Chapter 1253 Her existence is a miracle!

Half an hour later, in the Chairman's office.

The midday sun was even more intense and generous than in the early morning.

Through the huge, specially treated floor-to-ceiling windows, light cascades in like a golden waterfall, coating the originally cold and solemn lines of the interior with a warm and soft light, and the fine dust in the air dances silently in the beams of light.

On one side of the office, near the floor-to-ceiling windows, there is a large and comfortable dark brown leather armchair, which is usually where Gu Chengyuan would take a short break and bask in the sun after reviewing documents for a long time.

At this moment, Gu Chengyuan was sitting on this sofa, but he was not sitting upright as usual. Instead, he leaned back slightly and relaxed.

The reason for this sitting posture is that Xiong Yuting is almost completely "embedded" in his arms.

She sat sideways, her long legs curled up, tightly hugging Gu Chengyuan's waist, her head buried deep in the crook of his neck, revealing only a small part of her exquisite profile and her thick, raven-feather-like eyelashes that trembled slightly with her breath.

With a height similar to Gu Chengyuan, nearly 1.8 meters tall, she appeared strangely petite and fragile, like a large koala that had been frightened but had finally found its home and refused to leave for even a moment, wholeheartedly clinging to and absorbing the warmth and breath that brought her a brief moment of peace to her chaotic consciousness.

The sunlight outside the window generously enveloped the two of them, dancing on the dark leather sofa and dark green military uniforms, creating a tranquil and beautiful scene.

At this moment, Gu Chengyuan gently wrapped one arm around her shoulder and back, while the other hand patiently and gently stroked her long hair.

His voice was extremely low, like the gentlest spring breeze, repeating those words like those used to soothe a child, continuously and softly, within a distance where only the two of them could hear:

"It's alright, it'll be over soon, it'll be fine in a minute..."

...

Beside this tranquil scene stood a figure who seemed somewhat out of place with the surroundings and even with this heartwarming moment.

An elderly man who looked to be around 60 years old was thin and had his full head of silver hair neatly combed. He wore a pair of old-fashioned but polished gold-rimmed glasses on his nose.

He was wearing a brand-new white lab coat, with several pens of different colors clipped to his left breast pocket, as well as a badge that identified him as a senior researcher at the Central Plains Theater Biological Research Center.

Wearing sterile gloves, he was carefully, with an almost reverent focus and imperceptible trembling, operating a small portable vacuum blood collection tube. The needle was inserted with extreme precision and gentleness into a section of Xiong Yuting's arm vein, which was exposed to the sunlight and was almost transparently white.

He is Shen Henian, an internationally renowned authority in molecular biology and virology before the apocalypse. He has been nominated for top international awards multiple times and is undoubtedly one of Zhou Bang's leading figures in this field before the apocalypse.

After the outbreak of the apocalypse, he was specially hired by the Central Plains War Zone due to his irreplaceable professional value. He now serves as the deputy director of the War Zone's Biological Research Center, and is actually in charge of research on core topics such as zombie viruses, mutated organisms, and human enhancement.

In the scientific community, his name is a legend in itself.

However, at this moment, this national treasure-level scholar, who usually addresses even the logistics minister of the war zone as "Old Shen" with utmost respect, was filled with extremely complex emotions.

Half an hour earlier, when he received a call directly from the secretariat, asking him to immediately bring the most basic blood collection equipment to the chairman's office to carry out a "blood collection task," his first reaction was absurdity and displeasure.

What kind of important sample requires him, the deputy director of the center and a top expert, to personally run errands to collect it? This is simply a huge disrespect to professionals!

Even his doctoral students wouldn't do this kind of basic work themselves!

If the tone on the other end of the phone hadn't been unusually serious, mentioning "the Chairman personally requested it" and "it's of great importance," and if he hadn't genuinely harbored some curiosity about this legendary young commander who single-handedly created the miracle of the Central Plains War Zone, he probably wouldn't have given him face.

But now...

Shen Henian held his breath, focusing intently on the gradually rising dark red liquid level in the blood collection tube.

His heart was pounding like a drum as he closely observed this "sample source" that the chairman was carefully holding in his arms!

As a scientist who has spent his life dealing with the mysteries of life, he was all too aware of the almost devastating damage that apocalyptic viruses could inflict on the human body.

Turning people into zombies is just the surface; the real issue is that viruses invade and rewrite the genetic material of host cells, disrupting their normal metabolism and energy cycle, leading to irreversible tissue necrosis, liquefaction, or distortion.

Muscles may become fibrotic or dissolve, the nervous system may break down or reorganize into bizarre circuits, and the skin may ulcerate or grow useless keratin, scales, or even an exoskeleton...

The vast majority of mutations come at the cost of sacrificing the integrity of the original human physiological structure, intelligence, and even the essence of life, in exchange for some seemingly useful "traits" in a harsh environment, such as strength, speed, regenerative ability, or special secretions.

The mutation process itself is painful and chaotic, and the final product is often a twisted monster that exists between life and death.

And the girl in front of me...

Shen Henian's gaze, peering through his glasses, was awe-inspiring as he "read" every inch of Xiong Yuting's exposed skin, observing the subtle rise and fall of her breath. Just by looking at it, he felt as if he could already sense the hidden, yet incredibly vigorous life force within her, a force that made even his biological instincts tremble!

'Her existence is simply a miracle!!' Shen Henian exclaimed in his heart more than once.

Her skin was pale, yet it possessed a flawless, jade-like texture, without any signs of ulceration, growth, or deformity, and her pores were so fine that they were almost invisible.

The proportions of his facial features are so perfect that they transcend the randomness of biological inheritance, as if they have undergone the most rigorous mathematical calculations.

Although the purple eyes are empty, their structure is so complex and profound that it far exceeds the scope of normal humans, containing an incomprehensible capacity to carry information.

What made Shen Henian's heart pound was that when he used a portable detector to conduct a preliminary spectral scan, the data showed that the girl's basal metabolic rate, cell activity, and the resonance frequency of some unknown energy in her body were at an unbelievable level, yet they were perfectly restrained and balanced in a way that he could not understand, without showing any signs of loss of control or self-consumption!

How can this be? !

According to his research, such a high energy level and cell activity must be accompanied by huge heat loss, intense radiation, or rapid aging and collapse of the body!

But the girl, curled up there quietly, looked like a delicate, fragile porcelain doll, except for her slightly low body temperature.

This is simply... simply violates all the basic principles of biology and energy that he understands!

The mutation in her body was not destruction, not distortion, but more like... an "evolution"? A leap in life form that approached "perfection" and "efficiency"?

It retains the basic human form, but has undergone unimaginable, currently benign, or even "optimized" modifications!

This completely overturns all of Shen Henian's research conclusions and assessments of the virus's potential since the end of the world!

If this is true, if he can delve deeper into it... this is not just a key to unlocking the mysteries of viruses, it's practically opening a door to a whole new realm of life sciences!

It represents the possibility of understanding a higher form of life! Its value cannot be measured by any existing scale!