Chapter 1 (The worst nightmare...)

Zhao Linong closed her eyes and thought vaguely, her brows wrinkling slowly. She instinctively turned her face to avoid the light, but the light hit her neck and made it feel slightly hot.

…This isn’t dormitory light, it’s more like sleeping next to a heat lamp.

As soon as this thought flashed through Zhao Linong's mind, she opened her eyes, looked towards the light source, and was stunned: No, there is no light.

The dazzling sunlight passed through a large rectangular glass, making it almost impossible to open one's eyes. She was not in bed, nor in the laboratory, but sitting in the window seat of the train.

Zhao Linong raised her hand to cover her face, squinting her eyes as she looked out of the window. In the distance, the endless hills under the sun were covered with dense forests, so dark green that they looked a black. As she looked down, the scene suddenly changed, as if it had been blocked by humans. There were no plants on the yellow-black soil, not even a single weed. It was empty and strange.

Even on an asphalt road, as long as there is a tiny gap, weeds will stubbornly grow out of it. This place... has an indescribable weird feeling.

The last bit of chaos in Zhao Linong's mind gradually disappeared with the dazzling light. She slowly put down her hand and turned to look around.

The whole carriage was quiet, with few whispers. In the aisle next to her sat two women and one man, all young people, thin and silent, with yellowish complexions and stiff backs, as if they were ready to stand up and run away at any moment. Her neighbour was a young man, who seemed a little relaxed, leaning back in his seat with his long legs casually stretched.

Perhaps Zhao Linong's scrutiny was too obvious, the boy sitting next to her turned his head, met her gaze and smiled: "Classmate, you finally woke up, I thought you were going to sleep all the way to the base."

His facial features are common, but he has a pair of phoenix eyes, which make him look clever and cunning.

The eyes looked somewhat familiar, Zhao Linong thought, but she didn't remember.

"Classmate?" Zhao Linong spoke and realised that her voice was a little hoarse, as if she hadn't spoken for a long time, so she cleared her throat and continued, "You are..."

Zhao Linong was precocious and her parents had high hopes for her since she was young. Her parents always told her that she had to go out and not be like them, staying in the fields all her life.

She did it, skipping grades and getting into a top university at the age of 14. It's no exaggeration to say she's a genius. But for some reason, the two top universities only had one quota each in her province.

In the end, Zhao Linong successfully got an admission letter from one of the universities, but was transferred to the agronomy major.

Everyone thought she should go, even her parents tried to persuade her.

Zhao Linong thought she could change her major in college, so she agreed. However, she didn't expect that she would end up studying for seven years, from undergraduate to graduate school. She was about to be pushed by her supervisor to study for a doctorate in agronomy, and then farm for the rest of her life.

Her parents have been farming all their lives and sent her to college, but she ended up learning farming in college. Many people in the village were laughing at her parents.

Zhao Linong's dream is to be a white-collar worker in the city, sitting in an office! Or study something else, or serve the country, but,not to be a farmer!

Zhao Linong had thought it all out. She was still very young and with her own ability, she could start over again.

As a result, just before graduation, her experimental field was suddenly destroyed, and her thesis data was gone. She had to postpone her graduation and continue farming.

Last night, Zhao Linong stood in front of the experimental field that was gnawed by dogs and drank to drown her sorrows. After thinking about it, she felt angry and couldn't help but point at the sky and curse a few times, but she couldn't control her body and fell headfirst.

In this situation, it would be normal to wake up in the dormitory or hospital. She really couldn't understand why she was sitting on the high-speed train.

"He Yuesheng." The young boy sitting next to me stretched out his left hand and asked with a smile, "Classmate, what's your name?"

"...Zhao Linong." She shook his hand back and then withdrew it, still feeling that something was not right.

I don’t know if it was because the car was too quiet or the environment outside the window was too strange.

Zhao Linong's eyes fell on her left hand. She found a silver ring on her wrist for no apparent reason. The ring had a thin square body, but inside it was a silver disc the size of a five-cent coin and slightly wider than the body of the ring.

The young man sitting next to her, He Yuesheng, also had it...not only him, the three people in the aisle seemed to have it too.

Zhao Linong subconsciously touched her pocket, trying to find her cell phone to contact her tutor or classmates, but there was nothing. Instead, her eyes swept across the advertisement on the back of the front seat and suddenly paused.

There are a few lines of black words printed on the white advertisement: Central Base Seeds, mutation rate as low as 13%, you can buy them from agricultural students. Website:

When choosing seeds, one must consider germination rate, disease resistance and drought resistance. She has never seen any brand advertise its mutation rate.

Zhao Linong stared at the black words on the advertisement for a long time, understood something, and suddenly let out a short laugh. Then she leaned forward, covered his face with her hands, and rubbed it hard.

No wonder she felt that the eyes of the boy sitting next to her were familiar. Her mentor had almond-shaped eyes, but as he got older, his eyelids became loose and drooped a little.

The strange scenery outside the window, the slightly familiar eyes of the boy sitting next to me, and the illogical seed advertisement on the advertisement, they made sense only if all this was a dream.

Maybe it was too much pressure, coupled with the delayed graduation, that led me to have this dream, Zhao Linong thought.

This was the first time she had such a clear and realistic dream, but unfortunately even her dreams were filled with agricultural subjects.

Zhao Linong put down her hands, closed her eyes again, leaned her head back, and waited to wake up.

He Yuesheng, who had just started a conversation with the person sitting in the next seat, saw this and thought: “…She was a little too calm”.

Ten minutes passed and Zhao Linong failed to wake up from her dream. Instead, the train suddenly braked, causing her upper body to jolt forward and she almost smashed into the back of the seat in front of her. She reacted quickly and supported herself with her hands.

At this moment, everyone in the carriage stood up, and most of them squeezed to the middle of the aisle. Their faces were very pale, and the braver ones moved closer to the window and looked out tentatively.

It was also at this time that Zhao Linong realised that in her dream, this carriage was full of young people in their twenties.

"What happened?"

"Maybe there's something wrong with the train."

"Did a mutant plant appear?"

"Don't talk nonsense! This is the base post road, there is no way that would happen.”

As the train stalled for longer and longer, an argument gradually broke out in the coach. Zhao Linong leaned back in her chair, staring at the luggage rack above with her eyes open, thinking that this dream was super realistic and she would have to tell her roommate about it when she woke up.

Just as the passengers were panicking, a shrill alarm suddenly sounded inside the train. A red light lit up on the top of the carriage and kept flashing, as if with a hideous thought, cutting off the last hope. At that moment, everyone fell silent.

[Emergency notice: There is danger ahead, everyone evacuate and find shelter! ]

An electronic female voice resounded throughout the entire train, playing rapidly over and over again, making people scared.

Zhao Linong was puzzled. She thought these passengers standing in the aisle were very weird. They were arguing, but when the alarm sounded, they quickly fell silent, as if they understood what had happened, and there was a hint of resignation in their expressions.

The direction of this dream is weird.

She didn't know why she had such a dream, but from the faces of these passengers, Zhao Linong felt that she saw the helplessness of having been rooted in the fields for the past seven years.

This is definitely a projection of her resignation to reality!

While Zhao Linong was daydreaming, the passengers on the train had already hurriedly got off. They moved quickly, as if they had rehearsed it countless times.

"Aren't you leaving?" He Yuesheng stood up and saw that Zhao Linong had no intention of getting up, so he couldn't help but ask.

Zhao Linong looked up at the boy sitting next to her. She became nervous and asked slowly, "...where are we going?" She hadn't figured out what was happening.

He Yuesheng pointed to the broadcast at one end of the carriage and said, "Go find a shelter. If you don't get off the train..."

Before he could finish his words, the coach in front of him suddenly began to shake violently. The passengers who had not yet had time to get off the car suddenly screamed and pushed the people in front of them to run off.

Seeing that Zhao Linong hadn't responded yet, He Yuesheng simply grabbed her arm and said, "Let's go!"

Zhao Linong stood up with his help. Just as she took a step and before he reached the aisle, her knees went weak and she was about to kneel down, but He Yuesheng pulled her up forcibly.

"You're so scared that your legs went bust?" He Yuesheng held up most of her body and said, "I thought you were so calm before."

Zhao Linong: “…”

She had no strength in her legs, as if she hadn't been out of the ground for a long time. But it was just a dream after all, so she didn't care about her legs. She was half-dragged and half-carried out of the car by He Yuesheng in a daze.

As a result of the delay, the two fell behind, and almost everyone who got off the train was running desperately in the opposite direction of the train.

Zhao Linong turned her head to look at the train, and saw that the carriage in front was slowly lifted up, as if something on the ground was pushing it up. No wonder their coach was shaking violently.

A train coach is not huge, but when it is lifted up like this, it looks like a scene from a science fiction movie, which is enough to make people go wow.

Zhao Linong thought that this dream was becoming more and more outrageous.

"Classmate, let's talk." He Yuesheng dragged her for a long time, and his forehead was covered with sweat. As a result, he turned around and saw Zhao Linong who was dazed. His face fell, "Can you move your precious legs a little?"

Zhao Linong, who was about to put her whole body weight on the other person without realising it, said: "...Oh."

She moved her legs and found that she could barely walk.

But they didn't run too far, when a tragic scream suddenly came from the crowd in front of them, cutting through the barren land.

Different from the previous screams of fear in the car, these were more like the last struggling roars of life.

Zhao Linong subconsciously looked up and her face changed.

In the crowd ahead, a "plant" suddenly emerged from the ground. It was about three metres tall, with an upright stem and five giant obovate umbrella leaves on the top. On each umbrella leaf was a living person, impaled through the chest. The branches covered with blood seemed to mature rapidly and split into three-sided broad round capsules.

The blood of those people spilled down from a height of nearly three metres, like bloody rain. After being drenched, the people below all screamed and turned around to run back.

As the plant matured and grew rapidly, the five people who were pierced and skewered on the stems and leaves also lost their lives and were no longer able to move.

Zhao Linong stared blankly at the corpse on the giant plant, thinking that this was probably the most terrifying nightmare she had ever had.