The Activity sweet potato was growing with almost aggressive enthusiasm. The Research Institute immediately organized a work crew to clear twenty mu of land along the Dafangyong Reservoir bank and plant the full stock. The tubers could be sectioned into small pieces, each piece a viable planting unit — consistent watering was all that was needed. Establishment rate was high.

The sweet potato fields did something the camp had been unable to achieve through any other means: they relieved the pressure on food supply. Operating purely on daily hunting and foraging runs had a ceiling, and that ceiling was the surrounding ecology's carrying capacity. Sooner or later, the camp would have eaten Hefei's surroundings empty.

The Research Institute had tried to cultivate evolved fruit trees before. The seeds wouldn't germinate — they rotted in the soil. Grafting, cuttings, transplanting: all had failed. The Activity sweet potato was the only plant the camp had successfully cultivated from human effort.

Well — the second, technically. Shen Cong still had one listless Mechanical Vine cutting on board, which was maintaining a glacially slow growth rate and contributing approximately nothing except a small patch of green in the greenhouse.

"My hypothesis is that the tuber contains an especially vital form of Activity — one that enables continuous reproduction." Yu Fucheng, a former associate professor from Anhui Agricultural University, had been appointed director of the Sweet Potato Research Lab and was personally overseeing cultivation operations.

Shen Cong had come out to the sweet potato fields a few times over the past two days, discussing the plant's biology with Yu Fucheng. "'A vital form of Activity?'"

The phrasing was a little awkward, but the concept landed immediately.

His Half-Activated Armor derived from a failed metal lifeform — a form of Activity that was distinctly inert. If you thought about it that way, Activity itself existed on a spectrum of vitality. The more vital the Activity, the more vigorous the life force it expressed.

And then another thought: Is Great Vajra's Activity unusually high-vitality? Great Vajra outperforms every other bonded vehicle in ambient Activity absorption rate and…