The research institute’s canteen was far superior to the one at the Ninth Agricultural Base. Seasonal fruits were piled high like small, colorful hills, glistening with drops of water, and the meals were rich and diverse.
He Yuesheng was already sighing that he had come to heaven.
“Eating so much fish and meat all of a sudden isn’t good for the stomach,” Yan Jingshui commented with a disapproving tone.
After a moment, she seemed to realize she sounded too stiff and added, “After your exam tomorrow, I can bring you here again to eat.”
“This is enough for me.” Zhao Linong did not order more, just a set meal.
Meanwhile, Wei Li, after waiting for Tong Tong to finish orders, stepped up confidently and placed her order: “I’ll have spicy chicken cubes, braised chicken nuggets, two chicken legs, a bowl of mushroom chicken soup, a chicken heart fruit, and the yogurt with the chicken design.”
The people who had already ordered the food: “…”
The limited menu at the Ninth Agricultural Base’s canteen had been holding Wei Li back.
The group found a table for six and sat down, with Zhao Linong choosing the seat by the window. Before eating, she sent a message to Feng He, letting her know she had finished the first round of exams and asking if she had eaten.
The exam had started at 10 a.m., and it was already past 11. The takeaway she had ordered for Feng He should have arrived by now.
Almost immediately, Feng He responded with a photo of the meal: [I’m eating now, Xiao Nong. How was your exam?]
[The first round should be fine], Zhao Linong replied.
Feng He: [That’s good. Xiao Nong, what are you eating for lunch?]
Zhao Linong snapped a picture of her meal and sent it. Feng He encouraged her to eat first and not chat too much.
“Who are you sending photos to?” Wei Li asked curiously, glancing over. She’d never seen her junior take pictures of food before.
“My family,” Zhao Linong replied, putting her screen away. “They wanted to know what I’m eating.”
“We should visit your house someday!” He Yuesheng suggested enthusiastically.
“I have to go back tomorrow,” Tong Tong said, shaking her head. “I planned to leave after Linong’s exam and already bought my ticket.”
“Next time,” Zhao Linong said with a smile. “After we move, I’ll invite everyone over.”
“That’s a promise!” Wei Li beamed with excitement.
Even Yan Jingshui, seated at the edge of the table, showed a hint of curiosity. She rarely visited others’ homes—likely because she didn’t have many friends.
Several researchers in the canteen glanced their way. Some recognized Wei Li and others had seen researcher Zhao Linong on the surveillance monitor earlier. The sight of the group, dressed casually without ID badges, eating openly in the canteen, drew extra attention.
“The second round of assessment starts at 1 p.m.,” Yan Jingshui reminded. “You’ll need to line up half an hour early.”
The second round of on-site assessment was more troublesome.
You had to line up and enter from the entrance according to the examination room. You only had 20 minutes to answer the questions. After answering the questions, you had to go through another door and wait for everyone to finish the exam before you were allowed to leave.
When they finished their meal and went to the second round of assessment site, the surrounding area was already full of people. It was already 11:30 when the planters came out after the exam.
Many people did not leave, but ordered an expensive takeaway and ate it standing or sitting outside the examination room.
“This year’s questions were way too hard. I barely understood any of it.”
“The second round is probably going to be even worse.”
“Don’t worry, nobody knows how to answer these things.”
Such discussions could be heard everywhere.
After waving goodbye to her friends, Zhao Linong joined the line for her designated examination room. By 12:30, all candidates had queued up, awaiting the second round to begin.
At 1:00 p.m., the bell rang, and the entrance door opened. Two staff members stood at the door, one of whom shouted, “Examinees from the first examination room, come in one by one, don’t squeeze or run.”
Standing toward the back of the line, Zhao Linong couldn’t see what was happening ahead. She distracted herself by browsing the central forum’s rewards section, trying to earn points for renting a better house.
“Examinees from the 23rd examination room come in.”
The person in front of Zhao Linong finally moved. She turned off the light computer and walked forward with the team. After all the people in the examination room came in, the two people at the door closed the entrance door, and all the candidates took off their light computers one by one and passed through another door.
As soon as Zhao Linong stepped through, a cold and light voice called out.“Empty your pockets.”
Zhao Linong subconsciously raised her head and suddenly met the eyes of the young man standing against the wall inside the door. He wore a casual suit today, without the usual Tang sword strapped to him. It seemed that he was just passing by.
The staff member next to him stepped forward with a stern look, obviously considering Zhao Linong a “cheater”.
Zhao Linong took out the saber in her pocket and pulled it out of the leather sheath. The three-edged blade exuded a cold and ferocious light: “Dagger.”
The staff and the examinee in front of her: “…”
You are a student taking an exam, why do you bring such a thing?
The staff member encountered such a thing for the first time and subconsciously turned his head to look at the examiners in the distance, wanting to go over and ask them how to deal with it.
At this time, Ye Changming stood up and stretched out his hand to Zhao Linong: “Come and get it after the test.”
Zhao Linong did not give it to him immediately, but glanced at the staff member and asked: “Is it okay?”
“Okay, okay.” The staff member breathed a sigh of relief, “Give it to Captain Ye.”
Zhao Linong then stepped forward, inserted the three-edged saber into the leather sheath, and put it in Ye Changming’s hand.
Ye Changming’s fingers were long, his palms were clean, and with slightly raised veins on his knuckles.
As soon as the three-edged saber was in his palm, it looked fierce. He held the three-edged saber and lowered his hand.
His cold black eyes looked at Zhao Linong and said, “You can go now.”
Zhao Linong followed the examinee in front of her and walked towards the examiner.
It was an empty auditorium.
Five guards were standing on each side. In the middle were eighteen sick plants. The examinees observed them one by one. After fifteen minutes, everyone needed to write down the symptoms of 1 to 18 on the answer sheet in five minutes.
The plants, all from different species but with overlapping symptoms, were designed to confuse even the most experienced planters.
Some symptoms matched diseases from the Ninth Agricultural Base’s illustrated guide, but others were subtly altered, making identification nearly impossible. At first glance, it was impossible to tell which disease it was.
Within fifteen minutes, thirty examinees shuttled back and forth and many of them were sweating anxiously.
With so little time, a few of the plants matched up with the sketchbook that came out from the ninth agricultural base, but the symptoms of the eighteen plants were similar which made them confused.
Not far away, Ye Changming twirled the dagger idly in his hand, watching the candidates. He looked at the candidates who were twirling around and saw Zhao Linong at a glance.
She was the only one standing on the periphery, trying to see the plants through the gaps.
Zhao Linong was helpless. She hurriedly followed the people in front of her and walked through them. She couldn’t see most of the plants.
When she wanted to go back, she had no way of doing that.
The examination process was far more chaotic than she’d expected.
Ye Changming stopped twirling the three-edged saber in his hand. He raised his eyelids and looked at the candidates who blocked Zhao Linong intentionally or unintentionally. He was about to step over.
“There’s a plant mutation.”
A voice that was neither loud nor low suddenly sounded.
But this was enough to make the candidates surrounding the plants disperse instantly and flee madly to both sides.
After Zhao Linong said this, the people in front of her disappeared immediately. She immediately seized the opportunity, strode forward, and stretched out her hand to turn over the leaves of the plants that had not yet been identified.
Everyone watched her go forward alone, turn over several leaves in succession, and then came to their senses. They were deceived.
Some candidates were dissatisfied immediately, but were stopped by the examiner: “Quiet! Line up according to your test number—no crowding!”
The great killing god just looked at him, and the examiner was guilty and dared not make any small moves. He could only strictly follow the rules.
Such a short time was enough for Zhao Linong to distinguish the symptoms.
However… the process was too challenging.
Five minutes later, when everyone was sitting in their seats to fill in the answer sheets, several people frowned and kept making corrections on the answer sheets.
Zhao Linong looked down at the contents of her answer sheet. If she hadn’t been confident in herself, she would have doubted it and made corrections.
Half of the answers were the same symptoms, and they were arranged one after another.
Any candidate who was a little unsure would doubt whether he/she had answered the wrong symptoms when he saw these answers.
“Time’s up! Everyone, put down your pens and stand up!” the examiner announced.
The candidates immediately put down their pens and stood up. Few of them looked calm, but most of them looked ugly. They had expected that they would not get a good score on this test.
Zhao Linong, however, stood calmly, her hands hanging by her sides, as the staff collected the answer sheets. She followed the others toward the exit waiting hall.
But she couldn’t get out.
The examiner suddenly screamed behind her: “There is a plant mutation!”
At first, the candidates seemed unfazed, assuming it was another trick, but when they turned to look, they saw branches stretching wildly in all directions from one of the plants.
This time, panic broke out. Candidates shoved and pushed, trying to escape through the waiting hall door, which promptly closed, locking some—including Zhao Linong—inside.
She quickly realized she wasn’t just trapped; some candidates were intentionally blocking her path, even shoving her backward. Left with no choice, she stopped and turned her attention to the mutated plant.
The guards were already firing at the plant. However, the mutated plant seemed to understand the power of bullets. The branches first protected the main body, blocked the bullets, and then separated to attack people.
It was unlike any mutated plant she had seen before. Zhao Linong stood at the closed door of the waiting hall exit and thought to herself that this mutated plant was special.
There was a guard next to him but the examiner nearest to the mutant plant panicked, fumbling for safety and pulling a staff member to take his place. The guard was only responsible for the examiner’s safety. After hesitating for a while, he looked at the approaching branches and finally chose to protect the examiner and leave the staff member.
The staff member who fell to the ground was so scared that his whole body went stiff.
He thought that his death was coming, but he was suddenly picked up by someone. “Get out of the way.”
Ye Changming stepped forward, pulling the staff member behind him. In his left hand, the three-edged saber flashed as he slashed at the oncoming branches. The blade sliced cleanly through them cutting branches like mud.
While the guards’ bullets failed to reach the plant’s main body, Only Ye Changming, relying on a triangular saber, walked towards the mutant plant’s main body like he was in the middle of strolling in a garden.
When he finally reached the thick wall of branches surrounding the plant, he paused only for a moment. Ye Changming held the three-edged saber in one hand and slashed at the “branch wall” without any expression on his face.
It looked easy, but the veins on the back of his hand popped out. The moment he cut the stalk, he had a pistol in his right hand and shot at the mutant plant.
The stalks waving in the auditorium seemed to have suddenly lost all their strength, withered and aged and finally fell to the ground.
The guards stopped firing. Ye Changming glanced at the examiner hiding in the corner: “Destroy one plant, replace it with a new one, and continue the assessment.”
Diseased plants were prone to mutate, and the Agricultural Research Institute had prepared backup specimens precisely for such situations.
The examiner, still visibly shaken, nodded hurriedly, barely able to respond.
Ye Changming was too lazy to look at him.
He saw Zhao Linong standing at the door of the waiting room. He was startled.
Then he followed her gaze and looked down at the three-edged saber in his hand. ——It was broken.
“Come and get it after the assessment?” Zhao Linong repeated what he said before.
Ye Changming: “…I’ll compensate you with a new one.”
