Shi Qiang arrives at Ding Yi’s home and finds Wang Miao and Ding Yi drunk and despondent after the Trisolaran message calling humanity “bugs.” Ding Yi and Wang Miao argue that because sophons have blocked high-energy physics, humanity has lost the scientific foundation needed for any real technological breakthrough. In their view, future progress will be limited to superficial improvements, while the deeper understanding required to challenge Trisolaris has been cut off.

The two scientists turn their despair into bitter mockery. Wang Miao says that if humanity is doomed, then decadence is justified, and Ding Yi adds that the Trisolarans reveal their plans so openly because humans are as insignificant to them as insects are to people using bug spray. Shi Qiang rejects their surrender as cowardly and abruptly orders them to come with him, dragging them out despite their drunken resistance.

Shi Qiang drives Wang Miao and Ding Yi out of the city to his home region in Hebei. There, under the bright afternoon sun, he shows them wheat fields covered with locusts. When Wang Miao and Ding Yi ask why they have come, Shi Qiang asks whether the technological gap between humans and Trisolarans is greater than the gap between humans and locusts. The question shocks both men into sobriety because it exposes the weakness in their hopeless reasoning.

Standing among the insects, Shi Qiang silently makes his point: humanity has waged a relentless war against bugs throughout history with poison, fire, traps, breeding control, and countless other methods, yet bugs still survive in immense numbers. If even insects cannot be fully exterminated by a vastly superior species, then the Trisolarans may be wrong to assume humanity is already finished. As a new swarm of locusts darkens the sun and rains down around them, Wang Miao and Ding Yi feel renewed respect for life’s resilience, pour out their wine as a toast to the bugs, thank Shi Qiang, and decide to return because there is still much work to do.