Volume 10: Ancient Battleship Chapter 531 Curiosity
"I forgot to introduce myself. I'm Ke Lan, the leader of the God Hunter Group." Ke Lan extended his hand to the other party. "This is Valentina, the chief pilot of the hunting group. This is Qin Zhao, the trainee hunter who just joined the company."
"Ke Lan? You...you are the person in charge of the development of this new S-class ruins?" Sanshisan's face finally revealed a trace of surprise. He first wiped the oil and blood stains on his hands with an apron, and then held Ke Lan's hand.
"right."
"When we first met, you looked much younger than I thought." Sanshisan said, "As the old saying goes in China, heroes emerge young!"
Like Ke Lan, he is also an Asian with black hair, black eyes and yellow skin, and he is also of Chinese descent, which accounts for the highest proportion among Asians.
"Hey, thank you for the compliment."
“Although I have seen the news about you, the real person looks quite different from the one in the video.” Sanshisan said seriously.
The video he mentioned was naturally the "dirty material" secretly filmed by the Morgan Consortium.
"As for the clarity of the video...it's not an exaggeration to say it's AV quality, haha." Ke Lan said.
Official channels have never released his personal information, and all leaked information came from the Morgan Consortium in the form of "rumors". Although most people on the Ark have seen the video, there are very few shots of Ke Lan's face. Even if there are, they basically flash by, and the video is blurry after compression. If you are not an acquaintance, you can't recognize him at all.
"Shouldn't you be in Fleet Zero? Why did you come back?" Thirty-Three suddenly asked - as a relic hunter, he was quite concerned about the news related to Yagunakotor, especially this new S-class relic that "suddenly" appeared next to the Ark.
"I came back to do something and happened to pass by here. I was too busy on the way to eat so I thought I'd just eat something nearby." At this point, Ke Lan suddenly laughed, "By the way, where's our fried rice?"
"Do it now." Sanshisan said, taking the piece of bacon off the hook, pulling out a sharp kitchen knife, and smoothly cutting a strip of meat with a nearly square cross-section.
"By the way, is this meat really that expensive?" Ke Lan asked curiously as she sat on the chair.
"Yes." Thirty-three nodded. "You know Zhuoligetu, so you know that I am not a lone relic hunter. I have a fixed small team, which is made up of brothers who survived together. One of them opened a breeding farm, specializing in raising high-end livestock for the rich and powerful. At his farm, a live pig can be sold for more than 400,000 credit points."
"How much is the profit? If the profit is high, I might as well raise pigs!" Ke Lan said half-jokingly.
"The venue, equipment and feed are not cheap, and the profit from a pig is probably only 5 percent."
"You can earn more than 20,000 yuan from a pig. Isn't this much more comfortable than risking your life for money? By the way, this piece of bacon comes from his farm."
Thirty-three nodded. "According to my method, it takes about two kilograms of fresh meat to make one kilogram of bacon, and it has to be the best pork belly. Add in all kinds of seasonings and processes... this price is not expensive."
"What the uncle said is right... Although it is really expensive, if we go to the slaughterhouse to buy it ourselves, the same amount of black pork belly will cost about the same price." Qin Zhao, a veteran foodie, whispered to Ke Lan.
"Have you eaten it?"
“No…” Qin Zhao shook his head like a rattle. “I’ve never eaten black pork, but I’ve seen black pigs run… When I couldn’t sleep at night, I liked to watch all kinds of food videos, then open a bag of spicy strips or potato chips and imagine them as the food in the video…”
Pork belly is actually the meat from the pig's shoulder blade. There is only one piece of pork belly on a pig, and the total weight is only five or six pounds. It is a piece of extremely tender lean meat, but the inside of the meat has a grid-like criss-crossing fat texture. The top-quality pork belly looks like the expensive marbled beef, and the marble-like white texture is like a work of art.
If a black pig raised in the "traditional way" can be sold for 400,000 credit points, then the small piece of meat above its neck is estimated to account for one-tenth of the value of the entire pig, or even more.
After all, in the eyes of those rich people, if you want to eat, you have to eat the best.
The price given by Sanshisan is indeed not expensive, and can even be said to be quite affordable.
"But I can treat you to this meal." Sanshisan said, and in a blink of an eye, the dark brown bacon was cut into countless cubes of the same size and poured into a white porcelain bowl, "But I also have a request--"
"Do you want to join the exploration of 'Aguna Kotor'?"
"right."
"I was planning to invite you, but I didn't expect to get a free meal." Ke Lan tapped the table in front of him with his fingernails. "What about your old comrades? Are they coming with us?"
"I will contact them later. If there are any who are interested, I will bring them along. If they don't want to come, I won't force them." Thirty-three replied, "We form a team on a voluntary basis. There is no such thing as coercion."
He rubbed a piece of thick fat meat around the large iron pan, covering the inside of the pan with a layer of crystal oil film. Then he poured the rice that had been cooled and hardened beforehand into the pan and quickly stir-fried it.
"You have to use cold rice to make fried rice. If you use hot rice that has just come out of the pot, it will be difficult to separate the rice grains. Instead, they will stick together and the taste will be worse." He seemed to be talking to Ke Lan, but also seemed to be talking to himself.
"I've heard of this trick, but I've hardly ever cooked, let alone fried rice." Ke Lan said, "Although I invited you to participate in this exploration, I still have one thing I want to ask you."
"What's the matter?" Sanshisan didn't look up, but focused all his attention on the ingredients in the pot. Onions, ginger, garlic, MSG, soy sauce and other seasonings were added one by one, and an enticing aroma gradually floated out from the small window.
"Why did you become hunters?" Ke Lan stared at Sanshisan's profile and spoke word by word. "You spent the first half of your life in the wilderness. You were always fighting those ferocious native creatures and various biological weapons left by the Alphas... The original organization of the Velociraptor Squadron should have been 85 people, right? But in the end, including you, only 11 people survived to retire."
The corner of Thirty-Three's eye twitched slightly, but he did not answer the question immediately. Instead, he continued to concentrate on stir-frying the ingredients in the pot.
"You can spend the rest of your lives in peace on the Ark... I have investigated your backgrounds. You are completely different from the two people I know. The entire Raptor team has been posthumously recognized as combat heroes. No one has been declared 'missing', and the military has not deducted or delayed the pensions it has issued... Even if you don't work, you can live a very comfortable life with this honor and this money."
Ke Lan continued, "But why did you become relic hunters? I'm curious... Logically speaking, after fighting for most of your life, it's time to take a break, but you actually ran into the wilderness again... Is it really because you are bored?"
"Aren't I just taking a rest now?" Sanshisan was not angry because of this question, but laughed instead.
He lifted up the heavy pot. Compared with the huge volume of the iron pot, the fried rice at the bottom of the pot looked like only a small ball - of course, this was just a visual illusion. When the fried rice was scooped out of the pot, it still filled three large iron basins.
Most of the people who come here to eat are rough guys who do manual labor and have big appetites, so the tableware is naturally several times larger than that of restaurants in residential and commercial areas. Ke Lan conservatively estimates that this pot of fried rice, if served in the exquisite bone china bowls in the hotel, can hold at least five or six bowls.
They are called tableware, but they are actually three small washbasins for washing...
Fortunately, the two girls I brought this time, one is from the military and the other is a foodie, so there will be no waste of food.
"Here, the fried rice you ordered." Sanshisan handed out three iron basins from the window. "To be honest, I'm a soldier. Apart from making fried rice, I only know how to fight. I don't have any other skills."
"Is it the fate of a soldier to die on the battlefield? There have been many soldiers in history who returned home with honor." Ke Lan said, "Besides, making fried rice well is also a skill. So many people with no special skills are living and working on the Ark. There is no need for you to do such a dangerous job."
Ke Lan was still testing the waters. Although his first impression of Thirty-Three was that he was not the type of person who would be easily provoked or lose his mind, he still had to ask some questions… If he discovered any problems after entering the ruins, it would be too late.
"Do you really want to know?" Sanshisan turned off the fire, turned around and faced Ke Lan.
"think."
"Well, you're right. After fighting those things for half a lifetime, we are indeed tired and exhausted." Thirty-Three said slowly, "But we are also curious... what kind of planet this is, what kind of problem Alpha civilization is, and what kind of enemies we are facing."
“…”
"We want to know the answers to these things, but the Ark can't give us the answers. We can only seek them ourselves." Thirty-three paused and said, "So we became relic hunters."
"Out of curiosity?"
"Yes, besides curiosity... I also feel a little unwilling." Thirty-three sighed, "Since you have investigated our background, you should also know that we almost got wiped out in the last mission."
"Yes, I know."
"That mission record has been revised. We are not facing a group of mutated indigenous creatures at all... Although the Velociraptor Squad is not the strongest force on the Ark, it is not forced into such a predicament by a group of beasts." When saying this, Thirty-three's momentum changed for a moment, but quickly returned to its original state. "Our enemies are a group of monsters created by the Alpha civilization."
"Seed of Corrosion?"
"No, it's not those things." Thirty-three shook his head. "Because of the confidentiality regulations, I can't tell you more details. But since then, I have developed a great curiosity about this extinct civilization... It's not hatred, nor resentment... I just want to know how a civilization that created such a powerful monster ended up in extinction."
"So that's how it is."
"I know curiosity kills the cat. But I can't just lie down in the ark and live out my days until I can't walk anymore."
"That's understandable," Ke Lan nodded in agreement. "I chose the profession of Ruin Hunter in the first place, largely out of curiosity... Haha, of course the main reason is that the income is higher than being a wage earner."
"With your current wealth and income, why do you want to continue to stay on the front line?" Sanshisan suddenly turned from defense to offense and asked Ke Lan, "You have much more resources and choices than us... You can become a 'general' instead of a pawn."
"Ha... I had no choice. I don't have many choices." Ke Lan forced a smile that could barely be called a wry smile. "Forget it, let's not talk about this for now. Clean up the store. After dinner, I'll take you to the hunting group headquarters to register for the relevant procedures... Just filling out those documents and forms will take an entire afternoon. I have no choice."
…
…
Research Institute, headquarters, a biochemical laboratory.
A young researcher wearing a full set of protective clothing is carefully using a syringe to extract the contents of a sealed test tube. On the laboratory table in front of him is an experimental glove box. On the culture dish inside the box is an irregular mass of meat that is slightly wriggling.
Behind him stood a senior researcher who was also wearing a full set of protective clothing. A little further away, there were two "security personnel" holding shields and holding automatic firearms.
"Professor... do we really have to do this? This... this is against the regulations!" After completing the previous step, the young researcher turned around and said to the person standing behind him with some embarrassment.
"We have tried everything that does not violate the regulations, but there is no progress." The man called "Professor" said, "Science must have a spirit of adventure, otherwise, mankind and the times will stagnate."
"But……"
"Don't waste time. This specimen only has four minutes left to survive. Don't waste it!" the professor said sternly, emphasizing his tone.
“Yes… yes…” The young researcher placed the syringe into the experimental glove box and clamped it with a robotic arm.
"The first... the experiment of implanting active cells of the Seed of Corrosion into the 'Special Sample Clone Culture' has begun..."
The robotic arm moved slowly, aiming the syringe needle at the squirming, irregular mass of flesh.
The young researcher held his breath, found the right position, inserted the needle into the flesh at a constant speed, and then began to push the piston of the syringe.
The professor standing behind him opened his eyes wide involuntarily and gripped the back of his chair tightly with both hands.
