387: Chapter 386 The Theory of Biological Degeneration! Humanity's dominant genes are constantly transforming into recessive genes!

"Anti-Entropy Academy..."

Lin Mo stood where he was, staring at the diamond-shaped container in his hand that held the Azure Dragon Level 3 Supplement, stunned for a long time.

The two terms "Anti-Entropy" and "Academy."

One seems to come from a distant sci-fi future, while the other originates from ancient China.

Combined, they possess a unique magic.

He did not know how much time had passed before Lin Mo finally came back to his senses.

"Academy" is easy to understand.

In ancient China, the "Academy" and the "Shuyuan" were the two major institutions responsible for education.

Among them, the Shuyuan were privately founded institutions for basic education, representing an educational system distinct from official government schools.

The Academy, however, was a government-run institution for higher education and research, primarily responsible for higher education.

It was also the earliest form of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and a government think tank in China.

As for "Anti-Entropy"... if understood in its literal sense, it means "opposing entropy increase."

According to the Second Law of Thermodynamics (the Law of Entropy Increase), everything in the universe is constantly creating and releasing "entropy" outward at every moment.

Accompanying this is the continuous expansion, chaos, disorder, and collapse of the system itself as entropy increases.

Life is no different.

From the moment of their inception, all life forms have taken the acquisition of food (absorbing "negative entropy") as an instinct.

This is the only way for an individual life form to resist entropy increase and sustain its survival.

However, the process of entropy increase is generally irreversible.

Isolated systems will eventually descend into total chaos.

"Anti-Entropy Academy... Mall exchange... Genetic engineering..."

After a bit of divergent thinking, and connecting it to those genetic engineering products and technologies in the system mall that required massive amounts of prestige points to redeem, Lin Mo fell into deep thought.

It was clear that the Anti-Entropy Academy was an official institution established by "the authorities," dedicated to researching the mysteries of life in order to resist entropy increase.

It was similar to the current School of Life Sciences at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

As for who these "authorities" were, or where the "Anti-Entropy Academy" was located, it was impossible to know for now.

But at the very least, one point was certain: these "authorities" shared the same roots, the same origin, and the same lineage as present-day China!

The future technology system that Lin Mo had obtained after his transmigration indeed originated from a Chinese civilization in a higher-dimensional universe!

Having grasped this key point, Lin Mo felt quite excited.

Although he had already had some guesses before, now that he had finally received a definitive answer indirectly from a system item, it served as a significant morale boost for him.

After all, ever since he realized that the first boss in his "newbie village" was the Three-Body civilization, he knew that China would likely encounter other, even more advanced cosmic civilizations in the future.

The prospect of being struck by unimaginable super-dimensional weapons—like photoids, dual-vector foils, death lines, or causality laws—made it impossible for anyone to rest easy.

Calming his emotions slightly, Lin Mo focused his gaze on the diamond-shaped container once more, pondering the few lines of text from the Anti-Entropy Academy.

"Everything else is easy to understand," he muttered.

"It's just this one line: 'Life is degenerating'..." Lin Mo frowned.

In the scientific community of the Blue Star world, there was a universally recognized theoretical hypothesis: the "Theory of Biological Evolution," based on the concept of "natural selection and survival of the fittest."

As everyone knew, life forms possessed individual differences.

In the competition for survival, more advantageous organisms were better able to adapt to environmental changes, survive, and reproduce, thereby passing on the favorable traits expressed by their superior genes.

Meanwhile, the inferior genes of those who were unfit would be completely eliminated.

This was the original "Theory of Biological Evolution."

Although the "Theory of Biological Evolution" was merely a hypothesis, its core theory had sufficient evidence to demonstrate its scientific validity.

Furthermore, over a long period that followed, many scientists on Blue Star had built upon this foundation to refine various supplementary theories, such as the "Law of Segregation," the "Law of Independent Assortment," and the "Neutral Theory of Molecular Evolution."

These further supplemented and validated the rationality of the theory of evolution, eventually forming the "Modern Theory of Evolution."

Consequently, the hypothesis of the "Modern Theory of Evolution" gained universal acceptance in the Blue Star scientific community and was established as a foundational theory in Blue Star's biological Science.

Yet now, the "Anti-Entropy Academy" from a higher-dimensional Chinese civilization had presented a completely contradictory theory...

Lin Mo was certainly not foolish enough to believe that the Anti-Entropy Academy's theory could be wrong.

The fact that this theory could be engraved by the Anti-Entropy Academy onto the container of a Genetic Supplement and left within the system space only proved that the "Theory of Biological Degeneration" was an absolute truth, fully verified by a higher-dimensional Chinese civilization!

Working backward from a known answer was relatively simple.

Soon, Lin Mo found ample evidence for the "Theory of Degeneration" within the many clues of species changes on Blue Star over hundreds of millions of years.

Or rather... the theory of evolution was not entirely wrong.

Because "evolution" was merely "relative evolution."

For the sake of a population's reproduction and survival, sometimes, degeneration was actually a form of "evolution"!

It was a very simple principle.

Had the dinosaur clan that dominated Blue Star 65 million years ago gone completely extinct?

No!

There was clearly a direct lineage of species that inherited dinosaur genes which had not gone extinct on Blue Star.

That lineage was the birds, which currently possessed a vast population on Blue Star!

One of the most successful dinosaur descendants was none other than the chicken.

Currently, the average population of chickens on Blue Star had reached the hundreds of billions.

Although chickens had tragically become a common food source in China, they were still surviving tenaciously and reproducing diligently.

Compared to the Cretaceous period, their population was even more unimaginably prosperous!

Comparing the chicken, which had been reduced to a food source, with those dinosaur overlords that were often hundreds of meters long—was this evolution, or was it degeneration?

Similarly, take the Paramecium, a protozoan belonging to one of the ancient biological groups; it had also tenaciously lived on Blue Star for hundreds of millions of years.

Meanwhile, those other so-called "evolved" species, which shared the same genetic roots as the Paramecium but expressed more complex and advantageous traits, had all vanished into the long river of history...

At this thought, Lin Mo took a deep breath and then asked his own soul, "What about humans? Did humans really evolve from apes?"

Lin Mo shook his head vigorously.

From the perspective of the "Theory of Degeneration," the answer was clearly no!

At this moment, the deeply rooted perceptions in his mind were completely shattered.

Following this train of thought, Lin Mo quickly recalled the "Neutral Theory of Molecular Evolution" that the Blue Star scientific community had already summarized.

The core of this theory was that the life evolution of most organisms, as well as the genetic mutations of most species, were not caused by natural selection!

Instead, they were formed by the random, free combination and mutation of neutral alleles!

In other words, individual differences among organisms were solely related to genes!

Meanwhile, the ever-changing natural environment and turbulent natural disasters would destroy those biological individuals that were not adapted, leaving behind only those biological individuals that had sufficiently degenerated.

It was just like the dinosaurs and chickens.

Even if humans were to resurrect dinosaurs using genetic technology now, they would likely be unable to survive in the wild on today's Blue Star.

Because the Blue Star of today had a significantly lower atmospheric oxygen content, a significantly weakened magnetic field, and greatly increased cosmic radiation... among many other factors, causing the environment to be completely different from what it was tens of millions of years ago.

Only by degenerating into the form of a chicken could they survive!

But did that mean the chicken was no longer a dinosaur?

No!

The chicken's genes were still rooted in the same origin as those of the dinosaurs.

There still existed gene mutation nodes capable of expressing the same traits as the dinosaurs!

It was just that during the process of natural evolution, these mutation nodes had all simply become recessive genes!

"Perhaps..." Lin Mo focused his gaze once again on the Azure Dragon Level 3 Supplement in his hand and muttered to himself, "I already know why the Azure Dragon Supplement is called a 'supplement' instead of a 'potion'..."

"Because modern humans have constantly degenerated through the passage of time, amidst irreversible entropy increase, and in the process of superior genes continuously transforming into recessive genes!"

"But because of this, within today's human genes, there are countless gene mutation nodes that have been suppressed by various factors—nodes forced to remain hidden and not express their traits for the sake of individual survival."

"And for the human overlords who now dominate the Solar System, these mutation nodes hidden deep within their genes clearly no longer need to remain hidden!"

...

(Please send free gifts to support with love!)