It was quite a shock to see somebody walking a large lizard down the street. The lizard was like a huge magnet that attracted everybody’s attention.
Chen Fan hailed a few cabs, but none of them were willing to drive him. Finally, the fifth cab driver was brave enough to stop for him.
"Hi, please take me to Shangcheng Gardens!"
"What are you carrying in your arms, young man?" The driver was nervous. Not many people had seen a lizard so big its tail was left dragging on the ground while it was carried.
"It’s my pet lizard and it is very tame. It would not bite even if you kicked it!"
Chen Fan slapped the lizard's back to prove that the lizard really was calm.
"S-sit in the back seat please!"
Chen Fan settled the lizard down at home, then went to a sports store to buy a tent. Next he went to the supermarket to buy some food and tools for the next few days. Finally, after debating for a while, he went to a pet hospital to buy some anesthetic. If he was going to operate on the electric eel, he should be well prepared.
Material preparation was not enough, though, so when Chen Fan came back home that night, he spent the whole night on baidu.com learning more practical knowledge.
The next day around noon, Chen Fan came to the beach with his bag of supplies and the lizard, walked along the coast a few miles to the west, and finally set up his tent in an isolated place.
After feeding the giant lizard with food containing the anesthetic, Chen Fan picked up a shovel and dug a large rectangular hole connected to the sea into the sand.
It took him a while, but eventually Chen Fan could shift his consciousness to the electric eel and make it to swim into the pit that he had dug.
Since he was going to operate on its stomach, Chen Fan left the electric eel's head underwater and positioned its body on the sand. This way the wound would not be soaked in seawater after he sliced it open.
Chen Fan gave the eel anesthetic, grabbed the knife, and then hesitated, looking at the giant unconscious lizard.
He had slaughtered chickens and fish before, but definitely not a lizard bigger than some pigs. Chen Fan began to feel a little nervous, but he couldn’t involve other people in this matter. He had to do it all by himself.
After hesitating for a long time, Chen Fan made up his mind. He clenched his teeth and stabbed the giant lizard right in the heart. Then he cruelly ripped off the lizard's four limbs one by one, spinal nerves and muscular bundles included. He carefully shook off the remaining blood, then laid out the four limbs on a clean white mat.
He could not afford to make any careless mistakes, because if the nerves and muscle valves were not taken out completely, it would affect the eel’s ability to move later.
With a new knife, Chen Fan was ready to operate on the electric eel avatar.
Chen Fan knew with a quick thought that the electric eel had fallen into a coma, so he didn’t need to worry about feeling any pain once he started slicing.
When the sharp knife cut into the flesh of the electric eel near the spine, the cartilage that he’d purposely left behind was exposed. Chen Fan quickly grabbed the file beside him and rubbed a V-shaped groove into the exposed cartilage.
Chen Fan had already carved into the lizard's four limbs so that they would not be misaligned when they were joined together.
The electric eel didn’t have limbs in the first place, so Chen Fan didn’t need to think about joining the blood vessels and nerves. All he needed to do was connect the limbs to the cartilage of the electric eel, and use a surgical suture that he bought to stitch them together.
If a doctor with any knowledge of limb attachment saw what Chen Fan was doing, she would probably kick him out of the way and do it herself. Even a nurse still in practicum would have suturing skills a hundred times better than him.
Two hours later, Chen Fan muttered, "Huh. It’s done!"
Looking at the four short, ugly, different-colored lizard's limbs that were attached to the electric eel's abdomen, Chen Fan wiped the sweat from his forehead and let out a long sigh of relief!
As a "surgeon" with nothing but internet knowledge, Chen Fan was very satisfied with his accomplishment.
He sprayed the wounds carefully with disinfectants, then snuck into his tent. He was hungry after a long and tiring day. He ate a few pieces of bread, then shifted his consciousness to the electric eel as the anesthesia began to subside.
The knife cut was deep, so even though the anesthesia had not completely worn off, Chen Fan could still feel pain in four places on the abdomen as though he was being struck by a burning torch.
It was easy to attach a few limbs to the abdomen, but it was hard to keep them alive and guarantee that they were able to move. When Chen Fan focused his mind on the wound, a phagocytic war between white blood cells had begun as expected. Since he had dried the blood on the lizard's limbs, there were almost no white blood cells in the limbs to fight back.
The white blood cells of the electric eel were like a group of soldiers who would not allow the enemy to escape. Dead cells were beginning to accumulate on the surface of the muscle tissues that were joined together with the electric eel’s. If the situation was not controlled, these four limbs would probably die after two days because of insufficient nutrients supplied to the cells.
The hematopoietic stem cells from the bone marrow were behind the rejection. If the hematopoietic stem cells did not match, then the body would refuse to provide blood.
Chen Fan spread a charge carefully across the limbs and focused on the leg bones of the lizard. Due to the insufficient supply of nutrients, the hematopoietic stem cells in the leg bones had turned yellow, instead of the healthy red.
After moving even further into the cell, Chen Fan began to compare the nuclei of the hematopoietic stem cells of the lizard with those of the electric eel’s so that he could find the difference in their genetic sequencing.
DNA was fascinating, because though humans and apes were two entirely different species, only two percent of their DNA was different. After careful comparison, Chen Fan found that there was only a three percent difference in the DNA strands of the electric eel and the lizard. The smaller the difference, the better. Chen Fan would have been overjoyed if there were no differences at all.
Taking a sample of a hematopoietic cell from the electric eel, Chen Fan began to use electromagnetic waves of different frequencies to modify the DNA code of the hematopoietic cells in the lizard. Of course, Chen Fan was not foolish enough to modify the genetic codes of all the hematopoietic stem cells. It would have taken hundreds of years. Since the cells could reproduce on their own, all Chen Fan need to do was modify one of the hematopoietic stem cells, use their natural ability to repel the unknown cells, and let them engulf the surrounding cells.
Under the electric stimulation, the stem cells that had just joined the battle kept reproducing crazily, spreading like a deadly virus. One to two, two to four, four to eight, eight to sixteen... after the first cell had reproduced 30 times, there were already 10,737,441,824 cells. It would reach the trillions soon.
After creating this "virus" in all four limbs, Chen Fan quickly shifted his focus to the joints to stimulate the lizard’s tissue cells. He didn’t want them to fall to the white blood cells.
By midnight, most of the hematopoietic stem cells in the legs had been replaced, and only one third of the old tissue was left.