Alien Relic Hunter.

Chapter 592 Intracranial Crystallization
"At present, I have taken more than a dozen cells from hair, epithelial tissue, muscle tissue, etc. for inspection. Except for blood cells and body fluids, all other cells have a structure similar to a cell wall. The material composition of this layer of structure is not yet Clear, but if it's made of cellulose..."

"If it is made of cellulose, it is impossible for these organisms to show the same mobility as animals." Ke Lan went on to say that the cell wall, if you zoom in, looks a bit like the exoskeleton of an insect. But if every part of a bug's body is a hard exoskeleton, it is impossible for the bug to move at all.

"In addition, there is another discovery... During the process of my dissection, a large amount of radiation was released from this layer of cell wall-like structure... I even have reason to suspect that the energy shield produced by this wolf-like creature 'Source', from here."

"Wait...you just said that except for blood cells, all cells have a cell wall structure. What about nerve cells? Surely nerve cells have a similar structure?" Ke Lan asked.

"I didn't find nerve cells in the tissues of these creatures." Ivan looked at Ke Lan and said seriously, "Now you can understand why I called you over in such a hurry."

"No nerve cells... what about the brain? Are there full-body scans of complete cadavers or live samples?"

"I scanned it, but because of the large number of radiation sources in these wolf-like creatures, the scanned image is full of snowflakes, and I can't see anything." Ivan shook his head.

"Wait a minute, I'll make a call." Ke Lan was slightly taken aback, but immediately realized that he took out his cell phone and dialed a number.

"Is it the escort team? Yes, I'm Ke Lan. Immediately pick a wreck with a head and a complete head from the specimen... No, just send a complete corpse to the biology laboratory at the base. Now, immediately, immediately!"

Soon, an almost intact corpse of a wolf-like creature was brought in with a cart.

This wolf-like creature was killed during the battle with Augustus. Its spine was broken into four pieces, and there were multiple fractures and muscle tears all over its body. The hard object—it was a lump formed after internal bleeding coagulated... This wolf-like creature was probably thrown to death by Augustus.

Fortunately, her head was not seriously damaged, and the shape of her skull remained intact, which basically met the experimental needs of Ke Lan and Ivan.

"Prepare for craniotomy." Ke Lan glanced at Ivan, picked up a pair of medical gloves and put them on, "I'll help you."

"Yeah." Ivan nodded, and took a metal tray from the disinfection cabinet under the table, which was filled with freshly sterilized surgical knives and a medical chainsaw about the size of an electric razor.

The shape of this medical electric saw is very similar to the electric drill that is often used in construction, so some people call it a "saw drill" - of course, as long as the working head is changed, this thing can also be used as an electric drill Work.

"Prepare the skin first." Ivan said, even though he was facing a corpse, there were still all necessary procedures.

He covered the head of the wolf-like creature with a non-woven hole towel, shaved off the hair at the incision site little by little with a razor, and then disinfected the exposed skin with alcohol and povidone iodine.

"I'm going to get ready for the knife." Ivan glanced at Ke Lan, and after the latter nodded, he picked up a scalpel from the metal plate beside him.

The way Ivan uses the knife is to hold a pen. The advantage of this way of holding the knife is that it is easy to control, flexible in operation, and can perform some very fine movements, but the disadvantage is that the force is completely dependent on the strength of the fingers, and it is generally used to cut blood vessels and nerves. , but such a large and deep incision as amputation, disembowelment, or craniotomy will appear a little powerless.

But this problem does not exist for Ivan... After all, the hand he holds the knife is not a real human hand, but a mechanical prosthetic limb, and the strength that can be erupted from the fingers of the prosthetic limb even surpasses his own core muscles The power of groups.

With the sharp blade slashing down, the skin on the top of the skull of the wolf-like creature was cut open smoothly, and Ke Lan, who was in charge of assisting, used a retractor to pull the cut skin to the sides and fix it, so as to Prevent it from closing again, affecting the operation of the chief knife hand.

Ivan's hand didn't stop, and after cutting the skin, he cut down on the subcutaneous tissue—fortunately, the corpse of this wolf-like creature was just taken out of the freezer, and there was not a lot of blood during the dissection So that the operation could go on without a pump in the lab to suck the blood out.

"You look at the guy's subcutaneous tissue... skin, fascia, blood vessels, muscles, fat... are almost exactly the same as most mammals." Ivan placed the cut things on the plate by category, while Said to Ke Lan.

"To be honest, even though this corpse has been frozen, the body tissue does not feel like it has cell walls... Is it possible that the cell walls we observed under the microscope are just a 'mutated' cell membrane? "

"It's hard to say..." Ivan shook his head slowly, "If there is a structural mutation at the cell level, then the final form of this creature will not be able to grow like this... Even a creature like the Seed of Erosion Monsters, their cells are not as diverse as this creature."

Ke Lan can naturally understand the meaning of Ivan's words. This is like building a house. One of the two architects uses concrete as the building material, and the other uses wood as the building material... As a result, the two architects The resulting house has almost no difference in terms of appearance or interior structure... It is absolutely impossible whether it is from the perspective of architecture or biology.

It's just that the simple equipment in this laboratory alone cannot find the answer to this question... What Ke Lan and Ivan want to prove is another more straightforward thing.

Ivan had already marked the skull of the wolf-like creature. He picked up the saw drill, took a deep breath, and drilled the drill bit toward one of the marks.

The teeth-stinging sound of metal and bones rubbing against each other suddenly sounded, and both of them stared intently at the cutting position, not even daring to breathe.

Soon, a square incision with a side length of three centimeters appeared on the left side of the wolf-like creature's Tianling Gai.

The two looked at each other in unison.

"I'm going to witness the result soon, but I'm a little hesitant." Ivan said as if mocking himself.

"There's nothing to hesitate. Haven't we seen too many unreasonable and strange things?" Ke Lan whispered.

"Taking advantage of this opportunity, let's clarify the guess that we didn't say just now." Ivan said, "You should say it first or I will say it first."

"I suspect that this kind of creature... may not have such an organ as a 'brain'." Ke Lan said bluntly.

"This is impossible... If there is no brain, then the various behaviors they exhibit cannot be explained by common sense." Ivan shook his head again and again-the "brain" they referred to here is not just the one used for thinking. The "brain" of the human body also includes organs such as the diencephalon, cerebellum, and brainstem. These organs not only control the thinking and movement of creatures, but even the operation of various parts of the body, ranging from heartbeat and breathing to hormone secretion and metabolism. , all need these organs to "give orders"... Without the "brain", the organism will instantly fall into a state of "out of control".

"Then what do you guess?" Ke Lan looked at Ivan and asked.

"I..." Ivan hesitated for half a second before he said, "Although reason tells me it's impossible, my guess is the same as yours... Since no nerve cells can be found in other parts of these creatures' bodies , then the brain is a 'completely useless' thing for it - since the signals sent by the brain cannot be conveyed to all parts of the body, even if this creature originally had a brain, this organ will also be damaged after a long time. Slowly degenerate."

"But," Ivan continued, "it's easy to do without a brain. If there is no cerebellum and brainstem...what is controlling the movement of the body...controlling its heartbeat and breathing, eating and excreting? Even a robot , there must be a CPU (central processing unit), right?"

"Perhaps, the organ below is its CPU?" Ke Lan pointed at the cut skull with tweezers and said, "Don't you know if you open it?"

Ivan nodded solemnly. The tip of his mechanical finger split into several petals, and a thin metal probe was sandwiched between each two petals. He carefully inserted these needles along the cut gap, Gently clamp this square piece of bone, and slowly lift it up...

Below the incision is a layer of pale fascia. Because of the freezing, the blood did not overflow, but perhaps it was for this reason that Ke Lan had an illusion in a trance: it seemed that what they were dissecting was not a just The body of a killed beast is a zombie that has been sealed for tens of thousands of years.

"It seems...it's hard." Ke Lan poked the pale fascia with tweezers, and there was a hard touch from the things under the fascia, which made him feel "thump" in his heart—although this The corpse has been frozen, but even the muscles have not been frozen so stiff, how can the brain tissue be as hard as a stone.

Of course, the premise is that the organ under this layer of fascia is the brain and not anything else.

Ivan didn't answer, but took the smallest surgery, and with the help of tweezers and needles, he cut the thin layer of fascia little by little.

The things under the fascia were finally exposed in the field of vision of the two, but the two fell into a few seconds of silence.

Under the fascia is not the brain tissue frozen into an ice lump, but a crystal - a multi-faceted crystal that is transparent throughout and smooth on the surface.

"Although there is some discrepancy with my guess, it is not bad." Ke Lan broke the silence first.

"This thing... is a carbon-based creature?" Ivan's mouth twitched slightly.

"Except for the 'brain', other parts can be counted as carbon-based organisms," Ke Lan said.

"Could the brain of a carbon-based creature be a crystal? Or...these creatures are actually robots?"

"I am more inclined to the idea of ​​transforming creatures. Those who can be imprisoned in 'Yagunaktor' are obviously not ordinary beasts." Ke Lan sighed, "Until now, we have not It is clear what the purpose of this ancient battleship was built... Is it a weapon, or a colonial ship like an ark, or a 'research ship' for various experiments ?”

These wolf-like creatures are obviously not comparable to the crystallized lava beetles in the power room.The latter is more like an immigrant who accidentally entered the battleship, and then found a place that is "extremely suitable for survival" and settled there; while this group of wolf-like creatures is more like an "artificial creation" deliberately kept in the battleship. ".

But who kept them in captivity?Alpha civilization?Or... the mysterious third civilization that built "Yagunaktor"?
There is so little information at hand now. Logically speaking, Ke Lan and the others should be overjoyed to have such a major discovery in the first stage of exploration, but for some reason, Ke Lan is not happy at all. stand up.

An indescribable sense of oppression lingered in his heart.

At this moment, Ivan suddenly let out a low cry, and Ke Lan quickly looked down, only to see that the originally smooth mirror-like crystal surface had turned into bumps and pits in just a dozen seconds. .

"This thing...it, is it degrading itself?" Ivan suddenly felt a little at a loss, "How could this happen?!"

"Normal." Ke Lan nodded, "This can explain why we haven't found such crystals in those mutilated corpses—because all exposed crystals have 'disappeared'."

"What should I do now? Suture the incised fascia?" Ivan tried to pull the fascia with a crochet needle and wrap the crystals again, but he only used a little force, and the crystals under the fascia suddenly shattered It became powder.

"Try freezing." Ke Lan said, and he had already walked around to the other end of the dissecting table, but before he lifted the corpse off the dissecting table, the crystal had completely disappeared, leaving only an empty one. cranial cavity.

"Record all these and send them back to the ark together with the samples." Ke Lan said to Ivan, "There are not many samples left, and every time one is wasted, there will be one less opportunity for research... I knew this would happen. We should not dissect it hastily.”

"Crystals that will quickly degrade when exposed to air... This is the only information we have so far." Ivan looked at Ke Lan, "Do you think of anything?"

(End of this chapter)