Shen Cong turned the riddle of intellectual development over for a while, and then waved it away. A great deal of biology was, frankly, a closed book to him, and there was no way for him to reason out the secret of how a brain evolves.

On Activity wave research his enormously high perceptive Talent let him run ahead of everyone else. Everywhere else, the will outran the strength.

The Vajra Fortress ran east along the ruins of the Shanghai–Jiangsu–Zhejiang Expressway at fifty kilometers an hour, breaking the forest open as it went. Before long it reached a place that was probably Bache Town on the map, near Wujiang District. This country had turned to swamp, mire everywhere underfoot.

Had the Vajra Fortress's tires not been extended into treads several meters wide, driving here safely would have been very difficult.

Perhaps swampland did not suit plants; the trees were sparse and thin, and the view opened out a great deal compared with the dense forest. The Mushroom-Bug Sword had been run out until its tip stood close on a hundred meters up, and had grown a sunshade at the top as well.

Shen Cong had come to like standing on the tip of the Mushroom-Bug Sword and driving the Vajra Fortress with the Superbrain.

For one thing it developed the Superbrain's abilities; for another, standing high he could see far; for a third, there was the wind. Getting up there now and again and looking out, he could make out the situation seven or eight kilometers around, and whether anything enormous lay hidden in it.

The trick did not suit dense forest, though. In dense country the trees ran to a hundred meters as a matter of course, the branches grew in thickets, and the longer the Mushroom-Bug Sword the more resistance it met. The canopy blocked the view besides, and he could see nothing at any distance — not unless he ran it out to two hundred meters, and then the resistance would be too great.

In dense forest the upper story of the trees and the lower story…