Zhang Youhai’s group kept coming back.

Every day that Shen Cong checked the township, the same seven-person team was working through a new section of ruins, and Zhang Youhai kept drifting away from the group at intervals, wandering in the approximate directions where their previous encounter had occurred, looking around with an expectation that was almost readable through the telescope.

He wants to be grabbed again.

The logic was impeccable from Zhang Youhai’s perspective. One brief, harmless detainment had produced meat, medicine, and a story. The downside risk was minimal. Why wouldn’t he position himself for a repeat?

Because the repeat had nothing to offer Shen Cong. He had the information he needed. Zhang Youhai had given it freely the first time, under mild duress, and would give it again — but there was nothing new to extract. The supply-for-intelligence transaction had closed.

He watched the group finish their sweep and head south, then returned to Vajra.

Wait. Continue developing. The right moment will announce itself.

The bone-gold weapon research had been occupying his idle processing for several days.

He’d settled on using their terminology for the finished product — bone-gold weapons — while maintaining his own internal preference for Activity cores as the underlying concept. The distinction didn’t matter practically. What mattered was whether he could do anything more sophisticated with Activity cores than simply embedding them in existing weapons as enhancement points.

The question he’d been circling: could two Activity cores be merged?

His starting hypothesis: Activity cores have metallic-transitional properties. Metals can be alloyed. Therefore Activity cores might be alloyable.

He took two Short-sting worker ant mandible cores — matching frequency signatures, similar continuity values, the most homogeneous pair he had — and ran the test.

Step one, Amalgamation: seamless. Everything Amalgamated into Vajra eventually; the speed varied but the outcome was consistent.

Step two, Extension — using Vajra’s restructuring capability to merge the two Amalgamated cores into a single unified structure.

The moment he directed Extension at the two cores simultaneously, they pushed back. Not passively — actively, a mutual repulsion strong enough to feel through the guidance connection. The cores had become part of Vajra, but they remained distinct within it. The Activity in each was maintaining its own identity, resisting the merger.

He tried it several more ways. Different guidance intensities, different approach vectors, different timing of the Extension application. The result was the same each time.

This method doesn’t work.

He held both cores in his hands and thought about why.

The issue came into focus when he applied the liquid-solid analogy.

Vajra’s Activity was fluid — it could expand, contract, flow, be directed, be replenished. It had changed levels dozens of times. It adapted to new inputs and integrated them, as the motorcycle absorption had shown through the gradual frequency synchronization. Fluid properties: volume variable, shape adaptable, can merge with compatible fluids.

Activity core material was different. Fixed volume, fixed structure, the Activity concentrated within it locked into its final post-death configuration. He’d never observed an Activity core changing its radiation characteristics after extraction. Once the creature died, the core stabilized and stayed there. Solid properties: fixed volume, fixed shape, resistance to merger.

Two solids can’t simply be poured together. To merge solids, you need to either dissolve them into a common liquid phase or apply sufficient energy to force atomic mixing.

Industrial metallurgy had solutions for this — high-temperature forge welding, sintering, various forms of pressure bonding. But those processes worked on conventional metals through heat and mechanical force. Activity cores weren’t conventional metals. The Activity within them wasn’t responding to his attempts to bridge the gap through Vajra’s Extension property, which worked on Vajra’s native Activity rather than the fixed Activity of external cores.

Different phase. Different rules.

He needed to think differently about this.

He opened the physics reference files and started reading about radiation and wave phenomena, looking for an analogy that might generate a workable approach.

The section on resonance caught his attention.

Resonance: when a physical system vibrates with greater amplitude at specific frequencies than at others. The physics was well-established and pervasive — Napoleon’s soldiers marching in step across a bridge in the early 19th century, the rhythmic footfall creating resonant vibration that collapsed the structure. Wineglass singing from a sustained note at its natural frequency until it shattered. Avalanches triggered by a single shout on a primed slope. Microwave ovens using resonant frequency absorption to heat water molecules. Particle accelerators using resonant electromagnetic fields to accelerate charged particles to nearly light speed. Radio communication using resonant antenna tuning to select specific signal frequencies.

Resonance was how systems transferred energy efficiently between each other when their frequencies aligned.

Can Activity resonate?

The question pointed immediately toward a test: if he found the resonant frequency of an Activity core — the frequency at which Vajra’s Activity could transfer energy into the core most efficiently — he might be able to do something that direct Extension could not.

He cleared a section of cargo space and began working.

The first several attempts produced nothing useful. He guided Vajra’s Active radiation toward the test cores at various frequencies, watching for any response through his extended perception. The cores sat inert, the attempted energy transfer diffusing away without taking hold.

He pushed harder, expanding the frequency range, increasing the intensity, looking for any indication of a preferred coupling frequency.

Still nothing.

He sat back and reconsidered. Resonance in physical systems happened at the natural frequency of the target system. He’d been trying arbitrary frequencies. The natural frequency of an Activity core — the intrinsic rhythm of its fixed Activity — was exactly what he’d been measuring as continuity. He hadn’t been targeting the right parameter.

He went back in, this time directing Vajra’s Activity at a frequency precisely matched to the continuity rhythm of the test core rather than the standard radiation frequency.

Hum.

Not a sound exactly — more a sensation in the guidance connection, a quality of increased coupling, the Activity interface between Vajra and the core becoming suddenly more responsive. Something was starting to move.

Then it slipped. His concentration broke fractionally, Vajra’s Active frequency drifted off the target, and the resonant connection collapsed. The cores went back to sitting inert.

He breathed through the adrenaline spike and assessed.

It’s possible. The continuity rhythm is the target parameter, not the frequency. But maintaining the coupling requires sustained precise alignment that I can’t hold for more than a few seconds right now.

He reached for the Baogai Armor and put it on.

If this experiment escalated in the way he suspected it might, he wanted the Active protection layer between himself and whatever happened next.

Again.

(End of Chapter 47)