Homo Sapiens

Having successfully completed his mission, Li Jinglan was now reporting to Li Qingye on the company’s status.

”You’ve worked hard, Jing Lan. It’s too much trouble for you to go back to Xiangjiang for the New Year. Why not bring your family over here? You can spend the holiday traveling around Luzon. The company will reimburse you for everything.”

Hearing this suggestion, Li Jinglan thought for a moment and then agreed.

Li Qingye turned to Chen Jianxiong, Fang Xincheng, Kang Nan, and the others, saying, ”The same goes for everyone else. If your family is abroad, bring them here for the New Year. If they’re back home, you’ll get a bigger bonus.”

”Thank you, Boss!”

They were naturally thrilled to hear about the extra bonus.

After the annual meeting, Chen Jianxiong reported to him privately on the intelligence gathered about the various gangs in Luzon. Seeing the massive stack of documents, it was clear he had put in a great deal of effort.

After offering some words of encouragement, he sent Chen Jianxiong off to get his family.

「The next day, at noon.」

He arrived at Warehouse D of the research base, accompanied by a dozen or so bodyguards, Kang Nan, and a few employees who knew how to operate forklifts.

Inside the warehouse were ten large containers. Each was two meters long, one meter wide, and one meter tall, and they were fitted with special combination and mechanical locks.

He calmly instructed, ”Kang Nan, take these containers to Warehouse 3 in Dart Port. They’re for transporting lab animals, so be careful.”

”Understood.” Kang Nan didn’t suspect a thing.

After all, the company had a boundless future. At least until other companies could develop low-cost artificial eel fry, Homo Sapiens Company was a guaranteed gold mine.

And as one of Dart Port’s major taxpayers, Li Jinglan would be representing Homo Sapiens Company to smooth things over with the local authorities during the New Year holiday.

At a time like this, the people on the right side of the law wouldn’t dare cause any trouble.

After all, this was a technology-based enterprise, not some mining or agricultural processing company. If they angered Homo Sapiens Company, the worst-case scenario was that both sides would part ways on bad terms. For Dart Port, that would be a tremendous loss.

Soon, Kang Nan and his men successfully escorted the ten large containers to Warehouse 3 in Dart Port.

Li Qingye, who had followed them, gave his bodyguards a week off and stayed behind in the Dart Port office building.

Once all the preparations were complete, under the cover of darkness, he took a backpack, got into a small truck, and drove toward a small town west of Dart Port.

About three hours later, he arrived at the town.

It was an ordinary agricultural town with potholed roads. The locals primarily grew bananas and mangosteens.

He parked the truck in front of a motel and got a room.

He rested for the night.

The next morning, he left the motel with his backpack. Using his hacking skills, he locked onto the location of his target’s phone.

He went to a small hill, draped himself in a camouflage cloak, and observed a nearby plantation through a pair of binoculars.

This was the remnant of a small gang, just seven people in total. They had been hiding here for over half a year. If they hadn’t been unable to resist their greed and secretly looked for clients online, Li Qingye would never have targeted them.

These guys who made and sold drugs were perfect test subjects for the Soldier program. ’In any case, the deaths of these scumbags would be no great loss. Using them for experiments won’t give me even a hint of guilt.’

Looking through his binoculars, he confirmed that all seven targets were inside the plantation.

He took out a small box and opened the lid. Inside was a row of plastic compartments, each containing a frozen ice cube. He removed five of the ice cubes and quickly closed the box.

The removed ice cubes melted rapidly. Inside each cube were ten mosquitoes, which soon revived from their frozen state.

The mosquitoes circled Li Qingye once, seemed to sense a repulsive odor, and then quickly flew away toward the bungalows on the plantation.

About ten minutes later, he picked up an infrared camera and observed the inside of the building. Through gaps in the doors and windows, he could see people lying on the floor.

However, Li Qingye didn’t act rashly. The toxic mosquitoes had their limitations. If a target was asleep and under a mosquito net, they might not have been bitten.

To be absolutely sure, he released another batch of toxic mosquitoes.

At the same time, he threw a few glass bottles over.

The glass bottles instantly shattered against the rocks and concrete walls, making a loud, distinct cracking sound. Still, there was no movement from any of the houses on the plantation.

Now he was almost certain. Li Qingye quickly left the hill, returned to the motel, and drove off in the small truck.

He drove the truck right up to the plantation’s entrance, used an oxy-acetylene torch to cut through the iron gate, then opened it and drove inside.

In the small gatehouse, a man was lying on the floor. The bodies of several mosquitoes were visible on him.

He tied the man up and injected him with a special anesthetic to ensure he wouldn’t wake up for at least twelve hours.

He quickly rounded up the other six people on the plantation, giving each of them a follow-up injection of the anesthetic as well.

After collecting the dead mosquitoes and destroying the drug-making equipment and raw materials, he got in the truck and drove off without a backward glance.

To deal with these people, Li Qingye had specially engineered a type of mosquito named the Gu Insect - Coma Mosquito.

This species of mosquito wasn’t fully developed. It would indiscriminately attack any human nearby and then die quickly. Li Qingye was able to avoid their attacks because he had sprayed himself with a cilantro extract.

He had inserted a gene sequence into the mosquitoes that made them despise cilantro, so they naturally wouldn’t go near anything sprayed with its extract.

These mosquitoes could also rapidly detect human pheromones, allowing them to precisely target humans without attacking other animals.

As for the trait that made them die immediately after attacking, that was to prevent them from spreading into the wild.

Although Li Qingye had already destroyed the mosquitoes’ reproductive capabilities through genetic modification, insects were different from mammals. They reproduce incredibly quickly and are highly prone to mutation.

Once genetically modified mosquitoes enter the natural world, even sterilization isn’t a foolproof guarantee.

Brazil had done something similar, releasing a species of sterilized, genetically modified mosquito into the wild in hopes of eliminating the native mosquito population.

Initially, the wild mosquito population did decrease significantly, but the mosquitoes soon began to mutate, and their numbers quickly rebounded.

Apparently, insects with such rapid reproduction rates could overcome certain genetic defects through constant natural selection.

To avoid creating problems for himself, Li Qingye simply designed the toxic mosquitoes to be single-use. After injecting their coma-inducing neurotoxin, they would automatically die, reducing the probability of them coming into contact with wild mosquitoes.

After capturing the seven targets, Li Qingye quickly drove the small truck back to Dart Port.

Arriving at Warehouse 3, he sent the two warehouse managers to the office building to grab something. Then, he cut the internal surveillance feed and quickly stuffed the seven targets into the large containers he had prepared earlier.

Inside these large containers were restraints to hold a body in place, oxygen tanks, and an additional anesthetic gas cylinder. The anesthetic gas could be mixed with the oxygen to ensure the person inside wouldn’t wake up during transport.

Once everything was done, he notified Kang Nan to bring his men over and transport seven of the containers back to the research base.

The entire operation was completed in silence. Kang Nan, who was in charge of the transport, just assumed the containers held lab animals; he had no idea they were actually seven people.

Besides, the seven targets had been keeping an extremely low profile in the town to stay off the radar. They had no friends or family here, so even if they disappeared, it was highly unlikely anyone would report them missing.