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

Aygul's meteorite slices became completely transparent under a polarizing microscope. When the laser beam passed through, everyone could see that water molecules arranged themselves into miniature hydraulic structures within the fissures, with Han Dynasty pottery pipes upstream and ancient Roman aqueducts downstream, while the central rotating impeller resembled the bramble patterns on the old man Rehemaiti's bamboo basket. At that very moment, on the banks of the Rhine, middle school students were observing a live broadcast of the Chinese desert during their geography class. Among the volcanic ash they had sent were olive pits tied with colorful ropes and engraved with water ripples.

On the volunteer association's new map, red dots have already formed a galaxy. Jiang Zimei pointed to the salt lakes of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and said, "The lithium content here might be able to make better sensors for meteorite slices." Lu Mingze suddenly smiled—outside the window, sea buckthorn seedlings bred on spacecraft were blooming, each petal reflecting different celestial phenomena, from Han Dynasty star maps of Dunhuang to modern astronomical observation data from Germany, shimmering in the morning dew as the code of life.

At the end of Li Xiang's documentary, the elderly Rehemaiti reburies the pottery jar in the sand. His calloused hands first place Dunhuang sea buckthorn, German rye, and meteorite fragments, and finally stuff in half a Rhine seashell. As the jar is covered by the shifting sand, a shooting star streaks across the night sky, illuminating the smile in the old man's wrinkles—a cosmic algorithm more precise than any spacecraft, accurately predicting that the border guards of two thousand years ago and today's volunteers will share the same sweet aroma of sea buckthorn juice under the starlight.

As the earthenware jar belonging to the elderly Rehemaiti was completely covered by quicksand, the giant screen at the Nanjing Astronomical Observatory suddenly burst into green light. Under a polarizing microscope, Ayiguli's meteorite slice cracked open, and the seeping water droplets refracted into star chains in the laser light—each "star" corresponded to the genetic binding point between Dunhuang sea buckthorn and German rye, while the shimmering links were the Rhine volcanic ash crystals brought by Marcus.

"The Italian archaeological team sent a video!" Jiang Zimei's enamel mug shattered on a satellite map, coffee stains spreading along the ancient Silk Road, perfectly filling the line connecting the Pompeii ruins and the Dunhuang canal. In the video, the inner wall of a pottery jar unearthed in Pompeii is engraved with the same water ripple pattern, next to which is written in Latin: "When sea buckthorn flowers bloom along star trails, meteorite water will awaken the sleeping river."

A young man wearing a baseball cap suddenly burst into the laboratory. Before Li Xiang's camera could even focus, he saw Marcus running wildly with a cultivation box in his arms. The roots of the German sea buckthorn seedlings inside the box were growing at a visible speed, penetrating the box and weaving a network on the desert surface. Under infrared light, this root network completely overlapped with satellite images of Han Dynasty canals and ancient Roman aqueducts, with the nodes shimmering with the silver light of nickel-iron meteorites.

"The tandoor oven controller is connected to the International Space Station!" Wu Wei's tablet computer fell beside the tandoor oven, with images of sea buckthorn bread baked by astronauts floating on the screen. Uncle Terek suddenly tapped a wooden spoon on the glazed tiles, and the desert rose quartz that Wu Wei had embedded suddenly lit up, revealing a paper recently published in Nature amidst the flour dust—titled "Meteorite water-activated sea buckthorn genes can reconfigure planetary water cycles."

In the dead of night at the weather station, Sun Li's level suddenly pointed to a sudden change. Data transmitted by a drone in the sandstorm showed that the center of the star chart formed by the shadow of the sand barrier and the Han Dynasty canal dam suddenly gushed out groundwater—the test results showed that the water quality was exactly the same as the sediment water in the slice of Ayiguli meteorite, except that it contained blue enzymes secreted by the roots of German sea buckthorn.

"The dome is tracking pulsars!" Chen Mo's walkie-talkie was filled with static. The photovoltaic dome rotated in the downpour, focusing moonlight into beams that shot towards the constellation Perseus. Ayiguli suddenly screamed: meteorite slices were splitting in the accelerator, each fragment reflecting different celestial phenomena, from the celestial map of Zhang Qian's era to the pulsar spectrum of modern radio telescopes, forming a ring in the holographic projection.

Tang Tang's live stream suddenly went black. When the signal was restored, 100,000 viewers saw the old man Rehemaiti's bamboo basket suspended in mid-air, with orange-yellow berries arranged along star trails, forming a pattern resembling the supernova remnant recently discovered by the Nanjing Astronomical Observatory. A viewer sent a rocket emoji and asked, "Is Grandpa casting a spell?" Suddenly, the old man placed the bamboo basket upside down on a sand dune. The instant the meteorite fragments at the bottom of the basket touched the sand, all the leaves of the sea buckthorn seedlings turned simultaneously, and the veins of the leaves revealed a Rhine River navigation chart.

"The seeds in the terracotta pot have sprouted!" Marcus's incubator glass was covered in blue frost, and the newly grown seedlings had roots with the texture of Dunhuang sea buckthorn, while the branches and leaves resembled the arches of an ancient Roman aqueduct. Xu Lan's geological hammer broke open the bluestone next to it, and a copper clasp engraved with water ripples fell out—it was from the same ore that Rehemaiti's father had used to exchange for Persian seeds.

Suddenly, ancient music started playing in Uncle Terek's tandoor oven. When Wu Wei disassembled the thermostat, he found half a meteorite stuck inside—the same achondrite that Ayiguli had picked up by the sheepfold last year. It was now releasing audio under the high temperature, and it turned out to be "Leaving the Frontier Song," a song sung by soldiers guarding the border during the Han Dynasty, mixed with the tune of a Rhine River boat song.

"Look at the satellite cloud image!" Lu Mingze slammed his laptop onto the sand table. The cumulonimbus clouds over Dunhuang were arranging themselves into the shape of a pottery jar. Suddenly, the rain band at the jar's mouth split, one falling towards the ruins of a Han Dynasty canal, the other striking Marcus's experimental field precisely. Jiang Zimei suddenly knocked over the microscope: the microorganisms activated by the improver had formed English letters in the rainwater, spelling out the address of a German agricultural cooperative.

The lab alarm shook off the dust. As a meteorite droplet under the polarizing microscope was inserted into a seabuckthorn seedling, the spectral curves on all the monitoring screens simultaneously spiked—like a border guard from two thousand years ago and a volunteer today, exchanging high-fives on a quantum level. Aygul's tablet suddenly displayed: middle school students on the banks of the Rhine were live-streaming the grafting of seabuckthorn seedlings, using tools with the same curvature as the curved knife that old man Rehemaiti used to carve bamboo baskets.

"The tandoor oven patent has been approved!" Chen Zhe waved the documents and rushed into the rain. On the attached VR setup screen, Uncle Terek, wearing sensor gel, had a grain of sea buckthorn pollen from the International Space Station stuck in his wrinkles. At that moment, Wu Wei was welding a new module by the tandoor oven. The copper sheet he had secretly embedded suddenly glowed, reflecting the CERN Circular Collider in the grease of the roasted lamb chops.

Guli's wedding photo was printed on the casing of the "Digital Oasis" base station. As her Atlas silk skirt swept across the Han Dynasty irrigation canal, the satellite receiver suddenly broadcast a clear voice: "This is the Dunhuang garrison in 101 BC, requesting water replenishment." At the same time, Marcus's cultivation box beeped, and the root tips of German sea buckthorn seedlings were translating this ancient Chinese text into instruction codes suitable for modern drip irrigation systems.

"Grandpa, listen!" Ayiguli held the tablet to the old man's ear. The Morse code displayed on the satellite cloud image, when translated, turned out to be the complete Dunhuang section of the *Shui Jing Zhu* (Commentary on the Waterways Classic), except that "Qianggu River" was written as a spacecraft orbital parameter. Suddenly, Rehemaiti raised a bronze arrowhead, the arrowhead tracing an arc in the rain. From the sandy ground where it landed, new seedlings with purple veins were sprouting—the roots were the drought-resistant genes of Chinese sea buckthorn, while the branches and leaves bore the cold-resistant patterns of a German variety.

Li Xiang's camera captured a stunning scene: as the elderly Rehemaiti placed Rhine seashells into a pottery jar, all the drip irrigation pipes in the sea buckthorn forest simultaneously lit up, tracing star trails from Dunhuang to Rome against the desert night sky. Further away, the antenna of the "Digital Oasis" base station suddenly unfolded into a butterfly shape, pointing towards the constellation Perseus—where the atmosphere of the newly discovered planet detected volatile organic compounds identical to those found in sea buckthorn juice. Suddenly, water vapor rose from the sand dune where the pottery jar stood. When Xu Lan used radar to probe, the screen showed a complete Han Dynasty irrigation system buried beneath the dune, and the main canal's endpoint was precisely the thickest sea buckthorn seedling in Marcus's experimental field. Jiang Zimei suddenly remembered something and pulled out archaeological records from the Niya site ten years ago: "The wheat seeds found in the water-drawing device back then have an 87% similarity in gene sequence to the sea buckthorn we use now for space breeding!"

"The Italians sent us fragments of pottery!" Xu Lan's brush stopped on the newly arrived artifact. The cracks in the pottery shards weren't embedded with salt and alkali, but rather with seeds of tumbleweed, a plant unique to Dunhuang. Marcus suddenly used a Swiss Army knife to cut open a sea buckthorn berry. The orange-yellow juice automatically arranged itself in a petri dish to form the floor plan of the Roman Pantheon, and at the dome, a single grain of sea buckthorn pollen from China floated.

The electronic notification sounded from Uncle Terek's tandoor oven: "Meteorite isotopes detected." Wu Wei disassembled the controller and found a half-piece of meteorite soldered onto the Arduino board inside—a fragment of the Ayiguli meteorite. At this moment, it was generating a special frequency under high temperature, resonating with the radio telescope of Nanjing Astronomical Observatory, and receiving pulse signals from the constellation Perseus.

Suddenly, an international connection appeared in Tang Tang's live stream. Middle school students along the Rhine River held up cultivation boxes; the roots of sea buckthorn seedlings inside had pierced through olive pits engraved with water ripples, growing into miniature versions of the Zhaozhou Bridge in front of the camera. Chen Zhe suddenly slammed his fist on the table: "This isn't a plant, it's a living database of the Silk Road!" Before he finished speaking, a transparent berry rolled out of the old man Rehemaiti's bamboo basket, clearly reflecting the blue outline of the Earth, the edges of continental plates, all covered with the veins of sea buckthorn branches.

During the victory celebration banquet late at night, 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—Wu Weiqian's desert rose quartz was playing holographic images, from Han Dynasty soldiers digging canals to Marcus grafting seedlings, all the images flowing along star trails, finally converging into the peridot crystal in the slice of Ayiguli meteorite.

"Change the star map?" As the old man Rehemaiti pushed the pottery jar towards Marcus, the bronze arrow suddenly pointed to the zenith. The German youth trembled as he opened the incubator. Buried in the volcanic ash at the bottom was a Rhine snail shell, its opening facing the direction of Dunhuang. The patterns on the snail shell perfectly matched the metal staple pattern on the Rehemaiti family heirloom pottery jar.

The final shot of Li Xiang's documentary is a drone flying over the newly completed "Seabuckthorn Star Chain" water conservancy project. The shadows cast by the sand barriers in the sunlight, together with the Han Dynasty canal dam, form a giant star-shaped disk, and each "star" is planted with seabuckthorn trees—the branches of Chinese and German varieties intertwine in the air, and the rustling sound of the leaves rubbing against each other in the wind is exactly the dialogue between the desert and the river recorded in "The Travels of Marco Polo".

When the pottery jar was reburied in the sand, a low-frequency resonance resonated throughout the Dunhuang Desert. Ayiguli's meteorite slices were suspended in the laboratory, with water molecules arranging themselves into a miniature satellite network within the cracks. Each "satellite" connected to water conservancy wisdom from different times and spaces—from pottery pipes in the Han Dynasty to modern drip irrigation systems, and then to volcanic ash improvement technology along the Rhine River, weaving a web of life beneath the star trails.

Starlight filled the wrinkles of old man Rehemaiti's face, just like the dusk sixty years ago when he found the bronze arrowhead. He was unaware that at this moment, in the database of the Nanjing Astronomical Observatory, Ayiguli's research results had updated the global water resource model—those wind-eroded canal dam marks, the porcelain patches on pottery jars, and the ancient riverbed sediments in meteorites, together constituted an algorithm more sophisticated than any supercomputer, accurately calculating the key to reconciliation between humanity and nature, hidden between the sweet and sour taste of sea buckthorn berries and the arc of star trails.

As the pottery jar sank completely into the sand, the pulsar monitoring system at the Nanjing Astronomical Observatory suddenly emitted a burst of bright light. Under a polarizing microscope, Aygul's meteorite slice cracked into a star shape, with blue-green water droplets seeping from each crack—analysis showed that this was a special liquid mixed with German seabuckthorn enzyme and water from a Han Dynasty canal, which, under laser illumination, could project a holographic image of the stars during Zhang Qian's mission to the Western Regions.

"The Rhine River Archaeological Team has sent an urgent email!" Jiang Zimei's finger swiped across the tablet, and suddenly red dots appeared on the screen marking the ruins of the ancient Roman aqueduct. Each dot corresponded to the satellite coordinates of the sea buckthorn forest in Dunhuang. The attached scan images showed that the bridge foundation stones contained the same nickel-iron alloy composition as the pottery jars from Rehemaitijia, as if the craftsmen of two thousand years ago already knew about the stellar resonance between the desert and the river.

Marcus's incubator suddenly beeped. The roots of the sea buckthorn seedlings inside had penetrated the meteorite slices, forming a miniature radio telescope array at the bottom of the petri dish, directly facing the constellation Perseus to receive a special signal. When Wu Wei used a spectrum analyzer to detect it, he found that the signal frequency was exactly the same as the temperature control band of Uncle Terrek's tandoor oven controller, only the "roasted lamb chops 187℃" had been converted into an interstellar communication encoding protocol.

Tang Tang's live stream suddenly received a signal from space. Just as she lifted the bamboo basket belonging to the elderly Rehemaiti, the camera of the International Space Station happened to fly over Dunhuang. In the live stream, the drip irrigation pipes of the sea buckthorn forest formed a huge star map under the sunlight, and at the position of each "star," orange-yellow berries burst open at the same time. The arc drawn by the juice in the air perfectly coincided with the orbital parameters of the spacecraft.

"Look at the sand dunes!" Xu Lan's geological hammer stopped on the steaming sand. Radar images showed that beneath the location where Rehemaiti buried the pottery jar, the remains of a Han Dynasty canal and an ancient Roman aqueduct were creating a magnetic field, drawing groundwater to the roots of the sea buckthorn. Even more astonishingly, the inner wall of the pottery pipe through which the water flowed revealed an abstract of a paper recently published in *Nature*—about how meteorite water activates plant genes and restructures planetary water cycles.

Suddenly, a strange aroma wafted from Uncle Terek's tandoor oven. When Wu Wei disassembled the thermostat, he discovered that the meteorite fragments inside were releasing energy under high temperatures, baking the sea buckthorn ribs with the rich flavor of Rhine wine.

(End of this chapter)