Limeng gently pushed the final seed deep into the warm soil. His palm seemed to retain the seed's unique texture—hard, round, and pregnant with astonishing, explosive potential.
He gazed at the newly covered planting spot on the edge of the cracked fissure. There, a golden-red seed lay dormant, like a miniature fusion core carefully embedded deep within a dead and silent stratum of rock, waiting to be ignited.
Limeng did not leave. He sat cross-legged right at the edge of the field ridge, his dust-covered arms hugging his knees, his gaze locked onto the small reclaimed patch like the focus of a welding torch. The whispering and complaining around him seemed muffled, as if separated by a layer of frosted glass.
Time felt infinitely viscous across the dead fields.
An engineer's instinct took over his perception. He closed his eyes, no longer looking at the ash-gray, lifeless earth, but in his mind he clearly hallucinated the low, continuous hum of a graphics card fan running at full tilt.
Hum—hum—hum—
This became his sole timer. One second, two seconds... Every second felt like a rusted gear turning with agonizing difficulty. The engineer's blood assessed the risks: Was the modifier ratio precise? Was the local Geo Element's inertia underestimated? Would those precious seeds be silently swallowed by this wasteland?
"Minute thirty..." he muttered to himself. The fan hum in his mind seemed to grow louder, carrying a hint of high-load screeching.
"Look, absolutely nothing is happening..." The tall, thin man let out a long yawn, dragging out his words with heavy sleepiness and unconcealed mockery. "I told you it was a waste—"
Before the word "effort" could escape his lips.
Screech—!!!
A dense, crisp yet explosively powerful cracking sound—like countless miniature sheets of ice being instantly pierced by a white-hot branding iron—suddenly erupted from beneath the gray, lifeless earth! The noise was as dense as popping beans, or like the earth letting out a long-suppressed roar!
Not one spot, not a few spots—a full twenty-three blinding, golden-red cracks! Like a fire dragon sleeping underground suddenly opening its eyes, they violently tore apart the iron-hard rock crust! In the face of this overbearing vitality, the hard Geo Element soil was as fragile as a thin sheet of paper!
Immediately following, twenty-three shoots broke through the earth at a visible, almost overbearing speed!
The instant they broke through, their stalks displayed a dark, golden luster like quenched steel blades, carrying an unstoppable sharpness as they shot straight and unquestionably upward! The light bursting from the tips of the shoots was not a soft green, but a hot, pure golden-red flowing flame, like molten steel pouring from a furnace! This light was intensely bright, instantly piercing the gloom of the wasteland, illuminating the numb faces of the onlookers in shocked paleness, and making even the dust in the air seem stained with a layer of flowing golden brilliance!
"Ah!" the woman holding the baby screamed, instinctively taking a step back. The child in her arms wailed in fright at the sudden intense light and loud noise.
The white-haired old farmer who had once asserted that "gathering mushrooms is better" saw his cloudy eyes widen into circles, almost popping out of their sockets! His withered fingers, covered in calluses and mud, trembled violently like dead leaves in an autumn wind. Stumbling, practically scrambling, he rushed to the edge of the field ridge, completely unaware when his knees slammed heavily against the hard clumps of soil. With a reverence bordering on pilgrimage and incredulous panic, he reached out a trembling hand, extremely slowly and cautiously petting one of the robust sprouts that had already reached the height of his knee.
What greeted his touch was not soft, tender shoots as he had imagined, but warm, hard stalks full of explosive elasticity! The vitality surging within them, like a rushing subterranean river, was clearly transmitted through his fingertips, burning hot enough to practically scald his skin!
"Uh... uh ah..." Inopportune gurgling sounds issued from the old farmer's throat as his chapped lips twitched violently, like a drowning man finally reaching the air. His wrinkle-covered cheeks spasmed intensely, and cloudy tears welled up without warning, rolling down to mix with the dust on his face. Staring fixedly at the golden sprout, he suddenly jerked his head up to look at Limeng, his eyes filled with extreme shock, bewilderment, and a trace of world-view-shattering fear. His voice was as ragged as torn cloth: "The Geo... the Archon of Geo... has manifested a miracle?! This... this..."
The surrounding refugees were completely dumbfounded. The tall, thin man stood with his mouth open, his yawn frozen on his face, forgetting to wipe the drool sliding down the corner of his mouth. His mushroom-digging hand hung frozen in mid-air, his gaze fixed straight on the twenty-three seedlings piercing the silence like golden-red javelins. The numb ashes were thoroughly burned through by this sudden fierce flame, leaving only pure, speechless shock.
Limeng slowly stood up, his movements carrying a hint of stiffness after remaining tense for so long. He patted the gray-white dust from his trouser legs, producing a muffled pattering sound that was exceptionally clear in the silent field.
He walked over to the old farmer, his calm gaze sweeping over the twenty-three seedlings bathing in the flowing golden flames. They were precisely arranged, forming an array full of geometric beauty, the sole symbol of order amidst this chaotic despair. His voice was clear and steady, not loud, yet carrying the unquestionable certainty characteristic of an engineer based on data and logic, cutting through the chaos and shock of the scene:
"No. It's the manifestation of science."
The moment his words fell, the soil analysis flowcharts and instrument hallucinations in his mind instantly dissipated like a receding tide. In their place was the comforting, waterfall-like green operational parameter interface flashing across the monitoring screen when Limeng Technology's CTX9080Ti graphics card successfully lit up—the familiar victory constructed by logic and rules.
The panoramic camera seemed yanked upward by an invisible force. Across the cracked, lifeless, ash-gray earth, those twenty-three golden-red seedlings resembled twenty-three miniature furnaces, radiating the light and heat of life. Their precise spacing, stalks gleaming with the luster of metal and flame, and tender leaves unfurling with newly born sharpness formed a geometric totem of strength and hope completely out of place in the wasteland.
Limeng extended his index finger, his fingertip carrying a hint of caution in exploring the unknown, and gently touched the soft yet resilient leaf at the top of one of the seedlings.
Warm vitality, mixed with a strange, thriving heat—like the warmth emitted by a top-tier running chip—passed clearly through his fingertips into his palm, all the way down to comfort his taut heart.
This texture...
It was remarkably similar to the warmth and vibration brought by stable operation that he felt when his fingertips brushed against the cooling fins the first time he successfully lit up that top-tier graphics card, the CTX9080Ti, in his Shenzhen laboratory—the touchable "miracle" of heat bred by cold logic.
A sense of familiarity spanning dimensions of time and space, carrying cold logic and blazing hope, struck his soul simultaneously.
The corners of his lips curved upward slightly, and a thought that only he could understand silently brushed through the depths of his soul:
[System self-test passed. Seeds... operating normally.]
Just as the aftershocks of this shock had yet to subside, unnoticed by anyone in the shadows of a rock fissure not far from the experimental field, a slender, nearly transparent Glaze Lily bud quietly absorbed the imperceptible, surging vitality escaping into the air, and slowly unfolded its first petal.