Chapter 1027: Too Full

Chapter 1027: Too Full to Move

[Forests in Baiyue Province Suspected of Experiencing a "Tide"?! The Extraterrestrial Visitor from Alpha Centauri Suggests—You Might Be a Bit Over-Urbanized.

— *Goblin Observer*]

[It is reported that the Gaia planetary envoy visiting Fries Port has manifested psionic traits and successfully established a mental link with the mutated slime mold hive in Baiyue Province, accelerating plant growth in the region!

The specific effects and range of this ability remain unclear, as does its potential application in other fields. We call on the Alliance to disclose more valuable information to satisfy the curiosity of wastelanders and address the concerns of His Majesty Salun.

According to unverified rumors, ever since learning that the Alliance possesses more powerful mental interference technology, the esteemed monarch has moved from his original bedroom into a house made of iron.

— *Survivor Daily, New Westport Edition*]

...

Dawn City, the Administrator's Office in the Alliance Building.

Seated behind his desk, Chu Guang attentively listened to Heya's report on the latest research progress regarding the hive in Baiyue Province.

"The analysis results are in. The phenomenon resembling a 'Tide' in Baiyue Province was caused by a special pheromone released by the original Nago fungal strain, which catalyzed accelerated vegetation growth in the forests."

Pausing for a moment, Heya continued.

"According to our research, this pheromone not only accelerates plant growth but also extends the mating season of animals, thereby speeding up the reproduction rate of local wildlife... These clues are sufficient to prove that the ecological environment of Baiyue Province is entirely governed by the hive consciousness active in that region."

Good heavens.

Extending the mating season of animals, huh...

A peculiar expression crossed Chu Guang's face. He suddenly wondered if this might accelerate population growth in the Baiyue Strait area.

But such effects wouldn't be visible in the short term.

Moreover, humans are different from animals; the desire to reproduce isn't entirely driven by primal urges—there are houses, cars, and a whole mess of other things to consider.

He cleared his throat lightly and said,

"So... the 'Tide' in Baiyue Province wasn't actually an expansion of the hive itself, but rather of the forest influenced by the 'hive'?"

"You could see it that way, but the hive did expand as well, since the original Nago fungal strain shares a symbiotic relationship with the local flora and fauna," Heya nodded, speaking in a concise tone. "A reasonable hypothesis is that the ecological maintenance system of Alpha Centauri operates on a similar principle... composed of multiple life forms forming a collective consciousness, which regulates the ecosystem according to its autonomous will."

That sounded a bit convoluted.

Simply put, Gaia wasn't just slime mold; the slime mold observed by humans was merely a projection of Him in three-dimensional space.

Chu Guang tried to grasp the concept, pressing his index finger against his brow.

"So, Alpha Centauri's version is the fully functional one, while Baiyue Province's is a neutered version... Is that what you mean?"

"From the perspective of existence form alone, that is indeed the case!"

Heya gazed at him with bright eyes, her tone earnest as she continued.

"The 'Insov Tree' of Alpha Centauri has no tangible manifestation visible in three-dimensional space. Even if destroyed countless times by neutron torpedoes, it can still completely reset the already devastated ecosystem. In contrast, the hive in Baiyue Province has a concrete entity—specifically, the original Nago fungal strain growing near plant roots. Eliminate that strain, and you can remove it from Baiyue Province's land!"

"However! From a practical standpoint, its functionality hasn't been neutered much at all. In fact, it might even suit our needs better than Alpha Centauri's ecosystem maintenance device! Having a tangible entity means we can control it more easily, facilitating communication and even negotiation with it!"

"Sounds intriguing..." Chu Guang's face showed a contemplative expression as he tapped his fingers rhythmically on the desk.

After a moment, he looked at Heya and said in a half-joking tone,

"I even think it might help us terraform a few more habitable planets."

A cheerful smile spread across Heya's face.

"I think so too."

Although Xiao Yu possessed similar abilities, the ecosystem formed by its slime mold was, in every sense, too monotonous.

No matter how varied its fruiting bodies became, they were fundamentally just slime mold—they couldn't evolve into forests or grasslands.

But the hive in Baiyue Province was different.

It could break through the DNA barriers between species, forming a biosphere composed of multiple species.

And as a part of that biosphere, it played only a very small role!

Moreover, once planetary terraforming was complete, it could be removed from the stabilized ecosystem or confined to a specific province!

Technically, this was entirely feasible!

Chu Guang even thought that maybe they didn't need to solve it purely through technology—they could just negotiate with that entity.

For instance, after using it to terraform a habitable planet, they could set aside a nature reserve similar to Baiyue Province for it to inhabit.

Watching Chu Guang lost in thought, Heya couldn't help but curl the corners of her mouth.

She guessed that he was probably scheming again about how to maximize the Alliance's interests using this hive.

But that wasn't her job anymore.

Having finished her report, she put away her tablet and said in a gentle tone,

"...That concludes the latest research progress from the Institute of Biology. If there are any new discoveries, I'll report to you promptly!"

Emerging from his reverie, Chu Guang looked up at her and nodded with a smile.

"Alright, I'll wait for your good news."

To be honest, with so many brilliant minds in the Alliance, his presence as the administrator wasn't particularly prominent—after all, everything was handled by others.

Sometimes he envied the players.

Especially that kid Ye Shi.

No one else in the entire server had a more legendary experience than him, to the point where Chu Guang felt like creating an alt account to tag the dog planner and ask for a nerf.

Watching Heya leave, he picked up the tablet on his desk, intending to glance at the scientific expedition team's research report on the "Perforator." But just as the door closed, another knock sounded. The office secretary walked in, holding a bill.

The secretary had transferred from the players' Merchant Guild to the Alliance Building's clerical staff. Her name was Frost Snow.

She was actually one of the Alliance's earliest residents, hailing from the "Frost Spear Tribe."

Of course, after living in the Alliance for so long, those settled refugees had long abandoned that rustic name.

Chu Guang recalled that after several relocations and absorbing new clansmen, the Frost Spear Tribe's refugees had renamed their village Frost Spear Town.

Among the several town-level administrative units under Dawn City's jurisdiction, this small town, with its martial-sounding name, had ridden the wave of development and become one of the first to prosper.

"...Sir, the Ministry of Finance sent over a bill regarding the state compensation requested by the Fries Port Municipal Government." Seeing Chu Guang smiling at her, Frost Snow felt her cheeks growing hotter, as if steam might rise from them.

Chu Guang wasn't closely observing her inner turmoil; he was just reminiscing about old times. He nodded with a smile.

"Leave it on my desk."

"Understood." Frost Snow responded with a slightly stiff nod, placed the document neatly on the corner of the desk, and then, before she could betray herself, blushed and hurried out of the office.

Chu Guang reached out and picked up the bill forwarded by the Ministry of Finance.

According to the assessment by Fries Port's municipal financial staff, the Alliance Institute of Biology's experimental actions had exceeded expectations, causing direct economic losses of nearly 7 million silver coins.

Therefore, Fries Port hoped to receive state compensation from the Ministry of Finance.

After reviewing the amount and figures on the bill and confirming no issues, the Ministry of Finance, following the legal procedures for special budget approval, transferred the relevant application to the Administrator's Office for signature.

And this was probably the only thing Chu Guang needed to handle personally today.

Chu Guang read through the bill and the application document from start to finish, and confirming there was no issue, he reached for the pen in the drawer to sign.

Yet the moment he pulled open the drawer, he froze for a second.

"Xiao Qi, have you seen my pen? The one I use for signing."

He had signed quite a few documents with that pen, and had even planned to keep it as a collectible display piece after retirement—so how had it gone missing?

"Huh?! It's not in the drawer?"

Xiao Qi, perched on the pen holder, was also taken aback. She hopped down from the holder, scurried over to the drawer, and stared in surprise at the empty spot where the pen had indeed vanished.

"How strange..."

She distinctly remembered it being right there...

Though Chu Guang found it somewhat baffling, it wasn't an important document that was lost, just a pen.

"Maybe I slipped it into my pocket after signing something last time..."

Steadying himself, Chu Guang looked at Xiao Qi, who was crouched beside the drawer.

"Please have someone from the office secretariat send over another pen."

"Understood!" Xiao Qi nodded, called the secretariat staff, then turned back to Chu Guang and asked, "Master, shouldn't we inform the Praetorian Guard? Even if it's just a pen, this is your office, after all. Xiao Qi thinks we should take it seriously."

Though he felt it was a bit of an overreaction, Chu Guang considered it and found some merit in the thought, so he nodded.

"Let Lü Bei know about it."

...

Fries Port.

At a resort hotel not far from the beach, a group of people were resting after a hearty meal.

Little Koala had taken an interest in the marble statues in the hotel garden.

Especially after learning that the designer was a Vlandian artist, it sparked a desire to visit Triumph City.

Rumor had it there were many similar artworks there.

As for Professor Sun Zewen, he was still the same as before, trailing behind this robot said to possess a "machine soul," his eyes burning with fervor, muttering incessantly.

The image of the ethereal old professor from their first meeting had completely vanished.

His persona had utterly collapsed.

Additionally.

Due to the forest tide incident in Baiyue Province, the number of accompanying personnel for the Narmenian envoy's visit to the "Progenitor" planet had suddenly increased significantly, turning into a tour group of over fifty people.

Among them, besides social science researchers, a large group of researchers from the Alliance's Institute of Biology had been added.

For instance, Ms. Chen.

Under her influence, Old Bai, who had been preparing near the space elevator's military base for the counterattack on the Lagrange point space station, was also dragged along as a personal bodyguard to ensure the safety of the biology researchers and prevent any major incidents by the Enlightened Society's spies.

After all, the Baiyue Strait was not within the Alliance's core control zone, so security concerns had to be addressed.

But Old Bai felt that having one more or one less of him made little difference.

After all, the Burning Legion's "strongest perception-type specialist" was in the group, and he found it hard to imagine what kind of spy could get the better of these folks.

Not to mention that this perception-type specialist had recently unlocked the server's only "psychic" talent.

The Enlightened Society's assassins would likely be caught before they even showed their faces—it was no different from feeding kills.

While Old Bai was dozing off, Dora, who had been gazing at the stars in the sky, suddenly recalled the day's events and looked at Night Ten with curious, wide eyes.

"Speaking of which... what exactly is that 'fertilizer'?"

Throughout the day, she had seen so many things she'd never encountered before that she had forgotten the one thing that had amazed and intrigued her the most.

The question was a bit beyond his scope. Night Ten scratched the back of his head for a long while, then tried to explain in a way she could understand.

"Simply put... it's a kind of stimulant for plants. I can't really explain the specifics."

Dora nodded, half-understanding, then asked eagerly.

"Then will our tribe, the Domans... ever have that ability too?"

Night Ten thought for a moment and said.

"Honestly, it's a bit difficult."

Those big eyes that couldn't hide anything quickly filled with disappointment. Dora murmured softly.

"Why?"

Night Ten made a helpless expression.

"If I'm being honest... it's because you're too well-fed. You probably don't have the need to invent something like that."

All they had to do was coax the Sacred Tree for a basketful of fruit, or negotiate with the sky-dwelling pterosaurs to learn the migration paths of herds and the movements of prey.

That ability was already bordering on magic—in fact, it could be considered magic in a certain sense.

Add to that the inexhaustible biological resources of the Gaia planet, and they had lived a life of plenty for countless centuries before anyone else.

He could imagine the starving Qiu people during their migrations, but he couldn't picture the forest people going hungry.

Farming?

Fertilizer?

What were those?

Didn't food just fall from the sky?

From a forest person's perspective, Dora couldn't fully grasp what he meant, but she instinctively felt that the "Progenitor" must be right, and her mood sank a little.

Just then, however, another Progenitor placed a hand on her shoulder.

"That's not necessarily true."

Dora looked up to see the sister named Han Mingyue smiling at her, continuing in a pleasant voice.

"Hunger, war, poverty, disease... these elements do act as catalysts in the development of civilization. Their existence forces civilizations to step out of their comfort zones and actively change their circumstances. But I still have to say, it's not only these negative elements that can serve as catalysts; some positive ones can too."

Night Ten raised an eyebrow with interest.

"Like?"

Han Mingyue smiled and said.

"Like being too well-fed."

"Pfft, 'too well-fed' is a stretch..." Night Ten was about to offer a counterexample, but then thought about it and realized it might be true.

Wasn't that exactly the case with the players?

Because they were too well-fed, they spent their time coming up with all sorts of bizarre activities, which in turn boosted the Alliance's economy.

In fact, it wasn't just the players. As the wastelanders gradually escaped their precarious, life-or-death existence and settled into a "too well-fed" life in various Alliance settlements, they too played unexpected roles across all industries and fields.

And the most typical example of this happened to be right under their feet at Fries Port.

The "Abu Aerospace" founded by the former Grand Chancellor of the Bharata Kingdom.

Since its founding, it has gathered many skilled workers fleeing from Bolo Province and engineers from the South Sea Alliance.

Through the recovery and integration of aerospace chain technologies from the Prosperity Era, this enterprise has begun to emerge in fields like plasma engines, aerospace semiconductors, and control devices, increasingly participating in the Alliance's space industry chain.

It is hard to imagine this is a startup.

And the man who founded it was, long ago, nothing more than a laborer hauling crates on the docks.

“When you put it that way, it really does seem so.”

Unable to argue with the expert, Ye Shi did an immediate one-eighty, turned to Dora beside him, and cleared his throat before speaking.

“You see, I’m not entirely right either—I have my own limitations… and of course, she’s the same. What she says isn’t necessarily correct either. Just take it as you will.”

That last half was purely to save face.

Though he was no longer as eager to win every argument as he once was, some ingrained habits were still not so easy to shake off.

In comparison, Dr. Han was indeed far more mature.

Watching Ye Shi’s forced face-saving, she smiled and nodded, accepting the proffered step, then turned to the bewildered Dora and said.

“That’s true. What I say isn’t necessarily correct either—just some theoretical stuff, for reference only.”

Dora looked blankly at the two ancestors and asked, puzzled.

“Then what is? Correct.”

Ye Shi shook his head.

“There’s no such thing. What I say, or what she says—they’re just points of view. Like how you explain the existence of the Yinsov Tree through religion, and we explain Its phenomena through dimensional theory… We wouldn’t say your method is entirely wrong, just lacking objectivity. But for you yourselves, that lack of objectivity might not necessarily be inferior to our explanation.”

Knowledge that cannot be passed down is meaningless—the very existence of the Doma people proves this.

The sixteen crew members taught the forest tribes dimensional theories they themselves barely understood, yet the result was that those forest people still lived in trees over a century later.

In contrast, Dr. Qiu Shiye did not impart too much abstruse knowledge to his “spiritual descendants”; he only taught them simple, practical techniques like drilling wood for fire, metallurgy and forging, lime burning, and slash-and-burn agriculture.

With the help of these practical skills, the Qiu people instead used their own creativity to move into stone houses first, and even extrapolated to invent the “lizard stirrup” that their ancestor had not taught them, training a primitive tribal version of shock cavalry.

If not for the fact that their living area had been confined to the Forbidden Forest by conservative thinking, the spiritualists of the forest would likely have been annihilated long ago by these materialists who armed themselves first.

Watching Dora, who seemed to half-understand, Han Mingyue smiled and nodded, then continued where Ye Shi had left off.

“That’s right. Don’t be too impatient. From the height of civilization, you have ample time to gradually understand all those things you don’t yet know—what is meant to be understood will be understood.”

“And as people of the present, you only need to live your current life well and make whatever preparations you can for the foreseeable future.”

“As for things further beyond—that is not for you to worry about now.”