Limeng raised his eyes to look. The corn intercropped with the purple-leaf greens stood like neat rows of verdant soldiers. Their stalks were thick and straight, and the stems tightly wrapped by leaf sheaths were visibly thicker by more than a margin than those in the traditional monoculture plots nearby. Sunlight filtered through the leaves, revealing clear veins and a vibrant, yet restrained, vitality. A gentle breeze swept past, and the tender purple-leaf greens—with their lovely purple curled edges—gently swayed, dotting the spaces between the cornstalks and lending a touch of vibrant, rustic charm.
"Care to try some?" Jingyi's voice came from beside him, carrying a trace of unperceived briskness that broke Limeng's reverie. Her slender wrists supported a few freshly washed tender leaves of the purple-leaf greens. The leaves were a tender, vibrant green, their purple edges resembling meticulously drawn decorations, while the droplets rolling across their surfaces refracted tiny, glittering spots of light under the sun, crystalline and translucent, as if carrying the fresh scent of morning dew.
Limeng took a leaf and, without hesitation, chewed it raw. At first, his tongue caught a faint sense of astringency, but it was instantly overwhelmed by a clear, sweet, and slightly savory juice that quickly flooded his mouth, carrying a unique, crisp freshness belonging to plants. "Not bad." He nodded, swallowing the earthy-fragrant taste, and looked into the expectant eyes behind Jingyi's lenses. "Better texture than expected."
Jingyi pushed up the delicate round-framed glasses on the bridge of her nose. Her eyes behind the lenses curved into crescents, gleaming with the small, triumphant light typical of a researcher: "The temporary canteen tried making a tender purple-leaf greens soup today. It's a bit watery, but at least it added some green." Her tone turned lighter, then instantly carried a trace of helplessness. "Though you can still hear grumbling, saying things like, 'Instead of growing gold in good soil, they're just wasting effort planting these leafy greens that can't fill your stomach.' Still..." She paused, looking toward a few farm women in the distance pointing at the purple-leaf greens. "The murmurings are definitely a lot quieter than they were a few days ago."
The golden hue of grain and the emerald green of vegetables—two entirely different colors—were simultaneously nurtured and growing on this barren land at this very moment. This solid, tangible sight acted like an invisible yet immensely tough chisel, quietly chipping away at a subtle yet undeniable crack within the refugees' hearts, which had been wrapped layer by layer in suspicion and despair and nearly petrified. A wisp of light named "possibility," named "hope," was laboriously filtering through.
As Limeng's gaze still lingered on that splash of fresh green in the fields, Jingyi's figure had already quietly vanished down the path leading to the Temporary Archive. There lay another silent battlefield within the Serenitea Pot.
The Temporary Archive, a refuge hastily retrofitted from an abandoned grain warehouse, miserly squeezed light through the gaps of high windows, forming several turbid beams of light in the air heavy with the pungent smell of aged grain mold and the decay of old paper. Jingyi curled up alone beside a low table in the corner, pressing almost her entire upper body against the desk. To see clearly the fragments as fragile as butterfly wings, the tip of her nose was nearly touching the tabletop. She deliberately kept her breathing extremely light and long, fearing that a single breath might blow away these fragments of words spanning a millennium.
In her left hand, a pair of special tweezers featured a slender metal arm delicately inlaid with a small magnifying glass ground from crystal. With these tweezers, she steadily clamped a fragment of mulberry paper, thin almost to the point of transparency, with charred and curled edges. In her right hand was another pair of finer, sharper tweezers, their tips gleaming faintly in the dim light. Utterly focused, she moved her wrist with an almost imperceptible range of motion, trying to position this fragile piece of memory back onto an ancient book page equally riddled with insect damage and scorch marks, nearly falling apart. Sweat seeped from her smooth temples, sliding down her fair skin and past her slightly trembling eyelashes, bringing a stinging sensation and blurriness, but she remained completely oblivious, only blinking instinctively.
*Click.*
With an almost inaudible soft sound, the fragment carrying a millennium of time finally embedded itself seamlessly into its original position. At that very instant, a line of blurry yet tenaciously surviving Liyue ancient seal script, like a sealed password suddenly activated, unexpectedly struck her field of vision:
"Jiahe Symbiosis Technique: Tall crops anchor the soil, short beans enrich the fields, a double harvest can be expected."
"Tall crops... short beans... symbiosis..." Jingyi muttered unconsciously, her voice as light as a falling feather. Yet in her mind, countless dust-covered ancient texts, agricultural proverbs, ballad chants, and even the experiences passed down by word of mouth from elderly farmers in the fields were instantly ignited and linked together by these few words! The phrase from *Teyvat Agricultural Proverbs Annotated*, "Planting purple greens beside millet leaves the soil unspent," suddenly popped out, violently colliding with the four words "short beans enrich the fields"! The blocked train of thought cleared instantly, and the answer to a question that had troubled her for a long time—how to maximize the use of barren land—seemed hidden right within this ancient wisdom!
She abruptly tossed aside the tweezers, not even caring to wipe the sweat blurring her vision, and grabbed a piece of charcoal and a relatively flat piece of draft paper from nearby. Her wrist flew, and the charcoal made a hurried rustling sound against the rough paper, sketching rapidly:
The tall cornstalks stood like green pillars, upright and full of a sense of strength—this was "tall crops anchor the soil"!
Directly beneath them, the purple-leaf greens, previously planted rather sparsely, were arranged compactly in double rows, dense and thick, their leaves like tiny purple shields—was this not "short beans"?
With hurried, forceful dashed lines, she indicated the underground world—the deep root network of the corn, resembling main taproots, intertwining and wrapping quietly beneath the ground with the denser, shallower fibrous roots of the purple-leaf greens like close neighbors. She recalled descriptions in ancient texts about "earthly fertility circulation" and "roots embracing one another." The property of the purple-leaf greens' roots nourishing the soil was clearly noted nearby: "Short beans enrich the fields and nourish the main crop!"
"Row spacing! Right, the row spacing can be narrowed even further!" She was so excited she almost wanted to jump up, her chest heaving violently. She pressed the charcoal hard against the paper, leaving a dark mark, "Narrow it to one meter! The planting density of the purple-leaf greens can be increased by at least double! Let them 'symbiosize' more closely and give full play to the effect of 'enriching the fields'! This... this is the true meaning of the 'Jiahe Symbiosis Technique'!" This massive discovery made all the blood in her body boil. She excitedly raised her head, wanting to immediately find someone to share this breakthrough concept excavated from ancient texts—
Only to crash unexpectedly into a pair of focused, gazing eyes.
Limeng had unknowingly stood silently behind her, slightly leaning forward, intently looking at the sweaty, crudely stroked symbiotic draft on the low table, which was full of inspiration and insight. He was looking so earnestly that he hadn't even noticed the breeze stirred up by her sudden lifting of her head fluttering the stray hairs on his forehead.
"Next season," Limeng spoke calmly, as if the exquisite conception on the draft had already been simulated a thousand times in his mind. His fingertips crossed over Jingyi's shoulder, carrying the precision unique to an engineer, and pointed at the precious gap between the double rows of purple-leaf greens on her draft, "Here, we can intercrop Sumeru Sea-buckthorn." He added, "Sea-buckthorn is drought-resistant, has shallow roots, and its peak nutrient demand period is different. It can fill the gaps, anchor the sand, preserve moisture, and its fruit is useful too."
Jingyi's eyes widened instantly, her train of thought instantly broadened. Sea-buckthorn! She immediately searched her memory for related records; indeed, ancient books mentioned sea-buckthorn as a "good friend of vacant land."
Limeng took the piece of charcoal that still retained her warmth with utmost naturalness. His wrist was steady and powerful, and in the blank space of the symbiotic draft, he quickly sketched a growth cycle coordinate axis with distinct horizontal and vertical dimensions:
The X-axis clearly marked the time scale: sowing stage, seedling stage, jointing stage, heading stage, harvesting stage...
The Y-axis marked the critical nutrient demand peaks.
Several concise curves extended on the coordinate axis: the corn's peak nutrient demand was marked with a thick dark green line during the jointing-to-heading stage; the "field-enriching" effect of the purple-leaf greens was marked with a soft purple line during the mid-growth stage; finally, a brown line representing Sumeru Sea-buckthorn, possessing a sandy texture, was added. Its low water-demand period and relatively flat peak nutrient-demand period were cleverly noted during the gaps of the corn's peak nutrient-demand period.
Several critical intersection points were marked with circles by him, annotated with extremely concise symbols alongside: crop rotation to nourish the soil, staggered absorption, endless regeneration.
Jingyi's eyes shone brightly, like ignited stars. She understood instantly: this was optimizing and expanding the symbiotic principles recorded in ancient texts in an alternative way! Without hesitation, she picked up another brush and wrote annotations beside Limeng's chart in neat, delicate regular script with a lingering trace of excitement:
"Ancient methods verified, symbiosis secures the foundation; seasons rotate, soil fertility never exhausts."
Two focused faces were illuminated by the flickering, weak lamplight on the low table. One piece of charcoal sketched rigid engineering logic and time scheduling; one writing brush recorded warm ancient wisdom and humanistic annotations. The two wisdoms achieved a perfect blending and resonance in the dim archive corner heavy with the scent of mold and old paper, upon this rough piece of draft paper bearing future hope. An invisible tacit understanding quietly grew within the rustling sound of flowing brush tips.