Zhengzhou, Xinxiang, Hebi, Anyang, Handan, Xingtai, Shijiazhuang, Baoding—along a road that was no road, Shen Cong came back into territory the new government controlled.

All the way along, the ground the earthquakes had wrecked was starting to recover, thick with green.

And no shortage of fissures, of course, everywhere you looked.

Ever since An Sanshun's team finished writing the Spider Program, the Vajra Fortress had become Spider-Man, crossing the land in any direction without the slightest check. Even a vertical ninety-degree cliff could be climbed and descended. The 70B drove straight into the cliff face, and the telescoping spikes built into it could extend tens of meters, holding the Vajra Fortress firmly in place without breaking the rock away.

"It's time the Vajra Fortress's name was changed... Vajra Spider? Qilin Vajra? Or Qilin Spider Vajra, Vajra Qilin Spider?"

Feeling how well the Spider Program went with the 70B system, Shen Cong began turning over something of no importance at all.

Naming things.

It counted as one of the real pleasures of his life.

Singing, films, novels, games—Shen Cong's interests were wide enough. Study, research, labor, dolls. A journey taken alone always needs some way of working off the loneliness.

Keep some ants. Walk a lizard.

Give the Siberian weasel a beating. Tease an evolved beast or two along the way.

Hai Zi, who wrote Facing the Sea, with Spring Blossoms, is remembered for a line in it about wanting to give warm names to the rivers and the mountains. Shen Cong, a lone hiker, liked to give the things around him and the things he discovered names that were faithful, expressive and elegant.

Behind every name.

There was a stretch of story and thought that belonged to him.

Just like that ever-thickening Apocalypse Journal—no outline, no through-line, whatever came into his head went down on the page. It grew from nothing into something, and when he leafed through it now and then, what looked back at him was yesterday's self—and, all at once, the self he would be.

Living without being contaminated, holding stubbornly to the search for himself.

If…