Activity Pearls and banyan yogurt — Shen Cong gathered a quantity of both, for cultivating the Vajra-Ants.

The tour of his enterprises finished in short order, and Guo Shanni was left behind.

His travelling did not stop there, though. He went back to New Hefei, turned off through Juchao District, and followed Provincial Road 208 — so altered by now that he barely recognized it — the whole way home. To Wuwei County.

Wuwei County had once been buried in yellow sand. Sparse jin trees covered it now, and the floods had carried the sand away. Shen Cong wandered a long while through the ruins of the county town before he found it at last: the water treatment plant warehouse where he had once drawn his water.

"Little Four. Dig the entrance open. Gently — don't bring it down."

The four-legged dragon let out a flippant, self-satisfied jiji gugu, gave a light scrape with its jin-core claws, and the old warehouse entrance appeared.

"Bobo… Little Four… strong…"

"Fine. You're amazing. Wait here and keep watch for me." Shen Cong paid it its due and went inside.

The warehouse was buried underground, and a year had worked its changes on it. Two jin trees had driven their roots through the roof and taken hold in the space below.

They had gone into the water jugs in the first compartment and drunk every one of them dry.

On the floor lay the wreck of some small plastic thing.

Shen Cong bent and picked it up. The original shape was still faintly readable. "This is the longwave transmitter I left here. I didn't know then that metal corrodes. Completely scrap now."

"I thought those water jugs would come in useful. Never occurred to me the jin tree would get the benefit of them." Shen Cong walked on through the pitch-black basement, his sight strong enough to show him every inch of it perfectly clearly.

The second compartment had held a good many human remains, and the remains of something nobody could put a name to.

They were gone. The place was swept clean,…