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

As Marcus's incubator glowed green in the security scanner, Ayiguli was placing meteorite slices under a polarizing microscope. The domed skylight of Crescent Lake Village Primary School slowly opened, and midday sunlight streamed through the peridot crystals, casting flowing spots of light on the earthen walls, like someone had captured the Milky Way in a glass bottle.

"The root tips of the German seabuckthorn seedlings are glowing!" The laboratory suddenly went dark, and the photovoltaic dome designed by Chen Mo refracted the sunlight into a spectrum, illuminating the seedlings in the cultivation boxes. Marcus's Swiss Army knife was stuck in the seedbed, and what condensed on the blade was not dew, but blue sap secreted by the seabuckthorn roots—a strange reaction with the volcanic ash conditioner he had seen in the Rhine River basin.

"A congratulatory telegram from the Beijing Observatory." Jiang Zimei's enamel mug knocked over the microscope, and coffee stains spread across the satellite map in the shape of an ancient riverbed. "They said that the water molecules in the meteorite slices have an isotopic ratio that is exactly the same as the sediments in the Han Dynasty pottery jars." Before she finished speaking, the old man Rehemaiti's bamboo basket fell to the ground with a "clatter," and orange-yellow berries rolled through the cracks—several new buds with purple stripes were sprouting from the roots of the sea buckthorn seedlings that had frozen to death last winter.

An old man wearing a melon-shaped hat squatted by the canal, the bronze arrowhead in his hand suddenly becoming hot. He had found it in the sand dunes sixty years ago, and now the water ripples engraved on the arrowhead overlapped with the infrared image transmitted by the drone—beneath the ruins of the Han Dynasty canal lay the radiating remains of an ancient Roman aqueduct. "Stop!" Xu Lan's brush stopped at the crack in the pottery shard, where half a Rhine seashell was embedded, gleaming with the same silver light as the metal staples on the pottery jar belonging to Rehemaiti.

"Look at this, everyone!" Tang Tang's phone camera suddenly blurred. A sudden desert downpour hit the solar panels, and the resulting water flowed into the newly built "digital oasis" base station. A special message popped up in the live stream: "I'm from the Italian archaeological team. We've seen a similar irrigation algorithm at Pompeii." Chen Zhe suddenly placed his tablet face down in the wet sand. The water flow simulation on the screen overlapped with a border guard log from two thousand years ago—those canal and dam markings worn smooth by the wind and sand actually recorded the water conservancy secrets of the entire Eurasian continent.

As the alarm sounded in Uncle Terek's tandoor oven, Wu Wei was disassembling the drone's sensors. The modifier powder clumped together on the inner wall of the tandoor oven, and when the first piece of sea buckthorn sauce ribs came out of the oven, a slice of nickel-iron meteorite suddenly floated up—just like the fireball Aygul saw last year, revealing a star map of an olivine core the moment it was broken open by a geological hammer.

“This isn’t an oven.” Li Xiang’s camera was pointed at the crack in the tandoor oven. The juice seeping from the mended porcelain patches, when developed under infrared light, revealed a caravan route map from Zhang Qian’s mission to the Western Regions. Lu Mingze’s laptop suddenly crashed with a blue screen. After restarting, a string of gibberish appeared—the syllables were exactly the same as the ancestral recipe for making sauce passed down by the old man Rehemaiti, except that “steaming and drying sea buckthorn berries nine times” was written as binary code.

In the dead of night at the weather station, Sun Li's level suddenly pointed due north. A surveying drone amidst the sandstorm transmitted data: the shadows of the sand barriers formed the constellation Perseus under the moonlight, and the position of each "star" precisely corresponded to the water outlet of the ceramic pipes left by Han Dynasty garrison soldiers. "Look!" Zhao Qiang's spectrometer swept across the canal water; the microorganisms activated by the modifier, using meteorite water as a medium, were arranging themselves into a genetic map of German sea buckthorn brought by Marcus.

As Aygul's meteorite slices glowed in the accelerator, refrigerated trucks at Dunhuang Airport were unloading special packages. Among the volcanic ash sent by middle school students from the Rhine River were olive pits tied with colorful ropes—the same water ripple pattern engraved on the aluminum sheets that the children of Crescent Lake Village Primary School had tied to the legs of grey cranes ten years ago.

"They've applied for a patent for the tandoor oven controller?" The old man Rehemaiti's bamboo basket was stuck at the sluice gate of the irrigation canal. As berries rolled into the Han Dynasty pottery pipe, the inner wall suddenly glowed with fluorescence. Chen Zhe rushed over, carrying a tablet computer. The order data on the screen was being reconstructed—each "desert smart oven's" glazed brick was embedded with a luminescent gene cultivated by Marcus using sea buckthorn from the Rhine River. When roasting lamb chops, it would reveal the route of Zhang Qian's mission to the Western Regions.

Gul's wedding photo suddenly changed color. As the hem of her Adras silk skirt swept across the ruins, a newly installed satellite receiver received a special signal—it was a pottery urn buried by border guards in 101 BC. The wheat seeds inside, soaked in meteorite water, were resonating with the rye genes of a German agricultural cooperative in a quantum entanglement manner.

"Grandpa, look!" Aygul's tablet computer reflected the old man's wrinkles. The spots of light on the satellite map connected to form a star map, perfectly coinciding with the location of the pottery jar that Rehemaiti had buried in the sand. At that moment, Marcus was praying in front of the cultivation box. The roots of the sea buckthorn seedlings in the box had penetrated the meteorite slice and, under a polarizing microscope, had grown into the shape of the arch of a Roman aqueduct.

During the late-night celebration banquet, the power suddenly went out. When the emergency lights came on, everyone saw the glazed tiles on the inner wall of the tandoor oven glowing—the desert rose quartz that Wu Wei had secretly embedded was changing patterns with the alcohol content of the sea buckthorn wine, gradually transforming from a cross-section of a Han Dynasty canal into an orbital model of the International Space Station.

"Want to exchange seeds?" As the old man Rehemaiti pushed the pottery jar over, a bronze arrow suddenly stood upright on the sand. The moment Marcus's Swiss Army knife cut open the berries, the orange-yellow juice flowed like a river under the moonlight, upstream from the sea buckthorn forests of Dunhuang, downstream from the vineyards of the Rhine River, and shimmering on the riverbed were all "shards of stars" that Aygul and her friends had picked up.

The final shot of Li Xiang's documentary is a drone flying over a newly built water conservancy project. The sand barriers cast shadows in the setting sun, forming a giant star chart with the rammed earth traces of the Han Dynasty canal dam. Further away, the antenna of the "Digital Oasis" base station is receiving signals from the constellation Perseus—where a supernova explosion happened to illuminate Zhang Qian's camel caravan on his mission to the Western Regions.

The day the pottery jar was unearthed, a sandstorm struck. As everyone took refuge in their mud-brick houses, the old man Rehemaiti suddenly raised his bamboo basket. Orange-yellow berries arced through the sandstorm, falling into the volcanic ash brought by Marcus, while meteorite fragments at the bottom of the basket cast the reflection of the Big Dipper onto the newly sprouted sea buckthorn seedlings.

“This is the algorithm of life.” The old man’s wrinkles were filled with starlight, just like the afternoon sixty years ago when he found the bronze arrow. He didn’t know that at this moment, on the screen of Nanjing Observatory, Ayiguli’s meteorite research report was turning into a data stream, calibrating the global climate change model—those canal dam marks worn smooth by wind and sand had long ago written the equation for reconciliation between mankind and the desert.

On the seventh day after the sandstorm, the elderly Rehemaiti's bamboo basket got stuck at the sluice gate of a Han Dynasty irrigation canal. As Tang Tang's live stream camera swept across the silt, a bronze arrowhead suddenly emerged from the mud, the water ripples on its tip coinciding with the rainbands on the satellite cloud image. "Look, everyone!" Chen Zhe's tablet fell into the canal water, and when the screen lit up, all the comments saw it: microorganisms activated by the improver were arranged underwater in the constellation Perseus, and the position of each "star" corresponded precisely to the German sea buckthorn gene fragment brought by Marcus.

A young man wearing glasses squatted in front of the tandoor oven, flour smeared on his nose. Wu Wei disassembled three drone sensors, finally getting Uncle Terek's oven to speak Persian—when the temperature reached 187℃, the glazed tiles on the inner wall of the tandoor oven would reveal the recipe for sea buckthorn sauce recorded in Marco Polo's Travels; those worm-eaten pages were now flashing in binary code in the pork rib fat. "The stone samples for the ancient Roman aqueduct have arrived!" As Xu Lan's geological hammer cracked open the bluestone, a Rhine seashell fell from the debris, inlaid with nickel-iron alloy, just like the rivets on Rehemaiti's pottery jar. Jiang Zimei suddenly knocked over her enamel cup; the coffee spread across the satellite map like the ancient Silk Road, and the markers for each caravan post formed a perfect arc with the meteorite crater discovered by Aygul.

The laboratory alarm woke the children from their lunch break. As the third drop of water seeped from the meteorite slice under the polarizing microscope, the holographic projection at the Nanjing Astronomical Observatory suddenly malfunctioned—all the equipment was playing the same piece of static, which turned out to be an old Uyghur tune that the old man Rehemaiti hummed while making soy sauce, only it had been converted into a pulsar signal received by the radio telescope.

"The rye seeds sent from Germany have sprouted!" Marcus's incubator glass suddenly frosted over, and the projection of the dome of the Pantheon in Rome appeared in the blue light. Sun Li's level suddenly changed direction, and the newly measured shadow of the sand barrier formed a complete armillary sphere under the moonlight, while the drip irrigation pipes of the sea buckthorn forest were rotating with the star trails, drawing the star map of Zhang Qian's mission to the Western Regions on the ground.

Uncle Terek's tandoor oven suddenly started singing. When Wu Wei was adjusting the temperature control code, the tandoor oven controller suddenly connected to the International Space Station—the temperature curve of the sea buckthorn jam bread baked by the astronauts in the weightless environment was exactly the same as the old man's ancestral recipe for controlling the heat, except that the "three catties of wild honey" was converted into the nutritional ratio of space food.

"Look at the satellite cloud image!" Lu Mingze slammed his notebook onto the sand table. The cumulonimbus clouds over Dunhuang were arranging themselves into the shape of a pottery jar, and the mouth of the jar was precisely the sand dune where the old man Rehemaiti had buried his seeds. Li Xiang's camera captured a magical scene: when the first drop of rain fell into the crack of the pottery jar, all the leaves of the sea buckthorn seedlings turned at the same time, and the veins of the leaves revealed the contour lines of the Rhine River basin under the sunlight.

As Aygul's meteorite slice glowed in the accelerator, a garbled message suddenly popped up in the email from the Italian archaeological team. After decoding it, Chen Zhe discovered that on a waterworks map unearthed at the Pompeii ruins, a corner covered in volcanic ash depicted the same water ripple pattern, next to which was written in Latin: "When sea buckthorn meets a meteorite, the star trails will guide the water source."

In the dead of night at the weather station, Zhao Qiang's spectrometer suddenly pointed due north. A drone amidst the sandstorm transmitted data: the star chart formed by the shadows of the sand barriers and the Han Dynasty canal dam, its center coordinates precisely at the sand dune where the elderly Rehemaiti had found the bronze arrowhead sixty years ago. At that moment, Marcus was recording in front of the cultivation chamber: the root tips of German sea buckthorn secreted blue sap, which, after mixing with meteorite water, grew into miniature ancient Roman aqueducts in the petri dish.

"The dome is about to open!" came the static from Chen Mo's walkie-talkie. The photovoltaic dome slowly rotated in the downpour, focusing the moonlight into a laser beam. As the beam passed through Aygul's meteorite slice, the star map on the earthen wall suddenly began to move—the "star fragments" that the children had picked up were resonating with the olive pits sent by middle school students from the Rhine River through quantum entanglement.

Suddenly, 100,000 viewers flooded into Tang Tang's live stream. As she raised the earthenware jar, a torrential downpour formed a curtain of water in front of the camera, and the sea buckthorn juice overflowing from the jar mixed with meteorite water, drawing the complete zodiac in the air. A viewer asked, "What's in the earthenware jar?" The elderly Rehemaiti suddenly covered the camera with his calloused hands, and the starlight that filled his wrinkles shone through his fingers, displaying on the phone screen the astronomical log of Zhang Qian's mission to the Western Regions.

"The tandoor oven controller has been patented internationally!" Lu Mingze rushed into the lab waving the documents. In the attached VR debugging photos, Uncle Terek's wrinkles, adorned with sensor gel, had half a grain of sea buckthorn pollen from space stuck in them. At that moment, Wu Wei was welding a new part by the tandoor oven. The desert rose quartz he had secretly embedded suddenly glowed, reflecting the image of the International Space Station's porthole in the grease of the roasted lamb chops.

Guli's wedding photo was printed on a commemorative badge at the water conservancy project. As her Atlas silk skirt swept across the ruins, a newly installed satellite receiver suddenly emitted static—a melody played on a Qiang flute by border guards in 101 BC, which created a wonderful harmony with the Rhine boat song brought by Marcus, echoing as electronic pulses in the digital oasis's base station.

"Grandpa, listen!" Ayiguli's tablet was pressed against the old man's ear; the rainbands on the satellite cloud image were typing out Morse code, which, when translated, turned out to be the family recipe for making soy sauce, except that "nine steaming and nine drying" was written as the orbital parameters of a spacecraft. Marcus suddenly knelt down in the sand; the volcanic ash improver he brought, mixed with the sand from Dunhuang, was crystallizing at a visible speed into a miniature model of an ancient Roman aqueduct.

Li Xiang's documentary captured the most breathtaking scene: when the elderly Rehemaiti scattered German rye seeds into a clay pot, the leaves of all the sea buckthorn seedlings simultaneously glowed, drawing star trails from Dunhuang to the Rhine River against the desert night sky. Further away, the antenna of the "Digital Oasis" base station was receiving signals from the constellation Perseus—where the atmospheric composition of the newly discovered planet is strikingly similar to the ancient riverbed sediment in the clay pot.

At the dawn when the pottery jar was unearthed, the entire desert glowed. A translucent berry rolled out of the old man Rehemaiti's bamboo basket, containing the complete reflection of the Big Dipper. As Tang Tang's live stream camera focused on the berry, all the world's telescopes suddenly turned—the afterglow of a supernova explosion in the direction of Perseus passed right through the crack in the pottery jar, casting a silhouette of Zhang Qian's camel caravan on the ground.

"This is the universe's method of making sauce." As the old man placed the meteorite fragments into the pottery jar, the bronze arrow suddenly pointed due south. The Nanjing Observatory sent an urgent email: Based on Ayiguli's meteorite research data, they successfully predicted the path of the next dust storm, whose trajectory perfectly coincided with the direction of the Han Dynasty canal dam and the curvature of the ancient Roman aqueduct, as if someone had drawn an arc of sea buckthorn juice on the star trail.

As the sandstorm raged again, Marcus suddenly lifted the cultivation box. The roots of the German sea buckthorn seedlings had penetrated the box, growing into a giant star map on the desert surface, with orange-yellow sea buckthorn flowers blooming at each intersection—the veins of the petals representing the genetic chain of Dunhuang sea buckthorn, while the centers shimmered with the silver light of the Rhine sand. (End of Chapter)