The Luoxingyu Raised Fire River showed no sign of solidifying further. Split into a northern and a southern river, it was still churning, giving off thick smoke and heat in a dense, hazy pall.

Inside the haze, Firestarter energy flowed in and out, making the place a sanctuary that evolved people were drawn to.

The Southern Theater Command's troops stationed in the Wuzhou area sent quite a few evolved people here to study it. Shen Cong didn't bother greeting them. Once he had the data he wanted, he drove the Four-Armed Vajra straight off toward the Guangzhou area, towing the Train Convoy.

The Guangzhou area had been badly damaged.

It hadn't only been ravaged by the earthquake and wrecked by volcanic eruptions. A tsunami had hit it too. The one stroke of luck was that when the waves struck, they froze the raging volcanoes solid. So when Shen Cong returned to the Guangzhou settlement, he saw no raised fire rivers or volcanic lakes.

But the devastation was everywhere, of course. More than thirty-six thousand people had died in the disaster, and the mood in the settlement was heavy.

"BOSS, I'm so glad to see you!" An Sanshun came out to meet Shen Cong and burst into tears, snot and all. "It was so close, so close, Little An almost never got to see you again! The fissure opened up right near the little building where we were staying, and lava shot straight out. It nearly burned us alive, and then the floodwater came!"

Before the earthquake hit, An Sanshun and the research team had been evacuated to a spot with good terrain.

Since they were all evolved people, they had assumed nothing would happen to them. Who could have known there would be lava eruptions and a tsunami too? Luckily, the earlier great earthquakes had made the Southern Theater Command prepare thoroughly too, and its defenses were well built, so they escaped.

The ordinary people were less fortunate. Even with the fortifications to hide in, more than thirty-six thousand of them died.

There was nothing anyone could do about it.