Chapter 157
Chapter 157
That was right. There had been six of them in total, so why were Wen Miao and the other three the only ones who had gotten into trouble?
Nan Mu lay in bed, tossing and turning, unable to sleep.
He opened the picture Wen Xin had sent him and stared at the six people in the photo who looked exactly like them, sinking into deep thought.
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Wen Xin had just finished the task Xu Ziran had assigned him and was about to sit down for a short break when he realized that, aside from Sister Wu, everyone else in the office had gone to the laboratory.
He stood up and stretched. When he lifted his head, he saw the red light on the office surveillance camera blinking.
Wen Xin’s eyes flickered. As if nothing had happened, he picked up his mug and went to the break room.
Wisdom Biotechnology treated its employees quite well. The break room had not only all kinds of tea and drinks, but also afternoon snacks and desserts.
Wen Xin filled his own cup with juice, then picked up a small cake and prepared to return to his seat to enjoy it.
However, before he had taken more than a few steps, a Samoyed tripped him, and the little cake in his hand smashed onto the floor.
The Samoyed yelped in pain from being pressed down.
“What happened?”
Hearing the dog’s cry, Sister Wu hurried over. When she saw Wen Xin fallen on the floor, she immediately helped him up.
“Are you all right?”
Wen Xin gave an honest, good-natured smile. “I’m fine, I’m fine. I just didn’t see it.”
As he spoke, he picked up the Samoyed crouching pitifully off to the side and stroked its face.
Seeing that Wen Xin was fine, Sister Wu let out a huge sigh of relief.
Although the company had no explicit rule forbidding employees from bringing pets to work, Sister Wu knew that if an accident happened, she would definitely be held responsible.
She also knew it wasn’t good to bring a pet to the office, but there was nothing she could do. She lived alone, and her dog had fallen ill and needed to go to the veterinary clinic. If she went home to get the dog at noon, there wouldn’t be enough time, so she could only bring the dog to the company with her in the morning, then take it to the clinic for treatment during the lunch break, and pick it up again after work in the afternoon to bring it home.
She had been doing this for four days already. Nothing had happened before, and in another two days, the dog wouldn’t need to go to the clinic anymore…
As for today, it was because the veterinarian had suddenly had something come up, so she hadn’t been able to take the dog over.
Sister Wu watched Wen Xin wipe the juice off the floor with napkins, feeling guilty. To show her apology, she sternly scolded the Samoyed, then said, “I’ll go lock it up.”
“It’d be so pitiful locked up.” Wen Xin waved his hand, sincerely indicating that he didn’t mind. “Sister Wu, I’m really fine. You should get back to work.”
Sister Wu didn’t want to lock up her Samoyed either. Mainly, she was worried it would cause trouble if it wasn’t within her sight. She had only said that because she was afraid Wen Xin would mind. After politely offering a couple more times and confirming that Wen Xin truly didn’t mind, she returned to her workstation.
Wen Xin patted the Samoyed on the head before slowly making his way back to his seat.
As soon as he looked up, he saw that because the little cake he had dropped on the floor earlier hadn’t been cleaned up completely, the Samoyed had caught the scent and was constantly licking at it.
The cake had fallen in an unfortunate spot and had even touched an electrical wire. After licking the floor clean, the Samoyed went over and started biting that wire.
Wen Xin sat indifferently at his desk, watching the Samoyed like that, until he saw the surveillance camera that had been flashing with a red dot moments ago suddenly lose its light.
A smile curled at the corner of Wen Xin’s lips. He took the laptop from his bag, first masked himself with a fake IP address, then connected to the company’s data server and effortlessly bypassed Wisdom Biotechnology’s firewall.
…
Wen Tangtang had just finished her experiment and come out of the laboratory when she received a call from her friend.
“Wen Tangtang, the test report results are out. Do you want to come take a look?”
After Wen Tangtang saw Meng Ran’s high school photo, she already had her answer. If her friend hadn’t called, she would have nearly forgotten about this whole matter.
Still, she had asked for help before, and she couldn’t very well make the other person feel like they’d wasted their time. So Wen Tangtang smiled and said, “No need to go through all that trouble. Just tell me the result.”
“All right, give me a moment.” The sound of papers being flipped came through the phone. After a while, Wen Tangtang finally heard her friend’s voice again. “I just checked. The conclusion is that it doesn’t support it.”
Wen Tangtang could hardly believe her ears and hurriedly asked, “What did you just say?”
“The conclusion is that it doesn’t support it. There is no blood relationship between the two biological samples you sent over.”
Wen Tangtang held the phone, at a complete loss for words. She stood there in a daze, her eyes filled with confusion and disbelief.
The two photos looked so alike, but now she was being told there was no blood relation. This…
Even with the evidence right in front of her, Wen Tangtang still found it hard to believe.
“Wen Tangtang?”
“Huh? I’m here.” Wen Tangtang came back to herself and gave a somewhat stiff laugh. “I… Well, I don’t mean anything by this… I just want to make sure. This report couldn’t be wrong, could it?”
“Of course not. We’re very careful about these things.”
“Oh.” Wen Tangtang answered dryly and scratched her head. “Then… from the report, can you tell anything else? I mean, even if they don’t have a parent-child relationship, is it possible they’re close relatives or something?”
“With current technology, we can test clear kinship relationships like uncle and niece, or grandfather and grandchild. But for other close-relative relationships, it’s not always certain. That said, for most kinship relationships, among the twenty-one loci tested in a paternity test, there will be four loci that don’t follow the laws of inheritance. In some cases, there are three gene loci or two gene loci that don’t match inheritance patterns. But in the report I have here, the number of differing loci has already exceeded four…”
“So there’s no way the two of them are related, right?”
Hearing Wen Tangtang’s question, the person on the other end hesitated again. People in medicine were always cautious when drawing conclusions. After considering her words, she said, “We can only say that there is most likely no kinship relationship. Mainly because one of the samples is from a female, so it’s harder to determine. You know, women have XX chromosomes, one from the mother and one from the father. So even if the relationship between these two biological samples were uncle and niece, while the uncle and the father would definitely have inherited their grandfather’s Y chromosome, the grandmother has two X chromosomes, so they may not have inherited the same X chromosome. That means the X chromosome she inherited from her father isn’t guaranteed to be the same as the uncle’s X chromosome, and an uncle and niece may not show enough identical loci in testing. So we can only say the two of them most likely aren’t related, but we can’t absolutely rule out the possibility that they are…”
Wen Tangtang understood what she meant. Kinship relationships that were not parent-child relationships were harder to identify.
But the more she listened to the example, the more confused she became. “Wait. The two biological samples I gave you… weren’t they both from women?”
“Hm?”
Wen Tangtang heard the confusion in the other person’s voice, followed by the rapid flipping of papers.
At last, her friend’s firm voice came through. “Impossible! The chromosomes are XY. How could this be a woman? Did you people mix something up?”
Even after hanging up, Wen Tangtang remained dazed.
Wen Xin was an especially meticulous person. How could he possibly have made a mistake?
The more she thought about it, the more wrong it felt. A strange panic rose in her heart, and she immediately called Wen Xin.