In the downpour, the thunderbolt giant fir was generating intelligence out of the thunder-fire, and walking steadily in one direction without turning aside.

To get to the bottom of what was happening to it, Shen Cong decided to follow. He went back first, so as not to be cut off from the Vajra Fortress. Then he started it up and took the Siberian weasel and the four-legged dragon along, following the thunderbolt giant fir off in a direction none of them could name.

The lightning kept coming down.

The downpour was not going to stop any time soon. Scattered fragments of the thunderbolt giant fir's feeling kept reaching Shen Cong, and the sense of intelligence in them grew clearer and clearer. So long as this thunderstorm held and the lightning went on hammering down, stroke after stroke, the thunderbolt giant fir might truly become a tree spirit.

For now it could not be counted one. Its thinking was not yet whole. At most it had the makings of a sprouting intelligence.

This state — a plant evolving into intelligent life — was one Shen Cong needed to grasp in detail.

Knowing all that might look useless right now, but it would give him a firmer hold on the future. As a man who had set himself on becoming the predator at the top of the food chain, with the sea of stars as his final goal, Shen Cong knew better than to reach too far too fast. At the very least he had to have every secret of evolution in hand.

Science and technology are the primary productive force. Knowledge is technology, and technology is power.

These were the foundations, and only once they were laid firm could a man look out at a broader future. That was the principle Shen Cong held to.

The lightning did not stop.

Neither the weasel nor the four-legged dragon dared go near the thunderbolt giant fir. Animal instinct left them unable to make sense of a power that great, a power outside life itself.

After several days thrown together, the four-legged dragon was…