When Shen Cong cleared the rubble layer, what emerged was half a wing section — and attached to it, an engine. Corroded, but not catastrophically so.
He recognized the form: a turbofan engine, the type that powered commercial aircraft. The forward fan blades were almost entirely broken off or eaten away by corrosion, but the core structure was intact. The external ducting had developed holes in places.
Boeing 737 — Pratt & Whitney JT8D-15? Or a C919’s LEAP-X1C? Actually — the news that spring, before everything ended, was about the C919 making the domestic aviation mainstream. Could this be a CJ-1000A? He studied the external casing profile. Round barrel configuration. Not the oval JT8D-15 shape.
China’s domestically developed C919 had become the backbone of domestic civil aviation in its final years before the catastrophe. The CJ-1000A turbofan had just reached the commercial market, replacing the LEAP-X1C in the newest production models.
The specific designation didn’t matter anymore.
He grabbed the engine from the rubble and dragged it at a jog toward Great Vajra, securing it to the roof with cable. About five meters long, main body diameter around two meters — without the fan assembly it wasn’t oversized for the roof. Getting it repaired and installed would be an entirely different problem, almost certainly beyond the Mingfa Camp’s current technical capability. But having it was better than not having it.
An engine to restore to operation someday. For now: a future resource.
What he actually wanted was a fighter jet’s turbofan — smaller, more powerful. But a civil aviation turbofan found opportunistically was better than the nothing he’d had before.
Engine secured, he continued toward the underground fuel depot location. The two-hour window was nearly exhausted when he finally reached it.
The underground tanks were corroded through. Thick structural steel, built to last decades — eaten and perforated by the same accelerated corrosion that had been destroying metal throughout the region. Earth had infiltrated the tanks through the holes. At the very bottom of each, a dark viscous residue of uncertain composition was all that remained of what had been aviation kerosene reserves.
Every tank. All of it.
He stood there for a moment.
CLANG.
His boot went through the corroded tank wall, taking a large section of steel plate with it.
What is Activity?
He didn’t say it aloud. Just stood with the question, chest rising and falling more sharply than the physical effort warranted. Then he controlled it, turned, and drove Great Vajra home.
The turbofan engine created mild interest at camp. He turned it over to the Automotive Lab for assessment and repair research, then went directly to Commander Zhao Weiliang.
“The underground fuel depot at Xinqiao Airport is gone. The tanks have all corroded through. There’s no aviation fuel.”
Zhao Weiliang absorbed this with the expression of someone who had been expecting bad news and received confirmation. “Before you came to camp, I’d essentially given up on Xinqiao. When we opened the buried fuel tanks at city petrol stations about a month ago, we were already finding corrosion and leakage. With this much time elapsed…” He exhaled. “We knew.”
The camp’s current fuel inventory, at normal consumption rates, would last approximately three months. After that, without resupply, the vehicles stopped.
The Research Institute’s proposed solution was biogas or coal gas. Biogas from anaerobic digestion infrastructure, coal gas from Huainan’s coal mines — both producible given enough time and stable conditions. The limiting factor was the corrosion problem. Without addressing accelerated metal degradation, building the infrastructure to implement either alternative was itself a challenge.
What came to Shen Cong’s mind was a specific image — the gas-bag trucks of China’s wartime past, vehicles driving with enormous fabric balloons of compressed gas inflated on their roofs.
Great Vajra with a gas bag on top.
No. The revulsion was immediate. One puncture in combat and the energy supply was gone.
“Solar before coal gas. Always.”
Fuel was a serious structural problem. But the solutions existed in principle — biogas refining to natural gas, coal gas production, eventually petroleum extraction and diesel refining if the technological capacity recovered enough. Everything required time, and everything required solving the metal corrosion problem first.
Activity is the question. Activity causes biological mutation. Activity corrodes metal. Activity also causes metal to come alive. Why can’t Activity be used as a direct energy source? The resonance totem system was already a form of Activity harvesting. The principle was established. The applications weren’t yet.
Mingfa Camp’s research capability has limits. Maybe it’s time to look further. South toward Nanjing — or north toward Beijing. Find a larger survivor organization. Find people who can actually solve these problems.
He stood on Great Vajra’s roof in the afternoon light, looking at the camp below.
People everywhere, busy, purposeful — new construction going up, work teams moving between platforms, the optimistic energy of a community that had decided to keep building. It should have looked like stability. To him it looked like a place he was preparing to leave.
The humans here wanted settled lives. They wanted the new city to be real. That was what the apocalypse meant to them — a disruption to overcome on the way back to something recognizable.
What he wanted was something he couldn’t find here. Evolution. The next threshold.
This wasn’t the first time the thought of leaving had surfaced. It had been there since before the Vajra overhaul, and it was clearer now.
He glanced at the mechanical watch embedded in his armor’s wrist panel. Twelve thirty-six and forty-two seconds. The second hand moved to forty-three.
He said something quietly to himself, to no one in particular.
“Why act now? Why not wait?”
The second hand moved again.
“Because the world won’t wait for you.”
He looked east. Nuclear detonations in that direction. A scouting team nearly destroyed. The Eastern Theater Command somewhere out there, intact or not. Activity secrets that this camp couldn’t touch.
Go to Nanjing. If Nanjing is gone, go to Beijing. Find the larger organization. Find the answers.
Now — prepare.
The decision was made, privately, without announcement. He continued his daily routines without visible change — leveling, stockpiling materials for independent operation, putting in the hours.
In the spare time, he drove to Zifeng Mountain and watched the Swiftclaw Leopard.
Three days of detailed observation. Behavioral patterns. Movement timing. Territory boundaries. A complete picture of how it operated.
Then five days of digging.
A pit large enough. Concealment good enough to be undetectable. A cover strong enough to hold until the right moment. Bone-gold weapons positioned for maximum effectiveness.
And a lure.
Himself.
(End of Chapter 190)