The alarm had become background noise, sounding like someone rubbing sandpaper against a loudspeaker. Chen Hao stared at the countdown in the lower right corner of the main screen: **27:13**. The shield's energy bar looked like a sausage with a bite taken out of it, reduced to a thin strip.

“If we don’t act now, we’ll both turn into cosmic-sized kebabs.” He wiped his face, turned around and walked towards the lab. “Nana, that purple rock in Pit 3, don’t wait for the drone to come back, slice it in the air! I need to know what it is.”

"The sampling machine has arrived at the target area." Nana's voice was barely louder than the air conditioner vents. "We are opening the lead shielding chamber and preparing for laser cutting."

The scene shifts to an aerial view. Smoke is still rising from the bottom of the crater created by the meteorite impact. A purple crystal, about the size of a fingernail, is stuck in a crack in the lava, glowing slightly, like a candy that someone accidentally dropped.

“Active gene chain fragments have been detected.” Nana spoke a little faster. “The sequence matches the debris from the crash ten years ago with a 98.7% match, indicating potential for cross-species integration.”

Chen Hao kicked open the lab door: "I knew it! Why did this piece of junk keep hitting my doorstep? It's just an old neighbor dropping by."

He casually pulled a row of petri dishes from the shelf, all filled with purple wheat seedlings that had just been sown, the sprouts barely longer than a toothpick. With a flick of his finger, he stuffed them all into the temperature-controlled incubator in section B.

"Prepare the gene injection device; I'm going to operate it on-site."

"Risk warning: There is no precedent to support this operation, and failure may lead to the genetic disintegration of the entire crop."

"So what if it crashes?" he muttered as he adjusted the parameters. "Anyway, I can't deliver the goods after signing the contract. At worst, I can switch to selling meteorite souvenirs. I've already thought of a title—'Limited Edition Alien Daddy, Cures Infertility'."

Nana didn't reply. The robotic arm had already started the centrifuge, beginning to purify the genetic material in the meteorite powder. The liquid swirled into a pale purple vortex in the test tube, like scattered sunset clouds.

The light flickered when the first tremor hit.

Chen Hao's hand trembled, and he almost pricked his own finger with the injection needle. "Who's setting off firecrackers outside again?"

"The fourth impact swarm has entered the atmosphere." Nana adjusted the pressure stabilization system. "It is expected to land in fifteen seconds, with the epicenter 3.2 kilometers from the base."

Before the words were even finished, the second shock came. The reagent bottles on the table bounced three times, and one of them tipped over, blue liquid dripping down the edge.

“There have been three power outages.” She quickly switched the power lines. “The temperature in the culture chamber fluctuates by ±4°C, and the gene fusion window has been shortened to nine minutes and forty-three seconds.”

"That's enough." Chen Hao inserted the syringe filled with purple solution into the culture medium interface. "As long as it can survive, even if only one plant survives, then we won't have taken this beating for nothing."

The moment the syringe was pushed all the way in, the wheat seedling cells in the microscope image began to twitch. The chloroplasts looked as if they were being choked, their color rapidly turning gray, and their edges curling and falling off.

“The rejection reaction is severe.” Nana pulled up the data stream. “Cell membrane permeability is out of control, and photosynthetic efficiency has dropped to 12%.”

"Damn it." Chen Hao stared at the screen. "It's only been thirty seconds, and it's already going to give up?"

He suddenly looked up: "Wait...did those silkworms that spun golden silk eat feed mixed with meteorite powder?"

"Yes. Its digestive system secretes an unknown catalytic protein that can accelerate the stable chimerism of heterologous genes."

"Then add this!" He slammed his hand on the worktable. "Add a tiny amount, use it as glue!"

Nana immediately retrieved the frozen sample, extracted a trace amount of protein solution, and injected it into the culture system via a microfluidic chip.

The three held their breath.

Three minutes passed, and the rejection stopped.

Five minutes later, the new shoot of the wheat seedling in the very center stirred. It trembled slightly at first, then shot upwards at a speed visible to the naked eye. The leaves unfolded, revealing a deep purple color with an almost metallic sheen and a faint fluorescent glow at the edges, like a layer of glow-in-the-dark nail polish.

"The growth rate of new shoots has increased three hundred times," Nana announced softly. "The root system has begun to secrete acidic substances and is breaking down rocks to obtain minerals."

Chen Hao grinned: "Goodness, everyone else avoids radiation, but you're treating it like an afternoon tea snack?"

By the time the sixth earthquake struck, he had no time to count how many times it had happened.

The lights in the main control room went out completely, the emergency power came on, and the red light flashed, illuminating faces in alternating red and black hues. A muffled thud came from afar, like a crack appearing inside the mountain.

"The entire protective shield has run out of energy," Nana announced. "The last energy tower has shut down."

There was a moment of silence outside.

Immediately afterwards, a sharp tearing sound ripped through the sky. A meteorite with a diameter of two meters grazed the site of the old protective shield and crashed into the farmland, blasting out a ten-meter-high pillar of fire, and radioactive dust drifted away like gray snow.

“The external radiation level is 17 times the safety limit,” she continued. “Ordinary plants will wither within thirty seconds.”

Chen Hao didn't say anything. He walked over, opened the isolation door, took out a newly grown wheat seedling that had just grown to the height of his palm from the incubator, and placed it in the outdoor cultivation tank.

The wind immediately blew it about, making it sway this way and that. Dust settled on the leaves, like a layer of dirty flour.

Ten seconds passed, and it didn't fall over.

Twenty seconds later, the leaves actually opened wider.

At 30 seconds, a thin rod pierced through the plastic sheet at the bottom of the trough and embedded itself into the layer of gravel below.

One minute later, a second root broke through the soil and firmly hooked onto a piece of weathered rock.

"A 400% increase in photosynthetic efficiency was detected." Nana's voice wavered slightly. "And it is absorbing ionizing radiation from the environment and converting it into bioenergy."

Chen Hao plopped down in front of the control panel, grabbed a cup of cold coffee from the table, took a sip, and winced at the sourness.

"Okay," he grinned, sweat dripping from his chin onto the keyboard. "Other crops fear nuclear winter, are you just feeding on the aftershocks of a nuclear explosion?"

He reached out and brought up the file interface, created a new folder, and entered the number: Z-m41.

Type a line in the remarks column:

"Code name 'Rebel' - born of destruction, thriving in desperate situations."

Nana simultaneously activated the 24/7 monitoring program, focusing the camera on the small seedling standing in the wasteland. Its leaves swayed slightly in the radioactive dust, and the fluorescent edges flickered like an electric current.

"I suggest naming and registering it as a new crop variety," she said. "It could then apply for independent intellectual property protection."

“Absolutely.” Chen Hao rubbed his temples. “We can’t let them get away with this for free again. Let’s say it’s a special disaster relief grain that we developed ourselves. We need to come up with a name that sounds impressive—how about ‘Meteor Wheat’? It sounds like it can summon meteorites to fight.”

“There are already seventeen similar trademarks under review.” Nana pulled up the database. “I suggest changing it to ‘Reverse Entropy Wheat’ or ‘Radiation Rice’.”

“Too academic.” He waved his hand. “Ordinary people won’t remember it. Let’s just call it ‘Indestructible Wheat’. I’ve even thought of the advertising slogan— ‘Use it as a blanket if the sky falls, and treat excessive radiation as a calcium supplement.’

Another impact shook the ground. In the surveillance footage, another meteorite crashed into the edge of the wheat field, sending dirt flying. But less than ten minutes later, two tender shoots sprouted from that scorched earth, their color a strange metallic purple.

“They are spreading,” Nana said.

“It’s not them.” Chen Hao stared at the screen, his voice lowered. “It’s this. Every stone that falls becomes its seed planter.”

He suddenly remembered something, looked up and asked, "Where are the three golden silkworms? Are they still spinning silk?"

“The frequency remains high.” She pulled up the biosignal graph, “and the filament structure shows a new spiral winding pattern, which is suspected to be recording the current environmental parameters.”

"A record?" He scoffed. "You wouldn't happen to be writing a diary—'Today, humans fed us to the rocks again,' would you?"

No sooner had I finished speaking than an alarm popped up on the main screen.

[Abnormal signal transmission detected]

Source: Livestock Shed

Frequency: Intermittent pulses, continuously increasing in intensity.

"It's sending something out?" Chen Hao sat bolt upright. "To whom?"

“Unable to locate the receiver.” Nana quickly traced the signal path, “but the transmission pattern is consistent with the initial signal from the wreckage ten years ago.”

The room was silent for a few seconds.

Chen Hao slowly leaned back in his chair, his coffee cup creaking in his hand.

“So now it’s not just us farming,” he said in a low voice. “Are they also running projects?”

Nana's optical lens turned slightly, reflecting the firelight still falling outside the window.

"Current data shows," she said calmly, "that the species with the greatest evolutionary advantage in the ecosystem is no longer human."