He was a disabled military officer who doted on his research work in the Northwest.

Shen Tang looked innocent: "Yes. What's wrong?"

Lu Yanzhi's throat tightened.

The owner of that cabbage was sitting right in front of me.

"Cough." He coughed abruptly, turning his head sharply, his ears turning bright red. "N-nothing. I just wanted to see it for myself."

Shen Tang didn't expose him, but just smiled and said, "If you're interested, you can come and take a look. That piece of land is in my backyard. But you need to register to enter and exit the compound, so I need to tell my cousin first."

"cousin?"

"It's Commander Mu."

"Okay, okay! When?"

"This Sunday, perhaps."

"Okay! Sunday!" Lu Yanzhi tucked the scrap paper into his pocket and dashed out like the wind.

Shen Tang watched his figure disappear at the end of the corridor, then picked up her enamel mug and took a sip of water.

I was secretly overjoyed. Oh, Teacher Lu—I'll settle the score with you later for sneaking over the wall to steal vegetables.

She sighed softly again. This feeling of knowing something but having to keep quiet and pretend to be stupid is quite tiring, haha.

……

Sunday. 9:00 AM.

Lu Yanzhi arrived an hour earlier than the agreed time.

He tidied up a bit today, which was unusual for him. He combed his hair, tucked his shirt into his pants, and changed into a pair of relatively clean canvas shoes. But the huge canvas bag strapped to the back seat revealed his true nature: soil drill, sealed bags, labels, pH test strips, sterile sampling bottles—he looked like he was going to be in the mountains for three days.

Shen Tang led him into the backyard.

Mu Qinghan followed behind, leaning on her cane.

Shen Tang asked him why he wasn't going to the hospital, and he said, "It's cold, I'm not going."

She blinked. Was it cold? Why not stay indoors? But the thought was fleeting, and she went to greet Teacher Lu.

In December, everything in the Northwest is withered and yellow. But in the vegetable garden of about thirty square meters in the backyard, the bok choy is neatly arranged, with thick and emerald green leaves, and a row of scallions stands tall and fresh, their greenness dazzling against the gray and white saline-alkali Gobi Desert.

Lu Yanzhi stood at the edge of the ground, watching without moving for a full minute.

Then I squatted down, scooped up a pinch of topsoil, and smelled it—the fresh scent of humus, the unique aroma of active microorganisms.

pH test strip reading – 8.5 or higher. Strongly alkaline.

"For such healthy crops to grow at this alkalinity... there must be something in the soil regulating it..." His hands began to tremble.

"What did you do?"

"Treated? No, I didn't." Shen Tang tilted her head, looking completely innocent. "Just normal tilling, composting, and watering. Maybe this plot of land is special? I chose it because the color was darker than the surrounding land and it was more damp—maybe there was something underground to begin with?"

"Natural flora...the original population has been activated..." Lu Yanzhi murmured to himself, his eyes growing brighter and brighter. "I need to take samples."

"Go ahead and take them. Just don't ruin my vegetables."

Cough cough cough, Lu Yanzhi felt a little guilty thinking about the last time he came to collect samples. He immediately lowered his head to cover it up, took out a small shovel from his canvas bag, picked a medium-sized bok choy from the edge of the ground, and with a fist's width away from the root, he shoveled down, made a cut on each of the four sides, and cut the root diagonally at the bottom, lifting the whole vegetable up intact with the roots and soil, without the soil clump falling apart.

The movements were fluid and seamless, executed in one go; the practiced ease made it seem like it wasn't the first time.

Shen Tang crossed her arms and watched the whole thing quietly.

"Well, speaking of which—" she said casually.

"Hmm?" Lu Yanzhi didn't even look up, carefully packing cabbages into a sealed bag.

"A while ago, one of my vegetables went missing from this field."

His hand, which was serving the food, paused for a moment.

"That's how you dig it," Shen Tang gestured slowly. "A fist's width from the root, cut square on all four sides, and break off diagonally at the bottom—root and all, neat and tidy. Completely different from how people usually pull vegetables."

Lu Yanzhi remained squatting, motionless.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end.

"I immediately thought—this method looks exactly like the sampling technique used by researchers. Within a hundred miles, everyone doing soil research…"

She paused for a moment.

"Could it be—"

"It was me, I was wrong."

Lu Yanzhi slammed down the shovel, squatted down on the ground, and confessed his guilt decisively.

"I dug it up. Three months ago, I climbed over the back wall." He spilled the beans, his ears turning bright red, "But I wasn't stealing vegetables—I was taking samples! That cabbage is still in the lab—I analyzed the rhizosphere soil seventeen times. Later, I wanted to come back to take more samples, but the security guards in your compound increased their posts, and I was kicked out twice."

Shen Tang chuckled, remembering how she had told Mu Qinghan about it, and how security at the compound had been tightened afterwards. "You want to come back for more samples?"

Lu Yanzhi: "..."

Oh no. I forgot to mention it again.

He squatted in the vegetable patch, hugging a cabbage, radiating an aura of utter despair: "...I'm sorry, I'll pay for the vegetables."

"What compensation? Consider it a sacrifice for science." Shen Tang waved his hand. "But next time, use the main entrance. Otherwise, if the guards catch you—they'll treat you like a thief."

Lu Yanzhi wiped the sweat from his brow. The thought of being caught by the guards at the military compound was terrifying. "Okay, next time I'll use the main gate! Definitely!"

Shen Tang smiled and turned to get the labels, but stopped after taking two steps.

Lu Yanzhi was still squatting in the ground, but he was no longer taking samples.

He stared at the cabbage with soil still attached in his hand, his gaze shifting from excitement to a somber expression. It was as if he could see far away through the clump of soil.

Three years ago. Beijing, Academy of Agricultural Sciences.

He stood in his mentor Zhou Henian's office, his experimental report spread out on the table—the symbiotic mechanism of halophilic bacteria and plant roots, and the bioaccumulation effect of trace elements in alkaline soil.

The data is impressive. The conclusion is perfect. He worked on it for a full eight months.

Zhou Henian looked at it for a long time.

Then he took off his glasses and rubbed his temples.

"Yanzhi," he said, "your data cannot be reproduced reliably under laboratory conditions."

"Teacher, I can do it again—"

"It's not a matter of doing it again." Zhou Henian's gaze, hidden behind his reading glasses, was complex and unreadable. "Your ideas... are too ahead of their time. Now is not the time to talk about these things."

He didn't quite understand. What did "not the right time" mean? Did scientific discoveries really have a timing factor?

"You need to calm down," Zhou Henian finally said. "Go to the Northwest. Spend two years training at the grassroots level. Think carefully about what it means to be down-to-earth."

With just that one sentence, he traveled from the capital to the Northwest.

Two years became three years.

Zhou Henian did not ask him to return. Not a single letter arrived.

His letters all disappeared without a trace, receiving no response whatsoever.

In the eyes of his teachers, he was probably a student who was eager for quick success and impetuous in his work.

But his data was fine; he knew that in his heart.

The conclusion of that experiment was correct—it's just that the results couldn't be consistently reproduced under laboratory conditions. What he needed was empirical evidence in the field. A living sample of this naturally occurring symbiotic system.

Three years have passed. He searched through hundreds of kilometers of saline-alkali land in the Northwest, but found nothing.

Until now.

He looked down at the cabbage in his hand—its root system was well-developed, with white mycelium almost invisible to the naked eye entwined between the root hairs.

He had previously conducted a complete rhizosphere microbial analysis on the stolen cabbage. The results astonished him—the halophilic bacteria not only helped the plant survive in highly alkaline soil, but also formed a miniature element cycling system in the rhizosphere.

This is what he has been looking for.

Just you wait, teacher.

Wait until I've completed the symbiotic reconnection experiment. Wait until I stand before you with the complete data link—

You will know that I was not wrong three years ago.