Chapter 37 Why can't the lab ever grow the genes we want...?

Thanks to the nutrients and growth buffs that Wen Yu obtained from the system, the newly planted crops and vegetables in the field grew rapidly.

The vegetables in the field were growing very well, and even the villagers who were used to growing crops were amazed.

As a result, Luxi Village became more and more lively every day.

Merchants began arriving in the village in donkey carts and settling down there, bartering with the villagers at the village entrances and alleys with the needles, thread, oil, salt, soy sauce, and vinegar they had brought.

Some people even heard that the land here is fertile and the crops grow well, so they came specifically to pre-order the next season's harvest from the villagers.

Wen Yu walked on the dirt road in Luxi Village, hearing some unfamiliar accents and seeing many unfamiliar faces. There were also carts and horses loaded with goods parked by the roadside.

She suddenly felt a sense of unreality.

It felt as if I was immersed in an overly realistic holographic farming game.

Back when she was in school, Wen Yu always played farming games like she was going to work.

In pursuit of maximum efficiency, she sets multiple alarms according to the harvest time in the game, and logs on as soon as the time comes.

She couldn't bear to see the workshops and fields empty, so she would go up every now and then to replenish the workshops with raw materials and to water and catch insects in the fields.

Watching the little characters in the game running around busily filled her with a sense of satisfaction.

It wasn't until she actually started farming that Wen Yu realized reality was far more complex than the game.

A single, ordinary seed needs to go through dozens of sunrises and sunsets from being buried in the soil to flowering and bearing fruit.

During this period, there was hope for favorable weather and abundant harvests, but also fear of natural disasters such as drought and flood.

A half-hour progress bar in a game represents a whole season of hard work and waiting in reality.

An unexpected natural disaster can wipe out the hard work of millions of people day and night.

She had heard old people sigh before, "Farmers depend on the weather for their livelihood," and only now did she truly understand that saying.

The viewers in the live stream, who were initially impatient, have gradually become more patient.

Previously, people would complain in the comments: "Why can't Wen Yu use his time-manipulation technique to speed up the plot? Watching farming is so boring!"

These bullet comments gradually disappeared, and the remaining viewers were gradually "assimilated".

On social media platforms, a number of somewhat peculiar shares have emerged.

Someone posted a picture of a potted cherry tomato plant bearing fruit on their windowsill.

Someone showed off a row of neatly arranged tender green bean sprouts under the sunlight.

Others posted photos of their small vegetable gardens tended by their grandparents, captioning them: "I accidentally clicked into a live stream, and now my whole family is growing vegetables with me. We've now created a vegetable patch on our rooftop. I can only say, the Chinese spirit has awakened!"

[Hahaha, me too! I suddenly started growing vegetables at home, and my grandma even said I was doing it wrong, so she started teaching me step by step—it was like she had a cheat code! The good news is, I've already grown my first batch, and I've given them to lots of relatives and friends, and everyone raved about them! Homegrown vegetables definitely taste better!]

A rather coincidental thing happened: [My dorm is full of female college students. After going home for summer vacation, I was bored, so I opened Wen Yu's live stream and became completely addicted. From then on, I watched it every day while eating, and even got my whole family to watch it with me. Unexpectedly, after school started, I found my other roommates watching it while eating... Sure enough, meals just don't taste as good without this live stream!]

This trend swept across the internet, and even major media outlets took notice of it.

Agriculture is the foundation of the nation, and the media were immediately intrigued, seizing the opportunity to promote its importance.

Meanwhile, an agricultural researcher was drawn to the attention of his family members who were watching the live replay.

The screen over there shows footage of villagers trading with grain merchants.

The researchers, who couldn't resist the urge to experiment when they had free time, were astonished after casually calculating the grain yield in Luxi Village: "A group of non-professionals, using ordinary seeds, actually achieved this yield?"

This data is more than double that of high-yield seeds on the market!

One stone stirs up a thousand waves.

The research institute held an emergency meeting overnight, with researchers sitting around a long table, debating the data captured on the screen and the live stream clips made by netizens.

Ultimately, they came up with two possibilities.

Either Wen Yu and her team are faking it, buying a lot of grain to put on a show, or... they really have grown a high-yield grain that far exceeds the current average yield.

"I think the possibility of it being fake is extremely high." Senior researcher Lao Wang pushed up his glasses, pointed to a replay on the screen, and said with certainty, "Look, everyone, this is the critical period when the crops are about to be harvested, but Wen Yu suddenly took several children and left the village to attend some literary gathering in the city."

"When they returned, the grain in the field had already been harvested and put into the granary. It was the villagers who kindly helped her with the harvest. Because of this, the most crucial and impossible-to-falsify part of the process—the harvest—is completely missing! Isn't this the perfect window for fraud?"

“That’s right,” someone immediately chimed in. “The harvesting stage is the most direct indicator of yield, and it’s also the most labor-intensive. Skipping this process and directly showing the results is indeed hard to believe.”

Researcher Xiao Li, who had been closely following the live stream, couldn't hold back any longer and slammed his hand on the table, standing up abruptly.

She was a little agitated: "Teacher Wang, everyone! I've been observing her field for a long time, and I can roughly estimate the growth rate, tillering, number of grains per ear, and fullness of the crops through the high-definition live broadcast!"

Xiao Li walked to the whiteboard, quickly wrote down the data she had recorded, and performed the calculations on the spot.

“I previously used footage from the heading and grain-filling stages to create a model and calculated the yield, which was almost identical to what is now being claimed. I believe it is neither necessary nor very difficult for her to fabricate this scale of yield while the entire process is being broadcast live!”

She took a deep breath and glanced at the many senior colleagues present: "Teachers, think about it, why is it that the culture medium in the laboratory can never grow the bacteria we want, but it can grow easily in the moldy kitchen of the blogger?"

"Why couldn't her field produce high-yield seeds? Like a genetic lottery, the randomness of nature and the potential of the biological world can sometimes exceed our expectations through methodical experiments!"

A brief silence fell over the meeting room.

While these words were impulsive and lacked rationality, they subtly struck a chord with some researchers.

Yes, they meticulously design experiments and strictly control all variables every day.

However, sometimes the result may not be as good as a wild variety that grows randomly in the field.

Even many renowned industry veterans still have to search for treasures in the wild in order to find superior varieties.

"Alright, alright, arguing like this won't get us anywhere," another senior researcher stepped in to smooth things over. "Since her new crop has already been planted, why don't we continue observing?"

"If she can fully demonstrate the entire process from sowing to harvest this season, especially the detailed record of the harvest and weighing, the truth will naturally come to light. It's too early to draw conclusions now."

The two sides temporarily ceased their arguments, essentially accepting this compromise.

But Xiao Li felt that waiting idly was not a solution.

As soon as the meeting ended, she tried to contact Wen Yu's agent, Chen Xiayun, and eagerly inquired about the specific source of the seeds purchased by Wen Yu's team, whether they were the latest varieties from a foreign research institute or special germplasm resources from a certain place.

Chen Xiayun, on the other end of the phone, remained silent as she listened to the other person's carefully worded inquiry.

She didn't know either!

The so-called "Wen Yu team" being discussed online actually only consists of Wen Yu himself.

How did she know where Wen Yu's seeds came from?

Chen Xiayun quickly deflected the topic with a few words. She wanted to contact Wen Yu's mother, Wen Yan, but Wen Yan contacted her first.

[Wen Yan: Xia Yun, there's been progress on Xiaoyu's case. Dr. Eric has been monitoring her data for a long time and also contacted his senior colleague, Ms. Arabella. They finally found a similar case in the case database.]

[Chen Xiayun: Is it a good outcome?]

[Wen Yan: Well… that's hard to say. Ms. Arabella told us about a high-achieving student who had enjoyed many years of success and academic excellence, but suddenly fell into a coma after graduating from university and has not regained consciousness since. Her family spent almost all their savings and consulted numerous doctors, but they still couldn't find the cause.]

[Wen Yan: Her condition is very similar to Xiao Yu's right now.]

Chen Xiayun's heart tightened.

But just being anxious won't get them anywhere.

Previously, Wen Yan accidentally stumbled upon a donation channel, but the group tried many times without being able to reopen it. Perhaps the mysterious force there sensed their attempt to interfere with that world and became wary.

[Wen Yan: However, after discussing it with Eric, Ms. Arabella gave me a conclusion: we should try our best to expand the influence of Wen Yu's live stream. It's said that the greater our world's influence on her, the more likely she is to wake up.]

real?

Chen Xiayun took a deep breath.

Now that things have come to this, whatever it may be, she has to give it a try.

[Chen Xiayun: Okay. I will arrange for someone to do positive publicity.]

As for those researchers...

It's better if she doesn't reply.

After all, she couldn't come up with an accurate conclusion in a short time. Rather than making more mistakes, it was better to use this method to keep their curiosity alive and attract more people to watch the live stream.

----

Wen Yu still misses home occasionally, but it's not as painful as it was when she first arrived.

Once she gets busy, she finds it hard to be sentimental anymore. When she first arrived, she was immersed in sadness every day, but now that melancholy has gradually faded.

She had more important things to do: farming, managing the school, and leading the entire village to work hard and become prosperous.

Moreover, the more prosperous her life became, the more she felt that going home was only a matter of time.

She didn't know what the system's final task required, but judging from the growing number of viewers and the active comments, she occasionally felt that it wouldn't be anything too difficult.

Before that, she will do her best to bring a better future to those around her.

Today, Luxi School is thriving.

Although not all villagers will attend the classes, the number of people who actively seek to learn has far exceeded Wen Yu's initial expectations.

What pleased her most was that women made up the majority of the students sitting in the classroom.

At first she was a little surprised, but after thinking about it carefully, she felt it made sense.

The societal constraint of "a woman's virtue lies in her lack of talent" has trapped too many women who yearn for knowledge. It's not that they don't want to read, but that they can't. Once a place opens its doors and explicitly welcomes them, they will seize the opportunity no matter what.

Furthermore, Wen Qingshi's achievement of winning first place at the literary gathering inspired countless women.

A woman was able to defeat many highly praised talented men head-on.

Having grown up hearing the notion that "boys are naturally smarter than girls," how could they not be moved by such a rebuttal?

Finally, in this world, if a man is truly determined to study and make progress, his family and society will mostly support him, and he will have far more opportunities than a woman.

Nowadays, most men who are illiterate, except for a few who are truly impoverished by their family circumstances, have no interest or talent in reading.

A combination of factors led to the predominance of women in schools.

Therefore, Wen Yu increasingly felt that the school really needed a female teacher.

It's not just about relieving the pressure of teaching.

Furthermore, she firmly believes that some difficulties can only be deeply understood by people of the same sex.

The very existence of female teachers is a silent form of support for all female students.

Chen Miaozhi was the person she had been hoping for.

In the days following the letter's delivery, Wen Yu, like Chen Yu, eagerly awaited Chen Miaozhi's return.

But she never expected that her first meeting with Chen Miaozhi would be in such a way.

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Author's note: After reading so many jokes about raising bacteria in erotic novels, I've finally gotten to use this meme myself.

However, this article is not rigorous, please do not take it seriously.