Apocalypse: After Being Reborn, I Stocked Up on All Supplies-Chapter 179 - : Survival at Sea: A Big Secret

Chapter 179: Chapter 179: Survival at Sea: A Big Secret

Scorpions do not have ears.

They rely entirely on the sensory hairs on their body surfaces to detect movement.

So when the scorpion was moving about within the “Barrier,” feeling the direction of the surrounding airflow, Jiang Yan, with her sharp eyes, caught sight of it in a second.

She narrowed her pupils and quickly grabbed a bottle of insecticide while pointing in the direction the scorpion was crawling with her other hand,

“There’s a scorpion!”

“Snap!”

In the flash of a flame, a sharp dagger fell from above, aiming straight for the heart of the scorpion. A small amount of viscous fluid splattered out.

It was Song Qian.

After struggling for a few seconds, the scorpion’s limbs stopped moving.

“Jiang Yan, did you see where it crawled out from?” Song Qian looked at Jiang Yan.

Jiang Yan pointed in the direction from where the large scorpion had emerged, “It crawled out from that pile of rocks.”

Scorpions are nocturnal and tend to live in groups; rarely do they survive alone.

She suspected that beneath those rocks, there might be other comrades hiding.

“Alright.” Song Qian stood up and signaled Sun Jingtao and Ye Qing to also take up arms.

“Scorpions are cold-blooded and can adapt to both high and low temperatures. However, they hardly move when the temperature drops below ten degrees, so they should be easy to catch now,” Sun Jingtao said, and then gestured with his hand. They moved the rocks from several directions.

All of them had, more or less, participated in “wilderness survival”-type field survival training.

Back then, catching lizards, spiders, cobras, scorpions, drinking snake blood, and eating insects raw were all essential training exercises.

Given the current surroundings, it was much easier.

Jiang Yan had a natural fear of snakes and scorpions. She held the insecticide bottle and stood far away.

Su Dai also took a bottle.

She still felt a bit frightened. Luckily, she hadn’t encountered any scorpions earlier when she had gone to gather rocks for cooking.

Sure enough, there was a cluster underneath the broken rocks.

By the size, they seemed much smaller than the one earlier.

They were probably scorpion’s offspring.

Lots of white scorpion droppings were also around.

The group was precise in their action; within moments, they had exterminated this nest of scorpions.

All the scorpions were then gathered together.

Song Qian took a silver-gray sealed jar with a lid from his tactical backpack.

He cut off the scorpions’ stings, which carried poison, one by one with a knife and put the stings into the sealed jar.

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From the strange smell when he opened the jar, it seemed that the stings from those scorpions they had captured before were also inside.

Su Dai and the others were puzzled, “Brother Song, why are you keeping the scorpion stings? They are highly poisonous!”

“Don’t worry, this is good stuff,” Song Qian said, then screwed the lid tight and put it back into his backpack.

“You may not know, but there are people who pay to collect key extracts from mutated animals. So the venom from these mutated scorpions is valuable,” Kong Wu chimed in mysteriously.

After he spoke, he glanced at Song Qian, and seeing no objection from the latter, he added,

“And these are wild, much more potent than those cultivated artificially!”

Sun Jingtao and others furrowed their brows slightly, “Key extracts from mutated animals?”

That phrase made them involuntarily recall their earlier experiences in the Shallow Bay District with the live-bred Mutated Leech.

And the arrangement Dao Yinping had described, where they would need to deliver Leech to the Flame Base.

Were these things interconnected?

“Yes,” Song Qian didn’t avoid it and nodded.

Sun Jingtao gave him a sharp look, “But nowadays, the high temperatures have already caused most animals and plants to go extinct. So far, the mutated animals we have seen, other than Blood Mosquitoes, Leech, are just fish and these scorpions.

I’m not sure if those bats we saw that day count. After all, they were too far away to see clearly their size and such. Not to mention other things, these so-called mutated animals, other than changes in size, their intelligence, physical strength haven’t changed much.

What else could they do with these animals, other than developing them as food?”

Song Qian: “Scientific research. At first, they collected those Blood Mosquitoes, and later on, Leech and others. The species and numbers of animals that have survived in this world after the high temperatures and heavy rains are actually far beyond our imagination.”

“Blood Mosquitoes? They even want to study such disgusting creatures??” Su Dai almost dropped her jaw in shock.

Jiang Yan listened intently without speaking, taking a quiet breath.

When mutations occurred around, scientists would definitely conduct scientific research on these new mutant species.

And that was within reason.

But if the research was not conducted by official scientists, but rather by various private bases…

Then the secrets behind it were profound.

Song Qian scanned everyone, pondered for a few seconds, then continued,

“Blood Mosquitoes were the first to mutate, and they mutated most thoroughly. Have you ever thought about what it would look like if the size mutation of the Blood Mosquitoes were applied to other species?”

Su Dai muttered to herself, estimating, “If we enlarge the scorpions in the same ratio as the Blood Mosquitoes, these scorpions could be as big as a small crocodile…”

Everyone: “…”

“They are researching not just the problems of size increase, but the coordination between size and bodily functions. Have you thought about it, that being able to survive in these extreme disasters in itself is a remarkable ability?” Song Qian continued.

“Survival of the fittest, only the fittest survive. If we thus reason, then are humans who can survive these extreme disasters also considered a sort of capability?” Su Dai had a sudden realization.

“Yes,” Song Qian confirmed with a nod.

Ye Qing recalled the perfectly preserved bodies floating in Formalin on the 31st floor of the sky hotel and hit the nail on the head,

“So, to speak a bit conspiracy-theory-like, their research subjects are not just the surviving mutated animals but may also be the human survivors of these extreme disasters?”

“In theory, yes,” Song Qian concluded, narrowing his eyes and giving Ye Qing a pointed look.

Everyone gasped, turned to Song Qian, “So, who are they?”

“What we’ve heard seems to indicate that the Flame Base is involved in this, as for others, who knows?” Kong Wu shrugged, not forgetting to sneak a glance at Song Qian.

Song Qian remained as calm as ever, neither confirming nor denying.

“Flame Base?” Though Sun Jingtao and the others had guessed it already, they still feigned surprise for a moment.

Previously, they had heard some bizarre rumors about the Flame Base from Dao Yinping.

But those were limited to likening it to a deranged fortune-teller, Young Master Xue, cold-blooded and fierce.

Then there was his penchant for collecting beautiful women and dabbling in medical cosmetics and enhancements.

But studying mutated animals was the realm of life sciences.

Most average people and equipment couldn’t handle that.

Unless, of course, there were unusually strong backgrounds and resources backing it…