Self-Defense Measures and Gwen's Invitation

By mid-November, New York had already turned cold, and rainy New York was even more freezing.

Saturday, Osborn Tower, Harry's private laboratory. The electronic clock read two in the afternoon.

Lin Hai rubbed his aching eyes and swept the twelfth batch of failed seeds into the waste bin. Most experimental waste would be incinerated directly.

These improved pothos seeds, which should have instantly grown into sharp leaf blades, either remained completely still or grew wildly into a mass of useless vines with no offensive capability.

"Failed again?" Harry Osborn looked up from the holographic projector, his blond hair as messy as if it had been blasted by a typhoon. A rotating DNA molecular model floated before him, several red markers flashing warning lights.

Lin Hai sighed and picked up a seed. "The amount of energy injected is hard to control. Too much and it grows wild; too little and it can't be activated."

The lab door slid open, and Peter Parker rushed in carrying three coffees and a large bag of snacks, rainwater clinging to his glasses. "New York rain comes down without warning! I almost—whoa!" He saw the mess covering the table. "Still no luck?"

"Scientific exploration is ninety-nine failures for every success." Lin Hai took the coffee. The perfectly warm latte eased his taut nerves slightly. He did not particularly like the stuff, but anything that could keep him alert was useful.

Over the past few weeks, this strange "research triangle" had spent nearly every weekend in the laboratory—Harry's resources, Peter's scientific intuition, and Lin Hai's special ability had produced an unexpectedly wonderful reaction.

Peter leaned toward the microscope. "Why do we have to use seeds? Wouldn't it be more convenient to directly control existing plants like you did before?"

Indeed, Lin Hai could directly modify fully grown plants and make them evolve in the direction he wanted, like editing a program. Seeds, on the other hand, were much more troublesome.

For a plant to grow from a seed into an adult form, the changes involved were difficult to direct through external means. The process was not as simple as editing a program; after making the modifications, he still had to hope it would become what he needed once it finished running.

"Portability and concealment." Lin Hai took a small cloth pouch from his backpack and poured out more than a dozen ordinary plant seeds.

"I can't carry potted plants everywhere I go. In an emergency, you can't expect me to pull all kinds of potted plants straight from my pockets. I'm not Doraemon." He recalled the conflict with Kingpin's men at the clinic.

"I need defensive or offensive measures that can be used immediately. And while mature plants can change in the directions I set for them, they aren't strong enough to directly attack or defend." Lin Hai felt somewhat helpless. Nothing seemed to work.

Peter suddenly snapped his fingers. "Wait, did we get the direction wrong?"

He pulled up a set of data. "Your previous successful cases were all modifications of living plants. Seeds are dormant; they have to be awakened before they can be modified. The energy cost of doing both steps is too high, so it's hard to control."

Lin Hai and Harry widened their eyes at the same time. "Do it in one step!"

Peter continued, "We can implant 'growth instructions' while the seeds are dormant."

"Like biological chips with preset programs..." Lin Hai mused, the energy within him stirring faintly as his thoughts became clearer.

He picked up another pothos seed and closed his eyes. Instead of forcefully injecting energy as before, he focused his will on the life structure deep within the seed. This time, he would preserve its basic structure while adding several "growth instructions."

The seed emitted a faint green glow in his palm, and several nearly invisible lines appeared across its surface.

"This feels different." Lin Hai opened his eyes and injected pure Life Energy into the seed to stimulate its growth.

Under the gaze of three pairs of eyes, the seed sprouted rapidly. But what emerged were not ordinary leaves—the edges were sharp as blades, even gleaming with a faint metallic sheen beneath the lights.

Peter lightly touched a leaf with tweezers and immediately cut a mark into them. "Wow! That's as sharp as a scalpel!" He excitedly shook his finger.

Harry quickly pulled up the scan results. "The cell wall structure has changed. This is incredible! It practically violates the fundamental laws of plant cytology!"

"It doesn't violate them. It expands them. It's like adding a new line of code to the original genetic sequence, telling it to reinforce the leaf edges as it grows." Lin Hai corrected him, then made five more seeds with the same traits. This time, every one succeeded.

That was true, but without Lin Hai's energy to stimulate it, the seed would not grow into leaves as sharp as blades. It was an unexpected benefit. Even if someone else obtained seeds he had modified, they would have no way to plant or stimulate them.

Peter suddenly jumped up. "This is basically Huaxia kung fu's Little Li Flying Daggers! Can you launch the leaves?"

"Not yet. For now, I can only throw them by hand." Lin Hai smiled. "But maybe I'll be able to in the future."

Suddenly, his phone vibrated. Gwen Stacy's name appeared on the screen.

"She's messaging you at two-thirty on a Saturday afternoon?" Harry raised an eyebrow.

Lin Hai opened the text message: [Before biology class on Monday, can we talk about the "plant energy meridians" you mentioned during free discussion? I looked up some material.]

"Gwen is really interested in you." Peter waggled his eyebrows beside him. "A weekend message from Gwen Stacy, the genius school beauty every guy in school dreams of~"

Lin Hai's expression remained calm as he slipped his phone back into his pocket. "It's just an academic exchange. Anyone thinking otherwise can go stare at a wall."

It was precisely a chance conversation with Gwen before this that had allowed him to break through his energy-control bottleneck.

That day in the library, Gwen's sharp questioning of the traditional Chinese medicine concept of "meridians" had forced him to reinterpret his ability system in the language of modern biology. The sparks from that collision of Eastern and Western thought were more valuable than any laboratory equipment.

Before biology class on Monday.

Lin Hai arrived in the classroom half an hour early and found Gwen already filling the whiteboard with equations.

"Lin, you're here!" Gwen turned around, her blond ponytail swaying lightly with the movement. "I reorganized the energy flow model you described." She pointed at a string of equations. "If plant energy truly has fixed conduction pathways like you said, then according to..."

Lin Hai was stunned by the rigorous mathematical expression covering the board. The energy flow he could only vaguely sense had become a precise physical model under Gwen's pen.

"Here." He pointed at part of an equation. "The actual conduction speed is about three times faster than the theoretical value, because the energy isn't just passively diffusing. It's also actively guided."

Gwen's eyes lit up. "Quantum tunneling! I knew traditional models couldn't explain it!"

She suddenly moved closer, and the faint scent of citrus on her drifted into Lin Hai's nose. "Lin, have you ever considered publishing these theories? They could overturn the entire field of botany."

Lin Hai stepped back half a step. "These theories aren't mature enough yet. Most of them are only my feelings or guesses. If I were to publish them, I'd need more real experimental data." He had no way to explain that these theories came from his special ability rather than normal experimental discoveries.

Gwen looked at him thoughtfully. "You're always like this. You have astonishing intuitive discoveries, yet you avoid systematic theoretical construction. The ancient people of Huaxia seemed to be the same; they rarely explained their theories clearly in systematic language."

After a pause, she said, "There's a science seminar next week. How about being my co-presenter? The topic will be <Plant Energy Theory from a Cross-Cultural Perspective>."

Lin Hai opened his mouth to refuse, but Gwen's gaze changed his mind. Working with Gwen meant greater risk of exposure, but it might also offer a way to turn the theories born from his abilities into data.

"Okay." He answered briefly, then took a small glass bottle from his bag. Inside were several faintly glowing seeds. "These are for you. Put them in front of your desk, and they'll purify the air and improve concentration."

Gwen took the bottle, the seeds glowing faintly in her palm. "Are they breathing?"

"All plants breathe. These are just more obvious." Lin Hai smiled.

During biology class, Lin Hai took notes absentmindedly, but his thoughts drifted toward developing combat plants. The offensive seeds of the Flying Leaf Blade Style had begun to show results, but defensive and control measures were still being explored. He needed a plant that could rapidly form a barrier like the Wall-nut from Plants vs. Zombies.

"Lin Hai? Please answer this question." The teacher's voice pulled him back to reality.

The entire class turned to look at him. Lin Hai stood up blankly. Fortunately, Peter whispered from behind him, "The difference between the light-dependent and light-independent reactions of photosynthesis!"

His fluent answer earned a satisfied nod from the teacher, but Lin Hai noticed Gwen's inquisitive gaze.

After class, Gwen stopped him. "What research have you been doing lately? You're even zoning out during biology class."

"Some... um... special plant cultivation. The seeds I gave you last time are part of it." Lin Hai was vague.

Gwen suddenly lowered her voice. "Harry Osborn applied last week for five kilograms of high-purity nitrogen-phosphorus-potassium compound fertilizer and radioactive isotope-labeled carbon dioxide. Your name was listed as the user."

Her beautiful blue eyes looked directly into Lin Hai's. "Don't worry. I'm applying to become an intern under Professor Connors at Osborn Enterprises. Students can apply for corporate internships in the second semester of junior year. It isn't strange for me, as the top student in our grade, to have a few privileges. I happened to see that information in the logistics department while submitting my materials.

But that isn't important. What matters is that I'm curious. What kind of high school research project requires supplies of that level?"

Lin Hai's heartbeat quickened slightly. Gwen was sharper than he had imagined.

"A collaborative project with Osborn Enterprises, about plant adaptation in extreme environments." He chose to tell part of the truth.

"Interesting. Are you free Saturday? I have a small home laboratory. The equipment isn't as good as Osborn Enterprises', but it's still far more advanced than the school's." Gwen did not press further, but her eyes told him the matter was not over.

This was the second invitation.

Lin Hai hesitated for a moment, then nodded. Gwen's father was the commissioner of the New York Police Department, which made him somewhat wary, but the appeal of conducting scientific research with a genius student was even harder to resist.