2.518H had been the hard ceiling — for both Shen Cong and Great Vajra. After absorbing the fire truck’s primary metal, the Hummer’s primary metal, and a portion of the crane truck’s primary metal, the ceiling had simply stopped moving. No further progress, no matter what was tried.
Talent wasn’t something that responded to ordinary effort. Shen Cong had quietly investigated the iron people at camp over time — their Talent clustered between One-Star and One-and-a-Half-Star, and even after absorbing primary metal, almost none of them reached Two-Star. The camp’s mutants hit their own wall below 1H; the camp’s iron people hit theirs below 2H. Only Great Vajra and Shen Cong had climbed past 2.5H, and he had never been able to explain why.
He’d attributed it to the meteor shower itself — specifically, to the meteorite that had struck his warehouse. That particular fragment, whatever its nature, must have carried exceptional power.
After hitting 2.518H, he had begun preparing psychologically for the Lv1 era, assuming the ceiling was permanent.
And then he had woken up this morning to find his Talent at 2.521H.
The ceiling was gone.
“The meteorite fragment. It has to be the meteorite fragment.”
“The closer evolved beasts live to an Oasis, the stronger they are, the higher their Talent — because they’ve been exposed to the fragment’s stimulation. The Iron-Eater at Huoshan Oasis, enormous as a small mountain. The Water Tyrant pair here at Huanglishu — an extraordinary mutation, Talent values that shouldn’t exist. And now it’s my turn.”
A pause.
“Though — it seems the lead bucket and radiation suit aren’t fully blocking the fragment’s Activity radiation.”
He didn’t stop to wash his face or brush his teeth. He went straight to the laboratory.
The room temperature was slightly elevated — the shielding was doing something, the radiation wasn’t at full intensity, the heat output was modest.
“Activity radiation probably behaves differently from conventional ionizing radiation.” The best explanation he had for now.
He suited up, opened the lead bucket. The meteorite fragment was unchanged. The wire-drawing die he’d placed beside it was not — riddled with corrosion holes, crumbling, on the edge of complete disintegration.
“The Activity corrosion effect on metal is serious.”
The inference was straightforward: the Activity radiation from the fragment had corroded the die overnight, breaking it down almost completely in hours.
“The Research Institute’s experiments showed that corroding metal loses mass. So — Activity is the portion of that mass that gets converted and released. And the meteorite fragment is the catalyst for that reaction. It’s unchanged itself, not directly consumed — it’s acting as a catalyst.”
With that, a picture began assembling itself in his mind.
May 18th. A massive comet or asteroid had approached Earth, beginning to break apart as it grazed the atmosphere. The fragments scattered across the globe.
The larger pieces retained their core material intact — these became meteorite fragments. The smaller pieces burned and vaporized completely, becoming a cloud of some strange Activity-related substance.
The vaporized material had produced the apocalyptic storm — destroying surface structures, and simultaneously triggering mutation in biological organisms.
The meteorite fragments struck the ground and began catalyzing metal corrosion, releasing Activity, forming Oases.
As the apocalyptic storm settled, Earth absorbed both the fragments and the Activity and began constructing a new ecological order. Metal corroded further, releasing more Activity. Activity began remaking all living things. Those living things began metallic transformation in turn — gradually converting inert metal into metal with life properties.
Like the phosphatization events that had given Cambrian sea creatures the building blocks for skeletons, opening an entirely new evolutionary path. With skeletal support came the possibility of leaving the deep ocean. Life had surged from the depths toward the continental shelves during the Cambrian Explosion.
Now this “Activity accumulation event” seemed to be driving life toward metallic transformation. Perhaps this, too, was an entirely new path.
The mental image was vivid. Shen Cong didn’t linger in it.
He had experimental plans to execute. Time to systematically map the meteorite fragment’s properties instead of theorizing about them.
And time to check whether his companions had changed overnight.
They had.
Blackhead’s Talent: 0.350H → 0.352H. The Antgod’s Talent: 0.625H → 0.629H. The larvae, each showing increases between 0.002H and 0.004H. The Treasure Bee workers: 0.102H → 0.103H. The Treasure Bee queen: 0.219H → 0.221H. The greenhouse plants had all registered increases of approximately 0.001H.
One night of Activity radiation had changed every living thing aboard Great Vajra.
The Half-Activated Armor had changed too — he could sense it, a subtle but real shift in the failed metal life-form’s Activity character, moving fractionally from “inert” toward something closer to “vital.”
“So this is what the meteorite fragment does. Increases Talent in living organisms. Pushes ‘inert’ Activity toward ‘vital.’ And very likely — this is what the original fragments did to every ordinary creature within range. Infected them with Activity. Triggered their mutation. Turned them into evolved beasts, evolved trees, evolved people.”
“The effect diminishes with distance. That’s why there’s an Oasis, then an abundant zone, then a barren zone beyond it. The closer to the fragment, the greater the benefit.”
“I have a fragment now. Under prolonged Activity radiation exposure — will my Talent keep rising? And what negative changes might come with it?”
He made a note and kept working. “Careful observation required.”
Five days passed like a galloping horse.
Shen Cong threw himself into meteorite fragment research with complete absorption. His results, given his amateur scientist limitations, were modest but meaningful.
He wrote it up in the Apocalypse Journal:
Meteorite fragment: source of Activity radiation. Catalyzes the ‘metal-to-Activity conversion’ reaction. Effect diminishes in concentric rings with distance. Accompanied by multiple radiation types including X-ray, gamma, alpha, and beta particles. Extremely high hardness, chemical inertia, stable mass. Conventional radiation can be shielded by lead and tantalum. Activity radiation can be shielded by bone-gold and flesh-gold.
Increases Talent in biological organisms — raises the Activity capacity ceiling — but the effect is not continuous. Enhancement completes within approximately 72 hours; further exposure produces no additional gain.
Over those five days, the Antgod and the other companions had each gained between 0.05H and 0.12H of Talent. Shen Cong and Great Vajra had been elevated to 2.717H — an increase of 0.199H. The pattern suggested that higher baseline Talent produced greater gains from fragment exposure.
And the other consequence — the one he hadn’t dared hope for — was that the ceiling had broken entirely.
He and Great Vajra could absorb primary metal again.
He spent half a day consuming what remained of the coal truck’s primary metal. Before hitting the next ceiling, his Talent had climbed to 3.012H.
Past 3H.
The highest confirmed Talent of any known mutated organism — with the sole exception of the Iron-Eater at Huoshan Oasis, whose ceiling remained unknown.
The only Three-Star Talent in existence.
Beyond Three-Star.
(End of Chapter 214)