Chapter 981 Tremor
Before he could finish his words, the whole mountain suddenly shook violently. The copper bells on the altar rang spontaneously, and the incense ashes that fell to the ground floated in the air, forming a strange hexagram.
In the monitoring station, the little fox pressed its paw on the keyboard of the global early warning system. The data flow on the screen suddenly rushed in the opposite direction, weaving the ecological restoration data of the mountain village for 20 years into a golden protective net. "They are coming." The little fox's eyes were bloodshot. In the rain outside the window, countless human-faced mushrooms emerged from the ground, and black blood and tears flowed between the folds.
Qi Tongwei grabbed an old-fashioned Toad radio and sang the long-lost mushroom-picking tune into the microphone. The hoarse singing mixed with the sound of rain spread, miraculously stopping the growth of the restless mushrooms. Even more amazing was that sporadic green spots began to appear on red alerts around the world - those were the people who heard the singing and began to reflect on their relationship with the land.
It rained for three days and three nights. When the sun shone through the clouds again, the mountain village seemed to have experienced a rebirth. The people from the Southeast Asian companies left in disgrace. Before leaving, the leading man in a suit looked at the old locust tree and muttered to himself: "Our base... is completely destroyed." Qi Tongwei knew that the mushroom empires that were born from industrial waste could not withstand the backlash of the land.
Post-disaster reconstruction was not as difficult as imagined. The villagers spontaneously dismantled all smart devices and switched to traditional wooden plows for farming. Zhang Dazhu put up a wooden sign in the watermelon field: "This melon grew up listening to Buddhist scriptures"; Aunt Wang hung prayer flags in her strawberry garden, and tourists said that the strawberries here have a faint sandalwood scent. Even more amazing is that in the Global Soil Health Early Warning System, the green area began to spread slowly and steadily with the mountain village as the center.
One morning, Qi Tongwei found a new totem under the old locust tree - this time it was not a warning, but a pattern of blooming mushrooms. The little fox lay in the shadow of the tree, its tail sweeping across the light spots on the ground: "The land has begun to forgive." The roar of tractors came from afar, but it was used to transport organic fertilizers; drones flew over rice fields, spraying the villagers' homemade wormwood insect repellent.
When the ancient ballad "The Sky is Vast and the Wilderness is Vast" sounded again in the mountains, a new melody had been mixed in. Children sang "Don't be too hasty, don't hurt the roots, the land is spiritual and remembers the kindness" while chasing butterflies in the strawberry field. Qi Tongwei stood in front of the monitoring station, watching the green curves jumping on the screen and the light spots around the world forming a network, and suddenly realized that the reconciliation between humans and the land has never been a one-sided salvation.
As dusk fell, the old locust tree was full of people again. Aunt Wang displayed the strawberries she grew at home, Zhang Dazhu cut open the sweet watermelon, and the children gathered around the little fox to listen to stories.
On the screen, the green curves were still moving regularly, interweaving with the light points around the world, like the neural network of the earth. When the last ray of sunset sank into the branches of the old locust tree, he suddenly heard a faint resonance coming from the ground, like the drumbeats of ancient ancestors during sacrifices.
Under the old locust tree, the long bamboo table was filled with farm products. Aunt Wang, wearing reading glasses, carefully sorted the strawberries by size into a stoneware plate, with a wild chrysanthemum pinned between her white hair. "Try this 'gratitude berry,'" she smiled at the tourists, gently holding up the fruit with her calloused hands, "grown with mushroom waste compost, it's so sweet it can choke your throat." Most of Zhang Dazhu's watermelons had already been divided up, and the green melon skin was still stained with fresh dew. The children chased each other with the melon flesh in their hands, and the juice dripped from the corners of their mouths onto the hot stone road.
The little fox sat upright on the millstone, its tail sweeping across the children's upturned faces. It was telling the story of "The Fungus and the Mountain People", its amber eyes gleaming in the twilight: "Land is not a number on an account book, but a living soul." On the periphery of the crowd, several figures in suits and leather shoes quietly approached, with work badges of a multinational agricultural company hanging on their chests, and tablet computers in their hands flashing cold light.
"Mr. Qi, we represent the International Agricultural Union." The blond man in the lead pushed his gold-rimmed glasses, and his leather shoes made a harsh sound as they rolled over the gravel road. "The ecological data of your village is crucial to our 'future granary' plan. As long as you agree to data sharing, we can provide..." Before he finished speaking, Zhang Dazhu's shovel hit the ground with a "clang" sound: "Haven't you dismantled enough of the equipment that stole the data back then?"
The air suddenly froze. Aunt Wang silently put the strawberry plate into her arms. The "ecological origin" stamp on the bottom of the plate glowed coldly in the twilight. Qi Tongwei noticed the watch exposed from the other party's sleeve. The numbers on the dial were surprisingly similar to the frequency of the soil data from the monitoring station - this was definitely not a coincidence.
"The truth that can be told is not the eternal truth." Qi Tongwei suddenly spoke, his voice mixed with the mountain breeze and drifting towards the terraced fields in the distance. "Twenty years ago, we thought we could tame the land with fertilizers and technology, but what we got in return was a shed full of poisonous mushrooms." He pointed to the old locust tree, the totem on the bark was faintly visible in the moonlight, "Now I understand that the real account book is not on paper, but in the growth of each seed."
The crowd was in an uproar. Several villagers raised their phones to take photos. In the camera, the man in the suit looked uglier and uglier. Suddenly, the alarm of the monitoring station tore through the night sky. In the green network on the screen, the light spots in a certain area of Southeast Asia instantly turned into a glaring blood red. The little fox's hair stood on end, and it growled as a warning: "They are using gene editing technology to ripen mushrooms in the rainforest. The ground veins are going to collapse!"
The rainstorm came in torrents. Qi Tongwei rushed into the monitoring station and saw on the satellite map that countless red cracks were spreading from Southeast Asia. What was even more horrifying was that those cracks were exactly the same as the patterns of the fungus disaster in the village 20 years ago. "Quick! Release all our ecological restoration data!" He screamed into the microphone, and the rain dripped onto the keyboard along the ends of his hair.
Under the old locust tree, Aunt Wang took the lead in reciting the Ksitigarbha Sutra, and her old voice echoed in the rain. The villagers spontaneously formed a circle to protect the frightened tourists in the middle. The men in suits wanted to rush into the monitoring station, but were stopped by Zhang Dazhu and the young men. "If you want to touch the data, you have to get past me first!" His shovel drew a silver arc in the lightning.
When the first rays of morning light pierced through the clouds, the rain stopped. The people from the multinational companies evacuated in disgrace, leaving messy tracks in the mud with their tires. At this time, at the monitoring station, the global soil health early warning system had undergone amazing changes - the green data of the mountain village spread like ripples, giving birth to scattered oases in the red disaster area. The little fox stood in front of the rain-soaked screen, tapping the light spots on the African continent with its tail: "Look, someone is beginning to listen to the land."
Since then, the mountain village has become a special "ecological classroom". On the 15th of every month, a "land dialogue" is held under the old locust tree. Villagers share their composting experiences, tourists learn to identify wild mushrooms, and scholars study the resonance of earth veins and sound waves.