There can't be a Harvest Moon in the RimWorld.

"What does this have to do with the plants on the island?" I asked, curious why he'd chosen this godforsaken place. According to Mr. Dart, if he stayed any longer, his angry wife would take all his allowance.

This person might genuinely have a problem with interpersonal relationships, mistakenly believing his wife's excessive spending stems from a shopping spree. He clearly just wants to spend all the money to force him to come home...

"Haha, then this story is going to be very long."

Baqir glanced down at his wine glass and spoke slowly.

"About twenty years ago, when I had just graduated with my master's degree, I was doing a long and tedious graduation internship. It was called an internship, but it was really just observing the ecology of plants in a remote place. At that time, I was arrogant and thought that I knew everything and that I had no lack of existing knowledge. At most, I just lacked experience in applying theory to practice."

"Unfortunately, no one pointed this out to me at the time. So when I set foot in that small botanical research institute, all I could think about was finishing my assigned work as soon as possible and then looking for other research directions."

"At that time, he was the last old researcher in the Institute of Botany with gray hair. In my opinion, he lacked both the perseverance to continue his research and was obviously not a genius. All he did was water the flowers in the laboratory every day, read the newspaper, and occasionally cook a bowl of paste in a beaker for food."

"All I did was help him record the growth status of the laboratory plants and register the necessary data. That was all."

"This tedious work lasted only about two weeks. Before leaving, the old researcher thanked me enthusiastically for my help and expressed his gratitude to me to an unnecessary degree. I absentmindedly accepted the plant-themed greeting card he had made and left to return to the University of Michigan."

I listened for a long time, but I still didn't understand what Baqir was trying to say. "Professor, does the story you're telling have anything to do with what I asked?"

“Um…no…” Basil thought for a long time, “I just suddenly remembered it and just said it casually.”

In life, we should cherish people like this: even if they are not good at speaking and lack emotional intelligence, they would rather say a lot of meaningless words than respond with silence.

I can't get angry...

"Well, it's not entirely unrelated. I didn't make any major discoveries here, nor did I encounter any special events. I wasted twenty years of my youthful arrogance, never finding the research direction I wanted. Until one day, while packing my things, I discovered this gift from the past."

"During the inspection, I noticed that the plant had a very unusual shape, and it seemed to be a type of plant I had never seen before. Excited, I immediately went to look for my internship report from back then, only to find that it had long since disappeared."

"After that, I went to the school's archives management center to look for my student records from that year, which should have recorded my internship. But strangely, the student records from that year said that I spent that month at the school and did not leave the school."

"This makes me even more confused. Back then, someone clearly arranged everything for my internship, from train tickets to accommodation. How could there be no record of it?"

“When I inquired about this with the school, a classmate of mine from back then, who is now my colleague, said that I did indeed disappear for a period of time before graduation, and then reappeared two weeks later, looking travel-worn.”

"I excitedly asked my old classmate, hoping he could provide more useful information. But a hint of panic appeared in his eyes."

“He recalled that during the two weeks I claimed to be away for an internship, I did indeed disappear. Everyone assumed I had gone home temporarily and didn’t ask any further questions. But classmates often saw me in different places and on different occasions. Sometimes it was in the cafeteria line, sometimes it was brushing past the bookshelves in the library, sometimes it was in the empty seat at the back of the classroom, and even my roommate claimed to have seen me sitting in my seat reading while doing laundry.”

"These witnesses all vanished the moment they caught a glimpse of me, and I was never found again. But these recurring incidents became a major topic of conversation among my classmates..."

Chapter 251 The Key

Mr. Baqir took a sip of his drink and looked very confused. "It's strange, isn't it? I clearly went to do my internship, but I can't find any records of it. I can't remember how I went through it either."

"Should we travel by car, train, ship, or plane? Is that research institute tall, cramped, and opulent, or dilapidated?"

“I can’t remember any of that. It’s as if I’ve never been there. And that leaf is even stranger; it’s something I can’t get over.”

Is this the time to think about leaves?

You've clearly been subjected to a mysterious disappearance!

Broadly speaking, there are four types of outcomes for "disappearance": first, the person returns safely and still remembers the process; second, the person returns safely but forgets the process; third, the body is discovered; and fourth, the person disappears without a trace, and their fate is unknown.

Baqir is probably one of the luckier people, falling into the first category—he returned safely and still remembers what happened. But the incident was clearly terrifying!

I glanced at Lin next to me. She had closed her eyes and was leaning against the bar table, trembling and afraid to listen. She was filled with fear.

While Mr. Dart appeared outwardly calm, his eyes betrayed his surprise and astonishment.

Including me, the three of us present were probably shocked by this man who had been out of touch for so long. The mysterious incident that almost cost us our lives was only described by him as a question like, "What exactly is that plant?"

"Boss, bring Mr. Basil a cappuccino... What? No? Then bring a bar, I salute him as a warrior."

I sighed and continued to Baqir, "I really envy your mindset... Professor, don't you notice something's off?"

“What’s wrong?” Baqir looked at me in confusion. “Oh, you mean the plant? Yes, I’ve never seen such a strange plant before.”

As he spoke, he pulled a small bookmark from his chest and used a three-inch square piece of paper to attach a withered, yellowed leaf. Due to prolonged compression and drying, only dense, yellowed veins remained of the leaf, resembling a skeleton stripped of its flesh and bones, lying there quietly.

"Seems no different," I said casually, glancing at it. It was just an ordinary leaf, probably from a red oak tree, with an acuminate tip, a wedge-shaped base, and deeply pinnately lobed margins with finely toothed lobes. Even as a botany layman, I could tell the plant species; I couldn't see anything special about it.

“Take a closer look, for example, the veins in the leaf.”

As he spoke, Baqir turned the leaf over so I could take a good look at it from the back.

When I looked closer, I saw strange crystalline structures on it, like snowflakes covering the edges of the leaf veins.

"Leaf veins are the vascular bundles that grow on the leaves. They are branches of the vascular bundles in the stem. Leaf veins are generally divided into three types: bifurcated veins, reticulate veins, and parallel veins."

Seeing that I seemed to have noticed something unusual, Baqir winked at me and said, "Dichotomous venation is a type of leaf vein that branches into two branches after emerging from the base of the leaf. This venation is a relatively primitive type and is very rare in seed plants, such as ginkgo, but it is more common in ferns."

"Netted venation has a distinct main vein, which branches out in stages to form numerous intersecting fine veins. These fine veins connect with each other to form a network, hence the name netted venation."

Parallel venation is a venation pattern unique to monocotyledonous plants. In leaves, the midrib, lateral veins, and fine veins are arranged in parallel, or the lateral veins are nearly perpendicular to the midrib, while the lateral veins are nearly parallel to each other.

Baqir rattled off a whole bunch of information to me in one breath, then took a breath before continuing, "But the plant you see today doesn't fit any of these three categories at all. From its shape, the leaves have reticulate veins, but the fine veins at each level of the reticulate veins do indeed have a special crystalline composition. After drying, they even broke through the limitations of the shriveled leaves and pierced outwards!"

"Could this be a disease?" Given this strange condition and its seemingly morbid appearance, one can't help but think of a plant disease.

Baqir stared at the withered leaf veins and said, "I've considered common leaf vein yellowing, severe leaf vein corking, and leaf vein banding. No matter how we cultivate them, we can't get this special crystalline structure to appear."

"I contacted Dort's mentor, hoping he could help me analyze the situation from a medical perspective to see if it was caused by a special virus. But the final result was that there were no obvious abnormalities in the leaf. Apart from the unusual, grotesque crystalline structure, there was nothing wrong with it."

"After taking samples and analyzing them, the old gentleman concluded that what was growing on this leaf was fiber-reinforced plastic."

"Plastic? How can plastic grow on trees?"

Given the severe pollution in this area, how can we expect to see plastic growing on plants? Shouldn't we be using biodegradable plastics?

After listening for a while, Boss Dart finally interjected, "Don't talk nonsense if you don't understand. Fiber-reinforced plastics are reinforced plastics made with glass fiber or its products as reinforcing materials. They are called glass fiber reinforced plastics or fiberglass. This stuff is lightweight and hard, non-conductive, has high mechanical strength, and is corrosion resistant. It can replace steel in the manufacture of various machine parts, automobile and ship hulls, etc."

Fiberglass grew on the plant?

Now that you say that, I understand, but what exactly is the reason?

Baqir hesitated before saying, "Ever since I saw it, I've suspected it's a special resource crop. This plant can produce special resource substances while growing naturally. These crystals appearing in the leaf veins might be the process by which the plant is gradually replaced by these special substances!"

"Fiberglass growing on trees? Is that really possible?"

I exclaimed in surprise, suddenly realizing the preciousness of this plant. If this plant could naturally absorb specific resources, wouldn't it eventually grow into a whole fiberglass tree, which could then be directly used as material? Even if the purity wasn't high, it could be refined to meet usable standards, right?

Perhaps my description doesn't sound too unusual, but this resource crop isn't limited to producing only fiberglass. For example, what if we replaced this resource with... gold?

"I searched for a long time afterward, but I couldn't find the research institute from back then. There were no research results on resource crops in the entire Federation either. I think, if I'm not crazy, then the research from back then must not have yielded any results yet."

"So when the old gentleman told me that there were herbs on this island that could rapidly absorb saponins, β-elemene, and the trace element selenium as they grew, I thought, maybe I've finally found a breakthrough!"

"If I find the key to cultivating resource crops, I can prove that I wasn't dreaming back then, and that this research direction is absolutely correct!"

Chapter 252 Family Education

If we're talking about cultivating wood that surpasses steel, that's possible. For example, ironwood is mainly produced in eastern and southeastern Jilin, western Zhejiang, and northeastern Liaoning in China. It's also found in Russia, North Korea, and Japan. The Soviets used it to replace steel in making many machine parts.

This extremely hard material, three times harder than common oak and twice as hard as ordinary steel used in airports, can be used as a substitute for metals, such as in the manufacture of balls, bearings, and so on.

But isn't it a bit far-fetched for Baqir to think he can find plants that produce steel directly? If steel could be grown from the ground, why would we, the shovel-wielding class, have to go down into the mines and work so hard?

"Excuse me, Professor, how far has your research progressed?"

Baqir thought for a moment, then said seriously, "After a year of research, all that's left is to find a suitable plant, and then we can..."

I replied, "And that will bring results?"

"No, then we can begin the research."

That means there's nothing at all!

He spoke of this topic so seriously, I was almost fooled by his earnest and professional face, thinking he was a brilliant but unappreciated genius. Turns out, he's just another expert who talks a lot of nonsense.

Speaking of Baqir's face, it seems to be filled with words like "professional," "rigorous," "academic," and "diligent," giving people a sense of extraordinary demeanor. Even when sitting in a crowd, he looks like a down-on-his-luck scholar in a long gown, clearly distinct from the energetic group of people in short shirts next to him.

What a waste of that old face that looks like it's reading a textbook when looking at a recipe!

"Professor, aren't you planning to change your research direction? This resource crop project has to start from scratch, which is extremely difficult and fraught with challenges!" I couldn't help but persuade him, suggesting that instead of doing this kind of inexplicable project, he should help me improve potato varieties.

As a result, both Basil and Boss Dart said in unison, "My direction is absolutely correct!"

...Mr. Dart, what are you doing sneaking in here?! I just questioned your business plan, and you're still agonizing over it now?!

The two middle-aged men exchanged a glance, their expressions revealing that they had found kindred spirits. They even clinked glasses in perfect unison, seemingly reaching an agreement to get a 10% discount on their drinks.

"Dart, I really envy you having a daughter by your side." Perhaps he had drunk too much, Basil suddenly complained to Boss Dart.

I turned to look at Lin and found her still covering her ears and trembling, completely unaware of what was happening around her.

"..."

The ghost story ended half a day ago, Lin, why haven't you gotten over it yet?

I patted her on the shoulder, signaling that she should recover quickly and that it was safe outside. Meanwhile, the two middle-aged men continued their conversation.

"Bakir, where are your children? Didn't they come with you?" Boss Dart sensed the envy in Bakir's voice and continued to ask.

“My daughter is still in university, and the pressure at school is quite high, so she can’t come with us,” Baqir said, his eyes filled with melancholy. “But spring break is coming soon, and I’ll bring her to town to relax then. She didn’t inherit her mother’s extroverted nature; instead, she’s like me when I was young, spending all her time in the library. If this continues, her health will deteriorate.”

Upon hearing this, Mr. Dart's eyes were filled with regret: "Actually, I also hope that Lynn can go to university, but I'm worried about letting her leave my side. I'm afraid she'll end up like Dick, all alone, looking rather pitiful."

Boss, the poor guy you mentioned has squeezed himself into the cupboard and looks really pathetic. Aren't you going to get him out first?

Basil shook his head: "Well, I know all this better than anyone... but..."

Seeing that the atmosphere around me was getting heavier and heavier, I quickly struck up a conversation with Lin.

"Lin, what are your plans for the future?"

Lin cautiously raised her head, and only after feeling that she was indeed safe did she say, "From now on? I guess I'll just continue running this tavern."

"Ahem..." Boss Dart coughed awkwardly, but his face couldn't hide his pride.

Lin looked confident as she rolled up her sleeves and said, "My cooking skills still need improvement, so I'll work hard!"

Hmm? There's nothing wrong with what I'm saying, but why does it sound so pretentious and empty?

But Mr. Dart, the boss in front of me, nodded with great satisfaction, seemingly pleased that his daily hard work in teaching had paid off.

"Well said! People should keep striving and learning, and pursue new goals in new stages. That's what makes life inspiring!"

Lin said enthusiastically, "Besides cooking, I also want to learn sewing from Ellie's grandma!"

“Yes, it’s good that you’re interested in everyday skills!” Boss Dart nodded.

"And another thing, I'm also interested in learning Mrs. Mana's flower arranging!" Lin continued, counting on her fingers.