"Professor Tao, you found the source of the bugs, right?" Xia Wansan answered the call, speaking rapidly. "I found it on my end too. They're surging up from the groundwater!"
"They came from the water. Some components in the water samples were abnormally concentrated." Tao Bu was startled. "How did you know?"
"We have you to thank for that." Xia Wansan lowered his head, staring at the pale, sticky insect eggs in his other hand. "Didn't you add pesticides to the irrigation pipelines? Quite a few eggs were burned open by the pesticides. They clumped together into a sticky mass and blocked the sprinklers! We pried open the pipes, and they were full of tiny eggs!"
"Excellent, excellent! A lucky accident! No wonder pesticides work in the rice paddies—the bugs are aquatic when they're young!" Tao Bu excitedly analyzed the situation. "The Pearl Millet Sand Flea is probably an ancient species. I suspect there were lakes or other water sources here hundreds of years ago!"
"These aquatic bugs survived back then, but later the climate became dry and the water sources dried up. Only scattered bugs remained, barely clinging to life in the groundwater. Your farms provided them with food, so they came back out and reproduced. After gorging on the crops, they laid eggs frantically in the groundwater, and the pipelines sprayed the eggs back up! That's why they emerged in such massive swarms!"
"You're only half right." Xia Wansan said, "It's true that the water pipelines allowed them to emerge in such huge numbers, but these bugs aren't ancient local species. They're man-made!"
"What?" Tao Bu was stunned.
"The Pearl Millet Sand Flea didn't evolve naturally. It's a Man-made Species! Someone released bugs into the groundwater beneath our farmland!" Xia Wansan repeated himself. "To release adult bugs individually,