Pastoral Daily Life

When Yan Yue finished talking to Uncle Li about the house, he went back to the plant nursery and didn’t see Lu Lingxi. After a brief thought, he guessed where the young man was.

He wandered over by himself and from a distance saw the young man sitting with a small dark-skinned, unruly looking boy. Two big dogs, one black and one yellow, occupied their sides, and the two in the middle were talking head to head, actually looking like they were having a very warm conversation.

The corners of Yan Yue’s lips curled up as he walked unhurriedly to the two. “Xiao Xi.” He just casually glanced at the little boy, mostly still focused on Lu Lingxi.

“Big Brother Yan, you’re here.” Lu Lingxi smiled slightly and tilted his head in greeting. Who knows, maybe in comparison to the boy and the dog to his left and right being too dark, the fair skin of Lu Lingxi, who was sandwiched in the middle, seemed even fairer. However, this made the red pimple on his neck from some insect’s bite look unusually obvious.

“What’s happened?” Yan Yue whispered, squatting down in front of him.

Lu Lingxi touched his neck, not really caring. “It’s nothing, just got bitten by a bug.”

As they spoke, the little boy’s round eyes darted around, the child’s intuition telling him that the new big brother in front of him was focused on the beautiful brother and didn’t have much patience to listen to him. “I’m going home for dinner first, Brother.” He stood up, patted his bottom, called Ah Huang and ran away, leaving Lu Lingxi dumbfounded. He hadn’t had the chance to ask the little boy’s name while he had been listening to him talk before.

“Who is this kid?” Yan Yue asked curiously.

Lu Lingxi shook his head, “Haven’t had a chance to ask for a name but…”

“But what?”

Lu Lingxi thought for a moment but didn’t hide the conversation he had with the little boy. Although he promised the little boy that it was a secret between the two of them, in his eyes, he and Yan Yue were one and the same, and telling Yan Yue wasn’t considered a leak. After he finished, Yan Yue didn’t speak for a moment, only his brow was slightly furrowed as if he was thinking about something.

“Big Brother Yan?”

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Yan Yue returned to his senses, looking at Lu Lingxi indulgently, “What do you want to say, Xiao Xi?”

Lu Lingxi hesitated for a few seconds and said, “The matter of animal evolution that I talked about last time.”

It was not the first time the two of them had brought up this topic, but this time Yan Yue didn’t feel that Lu Lingxi was thinking too much, instead he nodded slightly and agreed, “There is this possibility, but it is not certain yet.” Perhaps due to Lu Lingxi’s influence, Yan Yue had recently read a lot of information about the Earth’s ecology, and he realised that he had previously been the one who had thought too simply. Plants, animals and humans were all in a large ecosystem and affected each other, and any slight change in any of them would bring about an overall change. Not to mention a variable as large as plant evolution. As the saying goes, the whole body is affected by one hair; whether it be animals or humans, as plants evolved and the environment changed, they should have all changed with it. As for the outcome of the changes, Yan Yue leaned in the direction of the good ones.

Take Lingshui Village as an example; since the evolution of the big willow, the entire village’s environment had become much better than before. Many villagers reported that they were in good health lately, eating vigorously and working vigorously, and the old people were not as sickly as before. Yan Yue felt that to some extent, this should be considered evolution. “It’s not a bad thing.” He came to a conclusion, “If animals can evolve, humans should be able to evolve too. Whether they evolve to be physically stronger or mentally smarter, the overall trend is good. Of course it would also be good if the direction of evolution was to communicate with animals, just like Xiao Xi and Dahei.”

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Hearing his name, Dahei barked calmly, and Lu Lingxi gently stroked his head, feeling that this wasn’t a bad thing either.

After the two of them finished talking, Yan Yue helped Lu Lingxi put away the tools and led him back to the small courtyard. Neither of them thought much about the possible evolution of animals and humans. Everything was still just their speculation and it wasn’t certain if it was true. Besides, even if humans would eventually evolve, Lu Lingxi, who had the panel, would definitely be the first to do so, so there was really nothing to worry about.

After washing up in the evening, Yan Yue hugged Lu Lingxi and held him in his arms, nibbling on the boy’s ear ambiguously and joking, “The old proverb says that when a man achieves the Dao, his poultry and dogs rise to Heaven. Should I hug Xiao Xi’s thigh now?” As he spoke, he ran his hand along Lu Lingxi’s waist, and as he did so Lu Lingxi moved his body uneasily, the tips of his ears reddening slightly.

Not surprisingly, this night Dahei was once again driven to sleep outside. Yan Yue was now doing this with ease. When Lu Lingxi spoke for Dahei, Yan Yue hugged and kissed him while thoughtfully suggesting to find a “wife” for Dahei, so that Dahei’s attention would be taken away from Lu Lingxi.

Lu Lingxi: “……”

The two of them had a good night’s sleep. When they left the next day, Lu Lingxi went to take another look at the Lingshui River. All the eelgrass bushes within the entire eelgrass ecological community had evolved, and the homologous (of the same origin) plants were all evolving in the same direction. Perhaps it was his illusion, but starting from the location of the eelgrass ecological community, the water downstream seemed to gradually become clearer. Lu Lingxi found mineral water bottles and drew three bottles of water at different places, intending to go home and measure the cyanide content of the water.

Having done this, Lu Lingxi tried digging up a few more evolved eelgrasses and walked a little way upstream, trying to re-transplant them to the bottom of the Lingshui River to see if another eelgrass ecological community could be formed. But the results were not quite satisfactory. On the panel, the first eelgrass ecological community to form showed that its range was not fixed. Like the willow ecological community, it was slowly spreading in both directions with the current, just not as pronounced as the big willow. Perhaps this was the difference between a first-class plant and a second-class plant?

After settling the matter at Lingshui Village, Lu Lingxi and Yan Yue returned to Fengcheng. To his surprise, Wang Chaoliang was waiting for him at the entrance of Tiny Garden early in the morning, looking as if it was some urgent matter.

“Xiao Xi, you’re finally here.” Wang Chaoliang greeted Lu Lingxi as soon as he got out of the car. Wang Chaoliang’s complexion was a little pale, his eyes were bloodshot and the dark shadows below his eyes were very obvious, but his face was indescribably excited. His eyes wide open, he grabbed Lu Lingxi’s arm and pulled it.

“Uncle Wang.” Lu Lingxi was a bit startled by his stance. Yan Yue looked at Wang Chaoliang’s action a little inhospitably, and pulled Lu Lingxi back silently.

Wang Chaoliang also realised that his reaction was too exaggerated, smiled shyly, rubbed his hands and said to Lu Lingxi, “Xiao Xi, I scared you. Uncle Wang is really too happy. You still remember the chlorophytum that I took away from the shop, right?”

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Lu Lingxi subconsciously glanced at Yan Yue and nodded slightly.

Wang Chaoliang didn’t notice his actions. He said excitedly, “It’s that chlorophytum! You know it’s different from ordinary chlorophytum. It seems to have a higher degree of evolution, right?” Without waiting for Lu Lingxi to nod, he continued: “I have studied it, and the genetics of this chlorophytum are very stable. Xiao Xi, do you know what this means? It means that all the new seedlings propagated through this chlorophytum have similar characteristics, and it is no longer an ordinary chlorophytum, but forms a new species.”

Speaking of this, Wang Chaoliang excitedly pulled out a magazine from his bag, the one of considerable weight in the botanical world. He flipped straight to the first few pages, which carried his research report on the new variety of chlorophytum.

Lu Lingxi took the magazine curiously, and Wang Chaoliang scratched his hair in embarrassment. “Uncle Wang’s research results have been approved by the Botanical Garden. I don’t know how to thank you, Xiao Xi. Uncle Wang has nothing else, so he helped you apply for the variety rights of the new type of chlorophytum, which can be regarded as a kind of thanks to Xiao Xi.”

Seeing that Lu Lingxi didn’t seem to understand what the variety rights of a new plant were, Wang Chaoliang sincerely explained, “The application rights and variety rights of new plant varieties belong to a type of industrial property, somewhat like patent rights, which is a kind of intellectual property. At present, the protection of the state in this area is quite sound, and according to the regulations, the variety rights of chlorophytum will be 15 years from the date of authorisation. Within 15 years, you will have the exclusive right to propagate, promote and sell this new type of chlorophytum, but you can also licence it to others, it’s up to you. You don’t know much about this, Xiao Xi, and may not realise how great the social and economic benefits of a new variety of plants will be. Make good use of this opportunity to promote the Tiny Garden brand out there.”

He spoke so quickly that Lu Lingxi didn’t react for a moment. Yan Yue, however, heard and understood what Wang Chaoliang said. In fact, he didn’t know anything about new plant varieties, but that didn’t stop him from understanding what Wang Chaoliang meant. Yan Yue was a little surprised. According to Wang Chaoliang, a new plant variety could bring huge economic and social benefits, but he gave this up to Lu Lingxi, which made Yan Yue look at him with respect.

Lu Lingxi slowly mulled over Wang Chaoliang’s words and his first reaction was to refuse. Although it was true that the chlorophytum had been evolved successfully by him, he hadn’t actually done anything about it. Instead it was Wang Chaoliang who had been studying it intently all this time. “Uncle Wang, I…”

Wang Chaoliang interrupted him, “Xiao Xi, don’t refuse. If it wasn’t for you, Uncle Wang wouldn’t have done this research. In the end it’s because of you, you deserve it.”

He was in a hurry to leave after finishing speaking. All this time he had been focused on this research. Today when the magazine was released, he was relieved; now there were still many finishing touches waiting for him. To Wang Chaoliang, financial value was nothing; what mattered in the botanical circle was the weight of your research, not who was richer.

As soon as he left, Lu Lingxi looked at Yan Yue blankly, not knowing what to do with it.

Yan Yue chuckled, took Lu Lingxi and kissed him on the forehead, and made the final decision: “He’s right, this is what Xiao Xi deserves. Besides, don’t you want to evolve the environment? This is a good opportunity to promote it.”

Wang Chaoliang’s move took Yan Yue by surprise, but in a way it was also an accidental favour to Yan Yue and Lu Lingxi. Yan Yue had just asked An Jie to register a plant technology company a few days ago. It was originally to facilitate the launch of eelgrass into the market, but now they could also make themselves known with the chlorophytum. If it wasn’t for Wang Chaoliang, Tiny Garden’s chlorophytum would just be an ordinary chlorophytum, but once Wang Chaoliang’s research results came out, Tiny Garden’s chlorophytum became a new type of chlorophytum that absorbed formaldehyde more effectively. In comparison, the social and environmental value was bigger than the economic value.