As soon as she asked this question, there was a lot of laughter in the class, as if she had asked some ridiculous question that everyone knew.
“If we knew why the mutant plants mutated, would we still have deaths?” A boy couldn’t help but laugh out loud and say, “Stop meddling in other people’s business.”
Zhao Linong didn’t even bother to look back at the boy who was talking and continued to look seriously at Kang Anru on the podium.
Kang Anru had been injured and looked unhappy from the moment she came in. She seemed to want to finish the class quickly. After Zhao Linong asked this question, her brows furrowed and her face became even worse.
Seeing this, the laughter in the classroom gradually died down, and everyone looked at Zhao Linong, who seemed to have angered the teacher. Most people unconsciously showed blame and dissatisfaction in their eyes.
“Why do you ask?” Kang Anru suddenly asked back.
Zhao Linong stood below and looked into the teacher’s eyes. “I want to know what signs or characteristics there are before plants mutate.”
Kang Anru narrowed her eyes, stared at her for a while, and finally said, “This is the content of the next class. Since someone asked, I will tell you directly. Mutated plants refer to plants that have undergone abnormal changes. Plants that are sick or encounter insect pests are most likely to mutate, and this kind of mutation will eventually lead to the rapid enlargement of plants and prey on animals.”
“Normally,growing plants won’t mutate?” Zhao Linong searched for information about mutated plants on the optical brain, but came up blank, as if someone had deliberately blocked this information.
“Currently, the crop seeds in the base have been screened by the Central Research Institute, and they will grow normally without any mutations.” Kang Anru’s eyes fell on Zhao Linong, and she finally glanced at the students below and said, “Okay, next, distribute the seeds. This is the content of your final examination.”
She didn’t want to discuss this topic any further, perhaps because she was afraid of affecting the progress of the course.
Zhao Linong thought about it and sat down again. He Yuesheng beside her immediately leaned closer and said, “You just said ‘what are the signs’, but you didn’t say ‘whether there are signs’. It seems that you are sure that there are changes before the plants mutate.”
The two words “what is there” and “is there” presuppose completely different positions. The former presupposes that something already exists, but no one knows what it is, while the latter is still unclear whether it exists or not.
Zhao Linong was stunned. She didn’t expect He Yuesheng to be so perceptive.
She said casually, “Everything has signs, and I guess the mutant plants have signs too.”
Zhao Linong simply believed, based on his professional instinct, that there were signs of sudden change.
Just like when a plant is sick, sometimes the cause cannot be seen on the surface, and only after treatment can we discover that there is a problem with the roots.
“So…” He Yuesheng thought, “I feel like you understand a lot.”
“I can’t say I understand.” Zhao Linong never felt that she understood. There were too many and too complicated plants in the world. It turned out that when she followed her tutor around, she was often amazed by all kinds of plants and marveled at the magic of nature.
“Classmate Xiao Zhao, let’s be neighbors.” He Yuesheng suddenly said.
“After we get the seeds, each of us will be allocated a piece of land.” He Yuesheng opened the map and zoomed in on the west side of the base. “The new land is in this direction, 2 meters long and 1 meter wide.”
At this time, Kang Anru had left the stage, and two senior students came in. One of them was holding a box and started distributing planting bags, while the other one was recording with a computer. He walked in front of them and dropped two planting bags.
The planting bag is a two-inch plastic zip-lock bag with a paper tag and ten seeds inside.
Zhao Linong lowered his eyes and looked at the seeds in the bag. They were flat, with fine hairs on the edges. They were tomato seeds1
.
He Yuesheng next to her, had already reached out and turned over the two bags on the table, revealing a paper label on the front with the words “Horseshoe Tomato” 2
written on it.
“It’s tomato seeds.” He Yuesheng picked up the bag and took a closer look. “Tomatoes are very expensive. I’ve only eaten them once.”
Various tomato diseases suddenly emerged in Zhao Linong’s mind, but she didn’t know to what extent plant diseases and insect pests would cause mutations.
In her world, if tomatoes were sick or infested with pests, they could be treated with medicine, and if they couldn’t be saved, they could be removed. But in this world, if tomatoes were planted and they got sick, they could end up costing lives …
Another senior student raised his bracelet, scanned He Yuesheng and Zhao Linong’s faces, and asked, “What seeds do you want to choose?”
Zhao Linong thought for a moment and asked, “Can I sell the seeds I choose after growing them?”
The senior student was not surprised by the question and nodded. “It’s up to you.”
“I want lettuce seeds3
.” said Zhao Linong.
Lettuce grows fast and is relatively easy to grow. The time for new student benefits is limited, so she has to earn points as soon as possible.
Upon seeing this, He Yuesheng immediately said, “I want lettuce seeds too.”
After the senior students completed the registration, they continued to walk back with another person. After all the planting packets were distributed and the self-selected seeds were registered, they notified the freshmen about the land allocation and took them to the field area.
Not only the Agriculture C class, but the entire freshman class went downstairs and, led by senior students, walked out of the round building and got on the bus.
“Linong!” Tong Tong came out, saw Zhao Linong in front of her, and immediately called her.
Zhao Linong turned around and saw her roommate. She subconsciously slowed down her pace and waited for Tong Tong to squeeze through the crowd. He Yuesheng next to her also stopped when he saw this.
“I asked my senior, and she said there are seeds of the rainbow vine at the base.” Tong Tong squeezed over and said excitedly to the two of them, “Although there is only one seed, my senior checked it and said the seed is quite active.”
“Rainbow vines are easy to grow.” Zhao Linong sometimes felt that she saw the shadow of her mentor in Tong Tong, who had an infinite love for plants, even though Tong Tong was only interested in rainbow vines.
“I’m going to get on the bus and go back to talk.” Tong Tong saw her class bus and hurriedly waved goodbye to Zhao Linong and He Yuesheng.
The Ninth Agricultural Base is divided into an urban area and a farming area. The urban area consists of three large buildings, where students can live and study. The farming area is where agricultural students grow crops. There are open fields, greenhouses, and many uncultivated plots of land.
The land for the freshmen was an open field, with 3,000 people sharing the land, so the area was not small. Each major had a fixed area, and the land inside was up for grabs. As soon as everyone got off the bus, they began to scatter, choose the land they wanted, and put up a flag with their name on it.
The flags were distributed on the bus, and everyone wrote their name on the flag with a pen.
Zhao Linong looked down at the tomato seeds in her hand, then walked towards the fields on higher ground with the flag in her hand. He Yuesheng hesitated for a moment but decided to follow her.
“It’s too far away.” He Yuesheng couldn’t help but remind her, “There’s still a large part of wasteland here that hasn’t been reclaimed. The closer you get to the edge, the more barren it becomes. We only spray protective liquid regularly, and there may be mutated weeds. It’s perilous.”
Zhao Linong looked back, and, as expected, most of the freshmen chose the middle option.
The west is not a plain, but a land of ups and downs. Only the land reclaimed for new growth at the base is relatively flat. The middle is the most regular and looks very suitable for planting.
Zhao Linong shook her head: “The ground in the middle is too low, and it will easily accumulate water when it rains.”
If the weather in this world was the same as in her original world, it would rain a lot in May and June. Once water accumulated and the high-temperature environment occurred, tomatoes would easily become diseased.
Zhao Linong didn’t avoid anyone when she spoke, and some classmates nearby heard what she said, but no one cared.
“We agreed to be neighbors.” He Yuesheng gritted his teeth and followed her steps. “As long as the base sprays protective liquid regularly, there shouldn’t be any mutated weeds.”
Zhao Linong chose a seat at the edge of Class C. Not far away was a wasteland blocked by barbed wire. She planted a flag with her name on it at the edge of the field.
He Yuesheng put up a flag next to her: “From now on, we will be neighbors, classmate Xiao Zhao.”
Student Xiao Zhao was squatting at this moment. She grabbed a handful of soil with her hand. She pinched it and looked at it for a moment, then opened her fingers to let the soil slowly fall. Finally, she turned over her palm and shook off all the soil.
A 2×1-meter area is barely enough to plant ten horseshoe tomato plants.
“Zhao Linong, He Yuesheng.” After all the freshmen had placed their flags, the senior students came over with boxes and called out their names, “The seeds of your choice.”
It was the same two-inch plastic ziplock bag, but this time the lettuce seeds took up one-third of the bag.
——Too much.
Zhao Linong thought that this piece of land probably could not be used for planting.
She turned and asked He Yuesheng this question.
“We can buy pots and soil on the Central Base Network.” He Yuesheng used his optical computer to open the Central Base Network. “Look, pots are not expensive. A small pot only costs 10 points, and a bag of sterilized, insect-killing safe soil is only 99 points.”
