BXBX NOVEL Chapter 18 I Want to Become an Electric Dragon
Chapter 18 I Want to Become an Electric Dragon
The story on the news was not of Chen Fan’s fight at Wansheng Breakfast Nook, nor of the western woman that was sexually harassed.
"Hello viewers! I am the reporter Xiao Lu, currently working on the Ocean 6 Research Ship, which is now more than 20 nautical miles northeast of the coast..."
When the government scientific research ship came to re-measure the continental shelf yesterday, it discovered a sunken five-masted ship suspected to be from the Ming Dynasty.
The State Administration of Cultural Heritage was very interested in the matter, and immediately sent a team of professional government scuba divers to explore the seabed.
The results of the exploration were exciting, proving that the sunken ship contained a large number of precious porcelain pieces from the Ming Dynasty.
"The State Administration of Cultural Heritage has decided to initiate a protected salvage of the sunken ship starting today. Below is a picture taken by the scuba divers."
Chen Fan could not even bother to wipe the cold sweat off his forehead. He laid down quickly on the sofa and shifted his consciousness to the electric eel he had neglected for half a day.
An eight-meter-long black snake-like creature was drifting along a quiet sandy seabed. The small fish in the area stared curiously at the strange and motionless creature.
All of a sudden, its eyes opened wide and it began to swim as fast as lightning, disturbing the sand.
"May God have mercy... God please... Please tell me that was not the ship that I found!"
Chen Fan made the eel swim at top speed, praying silently in his heart.
As Chen Fan neared the sunken ship at lightning speed, the mental strength he so prided himself in dissolved. The scene in front of him made him want to cry.
Above him, there were dozens of divers in full wetsuits examining the sunken ship with a spotlight. A huge net separated the sunken ship from its surroundings.
"Oh no! This is so sad and painful."
Chen Fan felt as though a sword had run through his heart.
He clenched his teeth and swam back and forth for a while. Finally, Chen Fan gave up the idea of striking them with electricity. Since the treasure had already been discovered, it was no use crying over spilled milk. As long as he still had the electric eel avatar, there would be another chance to make a fortune.
Chen Fan dragged the eel’s somber body back to its original place, then shifted his consciousness back to his body and fell head first into his bed.
After discovering the sunken ship, Chen Fan had thought that he could be like the prince who married the princess in a fairy tale and live happily ever after.
However, as the saying goes, when it rains it pours. He had an incident in the morning, and when he returned home, he had to bear the pain of losing the treasure that he found in the sunken ship!
His original plan was to spend the money and pamper himself. He wanted to fall in love with beautiful girls all over the world. He was 20 years old and still didn’t have a girlfriend.
After thinking about it in bed for some time, Chen Fan decided to look up online to see if there was any other way to make a fortune from the ocean.
Although he had about 200,000 RMB, Chen Fan was not satisfied. Even a normal house cost a few hundred thousand, and the prices kept rising with inflation. Besides, he still had a mortgage on his current house that was only 100 square meters. He was worried that 200,000 RMB would not be enough for him in the future.
Turning on his computer, Chen Fan logged into a forum called ‘Home of the Sea’.
The forum was relatively well-known in several coastal areas. It was a professional ocean forum, with participation from ocean research experts in the province.
After searching all afternoon, Chen Fan realized that there wasn’t any other way for the eel to help him make a fortune.
Finally, he decided to ask around. He hesitated a moment, then uploaded a post titled "Summoning all the Experts". As his last hope, he offered all his credit as a reward.
He asked, "If you were in the sea and had full control of a 10-meter-long sea snake, how could you make money?
Chen Fan did not know what to do next. He knew the longer he waited, the more answers he would get.
He decided to shift his consciousness to the electric eel. He hadn’t stimulated the pituitary gland of the electric eel yet that day, so he decided he might as well do it to pass the time.
Since Chen Fan had done this countless times, he could target the right spot immediately without searching. This time, though, Chen Fan felt something strange.
It was a subtle feeling. If Chen Fan had not calmed himself down before stimulating the pituitary gland, it would have been impossible to notice. It felt as though something that should not exist was now inside the electric eel.
Chen Fan was puzzled, as the electric eel could eat hundreds of pounds of fish per day and its body should have been in the best condition. It wasn’t possible for it to have any problems.
Chen Fan stopped stimulating the gland and calmed down. He used electromagnetic induction waves flowing from head to tail to feel exactly what the problem was.
"Eh, what is this?"
After checking many times, Chen Fan finally found the cause of the problem.
There were some tiny epiphyses growing out between his backbones near his waist. Epiphyses are the irregular bones that grow between normal bones, similar to bone dysplasia.
"How could this happen?" Chen Fan was confused. In class, the biology professor taught that bone dysplasia only affected terrestrial animals, not aquatic, because the bones of aquatic animals endured less pressure than those of terrestrial animals. Besides that, the only boney part of many aquatic animals was the skull. The rest of the skeletons in those fish was made up of cartilage, and cartilage itself is one type of the epiphysis.
It was similar to how only humans could get hemorrhoids, as they stood upright. Hemorrhoids were the product of pressure that wasn’t a problem for animals without an upright spine. The same concept applied to bone dysplasia. There was a higher risk for a laborer to develop this problem over 40 because a greater pressure would be exerted on the bones.
Although these epiphyses in the eel’s vertebrae were not big enough to affect the flexibility of the spine, Chen Fan was still very concerned.
If these epiphyses grew bigger, it would affect the electric eel’s swimming ability. In the worst case scenario it would fill up the gaps between bones, locking the spine and making it useless.
Although he did not know for sure, Chen Fan assumed it was closely related to the stimulation of the pituitary gland.
To prove his assumption correct, Chen Fan focused on the pituitary gland and continued to stimulate the region that secreted growth hormones. After half an hour of stimulation, Chen Fan stopped working and examined the epiphyses. The crystal-clear image that he saw almost made him go crazy.
The unnecessary layer of epiphyseal tissues had begun mitotic division at a very high rate. The cells were dividing rapidly. If anyone had passed by him in that moment, he would have had no hesitation striking that person with his highest voltage.
The situation was getting worse.
His excessive stimulation of the pituitary gland must have caused too many growth hormones to be secreted. Under these circumstances, the spine couldn’t absorb all of it, so the epiphyses absorbed them instead.
Knowing what caused it was not going to help much, though. Figuring out how to solve the problem was more important. There were still ten months left before the eel would be too old to grow any more. If he waited until then to address the problem, he was afraid that epiphysis might even start to grow between the eel’s teeth.
Seeing the growth of multiple chondrocytes in his mind, Chen Fan knew he had a dilemma.
He could just stop stimulating the pituitary gland, but then the electric eel would never grow longer than eight meters.
Suddenly, Chen Fan got an idea. "Is it possible to degenerate the growth cells that become epiphyses?"
Using a weak voltage could stimulate cell activity, which meant cells could also be destroyed with a high voltage stimulation.
The electromagnetic targeted chemotherapy used in the medical field applied thermal magnetic sterilization to cancer cells, but it hadn’t been approved yet for use on patients.
Chen Fan’s case was different though, as he was able to control electromagnetic waves. With electromagnetic induction, there was no risk of destroying a specific gany DNA in a cell.
Chen Fan mobilized the electromagnetic induction in the electric eel’s body and targeted a layer of cartilage tissues. He tried to use the heat released by the collision of both the positive and negative charges in the electrical arc to destroy the whole layer.
"Ah!" At the instant when the heat was released, Chen Fan felt an extreme pain in his brain as though it had been hit by a hammer!
If destroying only one layer of bone cells caused him so much pain, Chen Fan speculated that he would suffer a lot if he destroyed all the extra cartilage.
Chen Fan tried again on a second layer, trying out a new technique. First, he used the powerful electrical arc to destroy the nerve cells attached to the surface of the cartilage instantly so that the nerve impulses that detected pain would be unable to transmit to the brain.
The electric eel had 52 vertebrae. Chen Fan had just finished the 16th vertebra, when a ridiculous but feasible idea popped into his head.
The electric eel had a small spine just like a lizard. In a lizard, there was a bifurcation on both the left and right sides at the 16th vertebra. This attached to the lizard’s two front legs. At the 32nd vertebra, two back legs were attached.
"Why don’t we add two pairs of legs to the electric eel?"
Chen Fan got excited.
"If it works out, wouldn’t it become an electric dragon?"