66: Chapter 66 Severing His Left Hand, Limb Regenerating

Irene Zhao pushed a data pad in front of Musk.

On the screen was a set of comparative experimental records, each labeled with the test number, injection dosage, recovery time, and healing images.

"We conducted a stepped test on those ten Retainers from the Warren family, ranging from small-area skin defects and deep muscle tears to complete amputations equivalent in mass to an index finger bone..."

She swiped through the images continuously, every frame annotated with regeneration data for the areas, with the intervals shortened to an unbelievable degree.

"All achieved structurally complete regeneration."

"The most extreme case was three days ago, when we wheeled a Retainer who had voluntarily amputated his entire left arm into the operating room; after completing a sterile amputation, we immediately injected liquid zero."

"Within twenty-four hours, his arm grew back from the shoulder joint level down."

"The humerus density was qualified, the radial nerve conduction velocity met the standard, and the tactile sensitivity of the fingertips was restored to one hundred percent of pre-amputation levels."

"This can no longer be described as healing."

"This is... this is limb regeneration!"

Musk remained silent for a long while.

He sat in that old leather chair, his gaze fixed on that bottle of pale green liquid.

To someone building a colony on the surface of Mars, the four words "limb regeneration" meant that the "ceiling" for all medical supplies, emergency response efficiency, and expedition survival capabilities had been completely removed;

To him, that wasn't just about curing illness; it was rewriting the fate of expedition crew members from "injury equals death" to "as long as you don't die on the spot, you can recover right there."

He looked up, the gleam in his eyes exactly the same as when the Falcon 1 first successfully reached orbit,

but deeper, more primal, and more like touching a boundary one level higher than science for the first time.

"Limb regeneration, whether in mythology or religious legends, is an ability only gods possess."

"Moses, Jesus, Shakyamuni—take your pick; all of their miracle lists include this."

"Making a severed hand grow back—this isn't science; this is divine power."

He stood up from the chair, his gaze shifting from the reagent bottle to a sharp steel giant axe on the side cabinet of the laboratory bench, used for cutting biological samples.

It had only been brought in the day before yesterday to facilitate extreme amputation tests; the blade was as thin as a razor, and the handle was long enough for two-handed gripping.

"Prepare that axe."

"I want to test it myself."

Marcus Lin's expression shifted from ecstasy to high alert in that instant.

"Boss, the current sample size for this experiment is only ten people, and they are all young, healthy males with highly standardized physiques."

"We don't have any data on whether the mechanism of action of liquid zero is completely consistent across human bodies with different genetic backgrounds, age groups, and hormone levels."

"You are the leader of the company; if any accident occurs during the test..."

"Starship Base has the all-purpose operating room you personally equipped; at worst, we can just reattach the hand later." Musk interrupted him, his tone resolute.

"Knowing there is something capable of limb regeneration and not testing it myself, but letting others do it—that is something I cannot do, and you all know that."

"I don't care how many samples there are now or how great the genetic differences are; it must be used on me first so I can know exactly how good this thing is."

He took the giant axe from the tool rack and placed it on the lab bench, his movements clean and decisive. No one said another word.

The scene went quiet.

Marcus Lin and Victor Strauss exchanged a look.

After pausing for a moment, Irene Zhao turned to turn on the high-frame-rate dynamic recorder and other auxiliary monitoring equipment in the corner of the experimental area.

They couldn't stop him. They had worked under him for a long time and knew that the moment this man decided he had to test it himself, he could not be persuaded by any force.

It was just like the time he decided to bet everything on the fourth launch of Falcon 1 into orbit.

Musk rolled up his left sleeve, revealing a dark red new scar from his wrist to the outer side of his forearm.

That was from a sniper bullet graze in the abandoned warehouse district of Los Angeles a while ago; it had just healed.

Irene opened the sterilization kit and leaned in, finding the injection site on the outer side of his forearm, and slowly pushed half a tube of liquid zero into the subcutaneous tissue.

The liquid entering his body had almost no temperature difference, only a very subtle tingling sensation spreading upward along the ulnar nerve.

Lin said to him from the side:

"liquid zero has partial ganglion blocking effects, which can alleviate pain."

Strauss added: "It also contains local vasoconstriction factors, which can slow down blood loss from the wound."

Musk gripped the axe handle with his right hand and placed his left hand flat on the sterile drape on the lab bench.

He did not close his eyes, did not count down, and did not leave himself any time to gradually buffer.

He took a deep breath, and at the same instant his right hand muscles tensed, the giant axe had already cut down vertically.

The axe blade passed through the wrist bone; the sensation was completely different from what he had expected.

There was almost no pain, only a wave of tingling spreading from the cut to the elbow, like being lightly struck by an electric current and then quickly swallowed by a chill.

Only a few drops of blood dripped along the cut line on the bench; no fresh blood sprayed out, and there was no dull, explosive sound like an arterial pump.

He looked down at his left hand lying on the drape and the smooth cross-section at the end of his forearm.

Before he had time to digest the impact the visuals themselves brought to his brain, something new had already started to grow.

The subcutaneous tissue at the cut, as if a delayed reset switch had been pressed, without any external stimulation, the ends of the blood vessels retracted from the cut surface and reconnected themselves.

Milky white bone matrix surged out along the fracture line, forming a complete terminal cartilage base for the radius and ulna within seconds; at first, it was only the size of a peanut.

The bone extended rapidly on the base, and the nerve axon bundles advanced forward synchronously; a translucent cartilage cap immediately covered the end of the new bone, shimmering with a pale blue ivory color under the light.

The muscle fiber bundles, like elongated wet clay, automatically divided into two groups, extensors and flexors, and covered it.

Then, the skin of the new back of the hand appeared, thin to the point of being almost transparent, so one could see the bones inside; the surface was still covered with wrinkles soaked in blood and amniotic fluid-like liquid.

The whole hand remained at half the size of an adult's hand for only a few seconds, then, as if pushed hard by a time fault, it expanded rapidly.

The knuckles elongated, the tendon sheaths formed, and fingerprints carved themselves into the epidermis in the frictionless air. When the nails emerged from the root of the nail bed, they were still capped with translucent, soft keratin shells.

Musk turned this new left hand over, palm up, then turned it over again, back of the hand up.

He opened his five fingers, closed them, and opened them again.

Every movement was fluid, precise, and without any delay.

The fingerprints on the palm were as clear and sharp as the original severed limb, and the lines and positions of the veins bulging under the skin when making a fist were also exactly the same.

He looked down at his new hand, then looked at the small, old hand still in the pool of blood on the bench, his Adam's apple bobbing.

"This is the power of a god."

"Limb regeneration, this kind of power belonging to gods... today, I have obtained it!"

Marcus Lin, Victor Strauss, and Irene Zhao did not immerse themselves in the visual miracle for too long.

After all, they were scientists; after the shock lasted a few seconds, it quickly returned to data.

Lin bent over in front of the monitoring screen, his fingertips gliding over the continuous vital sign curves of Musk's entire regeneration process just now.

Local tissue regeneration rate, cell division density, telomerase activity peak, nerve conduction rate...

After reading them, he compared the same set of curves side-by-side with the average curves of the ten Retainers he had recorded before, then looked up.

"Completely identical."

"The overlap of the regeneration rate curves is over ninety-eight percent."

"The deviation in the peak time point of telomerase activity is no more than two seconds."

"Boss, you are over forty years old, your average exercise habits are not as good as those ten Retainers, and your body fat percentage, resting metabolic rate, and mitochondrial density are all not on the same level as theirs."

"But all the parameters of liquid zero taking effect on you are completely consistent with those on young, healthy males who have undergone special training."

"This shows that its universality has passed the most critical test."

Strauss pushed another data pad over from the side and added:

"In our previous ten tests, we only covered males between twenty-four and thirty-eight years old; now, adding your case, the age upper limit is pushed directly to forty-three, and the physical fitness lower limit is significantly broadened."

"Universality is one of the hardest hurdles to cross in drug development; many regeneration factors can grow perfect limbs on mice, but on primates, only scarring remains."

"But liquid zero shows absolutely no attenuation in comparative data across ages and physical conditions."

Musk withdrew the new hand from the lab bench and gently rubbed the web of his thumb with his fingertips.

He looked through the one-way glass at the mass spectrometer in the next laboratory, which was still automatically analyzing the molecular structure of the eyeball extract, and then suddenly asked:

"How many bottles of liquid zero can be produced by reverse-engineering it from this eyeball?"

Lin adjusted the record board in front of him:

"Currently, we only have this one eyeball as raw material; the total amount of extracted and purified liquid zero is extremely scarce, only enough to prepare twenty doses."

"We used ten doses on the ten Retainers, plus this dose of yours just now, leaving nine doses."

Strauss immediately added: "We are already looking for in vitro amplification methods that can simulate the interstitial fluid environment of eye tissue, but the timeline is still uncertain."

"Certain active molecular structures contained in this interstitial fluid have never appeared before in the framework of Earth's biochemistry; we need more analytical data before we can attempt artificial substitution."

Irene pushed up the goggles on the bridge of her nose, her fingertips tracing a light arc along a value line on the data pad labeled [Skin Elasticity Repair/Facial Tissue Rejuvenation Derivative Effect]:

"Even relying only on the preliminary substitute medium separated so far, generic drugs or low-concentration versions would be enough to change the landscape of the global pharmaceutical and medical aesthetics market."

"The repair and anti-aging efficacy of this liquid is unmatched by any currently known active factors, and its commercial potential is enormous."