Chapter 983 Desktop
The little fox suddenly jumped onto the table, and its tail swept across the shattered pieces of the teacup. The porcelain pieces were reassembled into ancient runes under the moonlight.
"Something has torn the seal of the earth vein." The little fox's pupils shrank into needles, and its claws pointed to the mist in the northwest. Qi Tongwei looked in the direction and saw that in the ecological network of the seven villages connected, the light spot of Dongjiang Village was dimming at a speed visible to the naked eye. Suddenly, Chen Xiaolong's terrified cry came from the intercom: "Night-scented mushrooms...they are eating people!"
At the moment of heavy rain, Qi Tongwei rushed into the rain. The muddy mountain road under his feet surged like a living thing, and every step was like stepping on the blood vessels of some creature. When he rushed to the ecological mushroom shed in Dongjiang Village, the scene in front of him made his breath stop - those night-scented mushrooms that once emitted a soft glow now had caps swollen like human faces, and countless ink-colored tentacles stretched out between the gills, dragging the villagers who tried to pick them into the abyss of mycelium.
"Use sound waves to interfere!" Zhang Dazhu's roar came from behind. He carried a modified insect repellent lamp and adjusted the frequency of the recitation of the Tao Te Ching to the highest level. During the sound wave vibration, some mushrooms screamed like babies crying, but their tentacles danced even more crazily. Qi Tongwei suddenly remembered the ancient insect repellent technique recorded in "Qimin Yaoshu". He grabbed a bundle of wormwood at the side of the shed and lit it. When the smoke rose, he saw the illusion of a Southeast Asian rainforest emerging from the mushroom group.
A violent explosion was heard from the direction of the monitoring station. Qi Tongwei turned his head and saw that the green network on the data screen was being swallowed by a black vortex, and the center of the vortex was the projection of the chip from the multinational company. The little fox appeared on his shoulder at some point, with hair standing up all over his body: "They used polluted data to create a ground nightmare, and now the entire ecological network is..."
Before he finished speaking, the ground suddenly cracked. Dark red mist surged out from the ground and condensed into seven figures. Qi Tongwei's pupils shrank suddenly - these phantoms were clearly the first villagers in the seven villages to die from the fungus disaster. Glowing fungus hyphae were crawling under their skin, but their eyes were as empty as dead water. "Give me back my land..." The phantoms whispered in unison, and their voices mixed with the mountain breeze drilled into everyone's eardrums.
"This is the embodiment of the resentment of the earth veins!" The little fox's tail wrapped around Qi Tongwei's wrist, "Use the real memory of the land!" Qi Tongwei suddenly remembered the time capsule buried under the old locust tree, which contained letters, seed samples and compost formulas written by villagers to the land over the past 20 years. He rushed back to the village in the rain, and the moment he dug out the iron box at the root of the tree, countless golden spots rose from the soil.
The light spots converged into a holographic image, projecting the entire process of the seven villages from disaster to rebirth: Aunt Wang tremblingly buried the first handful of organic fertilizer, Zhang Dazhu repaired the ecological greenhouse in the rainstorm, Chen Xiaolong carefully cultivated the night-scented mushroom strains... When the picture froze on the scene of the villagers holding hands and chanting around the old locust tree, the expressions of those resentful shadows began to loosen, and the mycelium slowly peeled off from their bodies.
"We were wrong..." The old man in the shadow suddenly choked up, "We shouldn't treat the land as an enemy." With these words, the entire forest began to tremble. Qi Tongwei scattered the seeds in the time capsule into the air, and the once contaminated night-scented mushrooms suddenly faded from black and bloomed with soft light again. On the screen of the monitoring station, the green data link was like a waking dragon, completely swallowing up the black vortex.
At dawn, the mushroom shed in Dongjiang Village returned to normal. Chen Xiaolong held the intact night-scented mushroom and found that the runes on the cap spelled out the word "symbiosis". Under the old locust tree, representatives from seven villages mixed their soil samples together and brewed new compost in bamboo tubes. The little fox flipped through the burnt "Qimin Yaoshu" and wrote on the ashes with a charcoal pencil wrapped in its tail: "Tuntian means to cultivate the heart."
On every full-moon night since then, the lights of the monitoring station will resonate with the fireflies on the old locust tree. Qi Tongwei looked at the re-lit ecological network and finally understood that the so-called supernatural is just the cry of the land against imbalance; and the real protection is not about fighting, but about letting every seed hear the heartbeat of the earth. When the mountain wind swept through the threshing ground again, it brought not only the fragrance of strawberries and soil, but also the long ballad of the symbiosis of all things.
The moment the screen lit up, the moonlight made the last message sent by Liang Lu pale: "For ten years, all you have seen is this mountain." He looked at the flickering fireflies on the old locust tree in the distance, and suddenly remembered the first time they met, when she was standing under the sycamore tree at the provincial university, with her white dress blown by the wind.
"Secretary Qi!" Chen Xiaolong's shout pierced the night. The young man stumbled over, and the night-scented mushrooms in his arms fell in panic. The moment the mushroom caps touched the ground, a faint blue ripple appeared. "The alarm at the monitoring station sounded again. This time... This time the data showed that all soil samples are mutating!"
Qi Tongwei rushed to the monitoring station, his rubber soles rolling over gravel and making a crackling sound. Inside the glass curtain wall, the little fox stood in front of the out-of-control data screen, its tail slapping the ground anxiously. The green dots that were originally connected into a network were twisting strangely, and the area of Dongjiang Village suddenly showed blood-colored lines, which was exactly the same as the scene when the fungus disaster broke out 20 years ago.
"It's Liang Lu." The little fox suddenly spoke, pointing its claws at the abnormal code jumping in the corner of the screen. "The biotech company she works for started illegally collecting our soil samples three months ago." Qi Tongwei's temples were throbbing as he recalled her hesitant expression during the video call last month and the cold light flashing in the laboratory behind her.
Heavy rain poured down at this time. Qi Tongwei drove to the provincial capital in the rain. The wipers swung hard, but they could not wipe away the distorted reflections on the glass. Liang Lu's laboratory was located deep in the development zone. The electronic lock on the iron door showed the words "Tianshu Biotechnology" - the subsidiary of the multinational company that tried to destroy the ecological network.
"You are here as expected." Liang Lu's voice came from behind. She was wearing a white coat, and in the petri dish in her hand were floating translucent mycelium, which glowed a strange purple under the cold light. "Do you know why I did this? Ten years ago, the day you chose to return to the village, my life had already collapsed."
Qi Tongwei noticed the faint green veins on her neck, which were exactly the same as the marks left by the villagers after they recovered from the fungus disaster. The mycelium in the petri dish suddenly twisted violently, and the shadow cast on the wall turned into the shape of an old locust tree. "I have been studying your ecological network for many years," Liang Lu dug her nails deep into her palm, "As long as the code of the earth veins is cracked, all the land can be controlled."
The alarm in the lab suddenly sounded. The little fox appeared at the vent without anyone noticing, with golden runes wrapped around its body: "She triggered the backlash of the earth veins!" The mycelium in the petri dish began to multiply wildly, penetrating the glass and climbing up Liang Lu's arm. Qi Tongwei rushed over to grab her hand, but found that the mycelium was absorbing the energy under her skin.