The floating intelligent bacteria did not scatter as before but arranged themselves.
Three horizontal lines of equal length.
Quite orderly.
Jiang Ye took out his phone, about to take a picture, when the bacteria on the water surface suddenly dispersed again.
Half a minute later, they rearranged.
No longer horizontal lines, but four concentric circles, quite perfect circles, looking like targets.
Jiang Ye quickly took a picture and sent it to Li Nannan.
Jiang Ye: "These bacteria have been like this since early morning. Just now they were three vertical lines, and now they're like this. Is this the character-displaying stage? It feels like just randomly arranged patterns!"
Li Nannan: "They should be reaching a critical point. These intelligent bacteria can now perceive their position and the outside world, and can communicate with their companions. Although it looks like child's play, their intelligence and information exchange levels are actually very high. You still need to provide some guidance."
Jiang Ye: "What kind of guidance?"
Li Nannan: "Paste a piece of paper on the lid of the culture tank. Print a few large characters on the paper, with slightly complex strokes, but not too complex, not exceeding ten characters."
Jiang Ye: "It's that simple?"
Li Nannan: "What you need to do is very simple, but what these bacteria need to do is not simple at all. They need to have a certain degree of vision, not individual vision, but group vision. Each bacterium receives a bit of light, and each bacterium connects the received light together, effectively combining it to see the entire field of vision. They also need to imitate the arrangement. Only when they can truly arrange characters will they have evolved to the character-displaying stage. This stage is merely simple imitation. Later, the intelligent bacteria will gradually learn the meaning of each character."
Jiang Ye secretly marveled.
He was beginning to feel the power of these intelligent bacteria.
To achieve this as a group of bacteria was quite remarkable.
But this was only the second stage of evolution!
He went home and upstairs, using the printer in his study to print four large characters, "Jiang Ye Baba".
The font was bolded and pasted on top of the culture tank lid so the intelligent bacteria could see it.
Jiang Ye squatted by the culture tank, observing silently.
The intelligent bacteria dispersed, and after a long time, they gathered again.
It was evident that they were trying to imitate the large characters on the culture tank lid.
Some intelligent bacteria arranged three dots of water, while others arranged fragmented "Ba"s.
After waiting for more than half an hour, various strokes appeared and disappeared, but not a single character was successfully pieced together.
Jiang Ye knew that these intelligent bacteria had not yet fully evolved.
"Honey, breakfast is ready," Cen Yemeng said, standing at the door and waving.
Jiang Ye went home to eat and then went out to work.
During this time, the military and police were conducting joint operations to track down fugitives from the Continent of Sin and Punishment.
Twenty-six people had been captured successively, and a large amount of intelligence had been obtained through interrogation and searches.
However, the mastermind "Spider Man" had still not appeared.
Jiang Ye took this matter very seriously, personally inspecting the interrogation scenes and reading all the statements every day.
Besides pursuing Spider Man, his other focus was, of course, the development of various cities.
Jiang Ye Star had many new cities, and he needed to inspect them one by one, going to the streets to ask passersby and understand the situation in each city.
Schools, hospitals, shops, factories – Jiang Ye had scheduled visits to all key units, accompanied by Su Yueming to inspect their conditions.
After working until eight in the evening, Jiang Ye returned home tiredly by car.
The first thing he did was to check on the intelligent bacteria in the yard.
The four characters "Jiang Ye Baba" appeared clearly on the transparent liquid!
Jiang Ye was ecstatic, took a picture with his phone, and sent it to Li Nannan.
"They've reached the character-displaying stage!"
Li Nannan: "Congratulations, everything is proceeding smoothly."
Jiang Ye: "The next stage is the communication stage. What should I do? Should I just keep adding alcohol for cultivation?"
Li Nannan: "For the communication stage, you can't just raise them randomly anymore. You need a professional breeding base. I'll send a blueprint to Xu Yan, and you can contact her."
After having dinner at home, Jiang Ye drove to the White Ant Real Estate Building.
Xu Yan was a workaholic, busy until past midnight every night and sleeping in her office. Therefore, no matter when Jiang Ye went to her office, he could usually find her.
She was dressed a bit revealingly tonight, in a semi-transparent white nightgown, standing barefoot by the window, holding a cup of hot coffee and looking down at the lights of Binhai City.
"Jiang Ye, are you proud?" Xu Yan asked without turning her head.
"Proud? What makes you say that?"
"Look at Binhai City, so big, with so many tall buildings and shops, all built by my construction team. Every night when I look out, I feel very proud." Xu Yan turned back and smiled.
"It is indeed something to be proud of. Your construction team is very reliable, the best I've ever seen," Jiang Ye praised. "Li Nannan sent you a blueprint, did you receive it?"
Xu Yan walked to the desk and gently tapped it.
A blue holographic projection appeared.
A factory covering one hundred square meters, with ten separate wine vats inside.
Pipes for automatic alcohol filling.
LED display screens at the bottom of the vats.
"Bacteria breeding farm, very cheap, 1.5 million each. Li Nannan wants you to build one first," Xu Yan said. "Are you raising bacteria? What kind of bacteria? Biological weapons?"
"I'm afraid I can't disclose that. This matter has a high level of secrecy, so we can't discuss it over the phone. I have to come in person," Jiang Ye said. "Build one on the empty land south of the hot spring area."
The two discussed the details for a few more minutes, and the matter was settled.
The construction team immediately rushed to the hot spring area to start work, and it was expected to be delivered by ten o'clock the next morning.
Jiang Ye took out his phone, intending to transfer the payment.
"Don't pay, it's a gift for you," Xu Yan smiled.
"How can that be?" Jiang Ye said.
"With our relationship, what's 1.5 million? Don't be polite!"
Xu Yan insisted on giving it as a gift, so Jiang Ye didn't insist further. He put away his phone and went home to sleep.
The intelligent bacteria solution was transferred to the brand new breeding farm.
Jiang Ye sat in his study, looking at the office desk screen to observe the status of the intelligent bacteria.
Li Nannan sent another set of "Bacteria Language Learning" software. Once downloaded into the breeding farm, the LED screens at the bottom of the breeding vats would scroll with various characters, teaching the bacteria to learn language.
Initially, they started learning from strokes.
The screen displayed hooks, horizontals, left-falling, and right-falling strokes, and the intelligent bacteria arranged themselves accordingly.
Then came simple characters: one, two, three, morning, noon, evening.
When simple characters were displayed, many pictures were also shown for the intelligent bacteria to observe.
The learning method was very similar to how human children learn to recognize characters.
This process took longer than Jiang Ye had imagined, lasting for a full month.
The weather on the entire planet had entered deep winter, and all continents were covered by thick blizzards.
Jiang Senlin could already walk, several times faster than a normal infant. However, his walking was still unsteady. He could also produce some unclear syllables. Cen Yemeng would often teach him to call "Mama," while Jiang Ye would teach his son to call "Baba" whenever he had the chance.