Victory played as Shen Cong drove east into an unknown world.
What he left behind for the camp was a reputation — Edge of Evolution — and a USB drive inside an oversized shoebox.
The drive held very little data. A few hundred kilobytes. A single document recording what he’d worked out on his own: resonance field totems, perceptual link establishment through animal eggs, the pressure aura phenomenon at 1.946H.
While he’d been at the camp, he’d guarded these discoveries carefully — high-level knowledge in others’ hands could become a threat vector. But he was leaving now, probably for a long time, possibly for good. Hoarding it served no further purpose.
And perhaps it was also a small record. Evidence that he’d been here.
Shen Cong wanted transformation. Wanted life that kept going. But death was always one of the possible outcomes — from evolved beasts, from disaster, from human scheming. He couldn’t guarantee it wouldn’t find him. This journey ahead was full of unknowns; danger might come in the next second.
He didn’t fear it. But leaving a trace seemed worthwhile.
Dust rising behind the vehicle. Dawn light spreading east. The engines’ roar cutting through the stillness of the empty road like a greeting no one had asked for. A few evolved beasts that had been preparing to forage scattered at Great Vajra’s approach, then, once it had passed, turned to shout at its exhaust trail.
A farewell, of sorts.
Shen Cong pressed the accelerator and looked forward.
He didn’t know someone was standing at the empty platform feeling the absence.
Li Aiping held the shoebox with the military dress uniform balanced on top of it, something stinging faintly at the back of her nose. I’ll never get to see you wearing this now. The thought was unexpectedly sad.
A single USB drive. One line of direction in uneven handwriting. On the day New Hefei was born.
It said everything that needed to be said.
He’d left. Quietly, before the crowd assembled to cheer.
He hadn’t arrived quietly. But he’d chosen to leave that way.
“Director Zhang — Colonel Hu asked me to give you this.” She handed the shoebox to Zhang Kan, who had put on fresh clothes for the ceremony. She stayed close — she wanted to know what was on the drive.
“From Colonel Hu? Come on, let’s go look.” Zhang Kan had been planning to stay away from the Research Institute today — a holiday — but Shen Cong’s name changed the calculation immediately.
The computer. The drive. The file: X-Files.
He opened it, skimmed for a few seconds, and then couldn’t stop reading.
“Remarkable. A genuinely original idea — so that’s another application for bone-gold. Resonance field. Totem. This is inspired thinking…” He kept going. “Perceptual link establishment — this, this, this — this is a thousand times more sophisticated than our taming lab approach!”
Li Aiping didn’t follow the technical vocabulary. “What is it, Director Zhang?”
“What is it? It’s priceless. A epochal scientific achievement. The pressure aura threshold at 1.946H — brilliant — this alone advances our understanding of Activity by an entire generation…” He was already standing. “Where is Colonel Hu? I need to find him, I need to talk to him properly—”
Li Aiping took his arm. “Director Zhang. Colonel Hu has already left.”
“Left where? When is he coming back?”
“He may have left New Hefei. Gone somewhere else.”
“Where? He’ll be back eventually, surely.”
“He may not come back.” Her voice went up a little.
Zhang Kan seemed to finally understand. “Why?”
“Because he was never really here to begin with,” Li Aiping said. “I’m not sure I know either… Director Zhang, you look at the research. I need to go brief Party Secretary Zhao.”
“Right — I’ll come with you — ” He was already following her. “Why did he have to leave. This research is a generational breakthrough. And he’s the strongest evolved person we’ve had — he should be here, leading humanity forward. Where is he going? The world out there is so dangerous.”
Great Vajra ran east on the Shanghai-Chengdu Expressway.
Every ten kilometers, Shen Cong braked and launched the drone — high-altitude forward reconnaissance before committing to the next stretch. Cautious pace, steady progress.
Two hours passed without his noticing. He was approaching Quanjiao County in Chuzhou.
Shell craters were visible at the roadside — the scouting team’s account had described Quanjiao County as having been comprehensively reworked by ordnance. True to the report.
Great Vajra slowed again at Machang Township, ten kilometers from Quanjiao’s urban center. Drone up.
“That’s…” In the feed, a patch of pale yellow and white against the surrounding grey and green — distinct, anomalous. He adjusted focal length. The image softened slightly but resolved enough to read. “Flowers? Those are flowers.”
Flowers might mean Activity fruit.
He cross-referenced the map. The area was north of Machang Township, in Fuxing Township — where Machang Reservoir had previously existed. The reservoir was gone, replaced by this spread of bloom.
He turned Great Vajra onto the rural connector road, which narrowed quickly to something passable only on foot. He parked at the edge of Machang Township, suited up fully, opened the greenhouse vent to let the Treasure Bees range freely, and dropped down to investigate on foot. Two kilometers to Fuxing Township.
He reached the flower field and identified what he was looking at.
Chrysanthemums.
White petals, yellow centers. Each flower the size of a washbasin. Half a person’s height. The characteristic scent of chrysanthemums, magnified and concentrated by whatever Activity had done to these plants.
A sea of them. Genuinely impressive.
The Treasure Bees that had followed him out of the greenhouse were already working the flowers with visible enthusiasm. Shen Cong was less enthusiastic — because these were clearly mutated plants, but they didn’t appear to be producing Activity fruit. The ones that had already bloomed and gone to seed showed no fruit formation at all.
“All flower, no fruit?” He frowned. “Or do I harvest them and dry them? Chrysanthemum tea?”
Every Activity enhancement he’d encountered had come from the fruit portion of evolved plants. Other parts — leaves, stems — provided nutrition but not meaningful Activity enhancement. These chrysanthemums were a disappointment on the Activity fruit front, even if they were spectacular to look at. Drying and steeping flowers was also a process he had limited patience for.
He raised his binoculars and looked north toward the hillside.
And found something worth finding: evolved fruit trees on the slope above, heavily laden with fruit. Elliptical forms in green, red, and yellow clusters, covering the branches.
Go look.
(End of Chapter 196)