By abandoning Vajra as the individual reference point and adopting Activity Source as the universal standard, the Level system had become substantially more precise.

That said, Activity Value was a reference factor for Level — not a direct line to combat capability. Different individuals had different builds, different physiologies, different instincts. Even identical Activity Values didn’t mean identical fighting power.

A tiger and a rabbit with the same Activity Value were still a tiger and a rabbit.

A trained fighter and an untrained person at the same Activity Value — the untrained person still lost.

But broadly speaking, Activity Value gave a clear picture of combat potential. At minimum, it showed exactly how far a species had climbed along the evolutionary ladder.

The new framework also told Shen Cong something concrete about Vajra’s ceiling.

At Lv0.647, Vajra was still well short of Lv1 — the gap between current Activity Value and the Activity Source limit was significant. Shen Cong needed to feed Vajra more material to amalgamate, expand the total Activity Value, push the combat capability upward.

Amalgamation wasn’t a matter of brute-forcing metal together. Vajra’s structural integrity had to be respected. New material couldn’t become dead weight.

In other words: a major redesign was needed. Engineering work on a scale he couldn’t complete here in Juchao. He’d need to reach Hefei, make contact with the provincial military district, use their resources to do it properly.

Though if I need fast results, there’s a simpler path — add a trailer section, complete the amalgamation, and the total Activity Value goes up immediately. Some loss of mobility, but manageable. I’ll decide when I get to Hefei. If proper modification is possible, do it right. If not, run with the trailer for now.

Wang Gen had been doing exactly that — using a trailer to keep his Level climbing.

Shen Cong could follow the same approach. He just had larger ambitions — a Vajra rebuilt specifically for this world, not patched together out of necessity.

He turned to the next question.

The Activity Source limit is fixed for every individual evolved creature. What does that mean?

He laid the numbers out mentally. Vajra at 1.584H. The Hummer at 1.193H. The Bull Demon King at 0.658H. The Tumour-Pig at 0.596H. The old-mature larva at 0.411H.

He pulled out Zhang Tianshen’s ten finger-claw cores and ran the measurements. Level Lv0.408. Activity Value 0.356H. Activity Source limit approximately 0.873H.

Then Tao Daqian’s canine cores. Level Lv0.521. Activity Value 0.387H. Activity Source limit approximately 0.743H.

I’ve been calling this the Lv0 era — but I have no real model for what Lv1 looks like. All I know is: when Vajra’s Activity Value reaches 1.584H, it enters the Lv1 era. Same logic applies to the Hummer — when it reaches 1.193H, Lv1. But both of them arrive at Lv1 with very different absolute values. Vajra at 1.584H versus the Hummer at 1.193H — doesn’t that mean Vajra’s future ceiling is fundamentally higher? Is the Activity Source limit a measure of evolutionary potential? Of innate talent?

That felt right.

So: rename it. Call the Activity Source limit Talent.

The full system, then:

Lv — the Level of evolution. H — the unit of Activity Value, representing Activity quantity and combat capability. Talent — the Activity Source limit, representing the ceiling of an individual’s evolutionary potential.

A complete quantification framework. Rigorous. Applicable to any evolved organism. Clear about exactly where each creature stood and where it could go.

Vajra’s complete profile: Lv0.647 / Activity Value 1.025H / Talent 1.584H.

The framework was finished.

He looked at the dense analysis report filling the laptop screen, and felt — not much.

Because there was a shadow sitting on his chest that the numbers couldn’t touch.

Last night, after killing Wang Gen, he’d interrogated the survivors. What they’d told him had almost made him sick.

This wasn’t Wang Gen’s first time hunting evolved people.

He and his core group had killed three evolved mutants — people who had come into the district from the main urban area. Killed them and consumed them as blood food.

“I don’t know exactly what blood food means. Brother Wang Gen and the others just had us capture people, then the three of them would take the captives away. We never saw those people again. Once Dahaizi let it slip — that’s how we found out they were using evolved people as blood food. We guessed privately that they were eating them.”

One of Wang Gen’s men had told him this, trying to prove he himself had no part in it.

The information sent cold crawling down Shen Cong’s spine.

Iron people could absorb each other’s Activity — that much was established. But apparently evolved mutants could do the same, using each other as blood food. And it seemed to offer better evolutionary returns than consuming evolved beasts or evolved fish. Otherwise, why do it when animal meat was available?

This world was more brutal than he’d imagined.

Survival. Be more careful.

The attempted amalgamation had failed. Forced Activity injection couldn’t sustain the Hummer’s vital signs either — the repulsion was too strong. The vehicle’s Activity had begun its decline, the outer shell losing its charge first, reverting to ordinary metal, plate by plate.

By evening, internal components were starting to go dark too.

Shen Cong watched it with mild frustration. It was a good vehicle. He’d have preferred to preserve it. But death, once moving in that direction, didn’t reverse — and he switched mental modes without dwelling on it. Waste nothing.

He began the final set of experiments. He was going to take the Hummer apart.

Everything useful — equipment, electronics, components — stripped out and transferred to Vajra. Raw material for the next round of modifications.

“This cabin air conditioning unit is good. Vajra’s cab has climate control, but my sleeping quarters don’t. That fixes that.”

“Surround sound system — excellent. Goes in the bedroom. No more relying on the laptop or phone just to play music. And this in-car display screen — mount it on the bedroom wall, watch from the bed.”

“This seat is something. Full leather, pneumatic adjustment, heating, cooling, massage. Take the air pump with it. For when I’m on the roof watching stars, I can actually sit comfortably.”

“The central console LCD screen could go in the cab as a dedicated navigation display. That frees up a full monitor for camera feeds.”

“The seat-mounted screen isn’t worth keeping whole, but the components might be enough to rebuild one of Vajra’s broken displays. Maybe I can piece together another monitor’s worth of parts.”

“In-car refrigerator — yes. My small fridge still isn’t repaired. This will do for now. Tiny — barely fits two bottles of beer — but something is better than nothing.”

“And this. This is the best one — adaptive cruise control. I can integrate it with Vajra’s existing autopilot system. Add the four parking sensors, design the interface properly, and I have a functional autopilot mode again. Wang Gen’s Hummer — genuinely well-equipped. Luxury vehicle for a reason.”

Reversing cameras, panoramic cameras, a full suite of secondary electronics — all practical, all salvageable.

Beyond the electronics, the Hummer’s engine had potential as a standalone backup power generator. Running it separately on gasoline would reduce Vajra’s diesel consumption. Vajra could burn both fuels, but running mixed fuel wasn’t ideal — having a dedicated gasoline generator would take some of the load off.

When the stripping was done, the Hummer was a bare frame.

Its Activity Value had dropped to 0.113H and was accelerating downward, the remaining charge barely holding together. Shen Cong kept his perception locked on the vehicle — he wanted to observe what happened when an Activity-bonded machine was fully dismantled. And he was looking for something specific: the original activation point. The part of the vehicle that had first been touched by Activity.

After learning about the meteorite fragments beneath the Oasis, a question had been forming in the back of his mind. Did Activity’s transformation of metal happen in layers? The parts that had received the initial raw Activity surge from the meteor shower — would they differ in some fundamental way from parts that had been activated later through ambient absorption?

The night had gone deep.

He set the question aside, climbed back into Vajra, and slept. Tomorrow, when the Hummer’s Activity dropped a little further, the original activation point should begin to show itself.

(End of Chapter 80)