Crayfish is mostly about the tail meat.

Female crabs are for the roe. Male crabs are for the crab paste.

Shrimp Soldier's tail meat went into the freezer for later. Crab General turned out to be male — Shen Cong boiled it that same afternoon and spent lunch eating an obscene quantity of crab paste. Extraordinarily good.

The fourth and fifth barrier lakes took longer than expected — a full two days of digging to cut channels wide enough and long enough to drain them properly.

Neither lake yielded any large evolved beasts, and no new Activity fruit appeared. Just dense concentrations of small aquatic evolved creatures and a scattering of evolved trees.

One pattern was unmistakable: virtually everything here was sitting around Lv0.8.

Whether that was unique to the Mini-Oasis environment — an accelerated evolutionary pace driven by higher Activity density — or simply the natural progression of the outside world, he couldn't say. Maybe the whole world was collectively crossing into the Lv0.8 tier by now. Shen Cong didn't particularly care either way.

The Old Pearl Mussel had reached Lv0.998. Another day or two of feeding and it would cross into the Lv1 era.

As for Shen Cong himself: Activity Value now at 2.197H, level approximately Lv0.873. Two days of intensive Activity fruit consumption had produced rapid, sustained enhancement — his level was climbing faster than it had in a long time. The Activity Pearls had added another three centimeters over those same two days. He was now 185cm.

Not just taller, either. Across-the-board physical improvement. Seventeen-bull strength achieved.

"I can probably gain another four centimeters — eat the largest remaining Activity Pearls and they'll stop working. Call it 189cm, that's enough."

"Eating the Activity fruit to saturation should put me around 2.3H — less than the 2.5H I'd projected. I'll need more sources. The Mini-Oasis still has a dozen or more barrier lakes on the other side of the ridge. Activity fruit should be growing along those banks too. Once I've cracked the central lake, I'll go looking."

"Great Vajra is at 2.401H, level Lv0.954. Can't keep…