The incandescent light bulb in the sterile room crackled as Mou Xuan picked up a grain of wheat swollen with blood bubbles using tweezers.
The nutrient solution in the culture tank was becoming turbid at a speed visible to the naked eye, and the broken roots were floating on the water like curled up maggots.
"The soil organic matter content has skyrocketed by 400% in three days. These seeds simply cannot adapt!" Agronomist Meng smashed the petri dish on the metal table, his cracked lips stained with blood foam from the wheat ears. "Expert Liang's decomposer destroys the ecological balance..."
"Look at your test report!" Liang, a soil expert, suddenly opened the collar of his protective suit, revealing the silver lines on his neck. "The nanorobots remaining in the soil are mutating. They are clearly seed gene chains..."
Mou Xuan crushed the radiation detector that was buzzing with alarm.
The wound on the palm of the hand caused by glass shards oozed black blood, which was blocked by the hemostatic gel automatically sprayed on the protective suit.
Alarms rang out one after another outside the sterile room, and the third batch of germinated corn seeds began to ooze light green pus.
Chen Yao, wearing a gas mask, broke open the airtight door, holding a rusty refrigerator in her hand. "The original sample was sealed by the Academy of Agricultural Sciences three years ago," she turned the radiation value monitoring screen on the side of the box to the crowd, "the similarity of pathological characteristics is 92%."
The quarrel stopped abruptly.
The Mongolian agronomist used his sticky gloves to leave five fingerprints on the surface of the refrigerator. In the twenty sealed test tubes inside the box, wheat seeds from the last century were slowly expanding in an amber solution.
Two hours later, the automated defense system at the ruins of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences was still spraying acid.
When Technician Zhong used laser to cut open the seventh gate, honeycomb-shaped holes had been corroded on the left shoulder of his protective suit. "When we evacuated, we sealed up the paper files on the seventh floor underground," he kicked open the deformed titanium alloy door, "but I can't guarantee..."
Mou Xuan's tactical flashlight swept across the glass fragments on the ground.
In the rows of constant temperature incubators, dry vines were entwined around skeletons, and a skeleton in a white coat was holding half of the "Atlas of Apocalyptic Crop Mutations" in his hand.
Chen Yao suddenly kicked a metal box, and when the lid was opened, an ancient book wrapped in waterproof oilcloth was revealed.
"'Qimin Yaoshu'?" Technician Zhong used tweezers to turn over the brittle pages and suddenly started coughing violently.
On the yellowed rice paper was painted a pattern resembling a diseased wheat ear, and next to it was written in small cinnabar calligraphy "If the earth's veins are out of balance, the five grains will develop ulcers."
Mou Xuan's tactical dagger picked apart the stuck pages of the book.
Under the blue light of the mutant flashlight, a formula of pyrite powder mixed with ashes gradually became clear, and the last line of faded notes mentioned the need for "March willow juice" as a medicine.
Chen Yao suddenly grabbed his wrist, with the tip of the dagger pointing at the blurred seal at the footer - the top-secret project number of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences thirty years ago.
"Eighty kilometers to the southeast," Technician Zhong suddenly pointed to the yellowed map between the pages of a book, "The pyrite marked area is in the old industrial park..." His flowers were interrupted by the collapsed concrete slab above his head. Mou Xuan dragged him into the gap of the explosion-proof cabinet and saw a dry willow leaf falling from between the pages when Chen Yao stuffed the ancient book into the radiation-proof bag.
(Beginning of text)
Seed collector Fan was picking at the ice on the refrigerator with his fingernails, and his cloudy eyes suddenly shrank when he heard the word "March willow juice". "Five miles west of the old industrial park, there are twenty tons of pyrite powder buried under the willow forest." He held up three taped fingers, "but the Black Scorpion Gang just occupied that place last week."
Mou Xuan's hand paused for half a second while wiping the gun.
Gun oil mixed with tissue fluid oozing from the unhealed wound on the palm of the hand formed a dark red pattern on the tactical gloves.
Amid the crackling sound of mutant crows hitting the electric fence outside the window, he heard Chen Yao replacing the silencer on his submachine gun next door.
As two modified armored vehicles rolled over the salt-frost covered road, a Mongolian agronomist was still collecting willow sap in a test tube in the rearview mirror.
Fan the Seed Collector suddenly grabbed the edge of the car window: "We have to pay 30% more. They feed the mutant geckos with living people..."
The bargaining was interrupted by the explosion.
The first rocket blew away the rusty iron gate of the factory. At the moment when soil expert Liang pounced on technician Zhong, three three-meter-long mutant geckos rushed out from the smoke.
Their scales shone with sulfur, and their tails swept across concrete pillars, sending sparks that ignited gasoline barrels.
"Scatter!" Mou Xuan kicked open the deformed car door and stabbed the tactical dagger accurately into the eye socket of the oncoming gecko.
Sticky green blood sprayed on the gas mask. He rolled to avoid the bite of the second attacker and his back slammed into a corner filled with barrels of chemical raw materials.
Chen Yao's sniper rifle fired from the rooftop three hundred meters away.
When the fifth guard's head exploded into a bloody mist, the Black Scorpion Gang's machine gun position suddenly turned its guns - a bald strong man with a scorpion tail tattoo was pressing the barrel of the gun against his companion's temple.
"They are fighting among themselves!" Liang, a soil expert, roared and threw out an electromagnetic pulse grenade.
In the violently flickering blue light, Mou Xuan saw that the seven Black Scorpion Gang members who were shooting at each other all had the same neural controller chip embedded in their necks.
He rushed into the underground warehouse along the scalding pipes, his military boots crushing the wriggling controller wreckage on the ground.
When the last controller was crushed, there was a deafening collapse sound from deep inside the warehouse.
Twenty tons of pyrite powder were packed in sealed cans with the words "Strategic Reserve for 2075" printed on them. Seed collector Fan was frantically stuffing the scattered gold sand into his backpack until the barrel of Mou Xuan's gun was against the back of his neck.
Under the shadowless light of the base, "Qimin Yaoshu" was spread out in a bulletproof glass cover.
When the Meng agronomist dripped willow juice into pyrite powder mixed with bone ashes, the diseased seeds in the culture tank suddenly twitched violently.
The three-dimensional diagram of the gene chain on the monitoring screen began to repair itself automatically. Chen Yao reached out to catch a grain of wheat that bounced into the air—the golden germ was just breaking through the blood scab.
The cheers were torn apart by the piercing air raid sirens.
As the lookout tower's rotating searchlight swept across the wilderness, patches of metallic reflections flashed on the ridgeline thirty kilometers away.
Mou Xuan pulled over the tactical board and drew three defense circles. The sulfur powder remaining on his fingertips left a dark red track on the drawing.
"Distribute the remaining electromagnetic pulse grenades to Team Three." He pressed the collective communicator, startling the mutant crows outside the window. The last half of the order was drowned out by the sudden sound of heavy rain.
Chen Yao's hand paused as she wiped the sniper scope, the lens reflecting the outline of an aircraft faintly visible in the clouds in the distance.
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