Surgery Godfather

Chapter 2255: Chapter 1465: That Hand

At 5:17 a.m., Yang Ping abruptly woke up from a dream.

It wasn’t a nightmare, but a thought. Like a seed lying dormant deep in his consciousness, it finally emerged at this neither too early nor too late moment. He lay there for a few seconds, then gently lifted the quilt and walked into the study.

When the desk lamp lit up, he saw the experiment log spread open on the desk. It was a page he had casually flipped to before going to sleep last night, containing the original data of the first clinical application of K Therapy, with its corners slightly curled.

He didn’t deliberately look for this record; it had always been there, in the desk drawer, stacked with memories of those years.

Yang Ping sat down and started flipping through it.

K Therapy is not a cure-all; it works for some people and not for others. Why? He had asked himself this question for years.

Yang Ping turned the log to the last page, which was blank. He picked up a pen and wrote at the top of the blank page:

K Therapy, Stem Cells, Three-Dimensional Gene Theory.

Then he drew three lines, extending from each of the three words towards the same direction. The three lines converged on the right side of the page, pointing to a question mark.

He stared at this question mark for a long time.

At six in the morning, he dialed Tang Shun’s number.

After three rings, it was answered. Tang Shun’s voice was clear, as if he hadn’t been woken up.

"Professor?"

"Meet Manstein and Weber when you get to work and bring them to my office. You and Xiao Lu come too. We have something to discuss."

"What’s the agenda?"

"A hypothesis," Yang Ping said, "I might know what the invisible hand is."

Eight a.m., in Yang Ping’s office.

Manstein and Weber arrived on time. Tang Shun was already sitting on the sofa, holding a cup of coffee, and Lu Xiaolu was leaning against the sofa, contemplating something. Yang Ping didn’t bother with small talk; he directly posted the paper from last night onto the whiteboard.

The three of them looked at the paper in silence for a few seconds.

Tang Shun spoke first, "Are you suggesting that the mechanism behind these three things is the same?"

"Yes!" Yang Ping picked up the whiteboard pen and drew a circle on each of the three lines, "It’s the same principle, the same set of theories, just different manifestations in different scenarios and stages. The Three-Dimensional Gene Theory guides various cells to appear in the right position, Stem Cells become the target cells, and K Therapy activates some kind of endogenous repair program. They’re all doing the same thing: constructing the human body, and maintaining it."

"The human body is not a machine where you just replace parts as they break," Yang Ping turned around, looking at them, "The human body is a program. From the fertilized egg, cells differentiate, proliferate, migrate, and undergo apoptosis according to predetermined instructions, ultimately constructing a complete individual. This program, we call the Development Program."

Manstein’s eyes narrowed slightly; he clearly understood.

"But the Development Program shuts down after adulthood," Manstein said, "because if cells continue unlimited proliferation, that’s Cancer."

"Correct, the Development Program shuts down but shutdown doesn’t mean deletion." Yang Ping drew a timeline on the whiteboard, from fertilized egg to adulthood, "This program remains in the genome, just locked by epigenetic modifications. And what we’re doing with K Therapy, Three-Dimensional guidance, Stem Cell transplantation, is essentially the same thing: unlocking."

Weber leaned forward slightly, a signature posture when he delved into deep thought.

"After unlocking, what happens?" Weber asked, "Will cells start rebuilding the human body?"

"Not reconstructing, repairing," Yang Ping said, "The Development Program is about constructing from scratch, while the Repair Program is about localized activation, limited execution. For instance, after a liver resection, the remaining liver cells proliferate until the liver regains its original size. This process isn’t about liver cells knowing exactly how large the liver should be, but rather following a precise regulatory logic we call ’Three-Dimensional Guidance.’"

He pointed to the words "Three-Dimensional Gene Theory" on the whiteboard.

"This regulatory logic constructs the correct organ structures during the developmental phase and repairs damaged tissues during adulthood. Tumors occur because this program is abnormally activated in certain cells, while simultaneously evading normal apoptosis signals. K Therapy’s efficacy on specific tumors lies in its ability to prompt tumor cells to re-execute the apoptosis instruction and undergo apoptosis, essentially part of this same program."

The air in the office felt as though half of it had been drawn out.

Manstein stood up and walked to the whiteboard. He looked at the question mark for a long time, then picked up another pen and added a line beneath "Repair Program":

"Evidence: Unknown factors secreted by the original cells."

"This unknown factor," Manstein’s voice had a slight tremble, "might be one of the activation signals for this program. It is upregulated after a spinal injury, then activates endogenous Stem Cells to promote nerve repair, matching precisely with what we observed."

Weber also stood up; he walked to the whiteboard, picked up a third pen, and added a line beneath Manstein’s:

"Inference: Stem Cells are not the main characters of repair, the Repair Program is. Stem Cells are merely tool cells called upon by the program."

The four of them stared at the layer upon layer of markings on the whiteboard, as if looking at newly deciphered codes.

Tang Shun put down his coffee cup, his voice low, as if afraid of disturbing something, "Professor, if this hypothesis is true, what does it mean?"

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