Crayfish is mostly about the tail meat.

Female crabs are for the roe. Male crabs are for the crab paste.

Shrimp Soldier’s tail meat went into the freezer for later. Crab General turned out to be male — Shen Cong boiled it that same afternoon and spent lunch eating an obscene quantity of crab paste. Extraordinarily good.

The fourth and fifth barrier lakes took longer than expected — a full two days of digging to cut channels wide enough and long enough to drain them properly.

Neither lake yielded any large evolved beasts, and no new Activity fruit appeared. Just dense concentrations of small aquatic evolved creatures and a scattering of evolved trees.

One pattern was unmistakable: virtually everything here was sitting around Lv0.8.

Whether that was unique to the Mini-Oasis environment — an accelerated evolutionary pace driven by higher Activity density — or simply the natural progression of the outside world, he couldn’t say. Maybe the whole world was collectively crossing into the Lv0.8 tier by now. Shen Cong didn’t particularly care either way.

The Old Pearl Mussel had reached Lv0.998. Another day or two of feeding and it would cross into the Lv1 era.

As for Shen Cong himself: Activity Value now at 2.197H, level approximately Lv0.873. Two days of intensive Activity fruit consumption had produced rapid, sustained enhancement — his level was climbing faster than it had in a long time. The Activity Pearls had added another three centimeters over those same two days. He was now 185cm.

Not just taller, either. Across-the-board physical improvement. Seventeen-bull strength achieved.

“I can probably gain another four centimeters — eat the largest remaining Activity Pearls and they’ll stop working. Call it 189cm, that’s enough.”

“Eating the Activity fruit to saturation should put me around 2.3H — less than the 2.5H I’d projected. I’ll need more sources. The Mini-Oasis still has a dozen or more barrier lakes on the other side of the ridge. Activity fruit should be growing along those banks too. Once I’ve cracked the central lake, I’ll go looking.”

“Great Vajra is at 2.401H, level Lv0.954. Can’t keep running the totems — hit 2.518H and the Siphon starts again. Hold off. Wait for my own levels to catch up first.”

He carried a bowl of lotus seed soup into the cab.

The panoramic display in the cab made for excellent movie-watching. He was reaching to pull up a film when, on impulse, he switched on the vehicle radio and ran a full scan.

With radio silence having become the norm, he’d been scanning less and less. He still did it every day — but that had become something closer to compulsion than hope. He no longer expected anything. The radar had a one-kilometer range, the radio three hundred meters. The radio had effectively become a decorative fixture.

Hiss. Hiss. Hiss.

The familiar texture of meaningless static.

Then — on a longwave frequency during the full-band sweep — it wasn’t static.

It was a woman’s voice. Standard Mandarin.

“…tonight, Eastern Theater Command… military affairs broadcast… joining us… Lieutenant General Zhang Yicai… offensive against the radiation core zone… plan…”

Shen Cong’s pupils widened. His full attention locked onto the frequency.

The woman’s voice gave way to a slightly hoarse middle-aged male voice — heavy interference, cutting in and out: “…regarding metal radiation beasts… current situation… 12th Group Army… Hongze Lake area…”

Barely a sentence and a half. The signal vanished. Static again.

He didn’t touch anything. Didn’t dare move. This longwave frequency had almost certainly been developed by the Eastern Theater Command specifically for long-distance communication — a rare resource in China, and not an accident.

Three minutes later, the signal returned.

The woman again: “…General Zhang… this operation… nuclear warhead units… this is what everyone wants to know… could you explain…”

The middle-aged man: “We can’t rule out that possibility… Theater Command staff… the use of metal weapons isn’t enough to… nuclear warheads and environmental impact…”

Mid-sentence. Gone again.

For the next half hour the signal didn’t return. He adjusted the frequency up and down around the target range. Nothing. He locked the frequency and switched to recording mode, then left the cab, frowning.

The Eastern Theater Command was broadcasting on longwave radio. Unexpected, and genuinely welcome — it confirmed that the Command still existed as a coherent, functional organization.

Complete with nuclear warhead units.

That was unambiguously good news. Nuclear warheads didn’t maintain themselves. The technical expertise required meant the Eastern Theater Command had preserved serious scientific and engineering capability.

“Great Vajra’s next major upgrade should probably happen at the Eastern Theater Command. But the broadcast didn’t give a location. What it did say was — possibly an offensive toward the Hongze Lake area? Or troops massing near Hongze Lake?”

He spread the map open and found Hongze Lake.

Fourth largest freshwater lake in China. Located in Jiangsu Province. Major nearby cities: Suqian and Huai’an. If troops were massing near Hongze Lake, either of those cities could be the Command’s base of operations. But if they were planning an offensive toward Hongze Lake, then the lake itself might be the “radiation core zone” — in other words, an Oasis.

“Radiation core zone — that’s Oasis, almost certainly.” He turned it over carefully. “If Hongze Lake is an Oasis, then Huai’an and Suqian are both far too close to it to be a safe base of operations. The Eastern Theater Command might still be in Nanjing — or somewhere further out. Yangzhou, Taizhou, Yancheng. All possibilities.”

A few fragmented sentences wasn’t much to work with. He was guessing as much as deducing.

“Metal radiation beasts — jin beasts — that’s just what they call evolved beasts. Makes sense. The Nanjing Military Region figured out early on that Activity is a form of radiation linked to metal. They’re planning to attack an Oasis, which means the Eastern Theater Command still has enormous combat strength. They’ve already detonated nuclear warheads before — they might have already taken one Oasis.”

He circled three locations on the map: Huoshan County in Lu’an City, Anhui; Quanjiao County in Chuzhou, Anhui; and Hongze County in Huai’an City, Jiangsu.

Three suspected Oasis sites. His current best reconstruction.

“Not enough information. Keep the radio on for the next few days. Capture as much of that frequency as possible. Build a better picture of the Eastern Theater Command’s situation.”

“Finish excavating the Huanglishu Mini-Oasis first. Consolidate what the radio gives me. Then decide: north to Huai’an, or east to Nanjing.”

The radio signal had done something useful beyond the intelligence it contained: it had made his direction feel real again. The Eastern Theater Command existed. It was functional. It was doing things. Somewhere east of him, a larger organization was still fighting.

He believed — genuinely believed — that reaching them would finally let him crack open the fundamental mystery of mutation. The origins of Activity. Where evolution was actually headed.

But he also gave himself a quiet, firm warning.

Any contact with the Eastern Theater Command required extreme caution. More caution than that. A major military organization was nothing like New Hefei. One wrong move and he wouldn’t be dealing with politics or bureaucracy — he’d be dealing with the kind of institutional machinery that could grind a single person to powder.

The more people, the more schemes. The more schemes, the more people who might want me gone.

He lay down in the dark, let the feelings settle, and ran through everything he’d heard — once, carefully, completely. Only then did he close his eyes.

The night was still.

(End of Chapter 205)