Volume 10: Ancient Battleship Chapter 486 Chili Essence
"Who told you that hunting lava leeches is more risky than collecting gray potatoes?" The hound sneered, "Little sister, let your uncle teach you some knowledge that is not in the textbooks."
Hearing the hound calling her "little sister", Aya couldn't help but frowned slightly, but she didn't say much. Instead, she looked at the other party with an inquiring look.
"Gray potatoes generally like to live in alkaline, dry soil, and there is another plant that also likes to live in this environment - brown moss."
"Brown moss?"
"Yes, so the uncultivated gray potatoes in the wilderness are often accompanied by a certain amount of brown moss. Brown moss is just as its name suggests, a gray-brown moss, and it is very fine and looks like a layer of humus on the surface of the soil. Except for those experienced people who have been in the wilderness for many years, it is difficult for ordinary people to distinguish it at a glance."
The hound continued, "This thing is quite poisonous... It would be fine if you wore gloves when collecting gray potatoes. But if you didn't wear gloves and there happened to be some minor wounds on your hands, and you accidentally touched the brown sunflower moss, and let its toxins enter your blood..."
The hound paused, then said in a deep voice: "At the mildest, the patient will suffer from vomiting and diarrhea until he collapses, and at the worst, he will not survive for more than 48 hours... Moreover, there is no specific medicine for this toxin, and all the standard antidotes and antitoxin serums distributed are useless... This is a lesson learned at the cost of human lives, but that ridiculous textbook did not include it..."
"Why? Logically speaking, such important information should not be ignored?" Aya asked puzzled.
She really didn't know anything about what the Hound had said - although the Security Bureau's field teams often carried out missions outside the Ark, most of the time they were picked up by special planes, and logistics airdrops were available on call. Compared to the front-line combat troops under harsh conditions, their days in the wilderness were more like "a picnic for young soldiers."
The description in quotation marks came from the soldiers in the frontline combat units. As the leader of the field agent team, Aya had certainly heard this statement before, but she didn't pay much attention to it at that time. In her opinion, the tasks performed by the security bureau agents were far more important than those of the regular troops, so it was only natural that they would receive more resources.
But now she realized that this title contained more "contempt" and "scorn", rather than what she originally thought was "envy" and "jealousy".
"Of course the news about the brown moss was not omitted, but it was included in another independent report... Haha, in the eyes of those experts and scholars, the humble life of a soldier is certainly not as important as the signature at the end ." The Hound sneered.
"Is there such a thing? I will definitely report it truthfully when I return—"
"Was it useful?" The Hound gave her a cold look and interrupted her. "We already knew about the brown moss a long time ago. There's no point in modifying the tutorial now. As for more similar troubles, can you handle them all by yourself ?"
"I...now that you've let me know, I can't just ignore it." Aya said.
"That's a very righteous statement." Ke Lan interrupted and commented, "In this respect, you are very similar to Ms. Victoria."
Aya: “…”
"Okay, let's not talk about this for now. Even if you want to enforce justice, you have to escape from this place first." Ke Lan took out a piece of "white meat" from the hound's plastic bag and stuffed it into his mouth. The meat of the lava leech was indeed not delicious. Even if it had been roasted, it still had a strong fishy smell. As Ke Lan chewed, it continued to drill into his throat and then came out along the nasal cavity connected to it.
"Old dog, give me some water..." Ke Lan said with a bitter face.
It was also the first time for him to eat the meat of a lava leech. Before this, as an independent hunter, Ke Lan would stay as far away from this creature as possible when he encountered it in the wilderness. Only field troops with strong firepower would hunt this creature as food.
"Water doesn't work, try this ." The Hound smiled, poured some white powder from a small bottle and handed it to Ke Lan.
"What is this?" Ke Lan tried to dip a little with her finger and put it in her mouth.
"Freeze-dried chili essence." The Hound narrowed his eyes and waited until Ke Lan's fingers touched his tongue before he spoke unhurriedly.
The word "fuck" was still lingering in Ke Lan's throat when a burning pain quickly spread throughout her entire mouth, and the tip of her tongue instantly became numb and lost consciousness.
Without bothering to curse, Ke Lan quickly threw down her backpack, took out her water bottle, and drank most of the water in one breath.
However, the freeze-dried powder on the tongue dissolved in the water. After a brief cool touch, Ke Lan's throat, esophagus and even stomach began to burn.
"Cough cough cough... This chili essence... cough cough... is it concentrated?" He half-knelt on the ground, choking and crying.
"Of course. The concentration ratio is about 1 to 36... Anyway, only a few milligrams are needed to turn a large pot of clear soup into spicy hot pot. The amount you dipped your finger on just now is probably half a gram, which is enough to mix into several hundred bottles of chili sauce." said the hound.
It would have been fine if he didn't lift his finger. As soon as he lifted it, Ke Lan suddenly felt a burning pain in his fingertips. He opened his eyes and glanced, only to see that the finger that had just come into contact with the chili essence had become red and swollen.
"Look, now you can't help but smell the fishy smell, right!" The hound patted Ke Lan on the back and handed him his bottle of water.
"You still... ahem... have the nerve to say that... ahem... I almost... died of the spiciness!" Ke Lan drank all the water in the kettle in one breath, then threw the kettle hard at the hound.
"This is a good thing. Others want it, but I won't give it to them!" As he said this, Hound suddenly turned to Aya and the others. He held a bag full of lava beetle leg meat in one hand and a bottle of chili essence in the other. He smiled and said, "Do you want to try it too?"
The two agents subconsciously took a step back. Only the old agent who had served in the field force walked forward, grabbed a handful and stuffed it into his mouth without changing his expression.
"Would you like some seasoning?" The Hound shook the bottle in his other hand.
"No, thank you. This little fishy smell is nothing." The agent quickly swallowed the lava leech leg meat with clean water and declined the hound's kindness.
"How about it, do you want to try it?" The Hound looked at Aya again.
"Are you sure that the texture of the mutated lava leech won't change?" Aya asked worriedly, pinching a strip of meat about 15 centimeters long with her slender fingers.
"I've already done tests. They're non-toxic and parasitic, and the radiation levels are within the safe range," said the Hound. "Although the bugs' stomachs are full of energy crystals, their legs are relatively clean. I threw away the limbs that were stained with crystals. These are carefully selected good stuff."
Seeing Aya stuffing the leg meat into her mouth with a tense face, Hound turned to Ke Lan and the others and said, "Remember the 'Xinghai Lao' where we had dinner last time? They also sell lava beetle leg meat. I remember there was a dish called 'Alpha Star Special Crab Meat Crystal Dumplings', which used lava beetle leg meat instead of crab meat. I heard that the raw materials can be sold for more than 4,000 credit points per pound."
"Is this thing so expensive? I was so busy eating the lamb leg that day that I didn't notice these 'special dishes' at all." Zhuo Ligetu said in surprise.
"This thing is not that easy to get. If you want to hunt a lava leech, the cost of labor and equipment is not a small amount. In addition, after the lava leech explodes, how many limbs will be left depends entirely on luck. If you are unlucky, you may only be able to pick up half a leg. The price will rise accordingly." The hound said with a pout.
"But even if only half a leg is left, there are still several thousand kilograms of meat inside. The leg of an adult lava leech can be dozens of meters long. If you are lucky, the gross profit of one trip can easily exceed eight figures." Zhuo Ligetu counted on his fingers, "The team that specializes in hunting lava leeches must have a way to limit the self-explosion of lava leeches. It can't be that they always guarantee the bottom line."
"But there are too many fools! The price of this thing can be driven up completely by taking advantage of the vanity and curiosity of those rich people. To put it bluntly, it's just cutting leeks and IQ tax... Who the hell would spend so much to buy this kind of thing to eat. Even if it is processed by the restaurant and rinsed in red oil several times, the fishy smell is still there. Eating this thing is simply asking for trouble. Isn't the synthetic crab meat delicious at 40 yuan per pound? The price is only one percent of this thing, and the taste is okay - tsk, sometimes I really can't understand what the hell is in the heads of those 'upper class'." The hound complained.
"Hey, we might as well not take on missions to explore ruins in the future, and specialize in hunting indigenous creatures. Anyway, the official has never clearly stipulated what the hunting group should 'hunt'. When the time comes, we can set up a few brands, with gimmicks like 'Hunting Group's Careful Selection' and 'Fine Products'. It may make more money than working so hard like we do now." Layton joked.
"If I could really get in touch with the big guys who control the supply chain, I would have done this a long time ago, but now the market is saturated, and sales are shrinking every year... Although there is no shortage of stupid and rich people in this world, their interests will change. I heard that indigenous creature fighting performances have become popular again in the past two years. It is very difficult to apply for a legal license for this thing, and it is much more difficult to get living indigenous creatures onto the Ark than dead ones."
Hearing what the hound said, Ke Lan suddenly remembered the Angres Biotechnology Company under the Morgan Consortium. The main business of this company is to capture living samples of indigenous creatures and then sell them to various scientific research institutions on the Ark.
However, according to the information Ke Lan had, only about one-third of the indigenous creatures they captured were actually sold to scientific research institutions for experiments, and the remaining two-thirds all flowed into legal or illegal arenas.
The "Broken Tooth Black Market" which is only half an hour away from the hunting group headquarters has underground beast fighting performances every Friday. Ke Lan and his friends have also been to watch it once, but the scale of the performances held by this black market is very small, and the indigenous creatures used are all small species with a body length of no more than one meter. Sometimes it's just two bugs fighting in an arena the size of a bathtub. There's really nothing to see.
After Ke Lan and his friends visited it once, they never went there again.
As for the large-scale beast fighting performances, they were not something that ordinary people could see. Whether it was a legal or illegal arena, one had to have a special invitation letter to enter, and the time of each performance was kept secret. If one was not in that circle, there was no way to squeeze in.
"The Soma Group should have some connections in this regard." Ke Lan thought secretly, "Or I can go find that little fat guy Ye Yan, maybe I can get admission, but when it comes to large species..."
Ke Lan cleared his throat. Although the burning sensation still remained, thanks to his strong recovery ability, he was now able to speak normally.
"There's one thing I didn't have time to say just now." After seeing that everyone in the reconnaissance team had focused their attention on him, Ke Lan continued, "Since the larvae of lava leeches have appeared in this place, and the larvae haven't killed each other yet... then the adult lava leeches that gave birth to these larvae may also be here."
"That's what I thought, too." The Hound put away his playful smile and said seriously, "So I just told them to stay away from the edge of the giant pit as much as possible and not get close to it if they can. "
"There are so many crystal pillars in the giant pit, and each crystal pillar is equivalent to a pile of level nine energy crystals of the same mass. It's really hard to imagine what kind of behemoth can be raised with so much 'feed'..." Ivan analyzed in a deep voice while chewing the leg meat of a lava leech, "But the good news is that we made such a big commotion just now, but no more lava leeches appeared. This means that - either this giant pit is just the spawning ground of lava leeches, and they left after laying this batch of eggs, allowing the young to grow here on their own. Or their movements are restricted and they cannot leave the bottom of the pit."
"I'm more inclined to the first scenario," Zhuo Ligetu said. "If there really is something big at the bottom of the pit, it's impossible for it to not react at all to such a big commotion."
"Whether it's there or not, we won't know until we take a look." As Layton said this, he released a drone and flew it straight towards the sky above the giant pit.
