Homo Sapiens

The reason Li Qingye sighed a moment ago was simple.

Throughout the long process of evolution, some individuals were bound to mutate, especially in the twenty-first century, an era of population explosion.

An increase in population naturally increases the probability of mutations.

According to the debriefings of Anthony and Christine, the Knight organization was initially founded after World War II and developed significantly during the Cold War.

At the time, America acquired many assets and personnel from Germany’s Third Reich in Europe, including the superhuman project.

After America acquired this superhuman project, it was reorganized and localized, becoming the Institute for Special Human Abilities. In 1980, it was renamed again to what is now known as the Knight organization.

Anthony had abnormal hearing, about four times more acute than an ordinary person’s.

Christine, on the other hand, had abnormal vision. By concentrating, she could achieve a slow-motion visual effect, which was why she was trained as a micro-expression profiler.

According to the intelligence they provided, the Knight organization has over three thousand official members. Additionally, they recruit promising children and teenagers into their training camps each year.

However, the proportion of these individuals with useful abilities was not high—less than 20%.

In Anthony’s training camp cohort, only about 24% made it to the end and overcame their genetic diseases.

This didn’t surprise Li Qingye. After all, genetic mutations aren’t necessarily beneficial; they are far more likely to be detrimental.

Even so-called benign mutations still came with their own set of problems.

Take Anthony, for example. His hearing was about four times that of a normal person. This meant that when speaking with others, he had to struggle to overcome the thunderous sound of their voices. The slightest rustle of wind or grass would cause him immense distress.

As a result, Anthony had to sleep in a specially made soundproof room. When working outside, he had to wear sound-filtering headphones and noise-canceling earplugs.

Apparently, he couldn’t control the volume of the sounds he received through self-regulation, unlike Li Qingye.

Christine’s situation was similar. She often fell into a state of temporal confusion because she couldn’t precisely turn her slow-motion vision on and off. This caused her to sometimes feel that her surroundings were slowing down, and at other times, that time was speeding up.

Li Qingye examined their gene sequences and quickly located the abnormally expressed genes within them.

By this point, the Homo Sapiens Company’s internal genetic database had already collected the gene sequences of several hundred thousand people. By comparing them, it was easy to find abnormal genes.

Li Qingye then isolated their abnormal genes and initiated a search.

[Gene YC-72... Matches found: 3...]

[Gene YC-73... Matches found: 1...]

[Gene YC-74... Matches found: 4...]

Anthony’s anomaly consisted of a small segment of four genes, while Christine’s was a segment of seven.

The search found no identical segments, but it did find one individual with a 75% overlap with Anthony’s abnormal gene segment.

For Christine, two matches were found. One had an overlap of three out of seven genes, and the other had an overlap of two out of seven.

’Let’s take a look at these three people’s files.’

The one who matched with Anthony was a deaf person from Hongsawaddy.

As for the two who matched with Christine, one showed no issues, while the other was severely nearsighted.

"Genetic diseases truly are everywhere," he sighed in resignation.

Li Qingye then reviewed Anthony and Christine’s testimonies. From them, he learned that the Knight organization still maintained some of the laboratories from the original superhuman project, and that these labs were still operating in secret.

Although Anthony and Christine didn’t know the specific locations of these labs, or even what research projects were being conducted inside, Li Qingye could make a few educated guesses.

’He was all too familiar with the darker side of human nature.’

’Human biological research usually has only two goals: to save humanity or to destroy it. It’s that simple.’

’Based on the Knight organization’s superhuman project, their research would most likely be focused on developing technologies for immortality, super-brains, superpowers, and transgenic humans.’

As for how far they had progressed, Li Qingye estimated that the Knight organization had already conducted experiments on transgenic humans.

’After all, more than two decades had passed since the emergence of first-generation transgenic technology. Given their unscrupulous methods, it was virtually impossible that they hadn’t secretly experimented on transgenic humans.’

’But transgenic humans need over a decade to mature. Even if their growth was accelerated with hormones, it would likely still take around ten years.’

’Due to the immaturity of first-generation transgenic technology, the test subjects likely suffered from off-target effects, genetic diseases, and other issues. The chances of them creating their envisioned superhumans were probably slim.’

’However, with the advent of second-generation gene-recombination technology, cultivating the envisioned transgenic humans was no longer a major hurdle.’

’And second-generation gene-recombination technology matured around 2011, which was only about nine years ago.’

’Considering the initial testing phase, the application of this technology to human genetic modification probably began around 2015 at the earliest.’

’In other words, even if the Knight organization’s superhuman labs had cultivated transgenic infants, they would be four or five years old at most by now.’

’An experiment like this would take at least twenty years to yield any mature, applicable technology.’

Li Qingye wasn’t too worried about this. When it came to human genetic modification, if he claimed to be second-best in the world, no one would dare claim to be first.

After all, he had performed genetic modifications on his own body, not to mention the experience he had accumulated from so many Soldiers and test subjects.

Even now, it would be no difficult task for Li Qingye to create a few superhumans.

’The question was, why would he do that?’

’In Li Qingye’s opinion, the "super" in "superhuman" should refer to the brain and intellect. The physical body was secondary.’

’But if he created superhumans with super-brains, controlling such test subjects would be an extremely thorny issue.’

’After all, a human with a super-brain would most likely be unwilling to serve as Li Qingye’s pawn and would certainly try every method imaginable to free themselves from his control.’

’The more intelligent someone is, the more they tend to overthink things.’

Therefore, at this stage, Li Qingye had no need to create superhumans. Doing so would only introduce uncertainty into his own organization.

For now, the Homo Sapiens Company had him as its core brain, plus a massive number of research grunts. That was more than enough for the initial stages.

After all, he didn’t need to worry too much about research talent. There were plenty of unemployed STEM graduates in Southeast Asia, not to mention the millions of university STEM graduates Huaguo produced every year.

As long as the Homo Sapiens Company was willing to wave cash around, it could recruit these high-quality personnel without needing to go through the trouble of training them from scratch.

To date, among the researchers recruited by the Homo Sapiens Company and the Qingye Group, 3,225 were from various parts of Southeast Asia, and 5,206 were from Huaguo.

What’s the most valuable thing in the twenty-first century? Talent!

What’s the most worthless thing in the twenty-first century? Also talent!

Backed by the two world-class talent pools of Southeast Asia and Huaguo, how could the Homo Sapiens Company possibly be short on research grunts?

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