Pushing open the creaking wooden door, a wave of scorching, dry air mixed with dust rushed straight at him.
Before his eyes lay the so-called "test field" in the landing zone of the Serenitea Pot. Low wooden fences stood crookedly, symbolically enclosing a large patch of wasteland. The soil was a hopeless grayish-white, crisscrossed with cracks like the scars of a dried-up riverbed, or ceramics shattered by a blazing fire. Fine dust covered the surface, casting an inorganic, cold glow in the dim light—those were highly inert Geo Element particles, coating the earth like a suit of dead, silent armor. A few withered, yellow weeds crouched at the edges of the cracks, twisted and shriveled like air-dried skeletons. They were the only decoration on this dead land, yet they only added to the desolation.
A few hunched figures moved sluggishly along the edge of the field. Tattered clothes, sallow faces, and emaciated refugees were laboring to dig with withered branches or rusted metal fragments. Their target was a dull-colored mushroom with a curled cap—the Illusion Mushroom. This was one of the few things on this wasteland that could barely stave off hunger.
An old farmer with white hair and beard, his fingernails caked with gray mud, mechanically dug out one mushroom and tossed it into the ragged cloth bag at his waist without even looking. His turbid eyes swept over Limeng, who was standing on the ridge of the field, and his raspy voice sounded like sandpaper rubbing together: "Growing crops? Heh... Young man, save your breath. In this ghost of a place, if you can dig up a few mushrooms to keep from starving, the Geo Archon has opened his eyes... Growing crops? You'd better off foraging a couple more mushrooms."
Numbness.
Thick ashes covered the gaze of every survivor. They had long since given up any hope for the locked-down land beneath their feet.
Limeng didn't say a word. He walked to the edge of the field and squatted down. The young hands belonging to Limeng, the "Liyue agricultural expert," reached out, his fingertips touching the grayish-white soil surface.
Hard!
A rough, icy, and completely lifeless sense of hardness hit him instantly, like touching inferior grit and gravel. This sensation pierced his brain like a needle, activating two completely different torrents of knowledge.
The Teyvat agricultural knowledge belonging to the original "Limeng" surfaced clearly: the Geo Element particles were extremely inert, locking the gaps between soil particles and blocking the flow of water and nutrients, leaving the earth as if petrified.
At the same time, a slight wave of dizziness washed over him—resembling an electrical circuit overload. Fragmented, coldly flashing images forcibly squeezed into his consciousness: the operational interface illusion of a sophisticated soil composition analyzer, complex ion-exchange flowcharts, a pH measurement scale... Fragments of modern agricultural knowledge from an unknown source violently collided and intertwined within his cranial cavity.
The core contradiction was locked onto in an instant: to break open the shackles of this Geo Element, a strong acidic substance must be introduced for neutralization!
A memory fragment flashed by: amidst the mixed odors of the temporary infirmary, aside from herbs and staleness, there was also a faint, familiar acidic and astringent scent.
Medicine dregs! Those discarded Qingxin medicine dregs!
He stood up abruptly, his movement kicking up a small patch of grayish-white dust. The key to breaking the deadlock might just lie in those bitter residues.
The crude "laboratory" was nothing more than a wind-sheltered corner behind the back wall of the infirmary.
Limeng traded the promise of "assisting the pharmacist in grinding medicinal herbs" for a full coarse pottery bowl of medicine dregs radiating a pungent, bitter acidity. The dregs were sticky and dark brown.
He then walked over to a young Millelith soldier resting against the wall. The soldier's face was sallow, his expression tired but still relatively kind. "Brother, can I borrow your hoe?" Limeng pointed at the old hoe with a blade full of rust and chips by the other's feet.
The soldier lifted his eyelids, asked no questions, and simply nodded.
Finally, Limeng's gaze fell on a discarded object in the corner—a dusty, edge-cratered glazed lampshade. He walked over and carefully knocked away the jagged, uneven edges, leaving a natural "mortar" with a perfect arc and uniform thickness.
Resource integration—an engineer's instinct carved into their bones.
He squatted down and began to operate. First, he used the hoe handle to vigorously mash the medicine dregs in the coarse pottery bowl, producing a muffled, squishing sound. Next, he scraped cooled plant ash from the nearby bonfire pile and carefully added it to the bowl. Finally, his gaze swept over a few poor-quality Illusion Mushrooms discarded by refugees nearby. He walked over and snapped off their roots, which were stained with slimy slime.
A recipe for a "vernacular soil conditioner" based on reality's predicament and fragmented knowledge rapidly took shape in his mind. Proportions, sequence, expected reaction... The engineer's logical thinking operated at high speed.
Returning to the "reclaimed zone" he had marked out at the edge of the test field, which was only about the size of half a table, he gripped the heavy, rusted hoe.
His movements were somewhat clumsy at first. But the moment the hoe embedded into the hard soil, the muscle memory of this young body was awakened! His waist and abdomen exerted force, his arms swung, and his movements quickly transitioned from sluggish to smooth and natural, as if he had farmed like this thousands of times. Sweat soon seeped from his temples.
Yet, the soul belonging to the "coder" was frowning: the efficiency was too low! Too primitive! He instinctively reached into his pocket—there should have been a smartphone there capable of searching for information online at any time. His fingertips met only coarse cloth and the twenty-three precious seeds of Chisui Double-Resistant No. 3 hidden in his inner pocket.
"Tch..." He stopped, wiped the sweat from his brow, and chuckled self-deprecatingly under his breath, "Fine, hardware conditions are limited. The temporary worker at Gengxin Technology now has to rely on the version 2.0 human meat CPU..." He shook his sore arms and raised the hoe once more, turning over and leveling the last patch of hard soil.
The conditioner was poured onto the loosened soil.
The moment the grayish-white soil touched the mixture, it let out a faint hissing sound! A plume of white mist carrying a pungent, acidic medicinal smell and plant ash rose into the air!
This anomaly immediately drew the gazes of more numb onlookers. A few refugees who had originally been digging for mushrooms in the distance stopped what they were doing and hesitantly clustered around. Their eyes mingled with curiosity, numbness, and a trace of imperceptible, almost habitual mockery.
"A waste of effort..." muttered a woman holding an infant, instinctively tightening the ragged cloth wrapped around the child, as if that scrap of fabric could ward off all disappointment.
"That seed looks just like a nugget of gold; you can tell it's extraordinary," another thin, tall man smacked his lips, a tone of regret in his voice, "If you traded it to a Fontaine merchant, wouldn't it fetch enough black bread for three days? Burying it in this ghost of a place is a waste..."
"Young people, acting on every whim..." The old farmer from before shook his head, his turbid gaze sweeping over the wisp of white mist and mixed gray soil as if foreseeing the outcome, then lowered his head to continue searching for the Illusion Mushrooms he depended on for survival.
The murmurs grated against his eardrums like fine grit.
Limeng paid them no mind. He squatted down and carefully retrieved those golden-red Corn seeds from his inner pocket. Each seed was plump and hard, shimmering in the dim light with an understated vitality like solidified magma. He took a deep breath, his fingertips precisely puncturing small holes into the loosened soil, his movements steady and focused, much like soldering the most critical components onto a precision circuit board.
One, two... With desperate resolve, he buried all his hopes for survival beneath this dead, gray rock.