Alien Relic Hunter

Just when Ke Lan was "incompetently furious", among the few people present, someone finally raised this question - Jino pointed to the stomach pouch that was taken out of the corpse's abdominal cavity but was still connected to the intestines and said: "Perhaps, We can cut open its stomach and see..."

"Great! Doctoral students save the world..." Ke Lan suddenly felt the urge to burst into tears.

"Ah!" Liao Xing was startled, "I was preconceived. I kept thinking about the possibility of prions and forgot about this...a very fatal mistake."

He shook his head in annoyance, then picked up the monster's stomach and cut it open.

But soon, they discovered that things seemed to be more troublesome...

The food in the monster's stomach... seems to be some kind of finely processed cooked food, rather than "drinking blood while eating hair" as everyone imagined.

From the food residue that has not been melted by stomach acid, you can vaguely distinguish lumps of "starch artificial meat" and mushy cereals.

These things are almost the same as the canned or bagged food eaten by the people on the Ark.

Where did the food it eats come from?

Ke Lan also fell into doubts - he had explored so many ruins of Alpha civilization, and he had never found anything in the ruins that could be defined as "food" from human eyes, let alone luncheon meat and cereal. Such a "down to earth" thing.

Researchers on the Ark once believed that Alpha people did not need to absorb energy by eating like humans. They may obtain energy in a more direct way, with less loss and higher utilization rate - this is completely consistent with an advanced civilization. conjecture.

Ke Lan remembered that inside Yagunaktor, in the "Dirac Sea" created by "Park Sangwoo", he had seen scenes of suspected Alpha people eating - those creatures had human-like upper bodies, but lower bodies. Like an octopus, they are composed entirely of tentacles. Their bodies are connected to a transparent hose, and a light gray viscous substance is slowly injected into their bodies along the tube.

Let’s not say whether these creatures are the legendary Alphas, nor whether they are eating. But in short, there is nothing like the corpse of the humanoid monster in front of us, and the food residue found in the digestive organs of the corpse. relation.

"This is food for us humans..." Liao Xing picked up a handful of food residue with his fingers and gently rubbed it away, "Look... there are even whole cereals here... I can even recognize them. This is oatmeal..."

He paused and looked at the others: "Have you ever seen oats... or similar crops on Alpha Planet?"

Jino thought for a few seconds and then shook his head: "Crops that can grow on the surface of Alpha Planet and can barely meet the requirements for food... I only know of one kind of gray potato, and I heard that there are some fungi. It can be eaten, but it will be very irritating to the digestive system, so only enhanced humans or modified humans with modified digestive organs can eat it."

"Yes, only gray potatoes can grow in the unmodified surface environment of Alpha Planet. As for those crops from the Earth, they are completely unable to survive on this damn planet... Otherwise, the large area around the Ark The wasteland has long been reclaimed into farmland, and the price gap between natural flour and synthetic flour on the market is not more than ten times larger." Liao Xing nodded.

"Perhaps the food this monster eats comes from the Ark..." Sergeant Ken curled his lips, "Even in the exile camp, you can find fresh cans produced in recent years. There are several bags of cereal scattered in the wilderness that were picked up by these monsters. Isn’t it something very strange?”

"If this was wheat, it would not be surprising, but this is oats." Liao Xing continued, "Because of the flour extraction rate and taste, even in the old era, the planting area of ​​oats was far less than one of the three major cereals. Wheat, and now on the Ark, there are only a few agricultural bases that grow oats on a large scale."

"Less... but it's not nothing..." Collins said doubtfully.

"Ordinary people on the Ark will not consume oats at all, and oat products will not appear in the list of various military supplies... This kind of grain, which was mainly used as livestock feed in the old era, has become expensive in this era. A luxury product that will only appear on the tables of the rich and will not be taken to the wilderness."

"Military doctor, what exactly do you want to explain?" Sergeant Ken couldn't help but frowned.

"These oats most likely did not come from the Ark."

"But you also said that oats cannot be grown on Alpha Planet." Sergeant Ken said, "Is it possible that the Alpha people have also built agricultural facilities that simulate the earth's environment? Even if they have, where do their seeds come from? ?”

"We know too little about Alpha Planet and Alpha Civilization." Liao Xing stood up and shook his head, "If we want to unearth more information from this corpse, the tools and equipment at hand are not enough. , we have to find a way to preserve it and bring it back to the Ark."

"There are body bags, but where are we going to get so much formalin?" Collins wondered, "If we just stuff the body into a body bag, by the time we get back from the mission, it will have already rotted Bar."

"Use this." Liao Xing tore open a packet of sodium chloride powder used to prepare physiological saline, and spread the white powder evenly on the surface and inside of the corpse.

"Is this okay?" Collins was a little shocked.

"Human beings invented the method of using salt to pickle food thousands of years ago to extend the preservation time of food. High-concentration salt solutions have good antiseptic and sterilization effects, and can also be used to preserve corpses in unavoidable circumstances." Liao Xing replied.

"Use the method of preserving food to preserve the body..." Collins felt an uncomfortable feeling in his throat, as if acid water was about to gush out at any time... Even Ke Lan felt like vomiting. impulse.

Use salt to preserve corpses... The most famous one must be Yelu Deguang, Taizong of Liao Dynasty, the second emperor of China and Liao Dynasty in the old era. The emperor suddenly died of illness on the way back from the Southern Expedition. It was summer at that time, and the Queen Mother demanded that Yelu Deguang's body must be sent back intact. The civil and military ministers around the emperor had no choice but to obey a soldier. The chef suggested using salt to preserve Yelu Deguang's body.

Although Yelu Deguang's body was not decomposed, when it was delivered to the Queen Mother, it was no different from a kind of bacon called "羓"... As for the cook who proposed this idea, although there is no subsequent record in the official history, I don't think the outcome will be much better...