What exactly gives rise to thought and consciousness is a question not even scientists can answer.

Some hold that neurons in the brain pass information back and forth, and that this forms thought and in turn produces consciousness. Whether that's so, nobody can say for certain; in the old world it was an unsolved riddle.

And now, how intelligence arises out of a rough Superbrain in its waxy, cloud-and-mist state remains just as much a mystery.

All Shen Cong could do was observe the rough Superbrain's changes of form and then feel the thunderbolt giant fir's consciousness growing clearer, its intelligence rising—but he couldn't analyze the actual process of its birth.

"Nothing for it but to ask the scientists."

Given the choice, Shen Cong would rather not expose the secret of the brain gradation so early, but with his own brain gradation at stake he had to have the best data analysis available. This was no place for carelessness.

Over the Super-Thunder Wave station, he broke into the wrangling between the governments once again.

Listening in on their traffic these past two days, he'd already gathered that the Eastern Theater Command had shared its C2 development plan with the Provisional Government, that both the Academy of Sciences and the laboratory were hard at work on C2, and that the two leaderships had entered a honeymoon period. They were still wrangling over the particulars of forming a new government, but the will to unite was very strong.

More importantly, the Eastern Theater Command's evolved people had taken up the Primal Energy Fluctuation Method across the board and made solid progress. Among them, iron people like Chen Xiuni and Zhang Changde were on the verge of entering ultimate-grade.

With ultimate-grade iron people came the ability to operate abroad—to cross a thousand li of dense forest and link the Eastern Theater Command with the Provisional Government and the China Rescue Team.

A date for the first exchange was already under discussion; when it came, Liu Yiwu might well make the trip out here in person.

None of which had much to do with…