Leaving the Eastern Theater Command wasn't a whim. This was the second time he had left the Command and set out for somewhere further off.

The next stop was Beijing.

The route was already chosen: follow the Beijing–Taipei Expressway from Mushroom City to Jinan; from Jinan to Dezhou; out of Shandong at Dezhou and on to Cangzhou in Hebei; from Cangzhou to Tianjin, then turn for the last stop of all, Beijing.

Five or six hundred kilometers all told.

If the roads weren't badly blocked he could reach Beijing in a day. That was plainly out of the question now. Never mind what dangers waited for him along the desolate stretches where nobody lived — between the jin trees tearing up the roads and the lack of GPS, he would be lucky not to get lost.

So he meant to keep his speed down, and to search out survivor organizations in the city ruins as he passed them.

Following the Beijing–Taipei Expressway he soon reached the ruins of Jinan. Its survivors had all moved into the Eastern Theater Command by now, so he didn't linger and drove straight on toward the Yellow River Bridge.

The Yellow River was yellow.

The Yellow River Bridge had come down. Only a little of it was left, barely enough to make out where the piers had stood. The morning sun struck the water and threw back a shimmer of gold. This was almost past the abundant zone, so the trees were sparse here, and shorter than the ones inside it.

On the flats there were crocodile-like evolved beasts, low-grade by the look of them and not large.

The Yellow River wasn't deep enough to keep a huge evolved beast alive anyway.

Shen Cong stopped only a moment before driving the Vajra Fortress straight across. The huge machine threw up sheets of spray as it went, and the crocodile beasts took fright, swam off into the river, and vanished.

The four-legged dragon was afraid of water, but it clung to the Vajra Fortress and came across too.

It shook itself dry and was instantly all…