Volume 14: Devastation Chapter 673 Oatmeal
Just when Ke Lan was "incompetent and furious", someone among the people present finally raised this question - Jinuo pointed to the stomach sac that was taken out of the abdominal cavity of the corpse but was still connected to the intestines and said: "Perhaps, we can cut open its stomach and take a look..."
"That's great! A doctoral student saves the world..." Ke Lan suddenly had an urge to burst into tears.
"Ah!" Liao Xing was shocked. "I had a preconceived idea. I was thinking about the possibility of prions and forgot this point... It was a fatal mistake."
He shook his head in annoyance, then picked up the monster's stomach and cut it open.
But soon, they found that things seemed to be more troublesome...
The food in the monster's stomach... seemed to be some kind of finely processed cooked food, rather than the "raw meat and blood drinking" that everyone imagined.
From the food residues that have not yet been dissolved by stomach acid, one can vaguely distinguish lumps of "starch artificial meat" and mush of oatmeal.
These things are almost no different from the canned or packaged food that the people on the Ark eat.
Where does the food it eats come from?
Ke Lan was also confused - he had explored so many ruins of the Alpha civilization, but had never found anything in the ruins that could be defined as "food" from a human perspective, let alone something so "down-to-earth" as luncheon meat and cereal.
Researchers on the Ark once believed that the Alphas did not need to obtain energy through eating like humans. Their way of obtaining energy might be more direct, with less loss and higher utilization rate - this is completely consistent with the conjecture of an advanced civilization.
Ke Lan remembered that inside Yagunakotor , in the "Dirac Sea" created by "Park Sang-woo", he had seen scenes of what looked like Alpha people eating - those creatures had upper bodies similar to those of humans, but their lower bodies were made entirely of tentacles like octopuses. They were connected to a transparent hose, and a light gray viscous substance was slowly injected into their bodies along the tube.
Regardless of whether these creatures are the legendary Alpha people, or whether their behavior means eating, in short, they have nothing to do with the corpse of the humanoid monster in front of them, or the food residues found in the corpse's digestive organs.
"This is food for us humans..." Liao Xing picked up a handful of food residue with his fingers and gently rubbed it apart. "Look... there are even whole cereals here... I can even recognize that this is oatmeal..."
He paused and looked at the others: "Have you ever seen oats... or similar crops on Alpha?"
Jino thought for a few seconds and then shook his head. "I only know of one kind of crop that can be grown on the surface of Alpha and barely meet the conditions for being used as food: gray potatoes. I also heard that some fungi can be eaten, but they will have a strong stimulation on the digestive system. Only enhanced humans or modified humans with modified digestive organs can eat them."
"That's right. Only gray potatoes can survive in the unmodified surface environment of Alpha. As for those crops from Earth, they simply cannot survive on this damn planet... Otherwise, the large tracts of wasteland around the Ark would have been reclaimed into farmland long ago, and the price difference between natural flour and synthetic flour in the market would not be more than ten times as large." Liao Xing nodded.
"Perhaps the food this monster eats comes from the Ark..." Sergeant Ken curled his lips . "Even in the exile camp, we can find fresh canned food produced in recent years. It's not strange that a few bags of cereal were scattered in the wilderness and picked up by these monsters, right?"
"If this is wheat, it's not surprising, but this is oats." Liao Xing continued, "Because of the flour yield and taste, the planting area of oats is far less than that of wheat, one of the three major grains, even in the old era. And now on the Ark, there are only a few agricultural bases that grow oats on a large scale."
"It's a little... but it's not nothing..." Collins asked puzzledly.
"Ordinary people on the Ark would not consume oats at all, and oat products would not appear in the list of various military supplies... This grain, which was mainly used as livestock feed in the old era, has become an expensive luxury in this era. It only appears on the tables of the rich and will not be brought to the wilderness."
"Doctor, what exactly do you want to say?" Sergeant Ken couldn't help but frowned.
"These oats are most likely not from the Ark."
"But you also said that oats can't grow on Alpha," said Sergeant Ken. "Could it be that the Alpha people have built agricultural facilities that simulate the Earth's environment? Even if so, where do they get their seeds from?"
"We know too little about Alpha Planet and Alpha Civilization ." Liao Xing stood up and shook his head. "If we want to discover more information from this body, 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."
"We do have body bags, but where can we get so much formalin?" Collins said in embarrassment. "If we just stuff the bodies into the body bags, they will probably have rotted by the time we return after completing the mission."
"Use this." Liao Xing tore open a packet of sodium chloride powder used to prepare saline solution, and applied the white powder evenly on the surface and inside of the corpse.
"Is this possible?" Collins was a little surprised.
"Humans invented the method of using salt to pickle food and extend the shelf life of food thousands of years ago. High-concentration salt solution has good preservative and bactericidal effects and can also be used to preserve corpses when necessary," Liao Xing replied.
"Use the method of preserving food to preserve the body..." Collins only felt a wave of discomfort in his throat, as if acid was about to burst out at any time... Even Ke Lan had an urge to vomit.
Using salt to preserve corpses... The most famous one is the second emperor of the Liao Dynasty in the old era of China, Emperor Taizong of Liao, Yelü Deguang. The emperor died suddenly on his way back from the southern expedition. It was summer at that time, and the empress dowager required that Yelü Deguang's corpse must be sent back intact. The civil and military officials around the emperor had no choice but to follow the advice of a military chef and use salt to preserve Yelü Deguang's body.
Although Yelu Deguang's body had not decayed, when it was presented to the Queen Mother, it was no different from a kind of bacon called "羓"... As for the cook who came up with this idea, although there is no subsequent record in the official history, it is estimated that his end would not be good...
