Chapter 47 Active Commonality

"So, still no word about the abnormal activity of the fungi?"

Ouyang Xing didn't even really feel like talking to Xu Chen, and could only shake his head helplessly.

Xu Chen looked at Ouyang Xing, weighed his options, and decided to tell him anyway. "Here's the thing, I found a clue that might be related to the abnormal fungal activity you guys are investigating..."

As Xu Chen spoke, his voice trailed off because he noticed Ouyang Xing looking at him with a skeptical gaze, making it obvious that he wasn't trusted at all.

Feeling a bit defensive and angry, he said, "Senior Ouyang, what kind of attitude is that? At least let me finish what I have to say."

"Fine, fine, go ahead," Ouyang Xing agreed readily, wanting to hear what kind of nonsense his junior could possibly come up with.

"Alright, didn't I show you a medical case file before?"

"Yeah, I remember. You even asked me to check if there were any related clinical drug trials. I looked into it, and there was nothing."

"That was my roommate's dad. I went with him to the hospital back then."

Ouyang Xing looked at him, completely unsure of what Xu Chen was trying to get at.

"I read the meeting notes provided by the attending physician."

Ouyang Xing suddenly perked up. "Oh? What meeting notes?"

"I don't know, but it was a discussion between some big shot from Tianping Tumor Hospital and someone else, and it was entirely about my roommate's dad's illness."

"Patients' families really are loaded—no, wait, they're certainly very determined to save him if they can even hire doctors from Tianping Tumor Hospital..." Ouyang Xing leaned closer to Xu Chen. "And then?"

"It's an abnormal hyperactivity of Bcr-Abl tyrosine kinase!"

"???" Ouyang Xing wore a puzzled expression. "Huh? That's it? Is that the end?"

Xu Chen scratched his head sheepishly. "I'm only a freshman, and I only know a half-baked amount. That's the only phrase I remembered."

Ouyang Xing patted his shoulder with a look of utter disappointment. "Stop using being a freshman as an excuse. I couldn't say much when you quit the internship team back then, even though it was such a great opportunity Professor Yang gave you... I thought once you gained some experience, you'd come back and seriously dive into mycology, and then all it would take was a single application for me to get you back onto my team.

Never mind all that. Now that I've called you over, I realize you seemingly haven't studied a single thing at all."

A pang of guilt hit Xu Chen. He didn't know why, but he felt guilty.

"Do you have any idea what you've missed out on?" Ouyang Xing grabbed Xu Chen's shoulders and shook him. "Once EXC08 is refined a bit more and enters drug evaluation and preclinical research, our department, our entire team, is going to become famous."

Xu Chen maintained his guilty expression.

Seeing that his words hadn't struck a chord, Ouyang Xing brought out the heavy artillery. "You have no idea how bright the future of this drug is; the whole world is watching. Once the research and development are complete, countless pharmaceutical companies will be throwing money at us to buy it, and people will be lining up to hire you. Your salary afterward could be hundreds of thousands, or even millions!"

"An annual salary?" Xu Chen blurted out.

Ouyang Xing froze for a second, then stared at Xu Chen completely deadpan. "A monthly salary."

Xu Chen let out a cry, suddenly filled with deep regret. The moment he realized what he had missed out on, he desperately wished he could turn back time to before he had ever heard those words.

After a brief period of mental anguish, Ouyang Xing released Xu Chen's shoulders. "Once you go back, read more books on this subject and study as hard as you can. I'll figure out a way to get you on board, understand?"

"...Understood." Xu Chen hadn't expected the situation to make such a dramatic turnaround, and he immediately agreed with a joyful smile.

"Don't worry, I'll find a way to keep you from needing too much in-depth theoretical knowledge, but don't act like you do now—answering 'I don't know' to every single question."

Xu Chen nodded, a grin spreading across his face that he couldn't possibly hide as he daydreamed about a six-figure monthly salary.

Then he realized something was off. What was he originally talking about again?

"Wait, let's put the money aside for a moment. That tyrosine kinase hyperactivity thing I mentioned earlier..."

Ouyang Xing looked at Xu Chen. "Yeah, I'm listening. Why bring that up? I honestly can't see how this has anything to do with fungal activity. Fungi don't secrete that kind of biological enzyme."

"They're both abnormally hyperactive!" Xu Chen said with a completely serious expression.

Ouyang Xing sighed helplessly. "You might not realize this, but simply sharing the trait of being 'abnormally hyperactive' is just a similarity in words; it doesn't mean they're actually connected at all. There are plenty of abnormally hyperactive things in the world. One is a fungus, the other is an animal—they have zero similarities."

"There is! That big shot at the meeting also said that it was caused by unknown factors leading to abnormal hyperactivity in both the patient's hematopoietic stem cells and the Bcr-Abl tyrosine kinase. It drastically accelerated a disease course that should have been chronic, and it resulted in severe drug resistance."

Ouyang Xing fell silent for a moment. He possessed a wealth of biological and medical knowledge, yet he still couldn't fathom any connection between the abnormal hyperactivity of the fungus and that of blood cancer. From his perspective, it was only natural that the two had nothing to do with each other.

After a short while, Ouyang Xing finally grasped what he was getting at.

"Are you suggesting that some common substance caused both the fungi to become active and the patient's hematopoietic stem cells or Bcr-Abl tyrosine kinase to become active?"

Xu Chen nodded affirmatively.

Ouyang Xing sucked in a breath through his teeth, sounding like he had a toothache. He was shocked by Xu Chen's wild imagination, though considering the hypotheses they had discussed earlier, he figured this sort of thinking was par for the course for Xu Chen.

"You really do possess the most noble quality of a researcher..."

"Hehe, you flatter me—"

"You sure have the guts to imagine anything!"

Xu Chen shut his mouth, looking at Ouyang Xing with a puzzled expression, wondering why he was insulting him.

"A substance that can trigger hyperactivity in both fungi and hematopoietic stem cells..."

"And Bcr-Abl tyrosine kinase!"

"Right, a substance that can also trigger Bcr-Abl tyrosine kinase..." Ouyang Xing scratched his head, frantically combing through the literature and papers he had read, filtering through every substance he knew of.

Yet he could only recall various drugs that suppressed fungal activity rather than stimulating it.

"Sigh, your train of thought is a bit too whimsical. As far as I know, no one has ever managed to develop a substance that actually makes fungi more active."

Xu Chen offered a reminder: "Mutated Aspergillus flavus."

"Even mutated Aspergillus isn't like that. Take Aspergillus niger, which shares similar properties—it has been spreading and infecting countless patches of land. Any fungus inside a dead zone possesses this kind of high activity. If someone were actually out there spraying drugs to boost their activity, wouldn't people have noticed ages ago?

If fungi could secrete this kind of substance on their own, infected people would have been wiped out by the fungi long ago. Where would they even find the leisure time to go out and catch leukemia?"

"That's a dark joke, and not a funny one." Xu Chen reminded him again.

Ouyang Xing rolled his eyes. "Who's telling you a dark joke? Anyway, if you want to convince me, relying on this won't cut it. At best, all I can do is praise you for having quite the imagination."

Xu Chen briefly considered whether he should tell Ouyang Xing some of the truth, but after a moment of thought, he abandoned the idea. After all, he couldn't bear to drag such a great senior into this mess.

"Forget it then. Say, do you know how to get in touch with Academician Qi?"

"???"

Ouyang Xing wore a dumbfounded expression. You couldn't even convince me, and yet you want to go spout your half-baked knowledge to Academician Qi? Ouyang Xing desperately wanted to ask where on earth his self-awareness had gone.

"What are you even thinking? Academician Qi is a very busy man; getting in touch with him is extremely difficult."

"You don't understand. Just help me get in contact with him, and you can go back to whatever you were doing."

Veins began to bulge on Ouyang Xing's forehead.

"No, look here... If you have something to say, talk it out with me properly, and I can at least humor you. There's no guarantee Academician Qi would even give you the time of day."

"That's my problem. Just help me reach Academician Qi. Whether he answers or not, I have backup plans."

With a helpless sigh, Ouyang Xing looked at Xu Chen, shook his head, pulled out his phone, and made a call.

"Hello, is this Academician Qi? Yes, there actually is some progress... No, I have someone here who wants to speak with you... It's Xu Chen... Understood."

He handed the phone over to Xu Chen, eager to see how many sentences Xu Chen would manage to utter before Academician Qi hung up on him.

Instead, he watched as Xu Chen calmly took the phone and said, "I've discovered some commonalities between the abnormal fungal activity and a specific medical case."

And then, he just started rattling off information fluently.

To his utter disbelief, Academician Qi actually didn't hang up.

As Xu Chen explained his hypothesis to Academician Qi, he was somewhat surprised himself. The academician's capacity to accept bizarre information was clearly leagues ahead of Senior Ouyang's; it was entirely possible that he was someone privy to a portion of the truth and already knew that these fungi were far from ordinary.

Then again, it was also possible he simply had exceptional manners and was willing to listen to Xu Chen's nonsense.