Chapter 184 The Queen's Second Cocoon

For the Zerg, the useful parts of the genes of all the creatures eaten will be preserved in the Zerg's own genes.

And the Zerg can evolve these traits.

Of course, these traits can also be chosen not to evolve or be displayed in a certain Zerg individual according to the will of the Zerg Queen who controls the Zerg colony.

The Queen can even take back all these characteristics of the Zerg that have evolved related traits.

After all, the Zerg is an exoskeleton creature.

And suppose a certain bird has a hollow skeleton, which is one of the natural traits of bird flight.

If the Zerg eats this bird and then evolves this skeleton, will it still be alive?

However, even if the trait is restricted and taken back by the Queen, the things contained in the Zerg's genes will not change.

Everything is hidden deep in the genes, including the "hollow skeleton" genes assumed by Chen Ming.

It's just that as the complexity of the genes increases, the genes in front of the Zerg will become difficult to mine.

And as the Zerg colony expands and multiplies, many queens will gradually lose their memory of these genes in iterations.

It will be even more difficult to evolve various gene shapes that the queen may not have chosen to evolve due to the external environment.

The gene queen that has just eaten recently can evolve at will, but the genes that were once hidden deep in the genes.

It can only rely on the stimulation of the external environment to allow the queen to find the existence of these genes in a certain individual first, and then express these genes in all Zerg individuals.

For example, fighting, or extremely harsh and harsh environments.

For Chen Ming, there is a third way to make the Zerg evolve, using his psychic power to trace back the genes once a month.

However, this should be regarded as the second way in practical terms, extracting the traits that already exist in the genes, but the efficiency can only be said to be unsatisfactory.

In short, when Chen Ming knew that there were these large insects on the habitable planet, he took the initiative to send Yu Hui to catch a bunch of them.

Chen Ming's idea is very simple.

Anyway, the Zerg can get genes by eating them, and the genes just obtained do not exist in the complex gene chain. The Queen can evolve at any time.

Then just find more creatures to feed the Queen.

Like the giant bugs on the habitable planet that Chen Ming found last week.

Some of the characteristic creatures on the habitable planet found last week.

All of them were fed to the Queen by Chen Ming.

If valuable genes are extracted, they will evolve, and if they are not valuable, they will be left alone, even if this will increase the complexity of the genes.

The traits that evolve in battle are to adapt to battle. Zerg individuals that cannot evolve suitable traits or evolve traits that will affect combat should have died long ago.

And although the Zerg have been like this for so many years.

But since they were killed by humans and became endangered species, it has proved to a certain extent that their evolutionary ability is definitely not good under the condition of special targeted means.

With the lessons learned from the past, Chen Ming felt that it would be better to use some more scientific methods to make the Zerg evolve.

That is, when he has enough ability in biotechnology, he can analyze and test the genes of the Zerg.

Directly use physical means to extract Zerg genes, analyze the abilities contained in each gene fragment, select the useful ones, and then let the Queen Zerg extract and evolve from their own genes.

What Chen Ming is learning now is the crystallization of the empire in biotechnology.

Since the empire was able to specifically target the Zerg and kill the Zerg to the brink of extinction.

Then correspondingly, the Zerg will definitely be able to shine with new glory in terms of cultivation.

Although Chen Ming cannot do this now, he will always be able to do it in the future as he deepens his study of biotechnology.

And he always feels that compared to relying on the Zerg's own evolution in battle, direct feeding and nearby evolution are actually more efficient.

And it can satisfy his ideas to a certain extent.

After Chen Ming learned about the laws of Zerg evolution from the Queen Zerg, he already had several special ideas for the Zerg.

For example, feed a few of the energy crystal crabs he has on hand to the Queen Zerg.

As long as the energy crystal crab eats normally, it can use its own secretions to create a self-storage material on its back that naturally carries energy.

At the same time, this crystal shell is also a common energy storage material of extremely high quality, even better than various artificial materials and artificial devices.

However, the energy crystal crab is an omnivorous creature, and its usual diet is mainly various rocks and mosses in caves, and its eating efficiency is extremely low.

The Zerg is just the opposite. The Zerg can eat everything.

And the Zerg itself has something similar to the energy crystal crab shell.

That is, the biomass stored after the queen digests and transforms.

If the Zerg absorbs the genes of the energy crystal crab, the advantages brought by the combination of the two are a little bit unimaginable to Chen Ming.

Chen Ming's other idea is the Alturan Sky Eel, the source of Sky Steel.

Sky Steel, which can be said to be the top material among advanced materials, is a must for manufacturing hyperspace channel systems and spacecraft.

Chen Ming is now running around the star field with a bunch of afterglow, so he needs this material.

But he has no stable source of Sky Steel and can only choose to buy it at a high price.

Although Chen Ming can buy it from Sinda Company through his relationship with the factory director, the company is currently mainly focusing on the mining space station.

They want to rebuild the mining space station in a new location to facilitate the subsequent development of Sky Steel.

Therefore, at present, Sinda Company can only rely on some mining ships to collect a small amount of Sky Steel, which may not be enough for its own use, and partners have to give some out.

Chen Ming is definitely out of it.

So when a large amount of expenditure needs to be used to buy Sky Steel.

Chen Ming is thinking, if the Sky Fish can be fed to the Zerg, will there be some unique output and effect?

It's just that the Sky Fish is a little difficult to deal with.

At present, Chen Ming only knows that there are two places where air fish exist.

One is the star system of the mining space station, which is managed by the company.

The other is Yuhui's place.

When Yuhui raided the military outpost in the star zone, they captured several air fish.

Chen Ming knew which star system Yuhui sent the air fish to, but it was not so easy to bring it out.

So Chen Ming had to think about the air fish again.

Although both energy crystal crabs and air fish are good ideas, they are not combat types, and they should not improve the combat ability that the Zerg species needs most.

However, Chen Ming has never seen a powerful combat type creature with his own eyes.

The only powerful creature he has seen with his own eyes is the dark Zerg like a mammoth in the Zerg gene.

Of course, not seeing a powerful creature does not mean that Chen Ming does not know that powerful creatures exist.

Because when he was studying biology, he also knew a lot of ecological protection areas, or ecological protection planets, within the empire.

These are basically planets with unique creatures discovered during the Empire's pioneering era. Some of these creatures were put into the Empire's biology textbooks as examples.

These unique creatures that deserve special protection each have their own special features.

For example, Chen Ming knows a giant butterfly that lives in the atmosphere. The butterfly cluster has the ability to create auroras on a large scale.

Let the entire planet be covered by auroras all year round and in a beautiful environment.

So this planet is not only an ecological protection planet, but also a good tourist planet.

Although the butterflies on this planet seem to have nothing to do with combat power.

The biology book only gives a brief introduction to this species, and does not explain that this butterfly has aggressiveness and strong combat capabilities.

But if you think about it carefully, you can find something wrong.

The cause of the aurora is the plasma generated by the ionization reaction of the charged particle flow entering the planet's magnetic field.

That is, the same plasma as the plasma burst propulsion and plasma weaponization entanglement on the Brilliant Class.

So, these aurora butterflies actually have the terrifying ability to control strong charged particle flows and even plasma.

Although they have become animals for people to watch in the zoo in the Empire.

But if their genes can be absorbed by the Zerg, how can the Zerg evolve?

This is just a unique creature that Chen Ming has briefly learned about.

And there are many such ecological protection planets in the Empire, and there are more unique and powerful creatures.

So Chen Ming's current plan is to feed the Queen of the Worm a few energy crystal crabs to try and see the effect.

Of course, he did so. It is not difficult to send the energy crystal crabs from the temporary base to the Queen of the Worm.

After confirming that the energy crystal crabs have enough effect, or the Queen of the Worm has shown some potential, he will try to get some other interesting creatures.

Of course, it is through legitimate means. Poaching is not popular in the prosperous star field.

Even. After Chen Ming's fleet went to the space station held hostage by Zuo Jing,

Chen Ming still had some ideas in his mind about feeding the fungal psychic creatures he had just obtained to the worms.

This still needs to wait for the performance of the Queen of the Worm, and see the progress of Chaofan.

Let's see what Chaofan can research.

Let's see whether it is more valuable to cultivate the fungus by yourself or to feed it to the Queen Worm.

But just after Chen Ming finished recording what he had just done this week.

He suddenly received a message from the Queen Worm.

The Queen Worm has spun a cocoon.

Chen Ming immediately took over a bug in the Queen Worm's nest through the Zerg hive mind network.

He went to the Queen Worm's biological spaceship, which no longer needed to be buried deep underground and could build a nest directly on the surface.

The Queen Worm had eaten the energy crystal crab a few days ago, but she didn't expect that she would start to cocoon now.

When Chen Ming observed the Queen Worm's current appearance through the compound eyes and hive mind network of the Zerg.

It can be seen that it is the same as before, and the entire biological spaceship is wrapped by the augmented organisms.

Close to the cocoon, you can hear the heavy and slow heartbeat of the biological spaceship inside the cocoon.

Chen Ming specially asked the highest point, which had been running around in the past few days to open up the hyperspace channel, to return to the Queen Worm and scan the cocoon.

The result was the same as last time. The augmented organisms that made up the cocoon resisted the scan of the highest point. In addition to being able to see a little bit of the biomass spaceship shell, the inside was pitch black.

And it was this pitch black that added a bit of expectation to Chen Ming's heart.

After waiting for more than a day.

The Queen Worm moved again, and it broke out of the cocoon smoothly.

Although the biomass spaceship outside the Queen Worm did not change much, it was still covered by the streamlined black shell as before.

However, when Chen Ming was distracted by studying and controlling a bug to enter the biological spaceship, Chen Ming discovered that the evolved biological spaceship was different from the previous one.

Originally, there were some fluorescent cocoons inside the biological spaceship that could provide extremely small amounts of lighting.

Provide some lighting for the bugs inside the biological spaceship in the dim environment inside the spaceship.

Bugs with night vision and thermal sensing vision only need this little lighting to move freely in the dark environment inside the spaceship.

Now, all these fluorescent cocoons have been replaced by some luminous crystals with bright green color, which always seem to be full of radiation.

Of course, there is actually no such thing as radiation.

These crystals are the biomass converted from the digestion of the Zerg, which is actually condensed after the queen worm showed the genes of the unique glands used by the energy crystal crab to condense their back shells.

These things are also self-storage materials that can store energy, just like the back shell of the energy crystal crab.

It is called [Thorn Zerg·Biomass Energy Crystal].

This thing has a unique meaning to Chen Ming.

Because Chen Ming's ability has an unsolvable problem until now.

Energy transmission.

For Chen Ming, almost any energy storage material, including artificial batteries, will completely dissipate all the energy stored in it as long as he uses psychic energy to transfer it.

Only the self-storage material, which is the only exception and naturally carries energy, can still store energy in it under the action of Chen Ming's psychic energy.

Even if the energy is exhausted, it can be recharged by some ordinary methods.

And these subsequent stored energies can also be transmitted by Chen Ming over long distances by relying on the self-storage material as a carrier.

According to Chen Ming's previous understanding, the self-storage material of the energy crystal crab shell is much more powerful than most of the artificial energy storage materials he has learned about.

The usual energy crystal crab back shell can store two to three times the energy of the same volume of energy storage devices or energy storage materials.

And the Zerg energy crystals condensed by the glands evolved by the Zerg by absorbing the energy crystal crab genes are even more terrifying.

Take any one of them and it has an energy storage of more than five times the top artificial batteries on the same volume of cruisers.

At this point, Chen Ming already felt that the energy crystal crab mass breeding plan he had thought of before could be renamed.

Change it to the energy crystal worm mass breeding plan.

Let the queen worm produce some worms that are specifically used to produce these energy crystals.

Such worms must be easier to breed than energy crystal crabs, and only need the queen worm.

It is easier to raise than energy crystal crabs, and they can eat everything. If they can't eat, they can also let the special nutritional worms convert them into lacquer.

It is also easier to harvest materials than energy crystal crabs, and they can even spit out energy crystals on their own initiative.

Just like what the queen worm did just now.

Chen Ming saw that when the brightness of these energy crystals was gradually charged and reached the highest, the queen worm took the initiative to discharge these energy crystals from the flesh and blood of the biomass spacecraft.

Let some worms responsible for the transportation work be sent to the giant storage capsule that has shrunk several times because the biomass that no longer needs to store fluid is needed.

Such worms can be bred and produced in batches, and almost everything can be used as food for the Zerg and converted into this powerful material.

Chen Ming has foreseen how important it will be to the development of Chen Ming's colony in the future.

Even as long as the Queen of Insects is there, Chen Ming does not even need to be responsible for collecting it.

What he has to do is to find a way to put these materials into practical use and trade them with the Empire in the future.

However, it is too early to trade now, and studying the practical application of biological materials does not mean simply replacing batteries with self-energy storage materials.

There are many complicated processes involved.

Chen Ming is confident that he can produce results within a year.

But don't think about it now, the technical level he has mastered is not enough, and Chaofan also has things to do.

So after confirming the Queen Worm, Chen Ming still collected his attention and looked at whether there were any new changes in the Queen Worm.

Let's talk about the future later.

After all, Chen Ming still remembered that the Xinda Company had just developed an antimatter reactor that could be stable in large quantities and more powerful than all the power generation equipment in the empire.

Energy crystals seem to be able to produce some kind of wonderful cooperation with antimatter reactors.

So, since antimatter reactors have not been mass-produced yet, Chen Ming is not very good at mass-producing energy crystals now.

Let's talk about the two things that are expected in the future.

On the Queen Worm's biological spacecraft, except for the most obvious changes in energy crystals, the rest are only some structural details optimized.

The overall changes are not big, it seems that the energy crystal crabs mainly promote the cocooning and evolution of the Queen Worm.

The other creatures that Chen Ming fed to the Queen Worm before were useless.

But when Chen Ming observed the details of the Queen Worm's changes.

He suddenly noticed that the Queen Worm recalled all the Zergs who went out to collect various foods.

And directly absorbed most of the Zerg in the hive, leaving only some Zerg responsible for the defense of the hive.

The Queen began to cultivate a new generation of Zerg with the energy crystal crab gene.

Two days passed in a blink of an eye.

Under the control of the Queen, all Zerg individuals condensed an energy crystal that could store a large amount of energy in their bodies.

It can greatly extend the activity time of all Zerg individuals outside, and to a certain extent improve the combat effectiveness of Zerg individuals.

More energy reserves mean a stronger body, which is unquestionable.

However, the condensation of energy crystals may also lead to some negative effects.

For example, when the Zerg fights the enemy, the energy crystals on the Zerg corpse may be robbed.

But compared with the negative effects of some additional energy consumption, the improvement of the quality of the entire Zerg is obviously more important.

And the abundance of energy means that the speed of Zerg expansion will increase again.

The speed of the Queen's evolution will definitely accelerate again.

Chen Ming is looking forward to seeing the day when the Queen evolves into a cruiser.

If necessary, he could even sacrifice a cruiser, like the mother of the Queen of Insects that he controls now, and transform the man-made cruiser into a biological cruiser.

Since the day when the Queen of Insects re-evolved the hive.

Another four days passed in a flash.

The research equipment that Chen Ming bought before finally arrived.

There was absolutely no situation where Chen Ming deliberately delayed the progress in order to give Chaofan more time to study biotechnology, and had to let Lao Wu and other equipment gather before notifying, causing delays.

In short, Chaofan also almost understood the situation of this group of fungal psychic creatures in the past week.

So biological research can indeed be put aside for a while, and it is time for Chaofan to study what it wants to study.

Chaofan wrote down the research results of Chaofan with the knowledge level that Chen Ming can understand in biology now, and sent it to Chen Ming.

However, Chen Ming did not read it at the first time, but continued to have the morning course with Baiquan.

It was not until noon when Chen Ming was eating and resting that he put the terminal with the document opened next to him and contacted Chaofan.

But before he even looked at it, Chaofan came to the conclusion: "These psychic fungi are actually almost harmless to humans."

"?"

"What?"

Chen Ming quickly swallowed the food in his mouth to avoid choking.

He had clearly seen these fungi kill several people from Zuojing before, so how could they not be harmful?

Chaofan directly adjusted the content on Chen Ming's terminal to a page of photos, which was the photo of the damaged culture room in the laboratory that Chen Ming had captured when he was controlling the space station before.

Several bodies of Zuojing were lying there.

"According to my research, I found that the genes of this psychic creature have been modified."

"They have been implanted with some special root genes, that is, genes that cannot be modified a second time. Once modified, the species will die."

"This gene has only one effect, human body tissue is highly toxic to them."

"So these spores died after killing those people."

"And, because they are psychic creatures, even fungi do have a weak consciousness."

"They will take the initiative to stay away from things that are dangerous to them."

"So this is why I think it is almost harmless to humans."

"And look here."

Chaofan explained, marking a special device on the photo.

"It was this device that instantly emitted a large number of fungal spores, causing the deaths of those people."

"Under normal circumstances, the concentration of spores in the air is not high. Once the spores come into contact with human skin tissue or the mucous membranes of the nose and mouth, they will die directly."

"Dead fungi may cause some minor illnesses such as upper respiratory tract infections, but they will never be fatal."

"To reach a number of spores that is enough to kill you, you are almost inhaling pure spores."

"So I seriously suspect that there are humans on the space station who have used special devices to deliberately collect extremely high concentrations of spores for discharge."

"This is a special attack method used by the space station to target invaders."