Since the thunderbolt giant fir showed no aggression, Shen Cong eased up to it, started climbing, and picked a few branches from the crown to study.

"About the same quality of wood-copper as the dragon-claw pagoda tree, but a good deal tougher and stronger."

Shen Cong held one of the thunderbolt giant fir's branches and probed it in fine detail.

He was looking for the one component that would be different — Firestarter grains.

An animal's jin core held Firestarter grains. Whether a plant took them in at all, he had no idea. And if it did, where did it keep them?

"When an animal's intelligence goes up, you can chalk it up to the brain getting bigger and holding more brain cells… A plant evolving intelligence obviously can't have grown itself a brain out of nowhere. Set the dragon-claw pagoda tree and the thunderbolt giant fir side by side, and the only difference is that the lightning struck intelligence into this one."

Could lightning produce intelligence?

Obviously not.

But under that repeated hammering of lightning the thunderbolt giant fir's intelligence really had grown clearer and clearer. Trace it back for a cause and the answer had to be the electrical energy the lightning carried. It had brought on some change in the tree, and that change was what produced the intelligence.

What kind of change could give rise to intelligence?

Shen Cong knew of only one. Firestarter grains.

Once the spirit-fire was kindled, a metal life built a nervous system to go with it. A step further and it produced a Superbrain. And once there was a Superbrain, intelligence grew.

"If I can just find a trace of Firestarter grains in it, that's at least an eighty percent chance my guess is right. A plant takes in Firestarter grains, lightning kindles them, that gives it a spirit-fire, or a Superbrain, and that's what produces real intelligence."

Finding Firestarter grains in the thunderbolt giant fir was not simple.

The tree was just too big — the size of a skyscraper. If Firestarter grains ran all through it, the quantity would…