The Martial Unity

Chapter 3659: Complicating Variables

The baby T-cell in the thymus grew accustomed to the evosapien stem cell he had harvested from Anthea’s corpse. Their receptors became acclimatized to the stem cell, growing comfortable and familiar with it, before passing the test and graduating as young white blood cell freshmen.

Of course, there were those who failed the test and attacked the evosapien stem cell. The thymus promptly attacked and killed those faulty T-cells, ensuring that only those who passed the test would graduate successfully and enter the bloodstream.

”...It’s working,” Rui realized. ”It will take some time for the old white blood cells to die and the new ones to fully take over for the evosapien stem cell to be fully accepted in my body, but for now, it is done.”

He was surprised that the solution was this simple. All this time, he had been conceiving of crazy, torturous acclimatization processes, but now that he had gained the wisdom and knowledge of the Divine Doctor, he had been able to overcome this hurdle with a truly elegant solution of finesse.

”I really should improve my medical knowledge. This goes to show that there is probably lots of potential in my body that I have yet to fully harness because of the limits of my knowledge.”

Of course, his knowledge was still pretty solid. He researched the human body in his first life, allowing him to gain an intimate familiarity with the nature of the human body.

However, his knowledge didn’t match that of a dedicated biologist, and certainly was nowhere near one as brilliant as the Divine Doctor, who was in a realm by himself. The fact that he had independently cracked genuine immortality without the magical power of a Martial Sage was truly unimaginable. Rui was nowhere near that level.

”Perhaps this can be a long-term project to slowly improve my biological knowledge.”

Whatever it was, it would have to wait until he completed Project Evosapien and PluriBody over the next decade. Upgrading his knowledge was not very high on his totem pole.

He heaved a deep breath as he watched a small but steady stream of new white blood cells grow accustomed to the evosapien stem cell, while pondering the rest of his project and how he intended to go about it.

He had decided to finish the thymus part because he knew that it was a process that would take time. He could quickly get it out of the way and then focus on the more difficult parts of Project Evosapien.

”Like trying to replace half of my body with evosapien stem cells...” Rui muttered. ”One thing is for sure, though. I will have to leave my brain for last. For now, I should focus on replacing less critical parts of my body with stem cells.”

That way, even if something went horribly wrong, it would not be life-threatening.

”I can start with figuring out how to integrate evosapien flesh into my outer flesh and skin.” He glanced at his hands. ”Messing up in this part will be easy to fix. And it will teach me to avoid mistakes and learn what the best way of going about this is.”

He began plotting out different methods by which he could replace his flesh. The Divine Doctor had recommended in-vivo methods, meaning he would need to replace his flesh in a process entirely within his body, rather than surgically grafting or implanting an external flesh culture.

”Let’s see... tissue naturally replenishes itself in time,” Rui pondered aloud. ”There are stem cells across the entire body that create new cells to replace the old, dead cells... The safest and slowest way to go about it is to simply replace half of those stem cells with evosapien stem cells. This way, half of all newly created cells will be evosapien stem cells. I could go for more extreme methods, but...”

He shook his head. ”I already decided against that. There are also variables like my gu and cancer that I need to iron out, so no need to get hasty.”

He had already decided to minimize risk this time at the cost of extending the metamorphosis’s timeframe. The gu and cancer were complicated because they were spread across the entire body.

Except for the brain.

Not even Rui could tolerate the gu to sit inside his brain. Brain cancer was also an unacceptable outcome since it would compromise the health of his mind, which was his single greatest asset and the source of all of his extraordinariness.

What he had instead done is essentially have the cancer in the rest of his body be extra strong to compensate for the absence, and keep the gu busy. The blood-brain barrier in particular was the most explosive in its cancer, ensuring that the gu never ever reached his brain.

”Honestly, I don’t think I can perform this procedure with the gu and cancer across my entire body,” Rui grimaced. ”It was hard enough with the thymus, and that was implanting a single cell!”

Replacing half his body with evosapien flesh was a long, delicate process that needed to occur in a calm dialectic. His body was anything but calm. It was deeply volatile and highly dangerous.

Trying to metamorphosize his body with these two forces locked against each other in an all-out war was like trying to resettle a large group of refugees in the middle of a battlefield in the middle of a war.

It was not impossible, but things would be infinitely easier if the war could be temporarily halted.

”Removing my gu and ensuring it doesn’t go bezerk is its own challenge, unfortunately.”

He did have some solutions, but they were difficult to implement inside an inorganic environment like this training chamber. He could create an environment that mimicked the metabolism of life to trick the gu into saturating it since the chamber was inorganic and rock solid, impossible to mold in any way.

”I’ll just have to ask them to bring along like a pocket dimension artifact or something.”

Such esoterics were extremely rare and extremely demanding in many ways, but they had primordial seed technology, which had experienced massive jumps thanks to Rui.