Hunting Firestarter Spirits wasn't urgent; the Superbrain fusion could be pushed back a while.

Using the Super-Thunder Wave station, roughly recovered by now, Shen Cong discussed a good many questions about the Nebula Model of the brain-cloud's gradation with the scientists. Combined with his own observation and study of his Superbrain, he now felt mentally prepared enough to meet the coming Lv4 Nebula Era brain-cloud stage.

But at the very moment Shen Cong finished preparing, heaven declined to oblige him.

Since the first great land earthquake erupted on September 8, splitting the ground from Langfang to Tongzhou, a little more than a day had passed. In the small hours of September 10, while Shen Cong was sleeping soundly, he suddenly felt the world turn over in his dreams.

The great earthquake had erupted again.

If the last one had been a violent quake generally above magnitude ten, this one reached at least magnitude eleven—devastating. Mountains collapsed, the ground split, forests toppled, fissures ran everywhere in dense profusion.

"The quake's even stronger!"

Shen Cong climbed up, dressed hurriedly, and walked out of the swaying Vajra Fortress. In that moment the moonlit forest seemed to be remaking heaven and earth: enormous jin trees toppling one after another, the ground sieving soil like a screen, fissures opening and closing and opening again. Standing on that ground, you could feel the irresistible force of the pull.

Nature's terror was mighty beyond contending with, and even at particle-grade Shen Cong felt it.

The Activity in the air seemed to be boiling, carrying an enormous, violent quality; absorbing it into the body, he could feel the shock of it tearing at him.

The concentration kept climbing, too. With every breath he could feel clearly that the Activity was denser than it had been the moment before.

The Third Eye Radar covered a four-kilometer circle, and the scenery within it changed almost completely every few minutes as the creatures of the Tianjin oasis fled in blind panic. Just then a peculiar radiative fluctuation caught Shen Cong's attention. He seized on it fast and charged toward the center…