Homo Sapiens

Li Qingye set down the report. He was quite satisfied with the development of the Hongsawaddy branch.

He was especially impressed with Liu Zhifan’s resourcefulness, having leveraged the advantages of the glass industry to uncover its hidden value.

He wrote a letter of encouragement and had Phil send it to the Hongsawaddy branch. He also tasked Yang Mengjiao with overseeing the branch’s security.

Speaking of security, Li Qingye had made considerable progress in recent months.

He instructed Phil to arrange a trip to the Blood Blade Special Team’s training base.

The base was located on Bantun Island, which lies southwest of Luzon Island, northwest of the Mishan Islands, and directly east of Mindoro Island. The island covered a few dozen square kilometers and was sparsely populated, with only two small fishing villages.

Through its connections with the Fernando Clan, Homo Sapiens Company had relocated everyone from these two fishing villages to other islands.

Now, aside from Homo Sapiens Company personnel, there was no one else on Bantun Island.

Bantun Island was over 24 kilometers from the nearest large islands. Since it was not near any shipping lanes and lacked a port for civilian vessels, virtually no one ever went there.

「May 7th.」

Li Qingye arrived on Bantun Island with Phil and the others.

Bagheera, the commander of the Blood Blade Special Team, had been waiting at the docks for some time. By this point, the ranks of Blood Blade had expanded to 685 members.

On the training grounds, Li Qingye watched the Soldiers’ combat training.

The advantage the Soldiers held over natural humans was that they felt no fear or pain. Furthermore, a vast amount of knowledge could be implanted via the Soldier program, bypassing the need for tedious study.

”Have they seen any real combat?”

Bagheera looked at him with an intensely fanatical gaze before replying in detail:

”Half a month ago, I used the Lopez Clan’s connections to acquire over a dozen death-row inmates from a prison. I pitted them against our Soldiers in a life-or-death battle. Even armed with firearms and melee weapons, the inmates couldn’t defeat an equal number of Soldiers.”

”Is that so?” Li Qingye didn’t find this particularly impressive.

After all, the Blood Blade Special Team’s arsenal wasn’t limited to conventional special forces weaponry; it also included many items exclusive to Homo Sapiens Company.

For instance, bio-computers, the Gu Insect series, and various biological toxins were astonishingly powerful in special operations.

In a tropical rainforest environment like that of Bantun Island, who would be on guard against a mosquito? A spider? A fly?

Of course, the Blood Blade Special Team would have a hard time in a direct confrontation with a large military formation. The enemy could simply saturate the area with incendiary bombs, thermobaric bombs, and cluster bombs.

Li Qingye didn’t expect the Blood Blade Special Team to excel in frontal assaults. After all, specialization was key.

”I’ve brought a batch of new equipment with me this time.”

He clapped his hands.

Phil directed his subordinates to open the shipping container.

Inside were rows of cases of various sizes, each containing equipment for different purposes.

Phil opened one of the cases, revealing a special suit resembling a sharkskin wetsuit.

Li Qingye began his introduction. ”This is the White Shark Type Underwater Combat Suit. It allows the user to dive to a depth of around 100 meters without needing an oxygen tank, as the suit itself filters oxygen directly from the seawater. It also blocks infrared detection.”

Bagheera immediately had a Soldier come over and try it on.

Once on, the underwater combat suit felt like a second skin.

It didn’t just enhance resistance to water pressure; it also enabled prolonged underwater activity. The artificial gill system was located on the suit’s back and resembled a shark’s dorsal fin.

This bionic skin provided thermal insulation, infrared shielding, cut resistance, ballistic protection, and enhanced swimming speed.

With these underwater combat suits, the Blood Blade Special Team could swim from international waters, dozens of kilometers from the coast, and infiltrate enemy territory.

Of course, the Soldiers’ stamina was limited, so they needed another piece of auxiliary equipment: a miniature jet thruster.

The miniature thruster was about a meter long and shaped like a gas cylinder. It was equipped with two air bladders for depth adjustment and used gas stored in its Crystal Sponge liner for propulsion, conserving the user’s stamina underwater.

For regions with long coastlines, such as Hongsawaddy, Luzon, or Malaysia, this method of underwater infiltration was virtually impossible to defend against.

Even America, which boasted of being the world’s strongest nation, couldn’t possibly guard its entire coastline around the clock.

In addition to the White Shark Type Underwater Combat Suits and miniature jet thrusters, there were also rechargeable, retractable solar panels.

The power generation efficiency of these solar panels was comparable to that of ordinary monocrystalline silicon panels, but their advantage was that they could be collapsed to the size of a tennis ball. When fully expanded, they covered an area of five square meters. These, too, were made from biomaterials.

The solar panels could power the miniature thrusters by recompressing air into the storage bladder, and they could also be used to charge other devices.

Beyond that, there was also the Fierce Tiger Combat Suit for land warfare, a suit that integrated numerous biotechnologies.

These included: an exoskeleton (inspired by ants), optical camouflage (butterflies), infrared masking (amphibians), thermal insulation (amphibians), ballistic protection (chitin + diatoms + non-Newtonian fluid), waterproofing (sharks + lotus leaves), biochemical protection (lotus leaves + Crystal Sponge), ultrasonic detection (bats), infrared detection (snakes), pheromone detection (insects), a bio-assisted computer, and pheromone-based communication (insects).

This combat suit was practically a magnum opus of bionics.

To complement this combat suit, Li Qingye had also developed several other weapons.

Examples included the Gu Insect Nest, ultrasonic paralyzers, stunners, and Bomb Dragonflies.

With this new equipment, the combat effectiveness of the Blood Blade Special Team instantly rose to another level. In complex jungle or urban terrain, they would be an enemy’s worst nightmare.

Take the Bomb Dragonfly, for example. It was a genetically modified dragonfly with high-yield plastic explosives implanted in its body. The dragonfly itself was also highly toxic. Even if the explosion didn’t kill an enemy, they would quickly succumb to the poison if any of the dragonfly’s remains pierced their skin.

Then there was the Gu Insect Nest, a device that could store genetically modified insects like toxic mosquitoes, flies, and hornets. These insects could be pre-implanted with a variety of proteins, toxins, parasites, fungi, bacteria, and viruses.

If Li Qingye wanted to destroy the world right now, he could do so with these things alone.

The terror of a biologist lies in life itself.

It would be quite difficult for other types of scientists to destroy the world, but biologists were different. Even in a relatively crude laboratory, a biologist with enough madness could still bring unimaginable trouble upon the world.

For example, cultivating and genetically modifying superbugs presents almost no difficulty.

Li Qingye had previously given the Malaria Parasite super-resistance with ease, simply by cultivating it in high concentrations of antimalarial drugs and selecting the survivors.

Then there was smallpox, which many people believed humanity had already conquered.

If Li Qingye so wished, he could recreate a new strain of smallpox at any time from the cowpox or monkeypox viruses.

This is because, in terms of genetic sequencing, cowpox has the largest genome, followed by monkeypox, and finally smallpox (variola).

Poxviruses possess a special ability known as ”reductive evolution.” As the name suggests, a poxvirus can enhance its infectivity and lethality by shedding parts of its genetic sequence.

Historically, smallpox actually arose from multiple independent spillover events, evolving from other, less lethal poxviruses.

Do you understand?

In other words, by simply deleting four gene sequences from the monkeypox virus, it would become a new smallpox virus.

And is such a thing difficult to do?

No. Not at all.