deep shock!”

“Don't just stand there! Get him to the medical bay! Quickly!!”

At the critical moment, Su Qingyu maintained the last shred of her sanity.

She shoved aside the panicked Old Chen.

The two of them together lifted the completely unconscious Jiang Ran and rushed toward the medical room in the back like crazy.

Along the way, Jiang Ran's condition was worsening at a rate visible to the naked eye.

He wasn't just vomiting blood and running a high fever.

On the skin of his exposed neck and arms.

Large patches of eerie purple-red ecchymosis were rapidly emerging, like some kind of acute livor mortis.

Or like the capillaries under the skin were undergoing a massive spontaneous rupture.

“Hold on... please hold on...”

Old Chen panted as he ran.

Looking at this man who was usually omnipotent and had just led them to tear an aircraft carrier apart.

Now he was as fragile as a porcelain doll that would break at a touch, and tears couldn't stop falling.

The contrast was too great.

One second.

They were still piloting the most powerful battleship on this sea, possessing infinite power and invincible shields.

The next second.

The master of this invincible battleship had fallen beneath his own throne.

“Bang!”

The door to the medical bay was slammed open.

In a flurry, the two of them threw Jiang Ran into the Life Support Pod that hadn't had time to be cleaned and still smelled of the previous round of repair fluid.

“Activate emergency mode! Full power!”

Following Su Qingyu's shout, pale green Medical Gel quickly poured in, enveloping the blood-covered man.

But this time, looking at the data panel that kept flashing red, Su Qingyu's heart sank to the bottom.

Her intuition told her that this time, it probably wasn't as simple as a simple external injury... “Beep—Scan complete.”

“Generating Genetic Map... Warning, data anomaly.”

Beside the medical pod, Su Qingyu stared intently at the newly generated holographic diagnostic report.

Her hands, which were steady as a rock even when controlling the precision fire-control radar, were now trembling uncontrollably.

“What's going on? Is it poisoning?

Or did the radiation from earlier leak in?”

Old Chen leaned against the glass cover, looking at Jiang Ran inside, whose brow was still furrowed even in the repair fluid and whose skin was still bleeding.

He was as anxious as an ant on a hot griddle.

“It's not poisoning, nor is it radiation sickness.”

Su Qingyu's voice was terrifyingly cold. She reached out a trembling finger and tapped on the string of eye-catching red gene sequences:

“It's ‘collapse’.”

“Look here, his 23rd pair of chromosome telomeres have been completely worn away.

And here, the DNA chain that should have been a double helix structure.

The current state is like... a frayed rope, all coming apart.”

“What... what does that mean?”

Old Chen didn't understand these technical terms, but he understood “broken” and “apart.”

“It means that on a physical level, he is ‘falling apart’.”

Su Qingyu turned around and looked at the man lying in the Life Support Pod, her eyes filled with an unprecedented sense of desolation and shock:

“We all overlooked one thing. The most fatal thing.”

“The black iron evolved too fast.”

She pointed to the indestructible battleship around them:

“The current black iron has a Lv5-level Sea Beast Heart and Dragon Scale Skin that can devour radiation.

It also has an Ion Roar that can instantly evaporate mountains.”

“The power level of this ship already stands at the pinnacle of biological evolution, even touching the threshold of Lv6.”

At this point, Su Qingyu's voice suddenly became sharp:

“But what about its pilot?!”

“Jiang Ran... he is still just a mortal!”

“He controls this ship through that Deep-dive nerve connection system.

Every pulse of the [fission heart], every thrill of [Radiation Devour], every venting of [Atomic Breath].

Those terrifyingly massive data flows and energy feedbacks all have to pass through his brain and nerve system as a relay.”

Su Qingyu made a graphic and cruel gesture:

“Imagine using a thin copper wire from a household appliance to transmit the current of a high-voltage substation.”

“His willpower might be as strong as a god's, able to forcibly suppress this load and keep himself from going mad.

But his body... is ultimately just flesh and blood.”

“The ship is fine because the ship evolved.”

“The man fell because the man... overloaded.”

This was the cruelest truth.

Jiang Ran overextended everything he had to feed this steel behemoth.

He let the black iron become a god, but forgot that he was still trapped in a mortal shell.

That seemingly effortless shot of “Atomic Breath” just now was the final straw that crushed this fragile wire.

“Burned out...”

Old Chen stared blankly at the figure who was constantly bleeding in the Life Support Pod and muttered to himself:

“This isn't just piloting a ship... this is clearly burning one's life.”

“Regardless of whether it's an overload, stop the bleeding first! Keep him alive first!”

Old Chen looked at the bloody man in the medical pod, his eyes red with anxiety, and he grabbed Su Qingyu's arm:

“We still have that... the Special Grade Repair Fluid we got from the deep sea black market last time!

That's for Awakeners, it must work!

Quickly inject it into him!”

“I'm doing it! Don't rush me!”

Su Qingyu gritted her teeth, her forehead covered in cold sweat.

She quickly entered commands on the operating screen, and a high-concentration biological repair agent marked with a golden skull symbol was grabbed by a Mechanical Arm.

It was injected directly into Jiang Ran's vein.

As the pale gold medicine was pushed in, the two of them stared intently at the vital signs monitor, praying for a miracle.

However, what awaited them was not improvement, but deeper despair.

“Beep! Beep! Beep!!”

The already disordered heart rate curve, at the moment the medicine was injected, actually flattened into a string of irregular garbled code.

Immediately afterward, a hair-raising scene occurred inside the medical pod.

“Ugh...”

Jiang Ran, who was in a deep coma, suddenly let out a groan of extreme pain, and his body began to twitch violently.

The ecchymosis that was originally just subcutaneous bleeding actually festered instantly under the stimulation of the repair fluid.

Countless tiny blood droplets, as if squeezed out by high pressure, surged out from every pore of his body.

That pod of clear Medical Gel was dyed a murky crimson in the blink of an eye.

“How could this happen?! That's life-saving medicine!”

Old Chen was pale with fright and stumbled back, knocking over the tray behind him: “Why does it seem like he was fed poison instead?!”

“Stop! Stop it quickly!!”

Su Qingyu frantically smashed the emergency stop button and cut off the IV tube.

She looked at the cell activity reading on the screen, which had instantly dropped below the critical value, her face as white as paper:

“I was wrong... we were wrong...”

“Right now, his gene chain is broken.

It's like the blueprint of a building has been burned, leaving only a pile of scattered bricks.”

“Injecting him with this potent repair fluid at this time is like frantically pouring cement and catalysts onto a pile of ruins.

The cells don't know how to repair themselves; they can only undergo erroneous, frantic accelerated division and metabolism under this command.”

Su Qingyu's voice carried a hint of desperate trembling:

“This isn't saving him at all... it's accelerating his ‘dissolution’.”

This was the most terrifying hemolytic reaction.

Without the constraint of the Genetic Map, all life energy became a death warrant.

“Then... then what do we do?”

Old Chen looked at Jiang Ran, who had turned into a bloody mess inside the pod.

This rough man, who usually feared nothing, was now as helpless as a child, his voice carrying a sob:

“The ship was just fixed, it's invincible, we can go to K-19 to find that person soon... and now the person is gone?”

“What is this? Is God playing with us?”

No one answered him.

Only the still-piercing ‘critically ill’ alarm sounded like a death knell.

Inside this steel giant ship that had just conquered the deep sea, it echoed lonely and desolately... “Shut up! Everyone shut up!”

Amidst the chaos and despair, Su Qingyu suddenly let out a hysterical scream.

She swung her hand and slammed it hard against the control console, forcibly cutting off the distracting alarm.

She also cut off the conventional treatment program that was not only ineffective but also fatal.

The medical pod instantly became quiet.

Only the hum of the life support pump maintaining minimum operation remained.

“No more treatment?”

Old Chen was stunned, his eyes terrified: “Sister Su, are you... giving up on him?”

“It's not giving up.”

Su Qingyu took a deep breath.

She forced herself to detach from her emotional breakdown and return to her cold, rational scientist state.

She looked up, and those eyes no longer held tears, only a near-insane determination:

“Old Chen, don't you understand yet?”

“This isn't a disease; this is ‘elimination’.”

She pointed to the dying man in the pod:

“The old shell is no longer worthy of the new power.

Just like you can't stuff a nuclear reactor into a wooden carriage.

No matter how well you repair the carriage, as soon as that power operates, the carriage will fall apart.”

“The current Jiang Ran is that carriage that is falling apart.”

“It can't be cured. Unless...”

Su Qingyu paused and turned toward a thickened safe in the deepest part of the medical room.

She quickly entered three layers of complex biological codes, and with the soft hiss of leaking air pressure, the door slowly popped open.

A bone-chilling cold air rushed out.

In that lead-lined freezer compartment lay a spiral test tube emitting a faint red glow.

That was the most primitive and overbearing life essence extracted from the bone marrow of that Radiation Sea Lizard—the [Original Gene Serum].

“Unless we completely smash this ‘carriage’ of his and reorganize it into a ‘tank’.”

Old Chen looked at the test tube, his eyelids twitching wildly: “That... that's the blood of a monster!

If that stuff is injected, will he still be human?!”

“Is there a difference between being a human or a monster?”

Su Qingyu gripped the test tube, the cold touch stinging her palm:

“In this apocalypse, only those who survive are the truth.”

“If we don't inject it, his gene chain will completely disintegrate within ten minutes, turning him into a pool of pus.

If we do, he has a one-in-ten-thousand chance to complete the reorganization and keep up with the evolution of the black iron at the genetic level.”

After saying that, she no longer hesitated.

She strode back to the medical pod and slammed that dark red serum, which emitted a dangerous aura, into Jiang Ran's carotid artery.

“Inject!”

The dark red liquid instantly disappeared into that pale skin.

One second.

Two seconds.

The vital signs monitoring line, which had almost become a straight line.

Suddenly, like a startled venomous snake, it shot up an astonishing amount.

“Thump!!!”

A powerful heartbeat, so strong it even made the entire medical pod shake, exploded through the speakers.

Immediately after.

Jiang Ran's tightly closed eyes snapped open.

But in those eyes, there were no pupils, no whites.

Only a patch of burning... golden-red, as if from the deepest depths of the abyss.