The wind in the Serenitea Pot's landing zone never stopped. It carried grit and the whispers of despair, scraping like a blade against every inch of exposed skin. As far as the eye could see, the earth was caked, cracked, and ashen—a dead silence left by the precipitation of the Geo Element, hard as inferior concrete, making it difficult for even the hardiest weeds to take root.
Yet against this backdrop of utter despair, an abrupt, vibrant patch of emerald was tearing through the grayness with a near-arrogant posture. It was Limeng's experimental plot.
Limeng stood by the edge of the ridge, his mud-spattered coarse cloth trousers whipped by the wind. Beneath his feet came a microscopic yet continuous tremor. It wasn't the wind; it was root systems. Beneath this soil, accelerated by the abnormal time laws of the Serenitea Pot, twenty-three seeds of Chisui Double-Resistant No. 3 were frantically drawing in every shred of nourishment from the barren earth at an unprecedented speed, pushing upward, ever upward!
It had only been two days and twenty-two hours!
From the moment he had buried those sole surviving seeds—bearing the imprint of the Natlan volcanic region—with near-pious devotion into that bit of amended soil, these otherworldly lives refused to play by ordinary rules. They shot up, growing at a speed visible to the naked eye. Their wide leaves unfurled like broadswords carved from jade, upright and resilient, resembling not crops, but columns of young soldiers silently guarding the border. The verdant bracts tightly wrapped around the heavy ears, so plump they nearly burst, faintly revealing the alluring, gold-like luster within.
Compared to the ordinary crops outside the experimental plot—struggling in the same harsh environment, withered, yellow, sickly, their leaves curled and dry as if breathing their last any second—this oasis was blindingly luxurious. Like a giant magnet, it firmly locked onto the numb gazes of the survivors in the landing zone.
"Look... that corn... it's growing like a little tree..."
"Shh... keep it down, don't disturb..."
Whispers rippled through the distant crowd. Beneath the ice crust of despair, a weak yet very real spark of expectation quietly rekindled in the long-hollowed eyes. Several sallow children clutched at the hems of adults' clothes, timidly gazing at the unbelievable green, their throats swallowing involuntarily.
Just as this brief and fragile tranquility was enveloped by a trace of hopeful warmth—
"Insects! Heart-boring worms! They're coming—!!"
A scream, shrill and distorted, pierced viciously through the sky above the landing zone like a poisoned ice pick!
On the horizon, a rolling, sickening grayish-brown "cloud" was pressing down rapidly! Those weren't clouds; they were thousands, tens of thousands of heart-boring worms! The dense buzzing of their wings merged into a viscous, heavy wave of deathly noise that made one's scalp instantly explode and stomach churn, swallowing the Millelith squad leader's hoarse shouts as he tried to maintain order.
The apocalypse re-expressed!
Where the grayish-brown "wave" passed, the already sparse dead grass was devoured in the blink of an eye, leaving only bare, ghastly white ground. Despair, like the most violent plague, instantly crushed the crowd. Screams, crying, shoving... the crowd retreated in a rout like frightened beasts, and the tiny spark of hope just ignited was on the verge of being utterly crushed by this overwhelming despair.
"Fall back! Form a shield wall! Protect the fields!" The Millelith squad leader's eyes split, his roar tearing his throat. Heavy shields slammed into the ground with a dull thud, but amidst the all-consuming noise of the swarm, they seemed so weak and powerless, like a leaf in a giant wave.
The swarm's target was extremely clear—that lushest, most conspicuous patch of emerald at the edge of the landing zone! The filthy torrent, carrying a greed that destroyed all life, lunged straight for the experimental plot! The heart-boring worms at the very front flashed a fatal cold light on their needle-sharp mouthparts, just a fraction of an inch away from the plump, juicy corn leaves exuding the fragrance of life!
Everyone witnessing this scene had their hearts in their throats. The white-haired old farmer closed his eyes in agony. It was over... it was all over... the last hope...
Hiss! Hiss-hiss-hiss—!
A series of light yet exceptionally clear cracking sounds, like hot oil dropping into cold water, suddenly erupted!
A miracle bloomed on the edge of despair!
The dozens of heart-boring worms rushing at the very front had their hard shells instantly scorched as if brushed by an invisible, extremely high-temperature flame the moment their mouthparts were about to touch the edge of the corn leaves! Blackened! Curled! Wisps of strange, bluish smoke carrying an acrid, scorched odor rose! Before they could even emit a whimper, they were instantly drained of all vitality, dropping straight from the sky to smash onto the hard, caked ground, shattering into piles of pitch-black ashes!
The swarm following closely behind seemed to have crashed into an invisible, scalding, thorn-covered wall of death! The sharp buzzing abruptly spiked, filled with extreme panic and chaos! The subsequent bugs were slapped hard by an invisible giant hand, wildly and fearfully changing direction, colliding and squeezing against one another to form a chaotic vortex, and then fleeing in panic like a receding tide away from this "dead oasis" radiating a fatal aura. Only the edge of the experimental plot was left strewn with charred, curled, smoking bug carcasses, silently recounting the thrilling scene just now.
Dead silence.
Absolute, suffocating dead silence once again enshrouded the entire landing zone. Only the sobbing of the wind sweeping across the gravel remained, along with the heavy, suppressed breathing of the survivors sounding like broken bellows.
Everyone's eyes stared dead, unblinking, at the unharmed cornfield, where not even a single leaf was damaged in the slightest—nailed to the shocking carpet of charred bug carcasses.
Hope had smashed into their dying hearts in such a violent, unquestionable manner!
"Thud!"
The white-haired old farmer could no longer support himself, his knees slamming heavily onto the cold, hard ground. On his weathered face, turbid old tears rolled down like broken beads, smashing into the cracked soil. His chapped, peeling lips trembled violently, a rattling sound escaped his throat, and finally, all the shock, ecstasy, and disbelief condensed into two tearful, trembling, out-of-tune syllables squeezed out hoarsely:
"A... miracle..."
The old farmer's hoarse, weeping voice still trembled in the wind, and the congealed air felt as though a red-hot branding iron had been thrust into it!
"Clang—!"
A harsh, piercing sound like tearing cloth! Fierce, peerless purple lightning unceremoniously cleaved open the stagnant despair above the landing zone! The light was blinding, arriving in an instant, smashing precisely beside the circle of charred bug carcasses at the edge of the experimental plot!
Boom!
Finely powdered, violent electric snakes exploded in all directions, crackling and leaving spiderweb-like scorch marks on the ground. Before the electric arcs had completely dissipated, a slender figure carrying the imposing, awe-inspiring might of a mountain stood firmly at the landing point of the lightning. Her purple long hair fluttered without wind amidst the residual static electricity, strands drifting like the mane of a thundercloud.
The Yuheng, Keqing!