Chapter 1239: Reproduction Peak

The gene lab smelled bad even if disinfection and cleaning were done well.

Ye Zhongming walked into a sealed solo lab and saw large amounts of blood and corpses. People who didn’t know would think that this was a slaughterhouse.

Liu Zhenghong wore a white lab coat covered in red liquid and small cell pieces. But she didn’t care and continued to work. She lifted her head when Ye Zhongming walked in but returned to work.

Forty minutes later, she removed her mask, gloves, and clothes, and headed into the quarantine zone.

“You waited for long. Let’s go home.” Liu Zhenghong hugged his neck. Fortunately, she was just used to bullying the Cloud Peak boss and just let go immediately.

The two of them left the lab, and the guards didn’t follow them.

“How is the progress?” Ye Zhongming looked around warily before asking.

Her smile disappeared, and she was back to her researcher self. Careful and serious.

“Not bad.”

This reply surprised Ye Zhongming.

No one knew how proud Liu Zhenghong and Le Dayuan were as much as Ye Zhongming. At the same time, he knew how serious they were about their jobs.

Typically, Liu Zhenghong wouldn’t give a definite answer unless the experiment was about to succeed. The thing she said most was, "We will see."

Now, she said that it was not bad.

“This Rat King really went all out. He provided many experimental bodies as if their subordinates are endless.”

Liu Zhenghong smiled coldly. She still scoffed at such cruel behavior, even if this had created great external conditions.

“This made things easier for me, and I can do many processes together and test possibilities simultaneously.”

Liu Zhenghong walked and spoke, “Its demands aren’t high, but there aren’t any specifics. It just wants the next generation of genes to be better. I don’t know how long you want to control them, but even if the techniques remain the same, I can let them reproduce over ten times, and each time, the rats will improve.”

She understood what Ye Zhongming was thinking. Ye Zhongming wouldn’t treat the rats well. They were just using each other, just that Ye Zhongming had control.

“Don’t improve them too much, just enough that the Rat King can sense it.” Ye Zhongming waved in a direction. Xia Bai disappeared, “How long do they take to reproduce?”

“It depends on the breed. When evolving, this aspect heads toward two extremes.” Ye Zhongming was very serious.

She didn’t care about rats in the past. This wasn’t surprising as he experimented on humans and beasts' genes. She studied Death King Tree and Yangos, which were level-eight mutated beasts and plants. So she obviously wouldn’t care about those dirty things.

However, when she studied these mutated rats in depth, she was shocked by some of the data, which is why this dinner was arranged.

“Some breeds’ time to get from baby to adult became shorter.” Liu Zhenghong’s hands were in her coat pocket. “Some small rats take 40 days, and the large ones won’t exceed 90 in the past. But now, they take 20 days.”

“20?” Ye Zhongming frowned as that was too short, “17 times a year, that is too frightening.”

She rolled her eyes, “I thought you were smart, so why are you so stupid now?”

He was stunned and smiled awkwardly, “Right, that is different from the gestation period.”

“Ordinary rats are between 20-22 days, but these breeds need just ten days and take a few days to heal before they can get pregnant again. This means they can give birth every half a month, 24 times a year.”

Ye Zhongming didn’t speak, as those numbers were even more terrifying.

“Of course, this breed has many weaknesses. Their combat strength isn’t strong.”

“Some others have a longer period, but on average, it is around 2 months to mature and 45 days of gestation. Some stronger ones have longer gestation periods.”

Two months and an additional 45 days… Ye Zhongming thought about it. One hundred days didn’t seem short, but it was too quick to give birth. He noticed that he had underestimated the number of rats. The number of mutated rats under the Rat King’s rule was far more than he estimated.

“There is one more thing that you can’t forget.” Liu Zhenghong and Ye Zhongming passed a building and saw the bright light from inside. The former’s face looked warm.

“The number of babies each time. In the past, one male and one female, 250 a year. This means that a pair of rats can give birth to 250 in a year.”

“Although the numbers now aren’t accurate… The first birth would be three to five, then it increases by two each time. 20 a time is the max. Each birth will then start to drop until they stop giving birth. This process lasts 15 times.”

Ye Zhongming calculated what she said, this strong rat had three births in a year. So, it produced around 18 rats. 26 in the second year, 54 in the third… Now was the third year of the apocalypse!

“You are saying…” Ye Zhongming stopped, “The mutated rats are at their reproduction peak now?”

Liu Zhenghong nodded, “There might be a timing gap. After all, they needed to develop at the start of the apocalypse. Moreover, many new breeds appeared at later periods. Without a doubt, the stronger breeds of rats are about to enter their reproduction peak!”