Seeing the Big Picture from Small Details

All researchers of Laboratory No. 6 gathered within five minutes.

The laboratory, which had only been dimly lit by a few lights, suddenly became brightly illuminated, as if instantly bursting with life. People came and went, and the lab became quite bustling.

Once everyone had arrived, Researcher Chen organized a brief meeting to ensure everyone understood the situation, which would help with the subsequent work. He projected the real-time video onto the screen before the researchers, focusing on the playback of Dog 1 eating the fruit, wanting everyone to clearly see the reason for the meeting. Then, he presented the charts he had prepared.

As a result, before he could even display the newly completed comparison images, the research room quickly grew noisy as everyone began voicing their opinions, talking freely. Such a scene had occurred many times in the laboratory, and Researcher Chen was used to it. He used this method to understand everyone's ideas, and it kept things free from constraints. Doing so not only kept everyone happy but also frequently sparked great ideas, directly accelerating the progress of the experiments.

During the discussion, some researchers directly asked Researcher Chen:

“Researcher Chen, does this mean the fruit has officially ripened?”
“Researcher Chen, has the fruit really ripened?”
“Researcher Chen, if the fruit is truly ripe, will it fall directly like in the video?”
“Researcher Chen, is falling directly the sign of this fruit's ripeness?”
……

Researcher Chen listened quietly to the researchers' questions. Throughout, he did not rush, refute, or interrupt them, maintaining a calm attitude as he listened. He was no longer in a hurry regarding the fruit; precisely speaking, there was no need to be too anxious for the time being.

Right after notifying the researchers to come to the lab, he had quickly drafted an email to his superiors and confirmed they had received it. Therefore, he was in no rush! Because he knew that once his superiors received his news, they would definitely make arrangements.

As for why he woke up the other researchers when he had already sent the news himself, it was because working overtime with just one or two people was simply depressing! Having more people work overtime could spark everyone's passion and efficiency, allowing them to produce an official experimental report faster and more effectively.

Researcher Chen thought to himself that although he loved his work immensely, being woken up in the middle of the night still left him slightly disgruntled! Since waking him up was for important and urgent work, he wouldn't complain about it; instead, he would invest even more enthusiasm into his tasks.

However, when working alone, he would think of those still sleeping in the resting cabins, wondering if they would complain when they woke up during the day about why he hadn't called them for such a good opportunity. At that moment, that sudden feeling hit him—the sense that this was an important task that everyone had to overcome together! This feeling usually made him lose control of his hands, which was why all the researchers were now up!

Because he had rung the alarm of the resting cabins!

After ringing the resting cabin alarm, he felt much better, and the discomfort of being woken up in the middle of the night was completely washed away.

Once everyone finished speaking, Researcher Chen began to talk. He brought out the comparison images he hadn't displayed yet, showed them to everyone, and began to explain.

“Everyone, look. These two images compare the fallen fruit and the unfallen fruit. To the naked eye, you might not see anything yet, but through computer comparison, we can clearly see some differences...”

After explaining, Researcher Chen began assigning tasks. Everyone had different duties, and Liu Yang was still assigned to take care of the small plant. Although the small plant was in a state of completely halted growth, the laboratory still insisted on having someone care for it under 24-hour surveillance, allowing them to review the footage at any time.

The researchers began to take action. Even though Researcher Chen had judged the fruit to be ripe, did it really ripen by falling? And since only two fruits had fallen so far, would more continue to fall? Why did Dog 1 know the exact time these fruits would fall and catch them perfectly in its mouth? What benefits did Dog 1 get from eating this fruit?
……

Next, the researchers checked all the plants under the research institute's surveillance. Only Dog 1's plant had falling fruit, and for the remaining plants that hadn't dropped their fruit, their animal guardians were still continuously watering them with blood.

Since the fruit fell, Dog 1 had stopped watering the plant with blood!

Although all the researchers now strongly suspected that those drops of blood were what caused the fruit to ripen, all the plants in the laboratory that replicated the steps of the guardian animals in the real-time video still showed no changes whatsoever. Even those fruits had directly stopped growing, as if time had frozen for them; no matter how they were manipulated, they maintained an unchanging posture.

The ripening method in the real-time video had never been predicted, and it was something the researchers had not expected. This made the researchers of Laboratory No. 6 extremely depressed, even casting doubt on their own experimental results. It felt as though scientific methods could no longer intervene in or predict those wild plants. Even simulating the plants' growth environment was inaccurate, preventing the laboratory plants from growing in sync with the wild ones.

Currently, these preserved plants in the laboratory seemed to be mocking humanity. As if telling humanity never to think they could control nature, for nature would always deliver a shock where humans least expected it!

The researchers in Laboratory No. 6 could now only predict the future growth of these plants by reviewing these real-time videos. However, the previous growth predictions only showed that the plants had begun to deceive humans, even managing to fool human manufacturing machinery. The laboratory's previous predictions of ripeness had been fooled by the fruit in this way; all the data shown by the machines indicated the fruit was about to ripen, yet in the end, there was no change at all. These fruits could even make people smugly feel they were correct, believing the plant would grow this way and the fruit would ripen...

Wait...

It was just that during this Eternal Night, it felt as though humanity had been abandoned alone in the evolutionary process, while all other organisms were accelerating their evolution.

The ones experiencing this feeling were not just these researchers, but also Cao Shudong.

Cao Shudong had been watching wild beast livestreams online for the past few days, and after watching for a long time, she felt it was extremely strange. She felt these animals were continuously evolving; their movement speed, attack power, and other evolutionary levels filled her with dread.

Moreover, she hadn't heard of humans evolving. It seemed she could only ever hear about animals evolving, mosquitoes evolving, plants evolving... but never about humans evolving. When humans were mentioned, it was usually regarding high death tolls, notifications of casualties, and the like. She had never heard of anyone gaining superpowers or anything of the sort, not even rumors!

Cao Shudong thought to herself, they say there's no smoke without fire, but when it came to superpowers, there wasn't even a breeze, let alone waves; perhaps even the seabed was completely calm!

Furthermore, the recent wild beast livestreams felt very odd. She felt they didn't even seem like wild beast livestreams anymore; that tense, blood-pumping feeling was growing weaker and weaker. The beasts on both sides didn't have a life-or-death atmosphere. Even the streamers said they had rarely captured footage of wild beasts lately, let alone fierce clashes.

This made Cao Shudong feel extremely puzzled. Was the animal riot about to end!? Then why hadn't there been any official announcements?