Chapter Six: The Mantis

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The chat screenshot abruptly ended. Li Cheng leaned back in his chair, resting against the backrest, his brows involuntarily furrowing.

In this screenshot, terms like "Insect Lord" and "Divine Sin" were clearly mentioned, aligning with what the Special Affairs Bureau had referred to last night.

Yet, frustratingly, the screenshot did not delve deeper into explaining how to save oneself if infected by the Insect Lord.

"I need to first verify if this screenshot is genuine..."

Li Cheng thought carefully and zoomed in repeatedly on the photo posted by the user HaccKer, the so-called image of the Mothman.

The creature was obscured in the shadows of the trees, blurry and indistinct. However, the night sky in the background was relatively clear.

With his knowledge of astronomy, he recognized Mercury, Mars, Venus, the stars of the Big Dipper’s fourth and second stars, and the M22 globular cluster.

That was enough.

Li Cheng immediately opened a star map website, cross-referenced the date of the chat screenshot, and searched for the star map from the previous night, beginning his calculations.

He converted the planets’ right ascension into hour angles under the horizontal coordinate system, transformed the celestial pole coordinates into horizontal coordinates, and determined the latitude, longitude, and local time...

He pinpointed the location: the northwest corner of South Dakota, along the Rabbit River.

Rubbing his temples, Li Cheng considered that this method of star positioning could have an error margin of about 20 kilometers. In a densely populated city, it would be difficult to precisely locate the photographer.

Fortunately, South Dakota was vast and sparsely populated. With an area of 199,747 square kilometers and a population of less than one million, settlements were few, narrowing the scope to a small town surrounded by a handful of farms.

He entered the town’s name to search for news and indeed found a report—about half a month ago, a local farmer’s family was attacked by robbers, resulting in a fierce gunfight. In the end, only the farmer’s child survived and was sent to a psychiatric hospital for treatment.

Beneath the news was a gun advertisement by Prometheus Laboratories—

A striking blonde Caucasian woman held a semi-automatic shotgun with a drum magazine and said seriously, “In the American Midwest, it takes twenty minutes for the police to arrive after calling. In those twenty minutes, who protects you besides your gun?”

...This gun advertisement was everywhere—truly a reflection of the American national character.

Li Cheng closed the webpage, now basically certain the chat screenshot’s content was authentic. “Considering that China has the Special Affairs Bureau and the US has the FBI’s Special Incidents Division, each country must have established professional agencies to handle anomalous events. They must have accumulated vast experience.

The so-called ‘Insect Lord’ infection must have some countermeasures; I just haven’t found enough information yet. I don’t know enough about that world.”

After much thought, he unplugged his USB drive, shut down the computer, took out paper and pen from his backpack, and began detailed recording.

He noted everything, including but not limited to total calorie intake that day, his current height, weight, waist circumference, body fat percentage, body temperature, and so forth.

Then he began his workout.

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He did two sets of twenty-five push-ups, two sets of twenty-five squats, two sets of twenty-five seated knee bends, two sets of twenty-five burpees...

He repeated these cycles until his muscles began to ache and his breathing grew rapid, then finally stopped.

“My muscular endurance has improved significantly compared to before, though my explosive strength hasn’t increased as dramatically.”

Li Cheng recorded his fitness data carefully on paper and pondered deeply.

He recalled from elementary school textbooks that ants could lift objects hundreds of times their own weight, making them the strongmen of the insect world.

So, if an ant were scaled up to human size, could it lift cars or trucks?

The answer was no. Even ignoring oxygen content and the load-bearing capacity of chitin joints, it was impossible.

The reason was simple: when a living creature’s size changes, length varies linearly, area varies by the square, and volume by the cube.

If an ant were enlarged 250 times, its muscle cross-section would be 62,500 times larger, but its weight would be 15,625,000 times greater.

Firstly, it wouldn’t be able to exert its original strength; secondly, it would be crushed under its own weight.

Does that mean ants have no value at all?

Not quite.

When ants move, their muscles produce special enzymes and hormone proteins that trigger drastic changes in ATP (adenosine triphosphate, the body’s immediate energy source), releasing massive energy. This causes the muscle protein’s long filaments to contract rapidly, achieving explosive muscular power.

If Li Cheng’s guess was correct, this was precisely the ability he had absorbed—extreme burst power.

The hunger pangs returned. Li Cheng pulled out a snack box from under the bed and nibbled on chocolate balls bite by bite.

“There’s still one question: why did that taxi driver mutate so rapidly, instantly growing compound eyes and pincers, while my changes have been much milder?”

“Is it because he had his blood drained by the bee creature, while I was only bitten? Or perhaps because I once touched the red blood amber on the bee creature’s forehead?”

With so little information, no amount of pondering could yield an answer. Unconsciously, he had eaten a large amount of snacks, yet the hunger remained.

The fine hairs under his arms bristled again.

Had he entered the “genetic hunger” state?

According to the screenshot, he had to absorb new genes to stabilize the mutation; otherwise, he would become a monster.

Glancing at the time, it was already 1 a.m., and everyone at home was asleep.

He wrapped his entire right hand in a towel, took a forehead thermometer, quietly pushed open his bedroom door, left the house, and went down to the green belts below the apartment complex.

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After a day of drying with desiccant, his phone could now power on. He turned on the phone’s flashlight and searched the grass for his target.

Here it was!

He extended his left hand and caught a verdant Chinese mantis, placing it in his palm.

His palm skin writhed, hooking the mantis’s legs and forearms, preventing it from escaping.

The skin slowly absorbed the mantis’s blood cells, while simultaneously pumping some of Li Cheng’s own blood back into the mantis to keep it from dying immediately.

Burning! Scorching!

The same intense heat he had felt when climbing out of the canal surged through his body again. Steam radiated off him, especially from the left hand holding the mantis.

He instinctively took a deep breath but exhaled a long plume of white vapor, like a soaring dragon. His internal temperature was far higher than the 45 degrees shown by the electronic thermometer.

The heat came quickly and dissipated just as fast.

Half a minute later, the skin on his left palm returned to normal. The fine hairs on his right hand lay dormant again. The mantis staggered to its feet, showing no obvious abnormalities.

A faint, almost imperceptible connection seemed to remain between Li Cheng and the mantis.

“Is this considered done?”

His expression was grave. The intense hunger in his gut gradually eased, apparently completing one cycle of the “genetic hunger.”

Late at night, occasional passersby walked below the apartment, so he did not linger. He gently held the mantis and returned upstairs, placing it in a ventilated plastic box secured with twisted wire under his bed.

Then he examined himself. His height showed no obvious change; his weight was one kilogram lighter; waist circumference reduced; body fat decreased; strength... slightly increased.

“If I gained the fine hairs and explosive strength from the grassland ants, then what did I get from this gene extraction?”

After a moment’s reflection, Li Cheng flexed his arm muscles.

Clang!

Two slender bone blades suddenly sprang out from the lower ends of his left and right forearms, slicing the air with a sharp, piercing sound.