Since we are all reborn, let’s arrest the senior!

While the morning dew still clung to the sea buckthorn berries, old man Rehemaiti was already heading towards the sand dunes with his bamboo basket on his back. His deeply furrowed hands brushed against the thorny branches, and the orange-yellow berries fell into his basket with a soft rustling sound—this was his thirtieth year of harvesting sea buckthorn, but the first time he had seen a girl in a red dress live-streaming on her phone.

"Look here, everyone! This is the golden desert fruit from 40° North latitude, with 120 times the vitamin C content of lemons!" The girl in front of the camera is Tang Tang, with her hair in a high ponytail and her sun-protective sleeves revealing half of her tanned arms. She is a newly recruited "rural internet celebrity incubator" by the volunteer association, and she is currently squatting in the sea buckthorn garden of Rehemaiti, her fingertips dipped in fresh juice: "Grandpa's traditional sauce-making technique has been passed down for three generations, and we're having a limited sale on it in our live stream today!"

The live stream chat suddenly exploded with comments. Three days earlier, Tang Tang had discovered a faded poster on the mud-brick wall of the village committee—a propaganda poster from 1982 promoting sea buckthorn sauce. The pottery jar in the poster was exactly the same as the mold in front of Rehemaiti's stove. This discovery led her to contact Chen Zhe, the association's new e-commerce consultant, overnight.

Wearing Bluetooth headphones, Chen Zhe swiped his finger across the tablet: "We need to do 'contrast marketing' for desert specialties." He pulled up some data: "Last week, the 'intangible cultural heritage handicrafts' category on a certain platform grew by 237%. Let's film the sauce-making process as a 'rustic documentary,' and give the product an artsy name like 'Sea Buckthorn Under the Moonlight'..." Before he could finish, Rehemaiti's wife brought over a bowl of sauce. When stirred with a wooden spoon, the amber-colored paste stretched into threads, mixed with the sweet aroma of wild honey. Chen Zhe licked the back of the spoon, then suddenly slammed the tablet face down on the table: "We'll use earthenware jars for packaging, hand-write Grandpa's name on the labels, and stuff the shipping boxes with poplar wood shavings!"

While digging an irrigation well, the construction team unearthed half a pottery jar. Archaeologist Xu Lan was studying satellite maps in her tent when she received the news. She pushed through the crowd, squatted by the sandpit, and gently brushed away the salt and alkali residue from the shard with a brush—the patterns were strikingly similar to a water-drawing device discovered at the Niya site ten years prior. "Stop!" Xu Lan suddenly pressed down on the drill bit. "This could be an ancient riverbed used for border defense and land reclamation during the Han Dynasty!"

The news alarmed the Provincial Cultural Relics Bureau. When the Luoyang shovel unearthed carbonized wheat seeds, Jiang Zimei was on a video call with Lu Mingze. "Combining site preservation with tourism development?" Lu Mingze typed in his notebook on the other end. "But the villagers can't wait; the grapevines are due for the next month." That evening, Xu Lan spread out blueprints in the archaeological tent, the flashlight beam tracing water patterns on the rock face: "Look here, the ancients used tamarisk baskets to stabilize the sand. We can reconstruct this irrigation canal and create a 'living museum'."

The next day, Li Xiang, a young man wearing a baseball cap, appeared carrying a camera. He was a documentary director who had driven overnight after seeing the article "Han Dynasty Irrigation Canal in the Desert" on the association's WeChat official account. When the camera focused on the elderly Rehemaiti pressing sea buckthorn jam with a poplar wood mold, Li Xiang suddenly shoved the camera against the crack in the pottery jar: "This mending patch is more powerful than any narration."

"Look, students! That's the Perseid meteor shower!" Zhang Feng suddenly turned off his flashlight, and the exclamations of the thirty children shook the dust off the beams of the adobe house. This was the first night that the "Oasis Observatory" had been put into use. The telescope was donated by the Lin Xiaofeng Charity Foundation, and the tube was still wrapped with tumbleweed, a type of grass unique to the desert that can "walk."

Suddenly, Ayiguli, who was in the corner, raised her hand: "Teacher, a fireball fell down near my sheepfold last year!" She lifted her red headscarf, revealing a scalded forehead. Geologist Zhao Qiang immediately used a portable spectrometer to test the black stone she brought—it contained 87% nickel-iron alloy and was a rare olivine achondrite.

A week later, the Chinese Academy of Sciences expedition team arrived. When Ayiguli saw the researchers use a laser pointer to project green dots onto the meteorite slice, she clutched the notebook Zhang Feng had given her and whispered, "Do astronomy students in the city need to know how to identify stars?" At that moment, outside the starry sky classroom, Tang Tang was live-streaming on her phone. As the camera panned across the children's upturned faces and the comments section was flooded with messages saying "I want to go teach in rural areas," she suddenly turned around and photographed the Milky Way—the drip irrigation pipes in the sea buckthorn garden shimmered silver under the starlight, like a string of pearls scattered in the desert.

"Pump truck No. 3 has insufficient pressure!" The shout over the walkie-talkie was torn apart by the sandstorm as Sun Li shielded the level instrument with her body. Salt crystals clung to her eyelashes, and her work pants had holes worn through at the knees—this was her 47th day at the water conservancy construction site. Suddenly, Old Wang from the construction team rushed over, holding a red ribbon: "Girls, hurry up and get dressed! The bride says she'll be serving tea when the canal is filled!"

Half an hour later, the concrete pouring site became a wedding hall. The bride, Guli, was the village's first female college student. She insisted on changing her wedding dress into a long gown of Atlas silk. The red veil not only held up her hair but also the makeshift "archway"—two pillars supporting the newly poured irrigation canal. When Zhao Qiang used his safety helmet to catch the first handful of water from the canal, Guli suddenly stuffed the bouquet into Sun Li's hands: "This bouquet of sea buckthorn flowers should be given to the person who makes the desert bloom."

In the distance, Old Chen shakily sprinkled his homemade improver powder into the canal. Unbeknownst to him, in Tang Tang's livestream, 100,000 viewers were watching the murky water flow past the poplar wood sluice gate, gradually clearing. A viewer asked, "Who is that old man?" Just then, Li Xiang's documentary team cut to a close-up: the old man's calloused hands rippled the water's surface, his wrinkles reflecting the 3 PM sunlight.

“The temperature curve for this tandoor oven-roasted sea buckthorn sauce ribs needs to be recalculated.” Programmer Wu Wei pushed his laptop towards the tandoor oven, the blue light from the screen reflecting off his flour-covered fingertips. He had come to provide e-commerce training for the cooperative, but he was stumped by Uncle Terek’s “desert home cooking”—the ribs roasted in the old man’s earthen tandoor oven were always burnt on the outside and raw on the inside due to uneven temperature.

At three in the morning, Wu Wei, who was standing next to the oven, suddenly jumped up: "Use Arduino for temperature control!" He disassembled the drone's sensors and collaborated with the village blacksmith to weld a tandoor oven controller. When Uncle Terek pressed the "start" button on the mobile app for the first time, the glazed tiles on the inner wall of the tandoor oven suddenly lit up with a warm light—Wu Wei had secretly embedded desert rose quartz, "so that the meat roasted this way will have the taste of stars."

Backstage at the live stream, Chen Zhe stared at the sales data and suddenly slammed his fist on the table: "Intelligent temperature control equipment for tandoor ovens! This is even more marketable than sea buckthorn sauce!" He contacted Lin Xiaofeng's foundation overnight, and three months later, the first batch of "Desert Smart Ovens" were launched on a crowdfunding platform. Each oven body was engraved with sea buckthorn patterns hand-painted by Uncle Terek.

On the spring equinox, volunteers from the birdwatching association discovered a special band on the leg of a grey crane—an aluminum piece tied with colorful rope by the children of Crescent Lake Village Primary School ten years ago, which has now traveled across the ocean back to the Dunhuang wetlands. When Jiang Zimei read this news to the elderly Rehemaiti, who was packaging sea buckthorn sauce, he suddenly pointed to the metal staples on the pottery jar: "My father used to say that if something is mended, it will last longer than a new one."

In the distance, by the irrigation ditch, Ayiguli was teaching her younger brother to identify star charts, wearing a bracelet made from meteorite slices on her wrist. In Tang Tang's live stream, a viewer asked, "Is it too late to go and teach in a rural area now?" She turned around and filmed Chen Mo installing photovoltaic panels—the architect had designed the school's dome in the shape of a telescope, with a glass skylight framing a patch of newly green sea buckthorn forest.

As the sandstorm raged again, Li Xiang's camera followed a banded gray crane. It flew over a newly built water conservancy project, with sand-proof barriers being laid under its wings, and further away, on the top of a weather station being built by volunteers, the solar panels reflected golden light, like a handful of stars casually scattered in the desert.

The sea buckthorn grove glowed with an orange-red light in late autumn, and an exceptionally plump berry rolled out of the bamboo basket of elderly Rehemaiti. He didn't notice the blond, blue-eyed young man following behind him until the man called out in broken Chinese, "Grandpa, how much juice can this variety yield?" The man's name was Marcus, a technician from a German agricultural cooperative. Three months ago, he had seen a documentary about the volunteer association's sea buckthorn project at an international public welfare forum, and had flown to Dunhuang with twenty varieties of European sea buckthorn seeds. Now, he squatted in the sand, using a Swiss Army knife to cut open a berry: "Your sea buckthorn has 3% more fruit acid than ours, but it's less cold-resistant."

Jiang Zimei handed over an enamel mug: "Last winter, a third of our seedlings froze to death." Marcus suddenly pulled a sealed jar from his backpack; brown powder glittered in the sunlight: "This is our Rhine River basin volcanic ash conditioner. Want to try mixing it into the drip irrigation water?"

“Aygul, your meteorite slice looks like a nebula under a polarizing microscope.” Zhang Feng’s finger swept across the image on the tablet computer, and the classroom suddenly darkened—the photovoltaic dome designed by Chen Mo slowly opened, and the midday sun shone through the meteorite specimen, casting flowing spots of light on the earthen wall.

This was the first day of operation for the "Starry Sky Laboratory." Among the equipment donated by the Lin Xiaofeng Foundation, the most valuable was a small accelerator capable of simulating meteorite impacts. As Ayiguli placed the slices into the chamber, a professor from the Nanjing Astronomical Observatory suddenly appeared in the holographic projection: "Look! The olivine crystals have been reconstructed at high temperatures!"

Outside the window, Li Xiang's camera was pointed at the dome. He noticed that whenever he talked about astrophysics, some children would secretly reach into their pockets—where they had "shards of stars" they had picked up in the Gobi Desert.

Uncle Terek's tandoor oven suddenly emitted an electronic voice: "Internal temperature 187℃, suitable for roasting lamb chops." Wu Wei, squatting in front of the controller debugging the code, was suddenly handed a piece of freshly baked sea buckthorn naan by the old man. "Kid," the old man pointed to the newly embedded copper plate on the tandoor oven wall, "my father used this to record the temperature back then, and now you've made it talk to itself."

In the cooperative's live-streaming workshop, Tang Tang was holding up her phone: "Family members, look at this smart tandoor oven! Order now and receive a free handwritten recipe for baked buns from Grandpa!" A special message popped up on the screen: "I'm a restaurant owner from WLMQ, can I order 100 units?" Chen Zhe suddenly slammed his hand on the table: "This isn't just kitchenware, it's a cultural IP!"

Three days later, the patent application for the tandoor oven controller was placed on Lu Mingze's desk. Attached to the application was a photo of Uncle Terek wearing VR glasses and adjusting the temperature—the wrinkles on his face weren't covered in flour, but rather freshly applied sensor gel.

Guli's wedding photos have gone viral. She stands in front of the newly built desert museum, her Atlas silk skirt sweeping across the ruins of a Han Dynasty canal, while in the distance, a construction team is hoisting a satellite receiver—this is part of the "Digital Oasis" project donated by the Lin Xiaofeng Foundation.

"Bride, don't move!" Li Xiang's camera suddenly pointed at the horizon. In the sandstorm, Zhao Qiang and Sun Li were running frantically with their equipment on their backs, the surveying drone behind them flashing green. Just as Guli tied the red scarf to the base station antenna, BJ Aerospace City suddenly sent a congratulatory message: "Your miniature weather station data has just helped us calibrate the sandstorm model!"

At the victory celebration banquet late at night, Marcus suddenly stood up: "How about I trade you sea buckthorn seedlings from Germany for your meteorite slices?" Before he finished speaking, the old man Rehemaiti pushed a jar of newly brewed sea buckthorn wine over: "Trade! My father traded camels for Persian seeds back then."

On the spring equinox, a special refrigerated truck arrived at Dunhuang Airport. Marcus ran towards the boarding gate carrying a cultivation box; the roots of the sea buckthorn seedlings inside still had sand from Crescent Lake Village clinging to them. Little did he know that at the same time, Ayiguli's meteorite research report was being translated into German—middle school students on the banks of the Rhine were about to see stars in the Chinese desert during their geography class.

In the volunteer association's office, the new map was covered with red dots. Jiang Zimei pointed to a spot on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau: "Around the salt lake here, perhaps an improved version of sea buckthorn can be planted." Lu Mingze suddenly smiled—outside the window, the first batch of sea buckthorn seedlings bred in space were sprouting, dewdrops clinging to their tender yellow leaves, like someone had crushed the Milky Way and scattered it on the branches.

The final shot of Li Xiang's documentary shows the elderly Rehemaiti filling a clay pot with seeds. His calloused hands first place a handful of sea buckthorn from Dunhuang, then add a spoonful of rye seeds sent from Germany, and finally carefully cover it with a fragment of a meteorite. Just as the pot is buried in the sand, a shooting star streaks across the night sky, illuminating the smile in the old man's wrinkles—a smile more precise than any code, a life algorithm.

The old man, Rehemaiti, paused in his act of burying the pottery jar. His fingertips touched the coldness of the meteorite fragments and he suddenly remembered the bronze arrowhead he had found in the sand dunes sixty years ago—back then, he was a boy chasing lizards and didn't know that the water ripples engraved on the arrowhead coincided with the patterns on the canal dams left by Han Dynasty border guards.

“Grandpa, there are strange spots of light on the satellite map!” Aygul ran over, holding a tablet computer. In the infrared image on the screen, there were regular geometric shadows below the sea buckthorn garden. Marcus suddenly threw down the measuring instrument: “It’s an irrigation canal! The ancient Romans used similar radial canals!” He knelt down and dug into the sand. His fingertips touched not rammed earth, but a piece of bluestone with chisel marks—strikingly similar to the stone used in the ancient Roman aqueducts he had seen on the banks of the Rhine.

"Look! The olivine crystals are glowing!" Ayiguli's shout startled the entire laboratory. Under the polarizing microscope, a few drops of water seeped from the cracks in the meteorite slice, shimmering blue-green under the laser light. Xu Lan suddenly grabbed a geological hammer: "This is sedimentary water from an ancient riverbed!" As she rushed out of the adobe house, she saw Old Chen sprinkling an amendment into the canal water. The turbid water, flowing through the Han Dynasty ceramic pipes, suddenly became as clear as a mirror.

That evening, Li Xiang's camera captured a magical scene: as meteorite water droplets dripped into the roots of seabuckthorn seedlings, the spectral curves on all the monitoring screens simultaneously showed peaks—like border guards from two thousand years ago and today's volunteers clinking glasses across time and space. (End of Chapter)