Moving away the alien corpse, Zheng Rui went down the steps to the basement.

She saw the horrific and disgusting images again—bloody corpses, blood diluted by stagnant water on the ground—but not the slightest emotional fluctuation due to psychic abilities. Zheng Rui had already taken out the things that did not belong to a human in the dissected chest cavity of the corpse, and it seemed that no one had touched it after that.

Zheng Rui's feet were still wearing the slippers she had worn at her grandmother's house at the beginning, and she could only carefully step on the light-colored places as much as possible, and she saw the small octahedron that she had taken out and crushed earlier, as well as another cylindrical object.

The octahedron is supposed to be the "egg" of the alien, and the shell of the things that can grow is usually relatively loose, which means that it is not hard and can be easily damaged. It's just that the shape of the thing makes her think it's not a juvenile xenomorph, but more like some kind of organ - like the octahedral nucleus of the original xenomorph's abdomen. But given that the eggs of amniotes also account for most of the volume of yolk sacs and allantois, it cannot be said that there is anything wrong with this.

As for the cylindrical thing, there were a lot of blood vessels on it that seemed to belong to humans, and Zheng Rui guessed that this was the energy conversion device she had predicted its existence before. Based on the energy conversion efficiency of ordinary Earth creatures, it certainly wouldn't be able to reach the power needed to activate the ability, and this cylinder should be something that she thinks is beyond the scope of human comprehension to convert energy for the ability to consume.

According to her rough calculations, even the mere consumption of chemical energy would not sustain the release of the ability.

The complete oxidation reaction of 1 mol of glucose exerts 2840 kJ, while the oxidation of 1 mol of glucose in eukaryotic cells produces 30 mol of ATP, and the hydrolysis of 1 mol of ATP is 30.5 kJ. From the perspective of the transformation of chemical energy storage situation alone, the energy conversion rate of life on earth has reached more than 30%, and the main form of energy loss is heat production, which is also a necessary condition for maintaining life activities. Even if it were possible to somehow increase the conversion efficiency of chemical energy to 100%, it would only be a two-fold increase from the original one, and it would fall far short of the level of energy required to release the ability.

This means that this "energy converter" must be something other than a chemical energy converter.

The so-called chemical energy, that is, the Gibbs free energy of the reaction, comes from the reconfiguration of chemical bonds and the change of molecular state. A more "deeper" way of exerting energy than this is the restructuring of the inside of the atom, which is known to humans as the exergation of fission or fusion. For this form of energy, theoretically, as long as it is not a matter of iron nucleus, energy can be released from it, and this is equivalent to the exergonic mode of mass-energy conversion, and its efficiency is by no means comparable to chemical exergation.

From carbon atoms to iron atoms, the average binding energy of a nucleon is about 1 MeV worse. 1eV is equivalent to 1.6*10^-19J, so 1MeV = 1.6*10^-16kJ. For 1mol nucleons, that is, 1g of matter in a broad sense, the energy released from the decay of carbon atoms to iron atoms is 1.6*10^-16 times Avogadro's constant, and only the order of magnitude is calculated, and the release energy is in the order of 10^7kJ. Compared to 1 g of glucose burning and releasing about 16 kJ, the fusion energy of carbon atoms is six orders of magnitude different from it.

So, if this is some kind of small reactor, the loss of matter is probably very small compared to the amount of food consumed by humans. This can also explain that Zheng Rui was able to fake his death several times in a row without running out of energy, even if he felt hungry, it was only because the experiment took too long, and the normal metabolic activities consumed too much blood sugar.

According to this line of thought, it seems that in the modified human body, there are two sets of energy systems that supply abnormal energy and normal physiological activities. Zheng Rui thinks that if there is a condition, can this non-original high-efficiency energy converter supply the energy required for normal physiological activities at the same time?

This seems fanciful, as the energy currencies used are completely different. But if it succeeds, it means that these modified humans don't really need to eat.

Wait a minute—

Zheng Rui suddenly thought that the chemical basis of the alien should be different from that of humans, but it can feed on humans, and in the same way, she and Bian Na have been eating only alien meat and not normal food for the past few days, and they don't feel anything wrong. One explanation is that the Xenomorphs are alien creatures that have a partly the same chemical basis as humans, but this probability is a bit small.

Another explanation is that alien flesh is indigestible to humans, and human flesh is the same for aliens. However, since there are other ways of energy supply to maintain the energy supply, even if you eat something that cannot be produced by the original biological base, as long as you can take a certain amount of the corresponding element from it.

So they and the aliens prey on each other, just because they can satisfy their appetites?

This seems to make a lot of sense, and Zheng Rui did feel it, since she entered the "Apocalyptic MOD", she didn't particularly feel hungry due to blood sugar reduction. When she was hungry, she was only psychologically hungry, which could be relieved by eating a little food, and she could live normally with only one meal a day, which was inconceivable before.

Although the basal metabolic rate of a person will also decrease in response to caloric intake under starvation conditions, there must be a process, and it is impossible to adjust it after just a day and a half of starvation. When you think about it this way, it really looks like the effect of this non-original energy converter.

Moreover, Zheng Rui suddenly thought that yesterday she had been here to check on the matter of alien breeding since she got up in the morning, and after she went back, she began to have a nervous breakdown, completely losing her routine and rest, so she didn't catch up with the other three to eat once, and she hadn't eaten anything until now. During this time, she also killed an alien and came back to life three times with fake death, which was very energy-intensive, but even then she was not hungry at all, and even felt a little stretchy after drinking enough water.

Isn't it true that the energy they need for their physiological activities is no longer dependent on the chemical energy in their food?

If this is the case, then wouldn't it be ridiculous to kill each other for the sake of food?

But if that's the case, how can anyone else not know about it?

If nothing else, why didn't even Bian Na and them find out about this?

Zheng Rui: Sister Na, I suddenly want to ask a question.

Benna: What's the problem?

Zheng Rui: Have you ever felt particularly hungry after the "end times" came?

Benna: Absolutely, I feel hungry every day - what's wrong?

Zheng Rui: But I haven't eaten since the night before yesterday.

Benna: Really? However, I killed three aliens the night before, and what happened yesterday, and today...... Little Rui, don't you feel hungry?

Zheng Rui: Sometimes I feel hungry, but I haven't eaten. It seems that it's okay for us to skip meals?

Zuo Youcheng: I think so, too...... I didn't eat a single bite of the alien meat when you ate it - I was hungry, but it's better to be hungry than to eat it, right?

Zheng Rui: Then you are really squeamish.