Two days later, at Southern University.

"Professor Chen, there's a new discovery. Meet in the lab in half an hour!" When Chen Chen received Angela's message, he was sitting on the sofa in his office, watching the clock's minute hand slowly approach the number 10. In just six hours, the investigation team would require him to submit the materials developed in his lab. If he failed to comply, the team would take action and seal off the lab.

The chemical leak in the lab originated from an experimenter accidentally breaking a bottle of acidic chemicals. At that time, Chen had promptly reported the incident to the school. The leaked chemicals were not toxic, merely emitting a pungent smell. The school had merely categorized it as a routine chemical leak incident. Unexpectedly, the media exaggerated the incident, even linking it to a Super Brainwave.

Chen glanced at the black folder on the coffee table. It contained all the information Jiang Fei had prepared about the chemical leak. If no other means to prove his innocence emerged, he would take this material to argue his case with the investigation team. In any case, he couldn't hand over MTX. Currently, the lab was solving the issue of balancing the drug's efficacy and safety.

Moreover, only he and Xia Nan knew the formula for MTX. They had not even applied for a patent yet. Generally, once a compound was discovered in the lab, a patent would be filed before testing its efficacy to prevent competitors from stealing the work. But applying for a patent would also mean making one's research public.

Chen and Xia Nan had decided not to file for a patent yet, per Professor Albert's instruction. When they had just discovered MTX, it showed astonishing results in a rat experiment! Whenever he closed his eyes, Chen could vividly remember that night. If he hadn't seen it with his own eyes, he wouldn't have believed that something out of a sci-fi movie could occur in his lab.

That night, he was on duty in the animal room. After completing an experiment on neural network chemical signaling around 11 pm, he walked through the animal care area and into the animal room. Albert's lab had a well-stocked animal room, strictly managed, and Albert himself made a nightly round to ensure the animals were well taken care of.

As Chen walked into the room, he faintly heard words like "brain," "neuron," "amygdala" coming from inside. But he was sure he was the only one in the room that night! Following the sound, Chen stopped before the third cage in the mouse area. He bent down and found one mouse awake, shaking the cage bars. These were the mice he had requested from Professor Albert to test the effects of MTX on learning and memory.

He leaned close and listened. The mouse seemed to be whispering to him! Astonished, Chen couldn't help but exclaim, "Oh my God!" To his greater amazement, the mouse repeated his words back to him! Chen then said, "The weather is nice today," and again, the mouse repeated the sentence. Chen further increased the complexity of the sentences, but the mouse mimicked every word perfectly.

"MTX?" Professor Albert caught this scene just as Chen was fully engrossed in communicating with the mouse.

Before Chen could react, the word "MTX" popped out of the mouse's mouth.

"I think it should be!" said Chen, looking up at Professor Albert. "Today is the seventh day."

Albert signaled for Chen to take the two mice to the animal testing area and conducted a water maze experiment on them—a test of a mouse's memory and learning abilities. However, it was clearly unnecessary; a mouse capable of language learning would find such a test trivial. Professor Albert quickly realized this.

"Go to the dissection area!" Professor Albert looked solemnly at the two small creatures. "Their neural networks must have undergone significant changes!"

Chen Chen had euthanized thousands of mice, but he couldn't forget the look in the eyes of the little black-spotted mouse just before its death. His heart tightened even now, thinking of the sorrow, fear, and pleading he had seen in those eyes.

With trembling hands, Chen Chen euthanized the mouse by cervical dislocation and then used surgical scissors to cut open the skin on its head. The pinkish flesh was exposed to both him and Professor Albert, who separated the hippocampal tissue from the cerebral cortex and surrounding brain matter.

"Incredible, it's all incredibly beautiful!" Professor Albert exclaimed in awe as he examined the neuronal connections in the mouse's cerebral cortex under the optical microscope. "The neural connections have undergone significant changes, even forming long-distance connections within the cerebral cortex!"

Professor Albert spent more than half an hour at the microscope before finally giving Chen Chen a turn. What Chen Chen saw were astonishing changes in the mouse's neural network, with at least four to five times more neural nodes than a regular mouse.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Professor Albert paced the laboratory, finally breaking his silence, "MTX could potentially treat many neuron-related diseases. But it could also contradict the evolutionary process of human neurons."

Yes, when Chen Chen saw that the black-spotted mouse had the ability to learn language, he felt that MTX had crossed ethical boundaries. "Should we stop, Professor?" Chen Chen was momentarily uncertain.

"If we can find a balance, this could be a great invention!" Professor Albert paced faster, his eyes shining as he looked at Chen Chen. "The special chemical reaction between a genius neuroscientist and a genius chemist is MTX."

Currently, animal experiments with MTX diluted 10,000 times were ongoing in the lab. Chen Chen had not yet found the "balance" Professor Albert spoke of, and the ability of MTX to cross the blood-brain barrier had obviously weakened after dilution.

Rapid footsteps disrupted Chen Chen's thoughts. Angela burst into the office, out of breath. She threw her backpack onto the sofa, rushed to the water cooler, and guzzled down a large cup of water. She had probably been running around all day without even a sip of water.

After a loud burp, Angela collected herself and excitedly whispered, "I've found the 'pathogen' for the Super Brainwave !"

Chen Chen looked at her in surprise. He hadn't seen her in the lab since their last meal together. He waited for her to continue, sensing she had made a significant discovery.

"It's not a virus! There's no virus at all!" Angela pulled up a chair and sat down opposite Chen Chen. "It's an audio frequency that interferes with brain neurons, causing symptoms similar to Brainwave !"

"Audio frequency? What audio frequency?" Chen Chen felt a twinge in his heart. This sounded implausible but wasn't impossible.

"It's the title track of Andy Bogard's album 'Biero's Curse,'" Angela signaled for Chen Chen to hand her the backpack from the sofa and took out the album.

"How could that be? Both you and I have listened to it and nothing happened." Chen Chen looked puzzled.

"But Katrina got infected! She caught the Super Brainwave ! She fell ill at the police station, but fortunately, the symptoms weren't too severe," Angela said seriously.

"And what does that prove?" Chen Chen was there that day; he knew about Katrina's sudden illness.

Angela continued, "That day in her office, we did two things: drank American coffee and listened to 'Biero's Curse.' She hadn't listened to it before.

"I was puzzled why not a single student at the Sandy School for the Deaf had contracted Super Brainwave. Teachers at the school have been infected, yet these kids—part of a demographic most susceptible to the disease—were spared.

"Then it hit me. Students at the deaf school are immune to sound! That's why their teachers got infected, but the children remained healthy."

Listening intently, Chen Chen nodded, signaling for her to continue. Angela took a sip of water and changed her sitting position.

"Then, I had my second question: what exactly was the nature of the sound? I carefully recalled everything we did before Katrina fell ill that day, and the only thing related to sound was 'The Curse of Biero.' Moreover, she said she had never heard the album before.

"And I also noticed that the album's sales were unusually good. Actually, I don't think it's Andy Bogard's best work. However, its sales far exceeded the total sales of all his previous albums, and even multiple times over. Theoretically, such a rock-influenced album should have a limited audience. But it's being heavily promoted on radio stations, as if it's everywhere. Is it correct to say, 'ubiquitous'?"

Angela glanced at Chen Chen, not confident in her usage of idioms but eager to include them in the conversation. Chen Chen nodded, urging her to continue.

"'Ubiquitous!' Angela repeated the idiom, "So, I compared the release dates and regions of 'The Curse of Biero' with the outbreak and spread of the Super Brainwave , and they almost coincide!"

"To confirm this hypothesis, I conducted an experiment," Angela's voice softened. She looked earnestly at Chen Chen and paused for a while before continuing, "Professor Chen, please listen calmly. If you're going to blame me, so be it, but there was no better way."

Chen Chen had already guessed what Angela had done. He wasn't in the mood for laughter but managed a strained smile, encouraging her to go on, "I promise."

"Two days ago, I went to a rural village on the northwest side of Nanfang City. The village only has some elderly people and preschoolers, none of whom have heard 'The Curse of Biero.' As a volunteer, I visited two elderly people who are terminally ill. I played 'The Curse of Biero' for them. Three hours later, they both exhibited symptoms of Super Brainwave . So, I believe that 'The Curse of Biero' and Super Brainwave are directly related!"

"What happened to those two elderly people afterward?" Chen Chen clenched his fists.

"Unfortunately, their condition worsened significantly, and they passed away within a day," Angela's voice grew softer.

Chen Chen closed his eyes in resignation, tears streaming down his cheeks. He couldn't blame Angela. Although her method was cruel, it was effective in proving a direct link between 'The Curse of Biero' and the Super Brainwave . But Angela had overlooked one thing: the results of such an experiment could not be made public. It would provoke a whirlwind of criticism, both ethical and procedural, and the questions raised would far outweigh any agreement.

He composed himself and looked at Angela, whose blue eyes were staring right back, seemingly waiting for something, yet also fearing something.

"This is a very significant discovery, Angela. Sound therapy can cure autism and epilepsy, and sound can also induce diseases. High-frequency vibrations can resonate with the deeper parts of the brain, causing changes deep within. But we can't disclose your experimental process."

"Professor Chen, I have friends in the United States conducting an audio analysis. We should have the results soon."

"How soon?" Chen Chen glanced at the clock on the wall; he had only 4 hours left.

"At least 3 days."

"It's too late," Chen Chen sighed and turned on the wall-mounted TV. "The Antamin special research meeting is about to start. Let's watch it together."