Susan's hand was still suspended in mid-air, stopping Chen Hao's outstretched fingertips. Her voice was very low: "Don't touch it."
Chen Hao withdrew his hand and craned his neck forward. "It was fine just now, how did it suddenly turn red?"
“It wasn’t sudden.” Nana had already pointed the microscope at the edge of the leaf. “The record shows that the color change lasted for thirteen minutes, starting from the outermost edge and gradually spreading inward.”
Carl leaned closer to the terminal and zoomed in on the image. In the picture, the dark red edges of the leaves looked like a wet tissue, the color uneven but the boundaries clear.
“It doesn’t look like a disease,” he said. “There are no signs of decay, and the cell structure is intact.”
"What about the contamination?" Chen Hao asked. "Was it when I bled last time...?"
“Impossible.” Susan shook her head. “Blood residue wouldn’t cause localized discoloration, and it certainly wouldn’t only appear on one leaf.”
Nana adjusted the focus and turned on the low-light enhancement mode. The image on the screen flickered, and a tiny reflective spot appeared in the gap of the leaf's epidermis.
“Something’s moving,” Carl said, pointing to a pixel in the corner.
Nana immediately locked onto the area, zooming in five, ten, and fifty times. The reflective spot gradually revealed its outline—a slender body, six legs, and a back that shimmered with an iridescent sheen.
“Arthropod,” she said. “It is about 0.5 millimeters long, completely transparent, and is crawling slowly.”
"An insect?" Chen Hao's eyes widened. "It can survive something this big?"
“Small size doesn’t mean non-existent,” Nana said. “There is a type of mite on Earth that is only 0.3 millimeters long, yet it still reproduces for three generations.”
"But why is it here?" Chen Hao scratched his head. "Does it eat grass? Or... live here?"
“We cannot determine the nature of the behavior at this time.” Nana pulled up the surveillance footage from the past 24 hours, “but it did not happen by chance.”
The scene transitions to a time-lapse. As night falls, the night-blooming jasmine begins to glow. A few seconds later, a tiny figure emerges from the back of a leaf, moves along the leaf edge, pauses briefly in a certain spot, and then secretes a drop of almost invisible liquid.
"It's working?" Chen Hao asked, opening his mouth. "Is this how you clock in for work?"
“It’s more like some kind of regular activity.” Carl stared at the timestamp. “It always happens when the plant’s fluorescence is strongest, with an error margin of no more than two minutes.”
"Phototaxis?" Susan asked.
“It’s not out of the question,” Nana replied, “but it selects specific plants, not randomly distributed ones. Data shows that it prefers individuals with fluorescence intensity more than 15 percent higher than the average.”
"So, in other words," Chen Hao grinned, "it chooses to stay with 'celebrity grass'?"
“That’s one way to understand it,” Nana said without refutation.
Susan hesitated for a few seconds, then turned and walked to the control panel, pressing the lockdown button. A transparent barrier rose around the testing area, enclosing the Night-Blooming Grass alone.
"Don't let it run away," she said. "And don't let the other grasses get affected."
"Let's catch one and take a look?" Chen Hao rubbed his hands together.
“No,” Carl objected immediately. “A creature of this size would be easily damaged during capture. We don’t even know how thin its shell is.”
"So we'll just let it stay there?" Chen Hao scoffed. "Watch it give the grass injections every day?"
“We can simulate it,” Nana suddenly said. “We can reverse-engineer the composition of the secretion, create an artificial solution, apply it to other plants, and observe whether the same reaction occurs.”
"You can remember what the ingredients of that thing are?" Chen Hao asked in surprise.
“The complete molecular formula cannot be determined at the moment,” Nana admitted. “But mass spectrometry screening can capture the proportions of major elements. By combining it with similar compound paths in the database, an approximate formulation can be generated.”
"Then hurry up and calculate!" Chen Hao urged.
Nana connected to the main system and started the ecological behavior analysis module. A series of parameters popped up on the screen: nitrogen content was high, carbon chain length was concentrated in the C6-C8 range, and trace amounts of sulfur were present.
"Preliminary match indicates it is a nitrogen-containing heterocyclic organic compound," she read aloud. "Commonly found in insect glandular secretions, its functions are mostly related to information transmission or metabolic regulation."
"Translate this," Chen Hao raised his hand.
“What it leaves behind can affect the physiological state of plants,” Nana said. “For example, it can trigger defense mechanisms or promote the synthesis of certain chemicals.”
"Wait a minute." Chen Hao suddenly stood up. "I cut my hand the other day and touched a leaf, and the bleeding stopped really quickly. Is it because the bug had already 'processed' the grass?"
No one spoke.
A few seconds later, Carl whispered, "Possibly."
"So it wasn't the grass that was powerful," Chen Hao said, becoming increasingly agitated. "Did the insects add something to it beforehand?"
“It needs to be verified,” Susan said calmly. “If that’s the case, then the flavonoids x7 we detected earlier may not be spontaneously produced by the plant at all.”
Nana immediately pulled up the original data comparison chart. The concentration of x7 in normal night-blooming jasmine juice was 0.003 mg/g, while the sampling results from the reddish leaf showed that the concentration of the same component was four times higher.
“The differences are significant,” she said. “And trace amounts of unknown enzyme activity were also detected in the area, consistent with the catalytic characteristics found in insect secretions.”
"That's it!" Chen Hao slammed his hand on the table. "This bug is the real apothecary! The grass is just a deliveryman!"
“The analogy is inappropriate,” Nana said, “but the logic is sound.”
Susan picked up the whiteboard and quickly wrote down a title: "Nightgrass - Microscopic Arthropod Interaction Hypothesis".
“Next,” she said, “we need to determine whether this relationship is accidental or a common phenomenon.”
“Find more leaves with red edges,” Carl said. “See if they all have bugs.”
“We still need to try artificial intervention,” Chen Hao interjected. “If we apply some simulated liquid to grass without insects, can we make it turn red on its own and produce x7 more?”
“The plan is feasible,” Nana nodded, “but the difficulty lies in obtaining sufficiently pure secretion samples.”
"Can't we just scrape a little bit?" Chen Hao asked.
“The amount is too small.” Karl calculated, “Assuming each insect secretes less than a nanogram each time, we need at least one hundred collections to gather enough for the basic test.”
"It's been too long," Chen Hao shook his head.
Nana paused for a second, and the optical module flickered slightly.
“I have an idea,” she said. “Use nanoscale adsorption membranes.”
"Huh?" Chen Hao didn't understand.
“A highly absorbent material,” Nana explained. “When applied to areas where insects are active, it can capture residual volatile components and particulate matter in the air.”
"Sounds like a high-tech cleaning cloth," Chen Hao muttered.
“It’s more efficient than direct collection.” Nana ignored him. “After six hours of resting, it is estimated that the total amount collected can be equivalent to thirty natural secretions.”
“Then let’s stick it on!” Chen Hao immediately agreed.
Five minutes later, a thin, silvery-gray film, about the size of a fingernail, was gently affixed to the back of the reddish leaf, covering the area where insects often frequented.
"Now we can only wait." Susan put away her tools. "In the meantime, do not disturb the test area and keep the environment stable."
"I'll keep watch," Chen Hao volunteered. "I can't sleep anyway."
“You said the same thing yesterday,” Carl reminded him, “and then you were snoring in your chair at two in the morning.”
"This time is different!" Chen Hao puffed out his chest. "I'm going to witness a historic moment!"
"At what time?" Susan asked.
"The moment Dr. Insect officially started his job!" he declared emphatically.
No one responded.
Time passed slowly. Only the soft hum of the instruments and the occasional turning of pages remained in the laboratory.
Six hours later, Nana indicated that adsorption was complete. She carefully removed the membrane and placed it into the mass spectrometer's sample inlet.
While waiting, Chen Hao kept doodling in his notebook.
Susan glanced at it; the paper had the words "Dr. Bug" written in big letters, with a drawing of a small bug wearing a stethoscope below, and the sign next to it read "Registration fee: one leaf".
“Stop fooling around,” she said.
“I’m serious.” Chen Hao looked up. “If we could cultivate these artificially, we wouldn’t need to look for a first-aid kit when someone gets injured.”
“The prerequisite is that it is willing to cooperate,” Carl said. “And we need to figure out how it identifies target plants.”
"Maybe it's related to light." Chen Hao thought for a moment, "It specifically chooses to live in bright places, which means it likes strong fluorescence."
“Or the other way around,” Nana suddenly said, “it’s not that it chooses the grass, it’s that the grass attracts it.”
"What do you mean?" Susan asked.
“The night-blooming jasmine may release some kind of volatile signaling molecule,” Nana said. “It is produced only under certain physiological conditions and is used to summon this insect.”
"Symbiosis?" Karl frowned. "Plants actively calling on insects to help them?"
“There are many examples in nature,” Nana said. “Some flowers release chemical signals when they are injured to attract pollinators or defensive insects.”
"So the night-blooming jasmine isn't passively being slaughtered," Chen Hao suddenly realized. "It's like opening a clinic and getting an appointment with a specialist!"
"The analogy is still inappropriate," Nana said.
But this time, she did not deny the conclusion.
The mass spectrometer alarm sounded. A new matching result popped up on the screen: the adsorbate contained a highly reactive nitrogen heterocyclic compound with a structure that was highly similar to a key intermediate in the synthetic pathway of flavonoid X7.
“The connection is confirmed,” Nana announced. “The insect’s secretions have the potential to activate medicinal plant components.”
The room was quiet for a few seconds.
Chen Hao slowly raised his hand.
“I think,” he said, “we should give it a name.”
“No need,” Susan said.
“At least give it a number,” Carl suggested. “mIS-01, the first case of a microscopic arthropod.”
"It's too cold," Chen Hao shook his head. "It deserves better."
He opened his notebook and wrote another line of text next to "Doctor Insect": **Guardian of Night Grass - Number One**.
Then he drew a circle heavily.
“Now,” Susan stood up, “prepare the isolation incubator. We’re going to try to transfer the first live organism out.”
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