By the time the Four-Armed Vajra, traveling day and night, reached the Guigang area, it was early the next morning. There was no sun to be seen, only endless rolling banks of cloud, turning from gray to red and back to yesterday's blood-red.

The date was March 11.

The time, 9:16 a.m.

The first tremor came up from underground. Judging by the Four-Armed Vajra's resonance drum, the quake was centered on the Chaoshan coast.

"The coast from Chaoshan to Fuzhou is an earthquake belt. In plate tectonics, it's close to where the Philippine Plate meets the Eurasian and Pacific Plates." Shen Cong's mind went straight to what he had learned from geologists before about the world's plate tectonics and plate movement.

This was only the opening act.

In the next half hour alone, Shen Cong's resonance drum picked up quakes in every direction, north, south, east and west. Half an hour after that, a big quake struck right here in Guigang. The shaking wasn't all that strong, maybe magnitude five or six.

The Super-Thunder Wave station had gone completely dead.

The Third Eye Radar was squeezed down to almost nothing. Its range couldn't get past one kilometer.

Thick clouds blotted out the sun.

There was no telling direction. To keep from getting lost, Shen Cong could only stop for the time being and wait for this wave of disaster to pass. But the quakes grew worse and worse. The shaking in Guigang climbed from magnitude five to six, then to seven, and after that it went heading straight for ten.

The wind howled like ghosts and demons wailing.

Loose stones battered everything, and dust hid the sky.

The earth cracked open, and mountains caved in.

Fissures gaped and closed. Hollows heaved up into mounds.

The ground was like a lump of modeling clay, being kneaded and squeezed by an invisible giant hand.

"Ooh, what a rush!" Brother Dao ran across the endlessly shaking ground. To it, a disaster like this was nothing much. For now, it couldn't touch the dog.

Sometimes it jumped back and forth over the fissures on…