A full day's work. Every Spicy Eye on the ground — dead and living alike — collected and processed.

Final yield: 100 liters of Pepper Water, three large bags of venomous spines. All of it stowed aboard Great Vajra.

The evolved aquatic creatures brought down by the flood had their Activity cores harvested as well, everything stacked temporarily in the supply room. He'd sort through it later — anything workable into bone-gold weapons would be processed, the rest fed to the Vajra Ant colony. The Antgod had now laid three eggs. A colony was forming. Feeding requirements would only grow.

While he was at it, he gathered chrysanthemum petals from the flower field below and set them to dry. Tea ingredients for the road — proper tea production was gone with the old world, and self-sufficiency meant making do with what the new world offered.

November 22nd. The end of Light Snow, the seasonal marker on the lunar calendar. Deep autumn giving way to winter.

Shen Cong had sewn himself a leopard-skin coat. The driver's seat cushion and his bed had both been reupholstered in Swiftclaw Leopard hide. The vehicle looked warm in a way that suited it. At his current physical constitution, a few degrees below freezing was entirely survivable in thin clothing — but comfort was available, so he took it.

The Half-Activated Armor now had a leopard-skin underlayer as well. Jiao-hide bodysuit, leopard skin, Half-Activated Armor. Three layers.

Better in every respect.

Six months since the apocalypse began. He caught his own face in the small mirror by the bed — pale, composed — and said goodnight to it before turning out the light.

November 23rd.

Back to the drained lakebed.

A shallow residual puddle remained at the center — in the day and a half since the drainage, the evolved creatures trapped in it had been fighting each other. The water had gone red. Around the exposed sand and gravel, shrimp, crabs, turtles, and tortoises crawled in dense populations.

He harvested Activity cores. Then he dug a drainage channel to pull the last standing water down…