Mix Jin Ke La in your fertilizer, one bag does the work of two. Mix Jin Ke La in your fertilizer, wheat yields eighteen hundred jin per mu! America · San Diego. American · SHENGDIYAGE.

Standing at the edge of the sweet potato field, watching the soil bulging and splitting open under the pressure of tubers that had already grown large enough to push through the surface, Shen Cong found the old fertilizer commercial running through his head unbidden.

One week. That was all it had taken. The Activity sweet potatoes had erupted from the ground like something had been poured in to accelerate them — enormous root masses crowding each other, visible without any digging at all. As if Jin Ke La had been involved.

The dense Activity radiating from the field was drawing attention. Several of the camp's pet evolved beasts spent their idle hours circling the perimeter, unable to help themselves.

Not far from the sweet potato field, a new plot had been cleared — the peach orchard, planted with the Activity Peach pits Shen Cong had provided. The pits had germinated and broken soil. Growth rate was slower than the sweet potatoes, but the sight of green shoots had produced a disproportionate reaction in the camp. Germination meant future harvest. Future harvest meant another food source. The emotional math was simple.

Meanwhile, the Nanfei Moat had officially been completed. Only the Sili Moat remained under construction. A separate engineering crew, led by evolved people, was excavating the tunnel that would eventually connect the camp to Shushan Forest Park.

Everything was moving forward with coordinated urgency.

The leadership was meeting constantly — major sessions every two days, minor ones daily — organizing the formal establishment of the new city. Shen Cong attended almost none of it. His self-definition as an outsider remained unchanged.

"Everything is trending in the right direction." Yu Fucheng monitored the sweet potato field and the budding peach orchard daily, keeping meticulous growth records.

The surrounding evolved beast population had been substantially depleted by sustained hunting — finding Activity meat was becoming genuinely difficult,…