After leaving Wuqiao County, Shen Cong found somewhere to rest for the night.

The plan as it stood was to keep north along the Beijing–Taipei Expressway into Cangzhou territory in Hebei, where the first county-town ruins on his route would be Dongguang County.

But in the morning he suddenly decided to turn aside and go to Hengshui.

The Wuqiao oasis isn't large — about the size of the Longdi Town oasis, a medium one. And the Hengshui oasis doesn't reach as far as Wuqiao, which means it's medium or small itself… There are no survivors living at Hengshui any more. Could I dig the Firestarter fragment out and take it?

The Firestarter had changed everything in the new world, and the uses of its fragments were beyond counting.

He could not take the Eastern Theater Command's fragments — the survivors needed them to go on building their oasis — but a fragment somewhere else, with no survivors using it, he could carry off as he pleased.

Leaving it there only benefits the evolved beasts. I ought to take it. Shen Cong settled on the detour to Hengshui at once. In a large oasis the fragment's range of effect is too wide to fix a position from — I couldn't find it if I tried. In a medium or small one, there's a good chance I can take it away.

The only Firestarter fragment on his vehicle was the smallest of them, a piece the size of a fist, and part of that had been used already.

By his reasoning, once an evolved beast reached the Lv3 — Burning Era and kindled its spirit-fire, it would inevitably draw Firestarter grains out of its jin core, and the jin core — a product of a transitional period — would very likely vanish from the new world altogether.

And once the jin core was gone, there would be no room left for a source of power like the totem engine.

But a jin core is, in essence, Firestarter.

So the reasoning was simple enough: a Firestarter fragment might replace the jin core as…