A full day’s work. Every Spicy Eye on the ground — dead and living alike — collected and processed.

Final yield: 100 liters of Pepper Water, three large bags of venomous spines. All of it stowed aboard Great Vajra.

The evolved aquatic creatures brought down by the flood had their Activity cores harvested as well, everything stacked temporarily in the supply room. He’d sort through it later — anything workable into bone-gold weapons would be processed, the rest fed to the Vajra Ant colony. The Antgod had now laid three eggs. A colony was forming. Feeding requirements would only grow.

While he was at it, he gathered chrysanthemum petals from the flower field below and set them to dry. Tea ingredients for the road — proper tea production was gone with the old world, and self-sufficiency meant making do with what the new world offered.

November 22nd. The end of Light Snow, the seasonal marker on the lunar calendar. Deep autumn giving way to winter.

Shen Cong had sewn himself a leopard-skin coat. The driver’s seat cushion and his bed had both been reupholstered in Swiftclaw Leopard hide. The vehicle looked warm in a way that suited it. At his current physical constitution, a few degrees below freezing was entirely survivable in thin clothing — but comfort was available, so he took it.

The Half-Activated Armor now had a leopard-skin underlayer as well. Jiao-hide bodysuit, leopard skin, Half-Activated Armor. Three layers.

Better in every respect.

Six months since the apocalypse began. He caught his own face in the small mirror by the bed — pale, composed — and said goodnight to it before turning out the light.

November 23rd.

Back to the drained lakebed.

A shallow residual puddle remained at the center — in the day and a half since the drainage, the evolved creatures trapped in it had been fighting each other. The water had gone red. Around the exposed sand and gravel, shrimp, crabs, turtles, and tortoises crawled in dense populations.

He harvested Activity cores. Then he dug a drainage channel to pull the last standing water down the hillside and finish the job.

The lake was dry.

The disaster’s rock and debris had done the engineering work for him without meaning to — enough sediment had filled this valley to transform a deep mountain lake into a series of shallow impoundments. Drain one and it stayed drained.

Then he saw something in the last muddy depression.

A giant river mussel, half-buried in the silt. Four or five meters across. Surrounded by smaller mussels in descending sizes — centimeters to a meter or two — arrayed around it like family.

Are there pearls?

He picked up one of the meter-sized specimens and checked. Talent 0.544H, Activity Value 0.426H, Lv0.783. Half-Star Talent. Activity cores were the two shell valves.

He worked the Ape King Dagger into the seam and pried it open. Pale yellow mussel flesh, glistening. Embedded in the inner wall: several eggs-sized pearls.

He extracted one and turned it over.

Something was wrong. The pearl had separated from the mussel — and it wasn’t losing Activity. Dense Activity radiation emanated from it, steady and self-sustaining, like a living thing. Similar in character to Activity fruit.

Doesn’t leak Activity once harvested. Which means… could this function like Activity fruit?

Collect everything. Analyze later.

He moved to the largest mussel.

Bigger than a small cargo truck. Shells clamped tight. He sensed its data: Talent only 0.614H — modest — but Activity Value 0.611H.

Level: Lv0.995.

He stood there for a moment.

Lv0.995. One step from Lv1.

This was the highest-level evolved beast he had ever personally encountered. In six months of the apocalypse, the leading evolved organisms — regardless of species — had generally clustered around Lv0.8. This old mussel had reached Lv0.995.

Don’t touch it. Not yet. Once the site is clear, carry the whole thing back intact and study it properly. Something that has evolved this far must be different in ways worth understanding.

Lv0.995. That’s extraordinary. This place is genuinely strange.

Multiple trips hauled Activity cores back to Great Vajra until the cargo space was straining. He went back to the drained lakebed one final time.

From a high vantage point, he looked out across the full Huanglishu Reservoir system.

Seventeen lakes, various sizes, arranged across the terrain in a complex three-dimensional landscape. The central impoundment sat at the highest elevation. The others cascaded down from it in descending rings.

If I breach the barriers one by one, I can drain the entire system.

Is it worth doing? The first lake alone produced this much. What’s in the others?

He brought the drone up to a hundred meters and did a full survey pass — the entire Huanglishu watershed, comprehensively photographed.

He reviewed the footage. Then he reviewed it again. Then he pulled up his map and began drawing circles.

First circle: centered on the highest central lake, enclosing the entire lake system. Dense green vegetation within the boundary — the plant growth was noticeably thick and vigorous.

Second circle: same center, much larger radius, extending ten kilometers out to include Fuxing Township. Green still present but noticeably thinner — plants sparser, less vigorous.

The jujube grove and the chrysanthemum field fell inside the second circle.

Outside the second circle: sparse green. Transitional zone.

He looked at the two concentric circles on the map.

Huoshan Oasis — abundant zone — barren zone — concentric ring distribution, clear boundaries. This shows the same pattern.

His breathing changed.

What if this isn’t just an unusually rich abundant zone? What if this is actually a small Oasis?

He stood up on the high ground, looking at the ring of mountains enclosing lake after lake.

A meteorite fragment could be down there. Buried under those sediment layers.

The thought arrived with the force of certainty.

The Huanglishu Mini-Oasis.

(End of Chapter 200)